It wasn’t communist Yugoslavia/Croatia, during its miserable life, that kept alive for decades the desire and pursuit for justice for victims of communist crimes, it was the diaspora. Diaspora that houses multitudes of victims of communist crimes and human rights denials, including persecution, loss of work and opportunity to work, political imprisonment or murder family members. And yet this diaspora that, if counting all living generations of Croatian descent houses more people than Croatia itself, was not directly informed that in July 2025 a historic event that touches their own lives and families happened in Croatia. That is, the Commission for determining the fate of victims of crimes committed immediately after the Second World War was established by the government on July 10, 2025.

The Commission to my view should be carrying the name of Commission for Determining Communist Crimes in Former Yugoslavia.  But, I guess, when one is desperate for justice for victims of communist crimes the Commission’s name ceases to be very important. It’s just that without using communist crimes as part of the Commission’s name one’s suspicions as to its full impact and thorough justice for the victims are raised. After all, many in the government are direct descendants of communist operatives who never criticised nor tried to stop communist purges in Croatia during the life of post-Second World War Yugoslavia.    

Apart from over two thousand pits and mass graves in Croatia and Slovenia filled with Croatan victims of communist crimes the loudest living witnesses of communis crimes are in the diaspora simply because the story unlike in Yugoslavia was never killed there. Hundreds of thousands fled to safety and freedom from the brutal retaliatory hand of communist Yugoslavia. Whether retaliation for having fought for an independent Croatia during that war was swift and fatal, whether political prison followed, whether it was slow and cruel it does not matter – it was always a crime.

One can only wonder if it was on purpose, so that the public hears not much about it because of the summer tourist season and mass annual leave break, including the parliament, that the Croatian Government had, finally, established the Commission for determining the fate of victims of crimes committed immediately after the Second World War. Its birth seems to have arrived relatively quietly and just before summer parliament break and general public distraction due to impending hustle and bustle of the tourist season.

The Commission is here and that is a positive thing, and it would be completely positive if its work includes Croats living in the diaspora whose ancestors fled the criminal communist regime. Often to save their bare lives.

Official sources say that the Commission is an interdepartmental body responsible for:

– considering the historical circumstances and facts related to the suffering of victims of crimes committed in the period immediately after the Second World War

– collecting relevant data on victims from all available sources

– analysing the collected data using a multidisciplinary approach

– documenting and systematically recording the established data on victims

– cooperating with competent bodies, scientific and professional institutions and individuals in the processing and publication of data on victims

– monitoring the practice and experiences of other states and international organisations dealing with determining the fate of victims of crimes

– providing the Government of the Republic of Croatia with proposals and opinions on issues of the fate of victims of crimes committed immediately after the Second World War.

The Commission consists of the following members:

– Ivan Penava, Vice President of the Croatian Parliament, Homeland Movement Party/DP, President of the Commission

– M.Sc. Zvonimir Frka-Petesic, representative of the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia

– Darko Nekic, representative of the Ministry of Croatian Veterans

– Andreja Metelko-Zgombic, representative of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs

– Dr.Sc. Irena Petrijevcanin, representative of the Ministry of the Interior

– Dr.Sc. Dr. Vrselja, representative of the Ministry of Culture and Media

– Dr.Sc. Dinko Cutura, representative of the Croatian State Archives

– Dr.Sc. Miroslav Akmadza, representative of the Croatian Institute of History.

If necessary, at the invitation of the President of the Commission, representatives of other competent bodies and institutions and experts in specific fields may also participate in its work. The Commission shall submit its report to the government once a year.

While it is early days for the Commission there are at least two tasks, accompanied by positive results many would like to see during the coming year or two. If the Commission persists in the exposure of communist crimes, as its very name binds it to do, it will eventually succeed in lifting the stigma from a large part of the Croatian people regarding the WWII Independent State of Croatia/NDH and its Army. The current prevalent culture imposed by former communists upon the Croatian people is riddled with lies and historical fabrications that attempt to convince people that the so-called anti-fascists and Tito’s army were and are the good guys and the others, those that fought for Croatian independence, were and are the bad guys. One might expect that a terrible resistance by the former communists and their blindly devoted descendants will plague the progress in the above results, but such expectations should arm, not disarm the progress. Croatia will never see peace internally until the communist crimes and the communist regime have also been thoroughly condemned.  

By establishing such a Commission, Croatia is tending to demonstrate a determination not to face history selectively, but truthfully and justly. Hundreds of thousands of those who were liquidated without trial at the Stations of the Cross, in the pits and camps after the end of the war – from Bleiburg to Huda Jama – those driven out in fear for their lives and livelihoods, are finally being given a voice in an institutional framework that has the authority and responsibility to seek the truth.

But we have yet to hear that voice in public.

This move comes at a time when awareness is increasingly developing in Croatian society of the need to preserve the collective memory of the victims of all totalitarianisms. The goal is not to politicize the past, but to build a more just society based on facts, not ideological narratives.

A Commission for Determining the Fates of Victims of Crimes Committed Immediately After World War II could become a key mechanism in healing historical wounds and fostering national reconciliation – not through forgetting, but through truth. Ina Vukic