Way of the Cross – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Remembering the Bleiburg Massacres and Communist Yugoslavia Crimes Against Croatian Patriots

May 16, 2021 by inavukic 12 Comments

Map of Mass Graves of victims of communist Yugoslavia crimes in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina compiled in 2017 by Croatian association of historians “Dr Rudolf Horvat”, PHOTO: Screenshot 15 May 2021 https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1acZrR00vSr3kkgGXBZUsSL0Dbk&ll=43.93469114726703%2C18.12258350000001&z=7

Today, in Croatia, the communist Yugoslavia legacy of lies, deception, silence, denial of communist crimes and secrecy conspire against Croatia’s well-being and against the future for which rivers of Croatian patriotic blood was spilled during the 1990’s Homeland War. Without full disclosure of the crimes and criminals, without lustration and/or disabling former communists and their followers from power in Croatia, the political future of the country as a functional democracy remains uncertain and unlikely. Indeed, without a lustration the region within which Croatia sits remains politically unstable and widespread corruption is set to continue undermining livelihoods of the people and peace.

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This year, this month of May, marked the 76^th Anniversary of the end of World War Two. At the end of World War II, despite the victory of the Allies in Europe and the official defeat of fascism, the secret genocidal killing continued as organised groups of Yugoslav communist Partisans, starting on 15^th May 1945 at Bleiburg Field in Austria under the very noses of the British forces administering that part of Europe after the War, sought and pursued revenge against those who fought for and wanted an Independent Croatia. Most of the refugees reaching Bleiburg left the Croatian capital of Zagreb on 7 May 1945. A column of people approximately 70 kilometres long was reported by Radio London to be moving north to Austria from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, people scrambling to leave Yugoslavia, “overtaken by a fear of the Partisan units” (Portmann, M. [2004], Communist Retaliation and Persecution on Yugoslav Territory During and After World War II [1943-1950], pp 130-134).

Josip Broz Tito’s communist Yugoslavia killing machine started the brutal genocide there at Bleiburg and continued under the pretence of repatriation, forced repatriation to communist Yugoslavia of those who were fleeing it. This genocidal mass murder of Croatian patriots continued as the so-called death marches, the Way of the Cross, in that forced repatriation process as well as communist purges continued for several years to come. The British records indicate that up to 700,000 unarmed men, women and children were massacred by the Yugoslav Partisans, forcibly repatriated and their bodies dumped, as we now know, in over 1700 mass graves.

Croatian children were among those who fled communist Yugoslavia in May 1945 and were brutally massacred

On Bleiburg Field in southern Austria, the great deception began on 15 May 1945. According to records of the British Foreign Office Headquarters 5^th Corps, 200,000 Croatian and Slovenian soldiers and military personnel, as well as 500,000 civilians headed to Bleiburg at the end of World War II seeking asylum, expecting that the British would abide by the principles of the Geneva Conventions and provide them sanctuary to protect them from Partisan reprisals. They expected deadly reprisals from the communist Yugoslavia regime because, refusing to endure the oppression and brutalities against Croatians within any Yugoslavia, they fought for an independent Croatia during WWII.

Historical writings after WWII show that the great majority of the people the British forced back from Austria, Bleiburg, were simple peasants. They had no murders on their hands. They had not been Croatian Ustashas or Slovenian ‘Home Guards’. Their only fear was of communism and the reputation of the communists. The British forces pursued an unforgivable act by sending these refugees back to communist Yugoslavia knowing they were sending them to certain and brutal death.

Croatian civilians, children, women, unarmed soldiers fleeing communist Yugoslavia in May 1945

According to the testimony of a Partisan soldiers: the orders came from the staff of the 11th Dalmatian Brigade that the most reliable communists, both officers and soldiers were to be chosen for a confidential task… They (communists) created a special unit of them, which amounted to seventy people. Every day between 10 to 20 trains arrived at the station full of people. They didn’t receive any food or water. The overwhelming majority of them were collapsing. Most were men. A smaller proportion were women who were raped in the pit before they were shot… Two hundred boys from 14 to 16 years of age. Everyone was killed. All killed. In two pits. There were 30,000 to 40,000 killed in 8 days… The Partisans went to Lake Bled on vacation on Sundays after eight days of killing, then came back for another round. From Kočevja alone we sent over twenty freight cars of clothes. Daily we sent two to three freight cars of personal effects of the dead (Tolstoy, N. [1986], The minister and the massacres, London: Century Hutchinson Ltd., pp. 198-200). Yugoslav communists created many extermination squads that operated at local levels across Yugoslavia but the relatively greatest number of them operated within Croatia for a number of years, even within the WWII Jasenovac camp which Tito’s communists kept open until 1952 where, according to new and emerging research of historical archives and facts, extermination of anti-communist Croats occurred constantly.

Croatian refugees fleeing communist Yugoslavia in May 1945

Killing civilians and prisoners of war after the Second World War is the greatest massacre of unarmed people of all times in that territory. Compared to Europe, the Yugoslav communist massacres after the Second World War are probably in size and ferocity second only to the Stalinist purges and the Great Famine in the Ukraine. Because of its relatively short time, the number of murdered innocent people, the way of execution and massiveness, the so-called Bleiburg Massacres (that encompass murders at Bleiburg and the years that followed) is an event that can be compared to the greatest crimes of communism and National Socialism. Communist Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Broz Tito, under whose command the State-ordered purges and massacres of Croats occurred, stands listed among the World’s top 10 mass murderers of the Twentieth century.

And yet today’s powers that be in Croatia fail to legislate a ban on communist Yugoslavia symbols, insignia and celebrations! They barely pay a lip service to the commemoration of Bleiburg massacres and the State-owned or controlled mainstream media barely give it a mention. It would be a reflection of absolute truth that this appalling situation in remembering the victims of the communist Yugoslavia totalitarian regime exists because those who committed these crimes are and were among families of many today’s persons who hold positions of power or some form of control.

All of the crimes committed in Tito’s name from 1940 to 1980 were repeated again during the 1990’s war when Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina sought to secede from communist Yugoslavia. The message of the Serb-led Ovčara massacre at the outskirts of Vukovar, the message of ethnic cleansing of Croats from two thirds of Croatian sovereign territory, the message of thousands of rapes, tortures and murders committed by Serbs and Yugoslav forces, is identical to the message of the horrible massacres of more than 1700 mass graves and pits filled with the remains of brutally massacred Croats and Slovenes. Communist Yugoslavia hid these crimes, and it was only in early 1990’s when Croatia became an independent state, even if it was still in the midst of brutal Serb aggression and war of defence, that historical archives opened up and research into truth began without fear of communist reprisals.

Today, in Croatia, the communist legacy of lies, deception, silence, denial of communist crimes and secrecy conspire against Croatia’s well-being and against the future for which rivers of Croatian patriotic blood was spilled during the 1990’s Homeland War. Without full disclosure of the crimes and criminals, without lustration and/or disabling former communists and their followers from power in Croatia, the political future of the country as a functional democracy remains uncertain and unlikely. Indeed, without a lustration the region within which Croatia sits remains politically unstable and widespread corruption is set to continue undermining livelihoods of the people and peace. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bleiburg massacres, communist crimes, communist crimes Croatia, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, Croatian Homeland War, Dr Rudolf Horvat association., Josip Broz Tito, Mass graves in Croatia, Ovcara massacres, Way of the Cross

Bleiburg Massacres of Croatians – Lest We Forget

May 12, 2018 by inavukic 27 Comments

Memorial to the Croatian victims
of communist crimes at Bleiburg, Austria

The legacy of the Bleiburg Tragedy (Massacres/genocide of Croatian freedom fighters and civilians) by Yugoslav communist forces, aided by the WWII Allies, is catastrophic for human rights. Today, 12 May 2018, the annual memorial mass and remembrance at the field of Bleiburg, Austria, of hundreds of thousands victims who fell starting with 15 May 1945 and continued to fall after those that survived that massacre walked to their deaths on the so-called Way of the Cross that lasted months, most victims ending up in mass graves and pits strewn in their hundreds across Slovenia and Croatia.

Lest we forget!

History has not been written by the victims and it is up to today’s world to set the history right – to pursue facts so that justice for these victims does not remain elusive.

On the 4th of May 1945 began the exodus of the greater part of the Croatian Armed Forces and civilian population westwards in order to surrender themselves to the Allies before the advancing communist partisans. The Allies promised them safety; the Allies knew very well that only brutal death awaited them under Josip Broz Tito’s communist regime.

Croats fleeing from communist Yugoslavia, May 1945
In search for protection

The British war archives (War Office 1704465) there were 200,000 members of the WWII Croatian army who accompanied and protected about 500.000 civilians that walked towards Bleiburg, with the intention to surrender to the British military authorities there for protection. They arrived at Bleiburg on 14 May 1945, establishing contact with the British, telling them that they wanted to surrender to the British Army and to put the civilian population under British protection. The British commending officer replied that he had been informed of the coming of the Croats, and that the Croats would be allowed tomorrow to continue their march towards the West and to keep their arms. However, next day on the 15th of May the whole situation changed. The reversal happened after the political adviser of the Supreme Allied Commander for the Mediterranean Fieldmarshal Harold Alexander, with his seat at Caserta near Naples, Harold MacMillan, directly responsible to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on the 13th of May 1945 in Klagenfurt ordered to the commander of the 5th Corps of the British 8th Army, General Charles Keightley, that „a great number of the renegade Yugoslav troops, excluding the „chetniks“, should be handed over to the Yugoslav partisans.“ That order was contrary to the promise given by Fieldmarshal Alexander that the Allies would receive as war prisoners the Croatian troops after these surrender their weapons. This promise was given by Alexander to a representative of the Holy See, when Pope Pius XII, at the request of the Croatian Cardinal Stepinac, intervened with the Allied Commander to save the fleeing Croatian people. That the intention of the partisans was to prevent the surrender of the Croatian refugees to the Allies could be concluded from the telegram sent by Tito, as the supreme commander of the Yugoslav Army, to his troops on the 13th of May 1945, that is after the end of the war. In essence Tito’s telegram ordered his communist Partisans that these Croats fleeing Yugoslavia must attack and destroy them.

In the morning of the 14th of May 1945 the Croatian liaison officer of Jewish extraction Deutsch-Maceljski offered to the British the surrender of the Croatian armies and of the civilians. Second World War had already ended. Weapons put down and white flag raised among the Croatians seeking protection at Bleiburg field.

Croats at Beliburg field May 1945

According to the eyewitness report of the Dominican priest Drago Kolimbatovic, during the surrender English soldiers were lying at the rims of the meadow with machine-guns pointing at the Croats. Kolimbatovic further stated:“ What followed was a bitter experience, which we could have expected from the wild Bushmen but never from the cultured Englishmen. Under the pretence of checking whether we were hiding weapons, their soldiers indulged in robbery. They took away all golden and valuable objects which some of the Croats carried with themselves in order to ease their hardships in foreign lands.“ Kolimbatovic summarized the behaviour of the British in the following words: “In the English instead of refuge, we found executioners.“ (Quoted from the weekly „Glas Koncila“ of 13th May 2007). In order that the British perfidy be even greater, Fieldmarshal Alexander sends Tito a strictly confidential telegram on the 16th of May 1945, that is one day after the surrender of the Croats to the Yugoslav communists, telling Tito that the British would like to hand over the Croatian prisoners to him and asking Tito, whether he agrees with this proposal. Tito replies to Alexander on the 17th of May that he had received his telegram concerning the proposed handover of 200.000 „Yugoslavs“ and that he (Tito) consents with gratitude to this proposal. All this was happening after the Croats had already been extradited to Tito’s communists and after many of them had already been slaughtered.

What had actually happened on the 15th of May 1945, the day of the surrender? When after the laying down of the weapons Tito’s partisans were certain that their victims could no longer defend themselves and that the British did not intend to intervene (the British, namely, threatened that they would bombard the Croatian troops and civilians if the Croats did not immediately lay down their arms), the partisan commissioner Milan Basta, a Serb from Lika, issued his order.

What followed could only be described as an apocalyptic massacre. Here is the testimony of one eyewitness. „Men, women and children were falling down in sheaves while the partisans were mowing left and right with their machineguns over the open field. Soon so many people were slaughtered that the partisans ventured to descend among the survivors and with visible pleasure to beat them to death, to kick them with boots and to stab them with bayonets.“ (Report of the eyewitness Ted Pavic in Nikolaj Tolstoy’s book „The Minister and the Massacres“, London 1986, p. 104).

Croats who were not massacred at Bleiburg field
in May 1945 were forced to walk
to their death by communist Yugoslav forces
Photo: Celje, Slovenia, 18 May 1945

When the slaughter at Bleiburg was finished on the 16th of May, the remaining mass of disarmed and frightened Croatian prisoners was driven on foot into Yugoslavia, to the blood-fields of Kocevski Rog. Huda Jama, Tezno, and others further on, on a death march known as the Way of the Cross – across Slovenia and Croatia all the way to the Romanian border. Just under 1,000 mass graves with victims of these communist crimes have been discovered in Croatia to date.

Huda jama/pit
filled with Croatian victims of communist crimes

Although communist Yugoslavia government murdered and repressed more people than any other regime in the history of Croatia, their crimes have gotten only a tiny fraction of the public awareness, recognition and justice. We must do more, much more, to give justice to the victims and perpetrators of communist crimes. It isn’t yet too late. But it might well be in a few years, as more members of both groups die of old age and, in general, people become so impoverished in spirit and sustenance. Human rights pressure for victims of communist crimes must get its day in the sunlight of a just world. Without justice dished out to the past, the future is almost not worth having, as it will be the same as the past. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bleiburg, Bleiburg massacres, communist crimes, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, Huda Pit, human rights, Kocevski Rog, Tezno mass grave, Way of the Cross

Bleiburg – Commemorating Croatian Victims Of Communist Crimes

May 15, 2016 by inavukic 30 Comments

Tomislav Karamarko, First Deputy Prime Minister
Shakes hand with one of the
clerical officials leading the mass
at Bleiburg field Saturday 14 May 2016
Photo: Sanjin Strukic/Pxsell

The 71st annual commemoration of Croatian victims of communism (Yugoslav) at the Bleiburg field, Austria, and along the Way of the Cross from mid-May 1945 to months after, took place under the renewed auspices of the Croatian Parliament at Bleiburg field on Saturday 14 May 2016. The Eucharist led by Bishop Franjo Komarica (From Banja Luka/ Bosnia and Herzegovina) embraced the compassionate and grieving hearts of more than 20,000 Croats and their guests.
The Bleiburg field and death marches (Way of the Cross) symbolise the tragedy of the Croatian people that occurred after WWII had ended. The totalitarian communist regime of Yugoslavia then committed acts of horrendous violence on massive scales, violating basic human rights, including the most valuable human right – the right to life. All this, in the name of sick revenge and political agenda, which would see the undisturbed installation of communism as the only way of political thought and deed for decades to come.

Croatian government and parliamentary
leaders at Bleiburg 14 May 2016
Photo: Sanjin Strukic/Pixsell

Zeljko Reiner, the President of the Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Karamarko (who also led a delegation on the same day to lay wreaths at the Tezno pit – mass grave filled with more than 15,000 victims of communist crimes), several ministers and MPs gathered there to personally bow their heads to the victims. Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic, President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, and Deputy Prime Minister Bozo Petrov were not there with the masses on Saturday (although President Graba-Kitarovic did send a representative Bruna Esih), they each decided to avoid coming on that day but did get to Bleiburg privately or on the quiet the day or so before.

This seems to be some sort of a new fashion or a fad in Croatia from the office of the President and Prime Minister: not joining the official commemoration, not joining the people for the occasion – just going separately under the explanation that they do not want to bring politics into commemorating! Similar thing occurred for the commemorations of the Holocaust in Jasenovac in April, at least as far as the President is concerned.

Bleiburg 2016
Photo: Sanjin Strukic/Pixsell

Well, while politics should not interfere with commemorations for victims of these brutal crimes it does strike one that the very noticeable President’s and Prime Minister’s absence actually makes that choice of theirs very political. The President’s eye-poking purposeful absence from the official memorial ceremonies does colour commemorating the victims political no matter what the President or Prime Minister say. By not attending the official ceremonies, to my view, both the President and the Prime Minister have given their nod of approval to the Social Democrats/ the left parliamentary opposition for their absence from the official commemorations! So, the President’s and the Prime Minister’s calling for unity does not sit comfortably when in fact they practice separatism in this very important historic event for the Croatian nation.

Bleiburg memorial site for
Croatian victims of communist crimes

“A major problem in modern historiography is that when describing the ‘struggle for historical remembrance,’ not all victims enjoy the same privilege of commemoration. Judging by the modern media body counts, someone’s World War II dead must have priority, while someone else’s dead are meant to slide into oblivion. In Croatian historical awareness the word ‘Bleiburg’ has a special meaning, just like the word ‘Viktring’ has a specific meaning for the Slovenes and for the inhabitants of Austria’s Carinthia. Indeed, in the Croatian language the word ‘Bleiburg,’ does not evoke the images of pristine woods, skiing holidays, or a new shopping center. For many Croats this word has become a metaphysical locution designating a horrific example of catastrophically failed nation-state building. Bleiburg is not a symbol of a picturesque and romantic location, but a road sign of Croatia’s sociobiological catastrophe. By the late May 1945, hundreds of thousands of fleeing Croats … were extradited from there to Tito’s Yugoslav partisans—courtesy of the Allied English troops in the vicinity,” wrote recently dr Tom Sunic in his review of Florian Thomas Rulitz’s book “The Tragedy of Bleiburg and Viktring, 1945.

Bleiburg commemoration 2016
Photo: Sanjin Strukic/Pixsell

During communist Yugoslavia, the commemorations at both Bleiburg and Jasenovac were illustrative of how Josip Broz Tito’s communist dictatorship monopolised the historical narrative through public rituals. Under Tito’s – communists’ directives – the commemoration at Jasenovac (symbol of the Holocaust) served to uplift in people’s eyes and legitimate the ruling communist party, and any questioning of the official narrative or figures was strictly forbidden. Numbers of victims at Jasenovac were blown out of reality and floundered falsely, without questioning, into hundreds of thousands just because psychologically the greater the number the more horrible the crime in people’s minds. Bleiburg, on the other hand, was a taboo topic, banned and systematically erased from the cultural and historical memory in Yugoslavia, but was kept alive in the Croatian diaspora community and its press.

In contrast to the state-sponsored rituals at Jasenovac, individuals paying homage to the victims at Bleiburg and its aftermath often did so at great risk to their lives – the first commemoration in Bleiburg occurred in 1952, All Saints Day, when three survivors laid a wreath at the graves of Croatian soldiers in the Unter-Loibach cemetery. As attendance of the commemoration grew over the following few years, held annually on Mother’s Day, Yugoslav intelligence agents began monitoring, threatening, and killing Croatian émigrés involved with the Bleiburg ceremony. Communist Yugoslavia Secret Police/UDBA operating internationally hunted down their Croat political opponents with beastly brutality.

Original monument to Croatian victims
at cemetery near Bleiburg

“The atrocities and mass murders committed by Josip Broz Tito’s Partisan units of the Yugoslav Army immediately after the Second World War had no place in the conscience of Socialist Yugoslavia. More than once, the annual Croatian commemoration of the Bleiburg victims was subject to attacks carried out by the socialist Yugoslav state. Abroad in the West, on Austrian soil, the Yugoslav secret service (UDBA) did not shy away from murdering the protagonist of the Croatian memory culture, Nicola Martinovic, as late as 1975. The official history was aligned with a firm interpretational paradigm that called for a glorification of the anti-fascist ‘people’s liberation resistance.’ With the breakup of Yugoslavia and its socialist regime in 1991, the identity-establishing accounts of contemporary witnesses, which had mainly been cherished in exile circles abroad, increasingly reached public awareness in Croatia and Slovenia.

In the 1990s Croatia witnessed the emergence of a memory that had been suppressed by the socialist-Yugoslav regime—namely the Bleiburg tragedy. The situation in Slovenia was similar in terms of identity and remembrance culture… Reports on the communist postwar crimes and on the countless discoveries of mass gravesites have also begun circulating in the media of the German-speaking world in the last few years…” part of foreword to the English translation of the book by Florian Thomas Rulitz, “The Tragedy of Bleiburg and Viktring 1945”

The collapse of communism, the 1990’s war in Croatia, and the post-war efforts at reconciliation and EU integration all contributed to the public changes in the meanings, symbolism, and political significance of the commemorative events at Bleiburg. The annual gathering at Bleiburg Field transformed from an illegal commemoration attended largely by émigrés into a commemoration of victims of communist crimes and a proud symbol for all Croats who had sacrificed themselves for the freedom and independence of the Croatian state.

In 1990, on the 45th anniversary of the Bleiburg massacre, the Croatian media reported on the commemoration at Bleiburg for the first time in Croatia, but such reporting, especially the left-leaning media, has often continued with utter brutally untruthful allegations against innocent victims, often miserably implying they (or many of them) deserved death even if they were not ever tried in court or found guilty, fueling international media to do the same. That’s the talk of executioners who do not want to bear any guilt for their crimes that sadly still lingers strongly, preventing the victims to rest in dignified peace they truly deserve.

Tomislav Karamarko, First Deputy Prime Minister (front left)
and Zeljko Reiner (front right)
President of Croatian Parliament
Pay respects to victims of
communist crimes at Bleiburg
Saturday 14 May 2016
Photo: Vlada RH/Twitter

So, amidst all the politicking and media “cannibalism” let’s remind ourselves:

“What has actually happened on the 15th of May 1945, the day of the surrender? When after the laying down of the weapons Tito’s partisans were certain that their victims (Croatian army) could no longer defend themselves and that the British did not intend to intervene (the British, namely, threatened that they would bombard the Croatian troops and civilians if the Croats did not immediately lay down their arms), the partisan commissioner Milan Basta, a Serb from Lika, issued his order. Only those who were present at that apocalyptic massacre could describe what thereupon followed. Here is the testimony of one eyewitness. “Men, women and children were falling down in sheaves while the partisans were mowing left and right with their machine guns over the open field. Soon so many people were slaughtered that the partisans ventured to descend among the survivors and with visible pleasure to beat them to death, to kick them with boots and to stab them with bayonets.” (Report of the eyewitness Ted Pavić in Nikolaj Tolstoy’s book “The Minister and the Massacres”, London 1986, p. 104). Another eyewitness Jure Raguz reports, that in his vicinity he saw a desperate Croatian officer shoot his two small children, a boy and a girl, then his wife and in the end himself (quoted on the above indicated page). When the slaughter at Bleiburg was finished on the 16th of May, the remaining mass of disarmed and frightened Croatian prisoners was driven on foot into Yugoslavia, to the blood-fields of Kočevski Rog and others further on, on a death march known as the ‘Way of the Cross’. A Slovenian Franc Perme in his documentary book ‘Concealed graves and their victims’ proves, that in the first days after the end of the Second World War, only within the area of Slovenia, therefore outside of Austrian Bleiburg, further189,000 Croats were killed, and further 144,500 died in the death columns on the Way of the Cross from the Slovenian-Croatian border to the Romanian border…”

Bishop Franjo Komarica
Photo:Ivica Galovic/Pixsell

In his homily, Bishop Komarica said that Bleiburg is the most prominent symbol of totalitarianism and ideologies that have humiliated and disgraced human dignity of humanity – terribly and deeply; shamelessly trampling upon human dignity, rights and freedoms and destroying a man’s sense of co-responsibility and moral and ethical values. Lest we forget! Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)