A Confession by 101-year-old communist partisan to being present at massacre of Croatian friars and civilians in February 1945

With the backdrop of genocidal aggression Croatia copped, and defended itself from through thousands lost lives, rivers of blood spilled and massive destruction of property suffered in the wake of 94% of its voters having voted in a May 1991 referendum to exit from communist Yugoslavia and establish a democratic, independent Croatia one would think that former communists, direct or indirect mass murderers of Croatian patriots, would sink into an abyss of dark, condemned history by 2025. But no, even communist mass crimes during and after World War Two are being paraded before the hurting patriotic public as something to be glorified and proud of. So much for the condemnation of communist crimes, in a EU member country, that would obligatorily come out of EU’s condemnation of crimes of totalitarian regimes (Nazi, Communist, Fascist) regimes from 2006 onward. So much for EU’s “policing” its members states, ensuring they uphold its proclamations and rules.

Cruel shocks in Croatia that carry awful connotation for both the nation and individual citizens carrying in their hearts and minds the values of the 1990’s Homeland War seem unending. Last week Zoran Milanovic, former League of Communists ardent and devoted member, had invited to his 18 February presidential inauguration a 101-year-old woman called Vjera Andrijic. In her younger days during the Second World War Andrijic was a communist Partisan recruit serving that echelon not only as nurse on the battlefields against Croats, who fought for independent Croatia, but also with her presence and most likely participation in mass murders of Croats. If she did not raise a hand against the massacred victims, which may yet come to light, she certainly did nothing to interfere with the crime or to report the perpetrators to authorities for at least 80 years. She does not even report the actions as crimes even now, she boasts of them as something to be proud of. Sheer hatred for Croatian freedom visibly emanates out of that woman’s eyes even at her ripe old age of 101.

It would seem that Milanovic knew very well that the presence of this macabre woman, or anyone like her, at his inauguration as president would hurt deeply the Croatian people who, in just under 94% measure, loathed Yugoslavia and communism, fought to defend Croatia to the last drop of blood from it, so he attempted to water down the cruel shock by inviting some army generals whose political loyalties appear suspect these days and who defended Croatia in the Yugoslav and Serb aggression against it in 1990’s. Such an attempt of mellowing down his cruelty did not work. It is not clear whether Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and Speaker of the Parliament Gordan Jandrokovic knew in advance that this cruel taunt would occur, but they did not attend the Presidential inauguration. They said this well in advance of the event, citing reasons of Milanovic’s breaches of the country’s Constitution!

To add salt to the wound Milanovic knew that 7^th February marked 80 years since the Yugoslav communists murdered 66 Herzegovinian Franciscans. On that fateful day the partisans came in the morning and at the end of the day they committed a crime against 12 Franciscan monks.

First they killed them with a bullet in the back of their head and then they burned them in the war shelter in the monastery garden.

They murdered a total of 30 Franciscans from the monastery community of Siroki Brijeg, as well as four others from the monastery area, which is more than a half of all murdered Herzegovinian Franciscans during those months.

Witnesses to the massacre of the 30 friars say the men were given a final choice – renounce their faith or face execution. Franciscans were killed in a war shelter near the Franciscan Monastery and the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in the period from February 5 to 10, 1945, 72 civilians were also killed. Milanovic invited this communist monster to his inauguration despite the fact that VIDA TV (owned by the Serbian National Council) published an incriminating interview with her in November 2024 in which she boasted about and glorified the mass killings of the Franciscans in 1945! 

In the most interesting and telling part of the interview for VIDA TV, partisan Vjera Andrijic, describes how the partisans „neutralised“ the Croatian Friars from Siroki Brijeg in Bosnia and Herzegovina but at the time of these mass murders that area was part of the Independent State of Croatia. In doing this, in recounting her witnessing of these mass murders, she boasts of her role and proudly places herself among the mass murderers and their political agenda. But she does not see the Partisans as murderers because she sees them as the only people who fought for freedom. Nobody else exists for her in that sense, the Croatian forces who fought against communist partisans in order to preserve Croatia as an independent Country and not part of any Yugoslvia appear to have completely evaporated from her brainwashed mind, and she does not even mention the fact that almost 94% of Croatian voters voted to escape from that communist Yugoslavia gaol.

„Now we’re going to Siroki Brijeg and when we got there, there was no one there. Not a single man, not a single woman there. When we entered Siroki Brijeg, there were many of us wounded, I was wounded, but not by a bullet, but by shrapnel… I bandaged my hand and had to take care of the wounded… we didn’t find anyone there, but the fight was on, the fight was on all night, night was approaching, the fight was on… we didn’t have a fight with anything except the church… as long as the church didn’t fall, as long as the priests didn’t stop shooting from the church, Siroki Brijeg didn’t fall. It was night, I saw it with my own eyes, our people stormed the church and naturally captured them, they were the priests who had a machine gun … we captured them all, five, six priests, as many as there were, they were all in their habits and they had that Jesus cross hanging down their sides and a machine gun in their hand. We had to deal with the church…. That was around February 1945. The end of the war was already approaching… they were hiding in houses so we had to search each house in detail…“ Andrijic recounts for Vida TV, accentuating the fact that they carried loaded guns, ready to shoot while searching the houses.

The historical facts researched during late twentieth centry show that on that fateful February 7, 1945, partisans found 12 friars and several students in the Franciscan monastery in Široki Brijeg who had hidden for safety. Partisans took all the friars out of the monastery, tied them up with wire, took them to the nearby war shelter, and there they were brutally murdered, some of them even burned alive. First, the partisans severely damaged the church, monastery, gymnasium and boarding school with artillery and airstrikes, and then, on February 7, they killed the friars they found, 12 of them. They killed them with a bullet in the back of the head and set them on fire in the war shelter. According to historical records now accessible the partisans entered the monastery around 11:00, and they did this around 17:00. This means that it was not a spontaneous act of revenge, but a carefully thought-out plan. Before that, they robbed them, as well as the entire monastery, and the students and people of God, who had taken refuge in the monastery. The searching of the houses about which Andrijic talks in the film most likely resulted in the murder of dozens of civilians besides the friars.

Why president Milanovic would want to rub salt on this Croatian patriots’ wound by inviting a person, Andrijic, who was there in 1945 when the crimes occurred is anybody’s guess. One thing for sure, though, he appears to have no respect for the victims of such mass murders and their families.

Calls for Milanovic’s impeachment as well as criminal investigation against Andrijic with regards for possible war crimes have more or less filled the public space in Croatia since 18 February, particularly the very important social media component. This case is about genocide that was committed, it is a war crime that was committed against the Franciscans in February 1945. Vjera Andrijic, who boasts that she participated in that massacre (by physical presence and political ideology), is now 101 years old… In any case, there are elements of a war crime in which she would have participated, because she herself says that she was present there. While president Milanovic is defending Vjera Andriic when it comes to World War Two crimes the State Attorney’s Office of Croatia is reportedly planning to question her regarding the massacre in Siroki Brijeg of February 1945. It is time to finally bring communist crimes to justice and this case, God willing, might just be the one to serve as the springboard. After all, communist Yugoslavia authorities charged, brought to court and convicted Andrija Artukovic, World War Two Croatian Ustasha, in late 1980’s, for a crime that did not even occur let alone been committed! And here emerges Vjera Andrijic who was present in Siroki Brijeg when a war crime was committed by her communist partisan unit!

Such a profile of guests for the presidential inauguration would indisputably appear to have been designed by Zoran Milanovic in order to give more validation and justification to communist crimes. It is the stuff depravity is defined in dictionaries by and illustrated from. Ina Vukic