Croatia: oppression of religious freedom stemmed from bigotry of Jewish filmmaker’s tantrum

Maribor school excursion flyer Photo: Mario Profaca

A producer on Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Croatian born Branko Lustig, was boycotted in Croatia after telling Zadar primary school children (of Catholic faith who also have Religion as part of school education curriculum) – God doesn’t exist. A Minister in the current Croatian government, swiftly picked up on this boycott with subtle but oppressive and calculated denial of religious freedom that would ultimately benefit the cause of taking the focus away from Communist crimes (WWII and throughout the duration of Former Yugoslavia) and mass murders and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Serbs against Croatian people between 1991 and August 1995.

On Wednesday 26 September, as part of “Modern Jewish Film Festival Zagreb”, Lustig appeared in the coastal city of Zadar to show to primary school children his film “The Last Flight of Petr Ginz” ( Petr Ginz was a Czechoslovak boy of partial Jewish background who was deported to the Terezín concentration camp during the Holocaust. He died at the age of sixteen when he was transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp and gassed).

Prior to showing the film, Lustig delivered a lecture to the seventh and eighth graders during which he said: “God does not exist for me, I do not believe in God. If God existed he would not have allowed the Holocaust to occur, the horrible torture and murders of Jews in Nazi camps, as in Auschwitz camp where I ended up at the age of 11. He wouldn’t have allowed the Srebrenica massacres during the recent war…

Lustig’s words shocked the school children, and their parents. After all, as Catholics, as Christians, they have been taught to accept God’s will without rebuke, without denying His existence, no matter how harsh His will may at times fall.

Then Lustig told these school children that the film blames the Christian church for the Wars of the Crusaders and that if schools don’t teach their pupils that there were in history Crusader Wars then these schools are very bad schools.

Lustig’s final message to Zadar’s school children that there mustn’t be hatred and divisions between them seems to have, justifiably, fallen on deaf ears or considered bigoted as on Thursday 27 September, in Knin (the town cleansed of Croatians during Serb aggression against Croatia in the early 1990’s), school children boycotted his appearance and the showing of the same film.

Well, Lustig threw a doozy of a tantrum regarding the boycotting of his film in Knin. He expressed profound disappointment and accused, seemingly without any evidence whatsoever, the Principal of Knin’s school of telling his pupils not to attend. Croatian media picked up swiftly; scandal of big proportions erupted as some paddled and wielded their evil tongues in the direction of WWII persecution of Jews by some parts of Croatian population. At the same time parents of school children in Knin were heard, and reported by the media, saying words to this effect: I don’t want my children hearing this blasphemy that occurred in Lustig’s lecture in Zadar.

Lustig, in his bitterness and wounded pride of an Oscar winner, went so far as saying “if in my country I cannot say what I think and feel then fuck democracy.”

To this I would normally say “Hoorah! Bravo, Lustig!” But I cannot; I must not because he does not in this case deserve it!

Lustig gives himself the right to preach and practice democracy and yet denies the same to the Christian children and families who refused to hear his offences against their God.

Also, politically wired undercurrents swelled in this whole affair and there were those who associated the Knin’s school children’s film boycott with the World War II Ustashi collaboration with Nazi Germany. Suggesting that roots of antisemitism are still crawling about Croatia in the form of President Ivo Josipovic’s metaphoric “Ustashi snake”.

The Croatian government did not lift a finger in the defense of religious freedom of their citizens in this whole affair. In fact, oppression and fear mongering became the order of the day, as journalist Mario Profaca writes on Dnevno.hr portal:

Caught at the very dawn of 2nd October 2012, in the net of Marija Gerbec Njavro’s Croatian Radio First Program, who bashed fear into their bones with her interview with Ivo Goldstein, Davor Gjenero and the minister for sciences, education and sport, Zeljko Jovanovic, especially as the Minister repeated his assessment that the Knin boycott of Branko Lustig’s film was a ‘second holocaust’, the parents of fourth grade High School children from Zagreb took their children to the bus terminal in silence …

 From there, buses took their children, at their own cost, to a compulsory ‘field lesson’ to Maribor where they will visit the Jewish Square and the synagogue. That excursion costs 205 Kunas per person, including health insurance for eventual ‘accidents within Croatia’, and they have insurance beyond Croatia’s borders if they’ve paid an extra 30 Kunas per person.

Parents’ response is totally understandable, given that a boycott of this excursion would be marked as absence from (field) school lessons, and in line with the already known opinion of minister for sciences, education and sport, Zeljko Jovanovic, for Jews this would be – a third Holocaust.”

The politically and anti-democratically calculated content of this school excursion to Maribor shocks even more when we realise that it does not include a visit to Tezno, a suburb of Maribor where a mass grave from Communist crimes is! The mass grave holds the remains of more than 15,000 Croatian innocent people and Home Guards who perished there in the post WWII Communist purges. In their multitudes mass graves of Communist crimes, across the territory of Former Yugoslavia, compared by population magnitude, put the Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime crimes to minor categories; and Tezno mass grave twice the size of Srebrenica 1995!

On his Facebook page Mario Profaca also comments on the Croatian Radio Program episode, referred to above, that “Ivo Goldstein was embittered by the Knin boycott of Lustig’s film who said that watching the film ‘would be an opportunity for the children to learn something about their own history, not only the one from 1941 to 1945 but also the one from 1991 to 1995’.

With that, ‘historian’ Ivo Goldstein has scandalously drawn an analogy between the WWII Holocaust of Jews with the Serbs in the so-called Serb Republic of Krajina during Croatia’s Homeland War.”

Giving a just dessert to the swept-and-mesmerised-by-left-winds journalists of Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper, who in their write-ups on Lustig’s “Godless” existence ask when one should reveal to Croatian children that God doesn’t exist, Dnevno.hr journalist Zvonimir Hodak skilfully extricates a sobering thought:

If it’s normal for Lustig to force his atheistic views upon children, why would it be abnormal for the Catholic majority in Croatia comprising of 85% of people to react to that”.

The fact that Goldstein thrust his twisted, anti-Croatian, pro-Communist finger into this twisted pie which accompanied Lustig’s film doesn’t surprise me at all. It just saddens me for the fact that it suggests justice for victims of Communist crimes is still far, far away. I know, everyone knows, that Goldstein justifies Communist crimes and sees them as acceptable ways of dealing with WWII woes and foes regardless of the fact that just like Jews, millions of innocent men, women and children were exterminated (by the Communists). Judging from his book “A History”, where Goldstein talks of Serb revenge upon Croatians and Muslims for Serbs perished in the Holocaust, it’s easy to see that his justification of mass murders committed by Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1990’s could be viewed (without due condemnation?) as “Serbian revenge for the killings of Serb during WWII”. The fact that Serbs attacked and brutally murdered Croatians and Muslims during 1990’s because they did not want democratic regimes splitting Yugoslavia, the fact that they tried to murder in its bud the democracy that feeds him, means nothing to him.

Not OK. Not acceptable. Not Just. Not humane.

With all respect to Lustig’s film and its message, the humane world must see that Knin boycott of the film was, as journalist Miro Matesic from Dnevno.hr says, simply the exercise of choice that democracy guarantees, or should guarantee. No more, no less. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Europe demands justice for victims of Communism – Croatia must follow

Seeing crimes of communism for what they are and getting them prosecuted legally – this was the topic discussed at the conference on the legal settlement of crimes of communism at the EU parliament in Brussels, 5 June.

At the conference, Sandra Kalniete, Chairwoman, Reconcilliation of European Histories Group said:

Today every school child knows that Nazi was an evil regime. There’s a confusion about communist crimes. We have to raise this issue and deprive it of all the ambiguity. Because if not, then these crimes will be perpetrated again and again.”

Egils  Levits, Judge, European Court of Justice, said: “Victims should have experience of not only injustice, now they should experience justice and especially for this reason   I think a legal settlement of communist crimes is necessary”.

At the conclusion of the conference an announcement was made that “The Platform of European Memory and Conscience is calling for the creation of a supranational judicial body for the gravest crimes committed by the Communist dictatorships.

The Platform of European Memory and Conscience is founding an international legal expert group to work on a road map for establishing a supranational institution of justice.

The Platform endorses the initiative of the Reconciliation of European Histories group in the European Parliament to give the national archives which harbour information on the crimes of totalitarianism a status of European importance and is calling upon institutions of the European Union and national governments worldwide to support this work”.

The moves within European Union to finally deal with communist crimes, in the way that truly and loudly counts – legally – and not just talk about them, record them or condemn them are, I believe, of crucial benefit for Croatia when it becomes a member of the EU.

Within EU, the bravest sector of Croatian establishment that has for years been obstructed, ridiculed and criticized for attempting to prosecute communist crimes, will gain allies in pursuit of justice for victims of communist crimes.

The situation in Croatia with former communists (the Social Democrats led government and the president of the Republic) is outrageous.

Even at the celebration of Croatian Statehood Day (25 June/ day of independence) this leftist lot had the nerve to lay a wreath at the grave of late Ivica Racan (Chairman League of Communists of Croatia 1989/1990; President Social Democratic Party 1990/2007) who actually protested in Croatian parliament in June 1991 against the proclamation of independence (he and his leftist colleague didn’t want Croatia to become independent but advocated for a new kind of union between seceding Yugoslav republics).

By this act they attempt to equate Racan with dr Franjo Tudjman when it comes to giving credit and worth for the achievement of Croatian independence and sovereignty.

Absolutely and alarmingly disrespectful of the achievements that must be attributed to dr Franjo Tudjman, for if things panned out the way Racan advocated we wouldn’t be celebrating the 21st birthday of Independent Croatia – of the greatest achievement of the majority of Croatian people in history.

But that’s not all, Croatia’s former communists, while celebrating the WWII antifascists did that in the spirit of equating them with the priceless value of Croatian defenders from the Homeland War of 1991-1995; at the same time justifying murders and massacres perpetrated by the antifascists/Partisans.

This is how Croatia’s well known journalist Mario Profaca commented on Facebook on the events in Croatia on Friday 22 June 2012 – and I could not agree more:

Not to mention by name the horrendous pit Jazovka, near Sosica on Zumberak, at which tribute and honour to the soldiers and civilians killed by the Partisans during World War II and after it dumped into the pit was bestowed with a commemorative Mass. Laying of wreaths and lighting of candles, in his speech for celebrating the public holiday Day of antifascist battle, 22 June 2012, speaking about the crimes committed also by Tito’s Partisans, Croatia’s Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic inaugurated a new ‘antifascist’ concept – ‘the right to revenge’.

President Ivo Josipovic (who ‘himself is a son of Partisan’) liked that, as well as Milanovic’s opportunistic meditation on how, during World War II, the ‘member countries of anti-Hitler coalition also murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians, women and children, and this was justified then’.

In the live TV broadcast from Brezovica, Milanovic uttered that sentence exactly at 11.59 a.m., and at that moment the live broadcast was cut due to regular News broadcast on HTV 1 at 12.00 noon, and so we couldn’t hear whether there were more of such big thoughts from a small mind.

We also must not neglect the bad in the events of 1940’s. But Croatia was on the right side, we know that it was just to participate in antifascist battle. What Partisans were then, our war veterans from 1990’s are now’, Josipovic said with inspiration.  

In accordance with Milanovic’s and Josipovic’s inspired emphases of the analogy between antifascist battle and our Homeland War some idiot from Milanovic’s government could come up with the idea of inserting ‘the right to revenge’ into the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia as a Constitutional category. Only, in that case criminal prosecutions against Croatian defenders (war veterans) would need to be stopped. 

That’s why it’s understandable that Milanovic’s  ‘antifascist’ Cock-a-doodle-doo coalition has not yet forwarded to the parliament its proposal for the introduction into the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia the antifascist ‘right to revenge’, and when it will – we don’t know.”   

The men, women and children Tito’s antifascist regime (including Partisans) murdered during and after WWII form multitudes; the bones of most are in over 1200 mass graves. All of them – symbols of love for Croatia.

These were not random slayings.

It was genocide.

It came from the top of the communist echelon. It was systematic and planned; so planned that even decades after the war the Yugoslav secret police UDBA ravaged the Croatian diaspora, intent on murdering the strongest human links to the love for Croatia.

The time has come when strong positive and decisive actions need to be put into place in Croatia so that prosecuting and dealing with communist crimes reaches a nationally supported level – for justice for victims. I have no doubt that gladness  for increased efforts in justice for the victims of the communist regime would land into overwhelmingly supportive hands of both Croatia and diaspora – just like the movement for independence and sovereignty did in late 1980’s and 1990’s. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Remembering “Bloody Easter” of 1991, Croatia

"Blood on Easter" newspaper photo report by Mario Profaca, 31 March 1991

An incident at the Plitvice Lakes, Croatia, at Easter time in 1991, marked the beginning of the Croatian Homeland War. This incident took the life of the Croatian Police Officer, Josip Jovic, the first Croatian casualty in what was to become a terrible war, a bloody war. Croatian people decided to secede from communist Yugoslavia and Serbians decided to stop the secession by any means.

On 29 March 1991, the Plitvice Lakes management was expelled by rebel Krajina Serb police under the control of Milan Martic (sentenced by ICTY to 35 years prison for war crimes in Croatia) supported by paramilitary volunteers from Serbia proper under the command of Vojislav Seselj (Serb, currently in ICTY on strings of war crimes in Croatia charges).

On Easter Sunday, 31 March 1991, Croatian police entered the national park to expel the rebel Serb forces. Serb paramilitaries ambushed a bus carrying Croatian police into the national park on the road, sparking a day-long gun battle between the two sides. During the fighting, two policemen, one Croat, Josip Jovic and one Rebel Krajina Serb, Rajko Vukadinovic, were killed.

Croatian freelance Jounalist Mario Profaca sent me yesterday a photo (above) of the front page of Slobodna Dalamacija newspaper 1 April 1991 with headline that reads “Blood on Easter”, with the photos he took at Plitvice at the time.

Profaca wrote yesterday: “… At that time, together with Croatian policemen, on 31st March 1991, I went to Plitvice in the early hours of the morning and there we found a large number of barricades from which the Serbian terrorists were shooting at all vehicles that were there. Josip Jovic was hit near the post office building, bullets shot through his bullet-proof vest and soon he was taken to the Ambulance van but died on the way to the helicopter. The same evening, 31 March 1991, in Split, the next day’s edition of the daily newspaper was out with the headline and my photo-report from the location and from that time in Croatian history this day is called the Bloody Easter.”

Saturday 31 March 2012 marked 21 years from that incident and a commemorative service held at Plitvice Lakes.

Croatian President Ivo Josipovic at Plitvice Lakes 31 March 2012 Photo Robert Fajt/cropix

Croatia’s president Ivo Josipovic attended the ceremony, which commemorated the death of Josip Jovic, and said: “Today we celebrate freedom, peace, courage, heroism, patriotism and justice. It was courageous and just to stand here in Plitvice and defend the Croatian homeland, win in Homeland War, protect the values that are part of our constitutional system”.

 We have challenges in our efforts and needs to ensure our citizens a better living standard, prosperity and to stop all those who would want to turn back the wheel of history. As it was courageous and just in the 1990’s to fight against Chetnik ideas just as it was in the 1940’s, so too today, when some want to turn back the wheel of history, we need to say no,” Josipovic said to those Serbs who are attempting to rehabilitate the WWII war criminal Draza Mihailovic.

Today we have to tell them no. Croatia will remain a diligent, just country focused on reconciliation and coexistence, democracy and human rights. We want to clearly say that those values do not go hand in hand with the ideas that fed aggression, death and undermined human rights.”

Your son is our hero,” Josipovic said to the late Josip Jovic’s mother, “your son is our son, your son is all these values we cherish and which we will leave for our children to inherit. Thank you for giving birth and for bringing up your son, thank you, thank you to all war veterans and to all who had taken part in the Homeland War, because you have all contributed immeasurably to our future.”

The 21st anniversary of the first casualty of the Homeland War and the operation known as Bloody Easter was also attended by War Veterans Minister Predrag Matic, many of those who fought in the war, and representatives of the Interior Ministry and the Armed Forces as well as two candidates for the May elections for leadership of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Darko Milinovic and Tomsilav Karamarko.

Lest we forget!

Ina Vukic, Prof.(Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

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