genocide – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Stumbling Stones In Croatia Should Symbolise Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust and Communist Crimes – A Historical Reality to Pursue?

October 27, 2023 by inavukic 7 Comments

On the chilly autumn morning of 25 October 2023 in the capital of Croatia, Zagreb, several residents, or rather leftist or pro-communist Yugoslavia political activists some of whose immediate family members were brutal aggressors and ethnic cleansers against Croats during 1990’s war of aggression, former President Ivo Josipovic and a handful of politicians of Serbian extraction, viz Milorad Pupovac and Boris Milosevic of the SDSS/ Independent Democratic Serb Party, as well as handful individuals evidently aligned with the communist past, huddled together on the pavement just outside the Hotel Dubrovnik that is situated on corner of the Ban Jelacic Square and Gajeva Street, to commemorate Svetozar Milinov and his family with the installation of a remembrance stumbling stone (or block). A Croatian Serb Svetozar Milinov was the original owner of Hotel Dubrovnik and he and his family were reportedly among the first Serbs killed in Croatia (1941) by the Ustashi regime and their deaths are considered by some political servants to be a part of the Holocaust. Indeed, it can safely be assumed that those present at this commemorative installation of a stumbling stone and those behind it are among those.

Natasa Popovic, director of the Croatian Centre for the Promotion of Tolerance and Preservation of the Memory of the Holocaust, said that “the stumbling stones dedicated to individual victims of the National Socialist and Ustasha regime indicate the moral duty to remember and take responsibility for what happened.”

Naturally I agree. However, there is a duty to remember and take responsibility for everything that happened, including the communist crimes’ purges of patriotic Croats. Popovic was not about to mention that! And that is so symptomatic of the pro-communist mindset still holding heavily onto the power reins in Croatia.

Known as “Stolpersteine”, or “stumbling stones”, the stone is a ten-centimetre concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution the installation of which started in Berlin in 1996. The stones were invented with the aim to commemorate individuals at exactly the last place of residency or work – which was freely chosen by the person before they fell victim to Nazi terror, forced euthanasia, eugenics, deportation to a concentration or extermination camp, or escaped persecution by emigration or suicide. There’s probably over 100,000 such stones installed on pavements across Europe. The stones represent a new vision of urban remembrance and unlike large monuments focus on individual tragedies.

It is my firm belief that everything possible needs to be done in order to make sure that remembrance preserves the dignity of the victims and, in this case in Zagreb, not much victim dignity appears to have been preserved. First of all, the stone in installed and commemorated by Serbs and former communists of former Yugoslavia! It is a historical fact that while those Serbs deny the fact that World War Two Serbia was among the first in Europe to declare itself “Judenfrei”/Jew Free, they keep pursuing the laying of guilt for WWII exterminations against Croatia.

The Jew Free status of Serbia was achieved by the killing of 94% of Jews in Serbia as early as May 1942 as its Milan Nedic government joined freely, and enthusiastically, forces in this extermination business with the occupying Nazi forces. Croatia was Nazi occupied also, but it never pursued a Jew Free status. If you depend on history as reported by Serbs or their allies you will never come across this absolute fact, which of course does not in any way excuse the terrible killings that did occur under racial laws. That is a historical fact. Hence, how can any dignity of victim Milanov be preserved when his stumbling stone of remembrance is installed by the descendants and political subscribers to the murderous communist Yugoslavia that murdered so many more!? It cannot – in the eyes of dignity and truth.

For me, stumbling over a piece of metal or concrete in the ground is anything but dignified. But at least it is a daily reminder of the past that was cruel to multitudes. In that light, were stumbling stones to be installed for the hundreds of thousands of victims of communist crimes as well as multitudes driven to emigration due to intolerable communist oppression and purges then, together with the stumbling stones dedicated to the victims of the Ustasha regime, Croatia would have stumbling stones installed at every step of pavements in cities, towns, and villages. Every victim of whichever brutal regime needs to be treated equally, with same piety and respect but not in former communist countries such as Croatia! Anything less does not preserve the dignity of victims because remembrance becomes a political spin seeking power, justifying one crime by condemning another. That is Croatia today. Communist crimes as opposed to those likened to the Holocaust are consistently ignored and even justified! Justified! For political reasons and no other!

In a controversial move, Stolpersteine or Stumbling Stones were banned by Munich city council in 2004. The decision was upheld in 2015, despite more than 100,000 people signing a petition in favour of them. In the summer of 2018, Munich introduced an alternative remembrance project, also placed before a victim’s last home, but presenting biographic plaques and photographs on stainless steel columns.

Every time I come across the installation of stumbling stones in Croatia I think of my late friend Helena S., a Croatian Jew who fled Zagreb with her family in 1939 and the family’s sizable property in elite and expensive parts of Zagreb, such as Pantovcak, confiscated by the Ustashe regime in 1941. The family settled in Australia and once communist Yugoslavia took the reins in May 1945, the family tried and hoped to have their properties returned. Decades of futile attempts for justice bore no positive fruit. The communists of Yugoslavia did not return the confiscated properties but gave them to communist party officials and operatives. Then the family embarked on attempts to have the properties returned from 1994, i.e., soon after Croatia seceded from communist Yugoslavia. To this day – no return; former communist operatives still live in those elite properties and have usurped as their own many of them! How can such people or their descendants be taken seriously when they go about installing stumbling stones to victims whose families suffered under their reins also!?

German leftist (or pro-communist) artist’s, Gunter Demnig’s stumbling stones project in essence asks people to take an active role in the reconstruction of the Nazi past of their own cities and localities. Demnig set stumbling stones in the pavement only on the invitation of local organisations or groups of citizens who have developed an interest in his project and who have researched the histories of the victims who are to be remembered with these stones. Placing these stumbling stones has sometimes provoked controversy. Some homeowners argue that a stone in front of their property may lower its value, a few city governments have refused to give the necessary permission, and some Jews have questioned whether stepping on the names of the victims is an appropriate way to remember them. Yet, Demnig’s project is constantly expanding. It seems that the “stumbling stones” has become a European project; examples of this “decentralised monument” can now be found not only in Germany, but also in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Ukraine, Croatia, and other countries.

Hence, Croatia has not been exempt from this trend of remembrance, so a couple of years ago several such stumbling stones have also been set up in Zagreb. One of them, placed in Zagreb at the address Boskoviceva 28 mentions Miroslav Juhn, born in 1897, who was reportedly deported to Jadovno in 1941 and killed in August 1941. On the contrary, the online Jasenovac Memorial Site census states that Miroslav Juhn was born in 1897 in Podgorac and killed in 1941 in Jasenovac. So, already on the basis of the above mentioned example (and there are quite a few others), it can be clearly said that the stumbling stones project joined numerous other sources that denounce the online list of Jasenovac Memorial Site as a problematic source containing a number of false victims.

It is more than saddening that a similar project to stumbling stones has not been pursued for victims of communist crimes who were, in fact, more numerous than victims of the Holocaust. Europe had both murderous regimes in its twentieth century: the Nazi and the Communist and it had acknowledged this by officially condemning them in its parliament but chooses to stay silent at the relative lack of respect, justice, and human dignity for victims of communist crimes. Some would argue that by respecting both victims equally, diminishes the significance of the Holocaust and would fall under the politically invented term “Holocaust denial”. Well, to my vision, a human being never utilises politics or discrimination when it comes to victimhood because the very term “victim” is defined by an innocent human being falling as a target of brutal political regimes or criminals. There is no denying the crimes of totalitarian Communist governments, in Croatia under communist Yugoslavia in particular — mock trials and mass executions, forced labour camps, grinding oppression and several hundreds of thousands of patriotic Croats who rejected communism dead in over a thousand mass graves and pits as well as more than a million escapees fleeing to the West post World War Two. The purpose of memorials serves to remember and humanise the victims but should also stand as a reminder of the human capacity for evil from whichever corner of political pursuits, whether racial laws or political disagreements it comes from.

Both Communism and Nazism were genocidal regimes. No doubt about that! Analytical distinctions between them, that we come across rather too frequently, with the aim to make one look better than the other, devaluing the victims of one or the other, may be seen as important by some, but the commonality in terms of complete contempt for the bourgeois state of law, human rights, and the universality of humankind regardless of spurious race and class distinction is beyond doubt. Communism and Nazism contained all the political and ideological ingredients of the totalitarian order – party monopoly on power, ideological uniformity and regimentation, censorship, demonisation of the “people’s enemy,” besieged fortress mentality, secret police terror, concentration camps and/or hard labour camps, and, no less important, the obsession with the shaping of some “New Man.”

Renowned historian and political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, had drawn a moral equation between communism and Nazism, writing in her 1951 “The Origins of Totalitarianism” that both represented “absolute evil,” just two sides of the same totalitarian coin. Considering that and in light of my own moral persuasion no communist or Nazi sympathisers should be installing stumbling stones or other memorial symbols to any victims of any totalitarian regime because the lack of that non-discriminatory, filled with conflicts of interests, act takes the human dignity of the victims away. To boot, published in the late 1990’s the absolute international best seller, the Black Book of Communism, which documents communist atrocities, was very well received and opened millions of shut eyes. What The Black Book of Communism succeeds in demonstrating is that communism in its essence was from the outset inimical to the values of individual rights and human freedom. Despite communism’s overblown rhetoric on emancipation from oppression, the leap into freedom turned out to be an experiment in social engineering for the success of which murder and extermination of political opponents was compulsory. Paranoia regarding infiltration, subversion, and treason were enduring features of all communist political cultures, from Russia and China, to Romania and Yugoslavia (Croatia).

How long will it take for the world to repay the debt of civilisation to all victims, be they victims of Nazism or victims of Communism!? Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Black Book of Communism, Communism, communist crimes, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, equality of victims, extermination, genocide, Hannah Arendt, Holocaust, Jasenovac, Jew-free Serbia, Miroslav Juhn, Nazism, similarities between Nazism and Communism, Stolpersteine, Stumbling Stones, Stumling Blocks, Svetozar Milinov, Ustasha

Unpalatable Turn of Events Post-Croatian Operation Storm

August 4, 2023 by inavukic 11 Comments

Front images: Croatian Operation Storm veteran retired general and former MP Zeljko Glasnovic then and now

In May 1991. 94% of Croatian voters at the independence referendum voted “Yes” for Croatia to secede from communist Yugoslavia and become a free, independent democracy. This, its people’s human right to self-determination, was brutally attacked by the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbs. Today, August 4, 1995, was the start of 84 hours of magnificent, brave and victorious Croatian military liberating operation “Storm”, recapturing thousands of square kilometres of Croatia’s territory occupied by Serb forces. So, this year, like every year, Croatians celebrate the anniversary of the great and successful Croatian military operation that was launched when all peaceful attempts to liberate the country from Serbian clutches failed. It is a celebration of the heroism of the Croatian defenders and the Croatian military victory over the Serbian occupation army. These days, the Croatian media announced the order of events marking Operation Storm Day, the Day of Victory, Homeland Gratitude and Croatian Veterans’ Day: wreath-laying, speeches by political and military officials, mass and an evening concert, which will be broadcast live on national television. But there will be multitudes of Homeland War veterans who will not attend these official events out of grave disappointment with Croatia’s government and the President and their undermining and undervaluing the crucial value of the Homeland War for today’s independent Croatia. The HDZ government’s coalition with those associated with rebel Serbs and Serb forces that terrorised Croatia in the 1990’s is a constant wound and a constant injustice. The ever-increasing presence of communist Yugoslavia manner and mindset is eating away at the ideals and reasons Croatia fought so hard for during the Homeland War.

One would think that in 28 years that have passed since then Croatia would have made greater progress in becoming a fully functional democracy that cherishes above all else the people who in any way helped defend it from the brutal aggression and install it as independent state. But from year 2000 former communists and their descendants took power and instead of lustration, that should have occurred after the War wholly ended in 1998 when last occupied territory was reintegrated into Croatia, Croatia sank deeper and deeper into a state reminiscent of communist Yugoslavia. Corruption, nepotism, dysfunctional judiciary, celebration of former communist regime, humiliation of Homeland War veterans …

And so, while many will celebrate during this weekend this great victory of Operation Storm it is wise to do so by having in mind the sad reality that prevails on the streets of Croatia and sharpening one’s axes, so to speak, to make changes and to rid Croatian corridors of power of former communist operatives and their descendants. To illustrate this sad reality, I have chosen to translate into English two Facebook posts written by retired general of the Croatian Army and the Croatian Defence Council, and former Member of Croatian Parliament – Zeljko Glasnovic:

“From 1991 until today, more than 3,200 Croatian veterans have committed suicide. Almost an entire brigade of the Croatian Army. The number is certainly higher. There is still no accurate data on HVO (Croatian Defence Council) members who took their own lives. One Croatian veteran cut his own jugular veins, another doused himself with gasoline and burned himself alive, a third shot himself in the head with a pistol, a fourth hanged himself from a house, a fifth killed himself with a chainsaw, a sixth killed himself on the occasion ofMesic’s inauguration (Stjepan Mesic President)… and the most widely known, General Slobodan Praljak, innocent, drank a shot glass of poison, like a glass of bile in front of the world public. These are just some of the examples among hundreds of other comrades of theirs who suffered a similar fate because they suffered for years from the “cancer of the soul” better known as PTSD. They survived shells, bombs, bullets, camps, Great Serbian aggression, and war, but they could not survive this kind of peace. They were stronger than the horrors of war, but they could not deal with the horrors of peace, with robbery, with corruption, with extortion, with injustice and humiliation because they felt left behind and rejected after being used. Every third day, a Croatian veteran commits suicide. In the last 5 days, unfortunately, two more brave warriors left us, who did not last under the pressure of injustice, misunderstanding and condemnation.

Who is to blame for this situation among veterans? Who closes their eyes? Who failed? Where did we go wrong? The state failed them, which abandoned many of them to mercy or disfavour of fate, left them without work and status and declared many of them unfit for work. The policy that skilfully manipulates them, diminishes their contribution and disenfranchises them has failed. A society that stigmatises and systematically puts them on the pole of shame because of the alleged ‘privileges’ they have achieved has failed. Those veterans’ associations that, instead of taking care of the veterans’ psyche, were concerned about their political goals, also failed. The media have also failed, as they are instructed not to talk or write about it, and if they do, they do so in an extremely underestimating and sensationalist manner. Our families, who sometimes did not understand what we go through after the war, also failed, why we feel like a burden to others, why we cannot come to terms with injustice and why we persistently return to that most difficult period of our lives. In the end, we defenders (war veterans) also failed because we allowed ourselves to be mocked, belittled and deceived by those whose backsides we defended while they hid in their cabinets during the war so that in peace they would once again create a state that we never dreamed of, for which we never fought, the state we never wanted.

We never needed decorations, ranks or awards, we needed above all the true freedom we cried so much for, the respect we never got and the preservation of what we fought for.

After the end of the Homeland War, we probably expected too much when we thought that the Croatian people would never again allow the re-occupation of the land that was soaked in the blood of the veterans and raised from the ashes on their bones. However, moral criminals from the former Yugoslav Communist regime legally revived in peace and returned the failed creation that we had defeated in the war and thought we had destroyed forever. They took over the government, the cultural space, the media, all state institutions, and above all, they took over the mind and mentality of the people. Let’s not fool ourselves, WE handed it all over to them ourselves without firing a shot.

On a decorated tray.

No paper and pen.

No voice.

Without force.

Without resisting.

In peace.

Voluntarily.

Indifferent.

The average age of a Croatian veteran who fought and died in the Homeland War in the nineties was only 23 years. When I say average age, it means that there were also 17-year-olds. They were still only children who picked up a rifle overnight instead of a book. When a veteran who went to a psychiatric examination in Vukovar was asked if he was thinking about suicide, he answered: ‘Yes, but about mass suicide.’

When my brother left Manjaca (concentration camp) after 15 months, I didn’t recognise him. He experienced a clinical death. But he said: ‘Croats should build a monument to Milosevic (Slobodan Milosevic) on Ban Jelacic Square (in Zagreb), because if he hadn’t attacked them, most of them wouldn’t even know who they are.’ They erased the people’s collective memory and any feeling for the national state. My mother, who was raped twice, ended up in the communist prison in Petrinjska when I was only six months old because someone accused her of trying to sabotage the party elections. All that, and even more, so that today former SKOJ (League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia) members would sit in government, whose offices are headed by former secretaries of national defence, and their chief advisers are Udbas (Yugoslav Secret Services). Is that the Croatian state?! After 30 years, we can freely stop wondering why veterans take their lives en masse and start questioning ourselves, how much have WE as a society contributed to the fact that after everything they have done for this country, they raise a hand against themselves?I end with words from a sermon by Bishop Vlado Kosic:

‘Mary is sad when she looks at our Croatian veterans who created, defended and liberated Croatia with their blood, and then they were categorised as unnecessary, as a surplus against which the media and domestic traitors throw mud, and these do not even deserve to wash their feet. They, in their disappointment, no longer know what kind of country they fought for, so almost 3,000 of them have already raised their hands on themselves. I am calling out all previous politicians and people of influence and position, who hid this situation – you killed them, you are to blame that so many veterans committed suicide, you killed them, you are to blame for their disappointments, and the whole society is responsible, and above all the politicians and traitors of their own homeland who worked and are working against the interests of Croatia, for which they were ready to give their lives.’” (Zeljko Glasnovic, 11 July 2023)

—

“The falsification of history continues in Croatia. Non-existent events are celebrated, non-existent anniversaries are celebrated. The term ‘anti-fascism’ came out of Stalin’s kitchen. The ideological successors of Bolshevik satanism use it even today as a smokescreen to cover up communist crimes. Croatia is pure proof that history repeats itself as farce and tragedy.

While the Croatian Parliament is debating the recognition of the Holodomor as genocide committed against the Ukrainian people from 1932-1933, at the same time, under the guise of anti-fascism, Croatia is celebrating the crime against its own people. Mass graves of victims of communist crimes are being dug out day by day. Until 2011 MUP ( Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs) recorded more than 700 mass graves in which victims of thepartisan communist regime crimes committed during and immediately after World War II were buried. It is estimated that around 90,000 victims were buried in them. A greater number of mass graves are located in Slovenia. The battlegrounds from eastern Herzegovina to the Macedonian border have not yet been explored. In Serbia, the state commission made an individual list of about 70,000 victims of partisan-communist terror after the entry of the Red Army into Belgrade in 1944. In May 1945, aiming to cover up mass graves the Yugoslav regime issued order known as Order No. 1253. Until 1990. relatives and friends were forbidden to visit the sites of those mass graves. Even today, the successors of the (Partisan) Sixth Lika Division, in conjunction with the mainstream media, stand guard over those places of execution. The mentality sedimented in the party single-mindedness is trans genetically transferred into the present. Yugoslav nationalists know that a lie has more emotional appeal than the harsh truth. Communist regimes have crippled the future generations and left behind a moral and spiritual wasteland. The implementation of the so-called menticide (crime against spirit and mind) continues today. Along with the destruction of the ability to think critically, along with lies and manipulations, they keep us in shackles even today.

At the Yalta conference, Stalin may have stated the truth for the first time in his life when he told Churchill: ‘Satan is a communist and he is on my side.’ Tens of millions of people were killed, tortured, and deported in the Soviet Union alone. Tito’s regime is a microcosm of what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule. A few years ago, a non-government organisation named “Memorial” in Russia was abolished after they found a record of 2 million Stalin’s victims. The Red Army raped 355,000 women in Romania alone, 800,000 in Hungary, or a total of 10-15% of the female population. In Germany, 2 million women aged 8-80 were victims of rape. In Berlin alone, 20,000 women committed suicide after the mass rape of typhoidal men from the Red Army.

Today’s heads think identically to their predecessors and if they had the chance to exercise such power, all of us would end up with a bullet in the back of the head like the Dominican Father Dominik Barac who was killed in 1945 only because he wrote the book ‘Philosophy of Communism’ in which he exposed Bolshevik satanism. 1923 Bolshevik satanists formed the Ministry of Disinformation and continue to implement this regime to this day. In China, if you want to work in the public sector, you must first write a declaration that you are not a member of any religious community. This ideological lobotomy is written into their DNA, it is at the core of their being. It has merged so much with their spirit and mentality that even if they took the red chip out of their heads, they would continue to lobby for that regime. It is a pathological, incurable disease in which there is no remorse even on the deathbed, but instead we have statements like ‘I am sorry I did not do more…’ (ordered, killed, raped…). Communism is the biggest fraud in the history of mankind. Today in our country THEY celebrate it. They celebrate rape, killing, terror, abuse, expulsion, brutality, mistreatment, deprivation of human rights – in one word, they celebrate DEATH. And they don’t celebrate it just anywhere. They are holding their freak manifestations in the Brezovica forest in the vicinity of the mass graves where the remains of 6,000 victims of the partisan-communist terror who were brutally murdered are buried.

Over their bones, the regime and the monsters that led the innocent to their deaths celebrate. They even declared a non-working day (a public holiday) to celebrate the murderers of their people. We are still waiting for them to declare a non-working day in honour of the Chetniks to celebrate those who killed Croats in the Homeland War in the middle of Vukovar! While communist symbols are abolished from Lithuania to Hungary, communist guerrillas – the scourge of humanity – are celebrated in the Republic of Croatia. The best example of national masochism.”(Zeljko Glasnovic, 22 June 2023)

Ina Vukic, translation into English

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bishop Vlado Kosic, Communism, communist crimes, Croatia, Croatian Homeland War, Croatian Operation Storm, genocide, mass graves, Partisans, Serb aggression, war veteran sucides, war veterans, Zeljko Glasnovic

LEST WE FORGET VUKOVAR AND SKABRNJA – CROATIA

November 13, 2022 by inavukic 9 Comments

Photo: Croatian Club “Braća Radić” in Sydney Australia members, children and teachers during 2018 commemoration of Vukovar and Skabrnja

On 18^th November commemoration to honour the victims of brutal, genocidal, Serb and Yugoslav Army aggression will be held across Croatia and particular focus will be on Vukovar and Skabrnja who on that day in 1991 and days that followed suffered horrific destinies at the hand of the aggressor while the “world” via the UN pressed on with arms embargo against Croatia! I was particularly touched recently of the announcement from the Sydney, Australia, based Croatian Club “Braća Radić” (Radic Brothers) that they will hold a special commemoration on Friday 18^th November in the evening for Vukovar and Skabrnja massacres victims, focusing on including school-age children to participate in this event – so that future Australian-Croatian generations know about these tragedies and never forget the victims. The children, parents and friends will confirm their knowledge and remembrance of significant milestones of these tragedies and places in Croatia. It will include the following lines of truths that will be useful for your children and grandchildren to know:

1.The town of Vukovar is situated in the north-east part of continental or mainland Croatia and sits on at the confluence of the Vuka River and the Danube. Its history begins in the 6^th century AD when Slavic people settled in the area. Vukovar as a town was first mentioned in history books as Vukovo in the early 13^th century AD and in 14th century it acquires the name of Vukovar. Vukovar occupies parts of historical provinces of Croatia. What are those provinces called?

Reply: Eastern Slavonia and Western Syrmia.

Map of Croatia with position of Vukovar

2. What is the name of the historical symbol of the city of Vukovar?

Reply: Vucedol dove.

Vukovar’s Vucedol Dove

3. What is the name of the modern symbol of Vukovar’s suffering that was restored, with the help of Croatians living in the diaspora including Sydney, to its former glory of pre-Homeland War of the early 1990’s after it was significantly destroyed by the former Yugoslavia and Serbian aggressor armies’ bombing and shelling?

Reply: Vukovar Water Tower

Vukovar Water Tower

4. Most Croatian people wanted independence from communist Yugoslavia so in May 1990 they held the first democratic elections and on 30 May 1990 Croatian Parliament was inaugurated. This was the beginning of the end the 45-year rule of communist Yugoslavia over Croatia. At the instigation of the first Croatian President, dr Franjo Tuđman, who led the political movement for an independent Croatia, on 19^th May 1991 Croatians held a referendum and almost 94% of Croatian voters voted for independence from the oppressive communist Yugoslavia totalitarian regime. There was a Serb minority living in Croatia who opposed Croatian independence and loyal to Serbia they wanted Croatia to remain as part of Yugoslavia. These Serb minorities became to be known as Rebel Serbs in Croatia and in August of 1990 they blocked the roads around the town of Knin with logs and with the help of Serbia they proclaimed the Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina and commenced banishing Croats living in that area, killing many. On 25 June 1991 the Croatian Parliament proclaimed Croatia as an independent state and commenced the path to separate itself from communist Yugoslavia. As a result, the Yugoslav Army opposed Croatian independence and sided with the Croatian Serb rebels and together from August 1991 they staged a cruel and brutal attack upon Vukovar and Borovo Selo at its outskirts. Then Began the heroic Battle for Vukovar on Croatian side amidst the siege of the town by the Yugoslav army and rebel Serbs in Croatia who lived there. On 18 November 1991, the battle of Vukovar ended after the city ran out of ammunition but the Serb rebels living in the area nevertheless committed more mass killings and genocide in the days that followed. The massacre of Vukovar Hospital medical staff and civilian patients and war prisoners at the nearby Ovčara farm occurred on 20 November. During the siege of Vukovar from 25 August to 18 November 1991 by Serbs and Yugoslav Army 1800 of civilians and Croatian soldiers were killed, thousands wounded, and over 2,000 missing, presumed killed by Serbs, thousands of Croatians held captive and tortured in Serbian concentration camps and others that made up all Croatians living in the area were banished and became refugees, Vukovar suffered catastrophic damage in the battle with 90 percent of houses either destroyed or damaged. It is worth noting that while majority were rebels and aggressors there were some Serbs in Croatia who joined the Croatian fighters to free Vukovar. In 1998, the largest mass grave in Europe since World War II was discovered at the New Cemetery in Vukovar, from which the remains of 938 victims were exhumed. Croatian soldiers and civilians were buried there by the Yugoslav Army after the occupation of the town. Vukovar remained occupied by Serbian forces until late 1998 when it was returned to Croatia during the so-called peaceful reintegration of occupied Croatian Danube area. In Croatia, after the heavy suffering in the Homeland War that included the Battle for Vukovar, what is Vukovar called?

Reply: Hero City.

Devastated Vukovar from Serb and Yugoslav Army aggression - November 1991

Devastated Vukovar November 1991

5. There was a woman from Vukovar who is known as a Croatian hero and nicknamed “The Vukovar Mother of Courage”. She lost four sons and a son-in-law in the Battle for Vukovar. She searched for her sons’ remains for 12 years. The last body, the oldest Niko, was found in 2003 in an unmarked grave at the cemetery in Srijemska Mitrovica in Serbia. Niko was her eldest son and was 49 years old when he was captured in the fighting before the fall of Vukovar. He was taken to the Srijemska Mitrovica concentration camp in Serbia. There he was brutally tortured and killed by a blow to the head in December 1991. He is survived by three sons. The second son Mijo, three years younger than Niko, managed to hide his family in Zadar, and he returned to Srijemski Čakovci, Croatia, to see what happened to his house. His Serb neighbours captured him and then killed him in a cornfield on the day of the fall of Vukovar on November 18, 1991. Kata’s third son Ivan, the commander at Mitnica near Vukovar for defence of Vukovar, better known as “Big Joe”, was 43 years old when he died. He started to break through from Vukovar, was ambushed by the Chetniks and tried to get out of the ambush. He jumped into the Danube and drowned in the cold and swollen river. He left behind three minor children. The fourth son Mato was killed at the beginning of the war during the attempt to seize the Yugoslav Army barracks in Vukovar on September 19, 1991. She died in July 2008 at the age of 85. A Park in Zagreb was named after her to honour her courage in the Capital city. What is her name?

Reply: Kata Soljic.

Kata Soljic

6. There were many men and women who lived in other countries outside Croatia, some were of Croatian origins some were foreigners, who came to Croatia and volunteered as fighters to help Croatia defend itself against the aggressors in the Homeland War. There was a French man who fought across the Vukovar fields as member of Croatian military forces. He was wounded in battle in early November 1991 and was treated for his injuries in the Vukovar Hospital. On 20 November 1991 he was forcefully taken from the hospital and placed in a Serb a “Hangar” at Ovcara farm by members of the Yugoslav Army and Serb paramilitary after he gave an interview to a French TV journalist in which he stated that “Vukovar was a slaughterhouse”. He was dragged from the hangar by Serbs, viciously beaten and murdered. His remains have not been found and he was still in late 2021 among hundreds of Croatian men and women listed as missing although there are more recent claims that he was buried in a mass grave behind the hangars on Ovcara farm and these claims need verification. His mother and brother have moved to Croatia where they and continue searching for justice for him and his burial place. In 2015 Croatians in Vukovar build a statue of him, which now forms one of the important landmarks of Vukovar’s suffering during Croatia’s Homeland War. What was the name of this French volunteer, hero, who bravely fought to save Vukovar and was brutally tortured and murdered?

Reply: Jean-Michel Nicolier

Jean-Michel Nicolier

7. During the negotiations with the Serbs for the peaceful reintegration into Croatia of the area in which Vukovar is located, which was successfully concluded for the Republic of Croatia in January 1998, a special train of 21 wagons left Zagreb on June 8, 1997 for Vukovar. In that train were President Dr. Franjo Tuđman and top officials in the Republic of Croatia and church dignitaries. That train symbolically marked the return of the occupied city of Vukovar to the territorial integrity of Croatia. “The arrival in Vukovar, a symbol of Croatian suffering, resistance, aspiration for freedom and a return to the eastern borders, to the Croatian Danube, is a sign of our determination to want peace, reconciliation, to create a truce and to never let what happened to us happen again. happened to us in Vukovar. This panorama of Hiroshima in the middle of Europe, the city of Vukovar, will be easier to rebuild in a material sense, but difficult in our memory. This train to Vukovar is truly a symbol of peace, the return of exiles, victims of this war who spent more than six years outside of their hearths, but who are ready to return and to also lend a hand to those who did not bleed their hands like war criminals,” said Dr. Franjo Tuđman at the time. What was the name of that train?

Reply: Peace Train.

President of Croatia Dr. Franjo Tudjman at arrival in Vukovar of 1997 Peace Train

President of Croatia Dr Franjo Tudjman arrives in Vukovar on Peace Train 1997

8. On the same day as the fall of Vukovar, Škabrnja massacre was perpetrated as the most brutal massacre killing of 63 Croats, 15 defenders and 48 civilians by the self-proclaimed Serbian Autonomous Region Krajina (SAO Krajina) Territorial Defence troops and the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in the villages of Škabrnja and Nadin (near the Dalmatian city of Zadar) on 18–19 November 1991. Every family in Škabrnja was “wrapped up in black” after that attack. By the end of the Homeland War, the number of people killed in Škabrnja had grown to 80; another 6 died after the war from land mines placed around the village by Serbs This terrible crime was planned and timed, at the same time when the Serb Chetnik hordes were rampaging in occupied Vukovar, as well as in other areas of Croatia where the Chetniks were killing all Croats (Kostrići, Saborsko, Slunj, Nadin, Vrhovine and elsewhere). After the massacre of Croatian civilians, the Serbian aggressor wrote on a wall of a large building in Škabrnja in large black letters “Welcome to the dead village”, which, in itself, says how very brutal and savage the Serbs who fought against Croatia were against the Croats. What is the name of the province in Croatia where the villages of Škabrnja o Nadin are located?

Reply: Ravni Kotari.

Map of Croatia and position of Skarnja and Nadin

Map of Croatia with position of Skabrnja and Nadin

9. Even before the 18 November 1991 massacre, Serbs from neighbouring villages and the Yugoslav Army attacked Škabrnja, wanting to kill and expel all the inhabitants of that Croatian village. The attacks were fierce on September 17, 1991 and October 5, 1991. In September, the residents were evacuated to Island of Ugljan, but they returned after a signed armistice. In the period from October 4 to 10, more than 2,000 grenade bombs fell on Škabrnje. Škabrnja was rocketed from an airplane; large bombs were thrown on the village, the so-called “Sow” bomb. The massacres in Vukovar and Škabrnja and throughout Croatia were part of Serbia’s plan and strategy for the destruction of Croats and the final breakdown of the defenders in order to create the genocidal creation of Greater Serbia, to which Serb s wanted to join Croatian lands and populate them with Serbs. Who was President of Serbia at that time who headed the terrible aggression against Croatia and Croats?

Reply: Slobodan Milosevic.

10. The United Nations Security Council, based in New York, United States of America, formed in 1993 the United Nations court of law base in The Hague, Netherlands, that dealt with war crimes that took place during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia including Croatia in the 1990s. During its mandate, which lasted from 1993 – 2017 after that the role of war crimes justice was passed onto a new body called the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals [IRMCT]), it irreversibly changed the landscape of international humanitarian law, provided victims an opportunity to voice the horrors they witnessed and experienced, and proved that those suspected of bearing the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed during armed conflicts can be called to account. While many war criminals who perpetrated crimes against Croatians in Vukovar and Skabrnja have still not faced court judgment and their victims have still not received justice it is noteworthy to know that Serb leaders of the time Vojislav Šešelja, Jovica Stanišić i Frank Simatović, Slobodana Milosevic, Goran Hadzic, Slavka Dokmanovic, Mile Mrksic, Veselin Sljivancanin i Miroslav Radic were indicted, and most were convicted. The notorious Goran Hadzic and Slobodan Milosevic both died in the Hague prison while the criminal court proceedings were continuing. What is the name of the International Criminal Court in the Hague that prosecuted war criminals in relation to war crimes perpetrated in Vukovar, Skabrnja and the entire Croatia during Croatia’s Homeland War or War of Independence during 1990’s?

Reply: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Prepared by Ina Vukic

CROATIAN LANGUAGE VERSION: DA SE NE ZABORAVE VUKOVAR I ŠKABRNJA (PDF):