Holocaust – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Call M.M. when you want to smear Croatia

March 18, 2023 by inavukic 13 Comments

Written by Dr. Josip Stjepandic

Translated into English by Ina Vukic

The largest portion of the Croatian diaspora lives in Germany, which happens to be the largest country within the European Union. Almost half a million people with Croatian passports as well as several hundred thousand with Croatian ancestry who have received German citizenship and their descendants reside permanently in Germany. Croats are almost ideal immigrants: loyal, calm, hardworking, enterprising. Croats are known not to cause problems, the crime rate among them is low when compared to the rest of German population. It is no different in Croatia either. The crime rate in Croatia is the lowest in Europe and this becomes evident to the 3.3 million German tourists that visit Croatia regularly. The average German, therefore, does not have even the slightest of reasons to be suspicious of Croats as potential causers of unrest.

Croats in Germany are not only employees, but also entrepreneurs, especially in construction and gastronomy. Jure Vujcic has been running the restaurant “Marjan Grill” in Berlin since 1981. The restaurant is doing so well that you can only get a table by reservation. Adi Cerimagic, a Bosniak activist employed at ESI (European Stability Initiative), was among the restaurant’s numerous guests late last year. According to its own statement ESI advocates for democratic institutions and human rights. There is a justified suspicion that for ESI or employees thereof these ESI noble intentions do not apply to Croats; this is demonstrated by the ESI attitude towards the controversies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it openly advocates a pro-Bosniak and anti-Croatian position.

In his own words, Cerimagic warned the owner of the restaurant about the Croatian coat of arms on the front of the building. In his opinion, such a coat of arms is not permitted, because, he says, it is “Ustashe”, so it should be removed. The restaurant owner did not agree with that because it is a historical Croatian coat of arms that has been used continuously for over 500 years. Hence, no social group can have an exclusive right to it. Much like the Swiss cross. Cerimagic passed on his understanding of the coat of arms to Michael Martens, a correspondent of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) newspaper for Southeast Europe, who proceeded to use it as a topic for one of his newspaper articles. Martens has a reputation of being a journalist of good quality and experienced who spent many years in Serbia (which harbours relentless enmities against Croats and Croatia) where he learned a lot of bad things about Croats and Croatia. Hence, in his occasional articles about Croatia, Martens mainly presents well-known Serbian stereotypes that are not anchored in facts nor have a foothold in facts.

Based on such attitudes, being a Croat is suspicious in itself, and if a larger group of Croats celebrates a sporting success together with their favourite singer, then it is absolutely reprehensible, even if there are no riots. Martens dismisses an argumentative reply as the work of a right-wing extremist.

Martens accepted Cerimagic’s recommendation and wrote an article entitled “Restaurant Review” (“Restaurantkritik”, 10.03.23), which is less of a restaurant review and more of a criticism of Croatian society and especially of Croats in Germany like Vujcic, who are supposedly pro-fascist and not even aware of it.

At the same time, Martens stays in the background with his judgment and gives the floor to university professors Ivo Goldstein (Zagreb), Florian Bieber (Graz) and Alexander Korb (Leicester), who seem to be competing against each other as to who will give a more severe criticism.

The essence of their criticism is that the Croatian red and white checkerboard coat of arms, which begins with the white field as the first field on the checkerboard, belongs exclusively to the Ustashas. The Ustashe were the military police formation in the World War Two Independent State of Croatia (NDH) created by Hitler in 1941 on the ruins of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, who established his government in it, which carried out his orders, such as the enforcement of racial laws.

The fact is that some Ustashas committed terrible crimes while others resisted committing crimes. This resulted in at least a quarter of the pre-war Jewish population being saved in the NDH even though Hitler’s strictest of orders were to exterminate them all. There are few such examples in Europe from the Second World War. There is a book about this based on archival material and authored by Esther Gitman: “When Courage Prevailed: The Rescue and Survival of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia 1941–1945”. I gifted Martens a copy of this book 4 years ago but it seems he hasn’t even read it. Meanwhile, almost no Jews survived in Serbia, which had a state administration similar to that of the NDH. Already in 1942, Serbia declared itself “judenfrei” (Jew free). Evidently, Martens does not care about this nor does this fact appear to interest him.

Goldstein comes from a hardline Yugoslav Communist family. There are several vanquishing reviews about his work, for example by Dr. Vladimir Geiger: “In his latest book ‚Jasenovac‘ Goldstein showed neither ‚good will‘ nor ‚common sense‘. On the contrary, he continues to lobotomise us by expressing everything but the willingness and ability to engage in scientific approach.”

When Goldstein says: “There is no doubt that anyone who today uses the checkerboard that begins with a white field declares himself a neo-Ustasha,” a serious analyst, such as Martens who is being portrayed as such, would have to interpret this as something like this: “Whoever uses a checkerboard that begins with a white field today shows himself to be a free-thinking man, who is not interested in the servings dished out by the Yugoslav communists”.

Goldstein is known to be a fan of the communist dictator Tito and he kept his portrait in his office while serving as the Croatian Ambassador to France in Paris from 2012. Despite being a supporter of one totalitarianism, as far as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper is concerned, he has become qualified enough to judge another totalitarianism!?

In a television interview in 2018, he claimed that in March 1945, for the purposes of hiding their crime the Ustashe received a special corpse crushing machine from Germany with which they grounded and crushed the corpses of their victims. That statement, which he did not repeat again, and whose accuracy could not be confirmed by anyone else, earned him the appropriate nickname “the Crusher”.

Florian Bieber, known among other things for having signed the so-called The Sarajevo declaration on a common language, according to which Serbian and Croatian are one and the same language, and therefore Croatian, one of the languages of the European Union (!), does not exist at all. Matica Hrvatska, the leading Croatian cultural organization, considers this Declaration to be linguistic violence. Bieber says:

“A coat of arms with a white field at the beginning indicates support for the Ustasha regime or are right-wing extremist groups. The use of a checkerboard with a white field is clearly associated with a right-wing extremist meaning.”

With this categorical statement professor Bieber shows all his superficiality and ignorance. Obviously, he has never had in his hands the 1974 Constitution of the SFRY (Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia) which prescribes a checkered coat of arms with an initial white field for the then Socialist Republic of Croatia, a component of Yugoslavia. Following his statement, Tito supported the Ustasha regime in the last years of his life.

Evidently unaware of its consequences, Alexander Korb, a Holocaust professor in Leicester, England, makes the most drastic, albeit true, statement:

“The use of symbolism is primarily a signal that the ‘Independent State of Croatia’ from 1941 to 1945 is considered a historically legitimate project.”

This is precisely the position that Martens persistently expresses, and it originates from Greater Serbia Serbs and Yugoslav communists: “Since Adolf Hitler in 1941, with his spontaneous decision, fulfilled the centuries-old dream of many generations of Croats and established a Croatian state, it, like Hitler, would have to disappear and remain permanently banned! All Croats must suffer for all eternity because a group of Croats abused the power that was suddenly granted to them by Hitler in April 1941.”

The checkered Croatian coat of arms originates from Austria in 1495. Although heralds claim that it should start with the first red field, which symbolises gold, which is more valuable than silver (white field), it seems quite natural that both variants are used simultaneously.

The coat of arms in question was used in all countries where Croats had some form of identity (Austria, Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Independent State of Croatia, SFR of Yugoslavia). There is also an opinion on this from the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia, which Martens unfortunately failed to request it seems:

“The historic Croatian coat of arms with a red and white checkerboard has existed for centuries in both heraldic forms, with an initial red or white field at the top left. Both forms are used today in Croatia as symbols on buildings or in associations. From the point of view of the Republic of Croatia, this coat of arms cannot be viewed as an anti-constitutional symbol, because it, as a free-standing symbol without additions, refers to belonging to Croatian culture and identity, and in no way to the military formations of totalitarian regimes.”

Several books have been published about the Croatian checkered coat of arms, for example Dr. Mario Jareb’s 2022 book: “From Checkerboard to Tricolor: Development and Use of the Croatian Coat of Arms and Flag Throughout the Centuries”. If only Martens and his interlocutors had taken a brief look at it, an article like the one mentioned above would probably not have been written. Dr. Jareb himself writes in an article: “Coats of arms and flags without the Ustasha tendril are not NDH coats of arms and flags.” Therefore, the insinuation that the flag which contained the coat of arms with the initial white field, with which the then Croatian president Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic took a picture with a group of Croatian emigrants in 2016, is “Ustasha”, is baseless. By the way, during the Second World War, the Ustashe movement did not have its own flag at all, so there was never an Ustasha flag.”

In the end, the question remains open as to why the Government of the Republic of Croatia did not regulate the issue of the Croatian checkered coat of arms in an appropriate manner (at least with a decree). Considering that the Independent Democratic Serbian Party (SDSS), which emerged from the Serbian rebels, who terrorised the Croats during the 4 years of war in 1991-95, and today are trying to realise their war goals with peacetime means. The passive attitude of the Government is also represented in the parliamentary majority is not surprising, although it is by no means acceptable, and is absolutely reprehensible. As long as this is the case, further attacks on Croatian national symbols can be expected.

The combination of red and white squares can be found in many patterns in Croatia, especially in sports. Designer Boris Ljubicic created many applications on that basis. Among them is our logo, which according to the logic of Martens & Co, should also be banned, because it starts with the first white field.

The Croatian checkered coat of arms is so widespread among Croats around the world that some form of state protection of origin and authenticity would be necessary. Outbursts like this article in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” are the best proof of that. It is fortunate that German readers do not read or believe articles like this one.

It is unfortunate that FAZ, once a very respectable newspaper, allows the publication of articles that exude the spirit of Greater Serbian, Yugoslav-Communist enviers and charlatans in line with the principle: “Call M.M. when you want to smear Croatia.”

dr. Josip Stjepandic

President of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Diaspora and Homeland

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Adi Cerimagic, Alexander Korb, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, Croatian Checkerbad, Croatian Coat of Arms, Florian BIeber, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Holocaust, Independent State of Croatia, Ivo Goldstein, Jew'Free Serbia, Josip Stjepandic, Jure Vujcic, Mario Jareb, Michael Martens, NDH, Ustashe

Croatia: Transition from Communism Must Accommodate Prosecution of Communist Crimes

January 29, 2023 by inavukic 7 Comments

“If some groups of victims are considered less worthy, it means that the racist ideology still lives on,” said Rosetta Katz, a Holocaust survivor in Parliament of Germany on Friday 27 January 2023, International Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day, which marked the first time, after many years of lobbying, German parliament has focused in annual Holocaust memorial commemorations on people persecuted and killed for their LGBTQ or gender identity by the National Socialism regime.

It’s a pity that such great words are not understood or accepted to apply globally to victims of communism as well. In view of the terrifying list of crimes committed in the name of promoting geopolitical supremacy by all warring sides during World War II and after it, every condemnation of crimes committed in the name of the theory of class struggle and the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat seems justified. It would appear to be equally justified to put the perpetrators of communist crimes on trial before the international community, as it was the case with the terrible crimes of National Socialism, i.e., Holocaust.

But once one says that and means it, respecting all victims of crimes, the wretched and derogatory label of Historical Revisionism is slapped onto one to intimidate and bully those engaging in research efforts to bring out the facts of history and equal respect all victims of all totalitarian regimes. One class of victims, hence, in the eyes of the world, becomes worthier than the other. For lasting peace and prosperity in the world the crimes in the name of communism should be assessed as crimes against humanity in the same way Nazi crimes were assessed by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Legal provisions should be introduced that would enable courts of law to judge and sentence perpetrators of Communist crimes and to compensate victims of Communism. But victims of communism largely remain anonymous, faceless, without personal photographs, just piles of skulls and rotting bones in pits, mass graves or piled up into walls of remembrance.

History is undeniably part of an individual and collective awareness and creates identity. It serves to affirm one’s own norms and values, to legitimise rule and claims to leadership, and to develop perspectives for the future. But when that history such as Croatia’s World War II one has been written and kept on life support by the communists with evident help of political aims among the Allies who won the War and when that history has been proven over and over again that it contains significant fabrications in order to justify the communist Yugoslavia enormous crimes against its political opponents then it is our obligation to pursue research and revision of that unjust written history.

“Croatia has to face the culture of remembering that is different from what we would like. We are Europeans now. We have integrated firmly into Europe, which is wonderful news, but mentally we have not entered it. You with the Ustashiade simply cannot go further than Brezice (a small town in Slovenia near the Croatian border). That doesn’t work in Europe. Liberal Europe does not accept Croatia like this,” concluded historian and former communist Yugoslavia fan Ivo Goldstein concluded in his address for the Croatian media the day leading up to the Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day 2023.

Evidently, whether of Jewish heritage, like Goldstein, or not, former communists and those who follow in their mental footsteps today in Croatia fail miserably to acknowledge and accept with open arms the liberal Europe they boast of belonging to. It’s a double standard nobody should tolerate. The Liberal Europe Goldstein refers to had ever since 2009 condemned by parliamentary declaration both the Communist and the Fascist regimes (to which the WWII Ustashe regime is arguably erroneously allocated) because of the totalitarian cloth they wrapped themselves in. For comparison’s sake the communist Yugoslavia murdered or exterminated many more innocent people than what the Ustashe regime did. But, it seems, to people like Goldstein, the term Holocaust holds much more weight for human condemnation and repugnance than what communist crimes do. This is, of course, a catastrophe for humanity as it classifies victims not by their suffering but by their ethnicity, religion, or political leanings. And so, in the case of WWII and post-WWII Croatia, victims of communist purges and exterminations appear insignificant to people like Goldstein, but victims of the Holocaust are significant.

The crux of the matter is that the Ustashe regime fought for independence of Croatia from any Yugoslav conglomerate and the communists fought for a third Yugoslavia (the first two being kingdoms of Yugoslavia ruled by the Serbian oppressive and dictatorial Monarchy). And Yugoslav communists or their indoctrinated descendants evidently loathe the fact that Croats fought for self-determination and independence during WWII. Hence, a clear reason why they keep spinning the lie that they freed or liberated Croatia in 1945! Liberated from whom? Its own people who wanted independence and fought for that in the most difficult of circumstances in the history of the 20^th century? In fact, they forced the Croatian people who wanted independence back to a Yugoslavia that took revenge against the Croatian patriots and murdered so many that Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito has been placed on the list of “Top” 15 mass murderers of political opponents of the 20^th Century.

Furthermore, it is evident that the more the facts of WWII Croatian history are uncovered and the more these facts show that the history of WWII Croatia written by the communists of Yugoslavia and their allies (including in relation to the numbers of Jews and others perished under the blanket of the Holocaust) who won the War was alarmingly falsified and fabricated, obviously for political dominance reasons and for social engineering communist Yugoslavia practiced, the more we experience people like Goldstein regurgitating the worn-out and intentionally intimidating term of the so-called historical revisionism. Historical revisionism should have positive connotations because it seeks to either prove as correct the historical records published so far or to disprove them as blatant politically motivated lies. Perhaps Goldstein and those like him in these matters harbour a sense of dread and fear that “their” history books will end up in trash bins or in bon fires across the world!?

There must be a politically “strong” reason why Ivo Goldstein, when he was the Ambassador of Croatia to France 2012-2017, kept a portrait of former communist Yugoslavia President Josip Broz Tito on his Embassy office walls.

Did this practice mean that Goldstein did not and does not accept the independence of Croatia from communist Yugoslavia for which terrible price in Croatian blood was paid amidst Yugoslav Army and Serb aggression in early 1990’s? While there were complaints to the Croatian government about this photo of Tito on Croatia’s Embassy walls from Croats living in France the best the communist bent government of Croatia could reply was that there was no law in Croatia forbidding the hanging of pictures on the wall! The eradication of succinct lines of communist mindset and practice in official Croatia has a long way to go yet.

The opening of State Archives after Croatia seceded from communist Yugoslavia in 1991 is indeed bearing fruits that have the potential of exonerating to a great extent the WWII Independent State of Croatia of many crimes and victim numbers that have been peddled to the world against it for over seventy years! The more the credible research into facts and archival documents of WWII Croatia reveals a completely different truth, the actual truth, to the one peddled for decades, Goldstein and those like him seem to waffle on increasingly about anti-Semitism in Croatia, as well as accusations of relativising Ustasha crimes through historical revisionism, i.e., through archival research! These kinds of public outbursts are akin to attempts to intimidate and suppress the factual truth from coming out.

Leading contemporary historians and researches into WWII Croatia, including factual victim numbers and rescue of the Jews, have been several and it is worthwhile mentioning some in this article whose work has attracted much public interest even if the Croatian government remains largely and unfairly uninterested in such facts of history that have been denied for decades : Esther Gitman, Roman Leljak, Blanka Matkovic, Stipo Pilic, and Igor Vukic,

“Ustasheism and historical revisionism have been coming at us from all sides for the past eight years,” Goldstein said in his public statement last week, failing miserably to reveal the indisputable outcomes of historical research that has been conducted in the past decade that more and more place his historical writings under severely unsafe historical records which cannot be trusted by those pursuing justice for all victims of state war and post-war crimes. It would appear apparent that he has personal interests in speaking against research or revision of written history and Ustashe regime of WWII Croatia. He has announced a new book he is writing on Historical Revisionism, and one must wonder how much of historical and general tripe, concoctions of biased personal views and biased content that book will have? If one is to judge from his past pro-communist agenda authoring works then Croatians, in readiness, need to keep their fingers pressed against the toilet flush button. No historian on Croatia, on the need to revise historical records through factual research, who fails to condemn the communist regime after 94% of voters condemned it in 1991 Croatian referendum, who fails the victims of communist crimes while tagging the victims of Ustashe crimes with precious worth, is worth the embrace by the public as a truth-bearer or authority on history. Such a book Goldstein is announcing seems nothing more to me, and I believe to multitudes, than an opportunistic gimmick to “earn a buck” and a promotion as worthwhile and “to them glorious” the murderous communist regime of Yugoslavia, which European Union has included in its condemnations many years ago as criminal.

The constant distortion of history by keeping the fabricated historical facts alive, by devaluing historical research through labelling it as historical revisionism with relativisation does nothing for the fact that the radical left (especially communists and former communists still holding a candle for communism) just like the radical right also must come to terms with its own history in Croatia and elsewhere. Without such confrontation no lasting peace or absolute respect of human rights can be achieved.

What to remember and how to remember is, in Croatia as in many countries, a very topical and urgent question that keeps both historians and politicians occupied. It does not only concern schoolbooks and history teaching, but also the use of public space to represent history whether in the form of monuments, museums, mainstream media or otherwise. Often decisions of this kind lead to fierce political debates and they are certainly not limited to aesthetic values of monuments of past regimes, even the criminal ones. And the truth or revealing it without condemnation suffers. The politics of the past keeps haunting Croatia and without the removal of World War II touted communist contribution for an independent Croatia from the historical narrative preamble to the Constitution the hundreds of thousands of victims of communist crimes have no chance for deserved and due justice. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Blanka Matkovic, communist crimes, Croatia, equal justice for all victims, Esther Gitman, Falsified history, historical revisionism, Holocaust, Holocaust remembrance, Igor Vukic, Ivo Goldstein, Prosecuting communist crimes, Roman Leljak, Rosetta Katz, Stipo Pilic, victims of communist crimes, Victims of Totalitarian Regimes

Another Antisemitism Splotch By Ivo Goldstein Against Croats

June 24, 2022 by inavukic 8 Comments

If it wasn’t for Croatian historian Ivo Goldstein’s past and perpetual fabrications and malicious lies against the World War Two Independent State of Croatia, such as alleged “bone-crushing machines” to hide the number of killed at Jasenovac camp or that Ante Pavelic’s Ustashe regime towards Serbs (whose enormous toll in exterminating Serbia’s 94% of Jews by mid-May 1942 is perpetually hidden by Goldstein himself) had a policy, even though Goldstein admits and states that such a policy had never been published or printed (!), that translated into “one third of Serbs to be killed, one third to be expelled and one third to be forcibly converted to Catholicism”, for Goldstein’s malicious and tragically categorising of Antisemitism into perpetrating ethnic groups rather than political or religious pursuits directed from authorities above, his new 640-page book on antisemitism in Croatia over the centuries may be taken as a crucial piece of encyclopaedic work. He fails miserably and I would say purposefully to note that while Croatian people had lived on the territory, he writes about for centuries they were, in reality, ruled and dictated to by foreign powers not their own until some thirty years ago. Then again, it may be encyclopaedic only if one is to look at the hatred against Croats, undeserved imputations against Croats of others’ deeds, that emanate from the pages of Ivo Goldstein’s new book. All in all, Ivo Goldstein’s as his late father Slavko historical work has always evidently existed to justify and protect Yugoslav communists and their crimes and to rub smears after smears at the fight for independence Croats had engaged in after decades and centuries of oppression.

When in 1918, resulting from World War One, the “Western Allies” tossed Croatia from the Habsburg Monarchy to the rule of cruel Serbian Monarch, creating forcefully the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, this is what Croats picked up as a matter of force as far as antisemitism is concerned but Ivo Goldstein would make you believe it was the Croats that held these views against Jews because they were transferred upon Croatian soil by the ruling Serbian Monarchy regime: “The story of the Jews of today in the Balkan States is chiefly concerned with Rumania, for their numbers in Bulgaria (76,000) and in Serbia (15,780) are but few, and their influence small amid the general population. To grasp at all the intricacies of the Jewish question, and the extent of the prejudice against them, it is needful briefly to review the condition, economic, political, and social … the real control lies in the hands of one class. These are the nobles… King Petar seems outwardly friendly to the Jews, and they enjoy some equality of civil and religious liberty. Yet this freedom does not, in Serbia, extend itself to social intercourse. As yet, the Jews have no share in public life or government. A few are successful in law and medicine…”, “The Conquering Jew”, John Foster Fraser, 1915, pp 232-234.

Immediately after World War Two communist Yugoslavia authorities placed in all key educational, cultural, economic, and political positions its own people including uneducated or barely educated individuals who fought in the war as partisans under the pretence of being antifascists but in fact were murderous communists or covering up those murders. And so, the stage was set for fake academics, for fake school directors, for fake university professors…the stage was set that gave licence and free hand to writing Croatia’s history regarding its independence fight under the Ustashe regime as it pleased the political goals of mega murderer Josip Broz Tito. Of course, this political appointment trend to key positions in Yugoslav society saw the rise of communist Slavko Goldstein and his son Ivo as some credible historians and, to eternal grief of Croats, they made up wild lies and inserted gruesome fabrications in order to paint the Croatian patriots who fought from freedom from Yugoslavia the darkest of the dark. Ivo Goldstein is still at it, seemingly changing his tactics from publishing wild lies or fabrications to stealthily imputing hateful thins against patriotic Croats! All that was possible during the totalitarian regime of communist Yugoslavia and it left awful stains on innocent Croatian people.

Last couple of weeks have seen in Croatia several launches of the latest book by historian Ivo Goldstein ‘Antisemitism in Croatia – from the Middle Ages to the Present’ published by Fraktura from Zapresic.

“Antisemitism has historically become a paradigm of hatred of the other and the different and paradigms – the ‘ancestor’ of all nationalisms and chauvinisms. But in terms of consequences, it is the most terrible of all because it culminated in the most terrible crime of all time – the Holocaust,” recently said the book’s editor Vuk Perisic. He added that the book describes the process of creating hatred in Croatia, with an extremely rich presentation of archival material, newspaper articles and political speeches. Well, if the severity of a crime is defined by the number of victims and brutality and depravity in the manner of murders then surely communist crimes take the top position! But no use of telling that to either Goldstein or Perisic as both are in the business of denying justice to victims of communist crimes. Weren’t all revolutions in human history, weren’t all wars in history of mankind the result of insufferable oppression, pressure, dictatorships etc!?

Thankfully, political scientist from the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb, Dr Mirjana Kasapovic, in her review of the Ivo Goldstein new book, emphasised that it is “embarrassing to read only bad books”, and she put Goldstein’s work in that category.

“Antisemitism in Croatia from the Middle Ages to the Present” by Ivo Goldstein, as Kasapovic states in her review, is a thematically, theoretically and methodologically demanding work.

It should be noted that in the scientific literature, antisemitism is studied “as a political ideology, political and social movement and state policy, either within one state or comparatively in several states.” However, as Kasapovic herself observes, Goldstein writes about only one country in his work. This of course is yet another example of his anti-Croatian and pro-Serbian bias when it comes to World War Two and the Jewish question in both; Serbia not Croatia was the one who declared itself “Jew Free”, having exterminated about 94% of its Jews by mid-1942 and Croatia had never pursued such a goal.

“I write deliberately about the country, not the state, because most of Croatia’s history since the Middle Ages was not an independent state, but Croatian lands were included in various state formations – the Habsburg Monarchy, the Venetian Republic, the Ottoman Empire, the Dubrovnik Republic, France, Italy, Hungary, Yugoslavia – in which there were more or less recognisable geographical, ethnic, cultural and political entities. One can speak of the state only from 1941 to 1945 (NDH) and after 1991 (Republic of Croatia).

Goldstein solved this problem by tacitly ‘writing’ the modern Republic of Croatia into history and treated Croatian countries that were part of various state formations in the Middle Ages and the New Age, and today are part of the Republic of Croatia, as areas of Croatia,” explains Kasapovic.

This means that, for example, “antisemitism in Austro-Hungarian towns and cities of Varazdin, Sisak and Zagreb was treated as antisemitism in Croatia. Such an approach is pragmatic, but not unproblematic. As antisemitism was and remains state policy, the question is to whom state-produced or sponsored antisemitism in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy should be attributed.

Isn’t that Austrian and Hungarian, not Croatian antisemitism? The opposite is also true: aren’t non-discriminatory state legal acts against Jews, such as the Edict of Tolerance of Emperor Joseph II, Austrian, not Croatian documents? The problem is even more complicated if we keep in mind that state and non-state antisemitism were intertwined: non-state antisemitism was often caused or encouraged by the state, but the state government often banned and suppressed antisemitic incidents in society and punished their perpetrators.

Therefore, Kasapovic believes that “Goldstein did not consistently adhere to this methodological approach, so he included antisemitism in Croatia as phenomena in areas that in the indicated part of history were not, and are not today, parts of Croatia.”

With some caricature, it could be said that only the 17^th century Croatian noble families Zrinski and Frankopani are missing in the gallery of characters Ivo Goldstein puts out in his book, especially since it is suggested in one place that the Hungarian-Croatian King Andrew II, who ruled in the 13th century, was an anti-Semite.

Worst of all, to Ivo Goldstein, they all appear to be the forerunners of the Holocaust. For many great European thinkers and artists – from St. Augustine to Luther, from Kant to Voltaire, from Balzac to T. S. Eliot – binds some form of antisemitism, but it is difficult if not evil to claim that they prepared the Holocaust. When it comes to unfairly portraying Croats rather than their rulers over the centuries as antisemitic Ivo Goldstein does not appear truthful or fair or ethical for that matter. Ivo Goldstein’s bias against the Croatian people who fought against any form of Yugoslavia during World War Two and those who fought against communist Yugoslavia in 1990’s is an enormous burden for history to cleanse in the service of justice and truth. To talk of antisemitism as the only precursor to the concept of Holocaust as defined in its Greek origins “sacrifice by fire” would also appear for many as blasphemous. What of the much larger “sacrifice by fire” entailed in communist purges and mass murders whose body counts are much, much, higher than those of the World War Two Holocaust. Ivo Goldstein should abstain from writing about either if for nothing else then because of the portrait of communist Yugoslavia mega murderer Josip Broz Tito whose portrait still to this day reportedly hangs in prominent places in Goldstein’s home and visibly in the public offices he had until recently occupied. Ina Vukic