CROATIA — Last month's swearing in of Croatian President Stipe
Mesic, and January's election of a center-left
government, did more than mark the first electoral
turnover in the country's short history as a
democracy. It signaled that Croatia was finally
ready to move out from under the half-baked
totalitarianism
of the late Franjo Tudjman, who passed away in
December. Croatia has already made incredible steps in
terms of political reform and civil freedoms, putting
it on course to join NATO and the
European Union, steps which
other former communist nations like Poland
and the Czech Republic
took long ago. But before it finally, fully, joins the
West, Croatia must use its new-found freedom to come
to grips with a part of its history it has so often
ignored: its role in the Holocaust.
Contrary to popular belief, Croatia was for the most
part not occupied by Germany during World War II.
Instead, it was run by the Ustasha, a virulently
pro-Croatian fascist party which modeled itself on the
Nazis, and yet in its core ideologies operated
independently from them. The Ustasha was strongly
Catholic and worked closely with the Church to
suppress its enemies. And while the Ustasha was
strongly anti-Semitic, its real enemy were the Serbs —
over 100,000 Serbs were killed in the infamous
Jasenovac camp alone.
Jasenovac, located about 50 miles southeast of the
Croatian capital of Zagreb, has long served as a
symbol of Ustasha atrocities. It was actually a series
of 6 camps along the Sava River, and while most of the
camps were nominally labor camps, the main emphasis
was on extermination. Along with Serbs, tens of
thousands of Jews, Gypsies and resistance members were
killed at the camp.
Traveling through Croatia late last year, I tried to
visit the Jasenovac site
(about 50
miles southeast of Zagreb). Surprisingly, not only was
it virtually inaccessible, but none of the locals I
talked with knew about it. I learned later that even
had I found it, all I would have seen was an open
field and a small fiberglass marker. Nothing to
indicate that the field was once the site of one of
the worst of Europe's extermination camps; nothing to
indicate that Jews, Serbs, and Communists alike were
executed here in ways so brutal that visiting German
officers demanded it be closed down (to no avail).
The absence of Jasenovac in the Croatian popular
memory reflects the larger, more complicated presence
of the Ustasha. On the one hand, in 1991 the newly
minted Croatian democracy was quick to distance itself
from its totalitarian pasts (both Ustasha and
Yugoslav). On the other, the reign of the Ustasha
represents the only previous era of Croatian
independence, and many still look upon the regime not
as fascist barbarians but as defenders of the Croatian
nation. Tudjman himself made no secret of his respect
for this aspect of the Ustasha reign. He resurrected
the regime's currency, the Kuna, and even incorporated
aspects of its flag into the current one.
Recently, Croatia has taken some steps to address its
dark past. In 1998 it extradited and tried Dinko
Sakic, the last surviving commandant of Jasenovac, who
had been living with his wife Nada in Argentina since
1945 (surprisingly under their real names). Sakic was
found guilty and given 20 years in prison. However,
Nada, who had been a high-ranking prison guard in the
women's section of Jasenovac, was released.
Many countries in central and Eastern Europe have been
able to mask their guilt as collaborators by claiming
to be victims of Nazi aggression (Austria, for
example, has always referred to itself as "Hitler's
first victim"). But whatever the case elsewhere,
Croatia cannot hide under the same story — the Ustasha
was not a mere collaborator. It groomed its own breed
of racism and anti-Semitism, and in its relation to
the Nazis must be viewed as a parallel, if somewhat
less sinister, fascist regime.
Croatia's new leadership has been silent on the issue
of the Ustasha, focusing its energies on structural
and social reform. This is understandable, and
acceptable, for the time being. The Croatian people
are involved in nothing less than the reconstruction
of their society, and already they enjoy new rights
and prospects unthinkable under Tudjman. The
international media has portrayed Croatia as a nation
with its eyes suddenly fixated on the future. But if
they are ever to enter fully into the ranks of modern
Europe, they must first use their new freedoms to go
back into their past, to address an issue that has
long been denied its due.
E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.
Croatia Looks Away