The Vatican's Holocaust The sensational account of the most horrifying religious massacre of the 20th century: Chapter 4 THE NIGHTMARE OF A NATION By Avro Manhattan

Chapter 4 



THE NIGHTMARE OF A NATION 

The Independent Kingdom of Croatia, having thus officially sprung into 
existence, set forth with burning zeal to fulfill all the hopes so obstinately 
entertained by its religious and political promoters: the Vatican and Fascism. 
Inspired by the graciously remote majesty of good King Tomislav II, under the 
patronage of His Holiness the Pope, protected by Hitler, watched by Mussolini, 
ruled by Catholic terrorists, and policed by Catholic bayonets, the New Croatia 
began to transform itself into the ideal commonwealth as advocated by Catholic 
tenets. 



A State, however, according to papal dicta must be regulated not only by civil 
but also by religious authority. So Pavelic, having determined that a religious 
equivalent of himself should partake of the rights and duties of rulership, saw to 
it that the head of the Hierarchy became a de facto ruler of the New Croatia. 
Archbishop Stepinac, the Croatian Primate, and others, members of the 
Hierarchy, the religious equivalent of the Ustashi, were duly elected members 
of the Sabor (Totalitarian Parliament). The military, political, and religious 
architraves of the new State having thus been erected, Pavelic and Stepinac set 
out to transform its whole structure into what a true Catholic-Fascist State 
should be. Movements, institutions, men, and everything else were made to 
conform to the letter and spirit of Catholicism. All potential opponents — 
Communists, Socialists, Liberals — were either banished or imprisoned. Trade 
unions were abolished, workers' organizations became pitiful caricatures of 
their former selves, the Press was paralyzed when it was not altogether gagged, 
freedom of speech, of expression, and of thought became memories of the past. 
Every effort was made to dragoon youth into Catholic semi-military 
formations; the children were marshalled by priests and by nuns. Catholic 
teaching, Catholic tenets, Catholic dogma became compulsory in all schools, in 
all offices, in all factories, and everywhere the iron heel of the new State was 
felt. Catholicism was proclaimed the main religion of the State. Other religions 
and those professing them were ostracized, chief among these, the Orthodox; 
while the Jews were compelled to wear the Star of David on their clothes, all 
members of the Orthodox Church went in fear for their property, their personal 
and family safety. To be Orthodox had suddenly meant to be a potential victim. 
Soon, in all parks and public transport vehicles, a new inscription appeared: 
"Entry forbidden to all Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and dogs." The Ministry of the 
Interior, led by Andrija Artukovic, issued the following decree: "All the Serbs 
and the Jews residing in Zagreb, the Capital of Croatia, must leave the town 
within 12 hours. Any citizen found to have given them shelter will be 
immediately executed on the spot." 

While Ante Pavelic was transforming Croatia with a mailed fist, his religious 
equivalent, Archbishop Stepinac, facilitated the revolution by a timely 
nationwide mobilization of the whole of the Catholic Church. No opportunity 
was allowed to pass without Stepinac openly singing the praises of, or 
sprinkling with oral or holy-water blessings, the new Catholic Croatia, her great 
Leader Pavelic, the Duce, and the great Fuehrer. When dates commemorating 
the bloody ascent of Fascism to power were celebrated in Fascist Italy or in 
Nazi Germany, Stepinac, although in Croatia, celebrated them with no less 
fervour. Thus he punctiliously celebrated October 28, the day when, in 1922, 
the first Fascist dictatorship was installed in Italy. While Mussolini annually 



paraded His Black Shirt battalions in Rome on that date, Stepinac annually 
commemorated the march with speeches, prayers, and congratulations, 
distributed with equal generosity also to Hitler on his ever-gloomier succeeding 
April birthdays. When it came to his own new Fascist State, however, the 
archiepiscopal panegyrics became impassioned recommendations for 
everything done by the New Croatia. After Parliament was convoked in 
February, 1942, Stepinac, with all the sacred authority of the chief pillar of the 
Mother Church, asked the Holy Ghost to descend upon the sharp edged knives 
of the Ustashi, and to settle, at least while the parliamentary session lasted, 
upon the brow of Pavelic. Special prayers and extra ounces of incense were 
offered in all Catholic churches on Pavelic's birthday. HI 

When the pocket-sized Ustashi Navy departed for the Black Sea, to destroy, 
side by side with the Germans, the Red Navy of godless 



A copy of the original document dealing with the conversion to the Catholic Church of all Orthodox persons 
employed by the Government. Issued in Zagreb by the Ministry of Justice and Religions. 

Everyone had to be or to become a Catholic. Refusal meant instant dismissal, loss of property, or arrest. And, 
very often, all three. 

Additional decrees were issued, e.g. "Law concerning the conversion from one religion to another." On June 1, 
1941, the Ustashi Premier set up an Office of Religious Affairs, in charge of "all matters pertaining to questions 
connected with the conversion of the Orthodox Church" (Decree No. 1 1,689). 

Such legislation rested upon the tenet that "the movement of the Ustashi is based upon the Catholic Church," as 
enunciated by Mile Budak, July 13, 1941, at Karlovac. 

Forcible conversions became the standard practice of Ustashi Croatia. The conversions were duly legalized by 
the State and gave immunity to the new Catholics, from arrest, from seizure of property and from execution. 



A mass execution carried out by the Ustashi at Brode, early in 1941. Nazi troops were looking at some of the 
victims. 

The Nazis, who for a time were posted in Croatia, were so horrified at the Ustashi atrocities that they set up 



y-x ,1 i *~\i i r* o i • • f* j ill* j i j j i tw i 



General Dulkeman to intervene and stop the Ustashi horrors. 

The Germans and the Italians managed to restrain the Ustashi while they were under their supervision. When the 
Nazis left Croatia, however, the Ustashi multiplied their atrocities, unreprimanded by the Government. Since the 
latter's policy was one of total elimination of the Orthodox Serbian population via forcible conversions, 
expulsion, or straightforward massacre. 

Victims were executed in groups without trial on bridges and then thrown into the river. In May 1941 the 
Ustashi besieged Glina. Having gathered together all the Orthodox males of over fifteen years of age from 
Karlovac, Sisak and Petrinja, they drove them outside the town and killed 600 of them with guns, knives and 
sledge hammers. 

Russia, Stepinac flanked by Dr. Ramiro Marcone, the representative of that 
lover of peace, Pius XII, celebrated the triumphal departure in Zagreb, 
surrounded by the Catholic Hierarchy, mumbling Latin incantations for speedy 
victory by those brave aquatic crusaders. Stepinac's colleagues imitated their 
leader with unmatched zeal — e.g. Bishop Aksamovic, of Djakovo, who was 
personally decorated by Pavelic because "His Excellency the Bishop has from 
the very beginning cooperated with the Ustashi authorities." Or Archbishop 
Saric — the bosom friend of Jure Francetic, the commander of the Black 
Legion — who raised his right hand in the Ustashi — that is, the Nazi — salute at 
every opportunity, public or private. 

The transformation of the Catholic Hierarchy into a de facto Ustashi Hierarchy 
had a most dreadful significance. It meant that the whole machinery of the 
Catholic Church in Croatia had been put at the complete disposal of the ruthless 
individuals determined to make of the new State a compact political and 
military unit, cemented by the most secure guarantees of the State's 
indestructibility. Such a policy implied, not only the transformation of the 
Croatian social, cultural, and political fabric, but also the complete extirpation 
of whatever was "alien" to Croatian stock and to its national religion. This 
required the total elimination of whoever was not a Catholic Croat. Not an easy 
task, as a large portion of the new State was composed of bulky racial-religious 
groups wholly foreign to Ustashi Catholicism. Out of a population of 
6,700,000, in fact, only 3,300,000 were Croats. Of the remainder, 700,000 were 
Moslems, 45,000 were Jews, followed by sundry smaller minorities. Over 
2,000,000 were Orthodox Serbs. 

The inclusion in the New Croatia of so many alien elements was due to the 
territorial ambitions of Croat Separatism. These, as we have already seen, had 



been epitomized in the conception of the "Greater Croatia" of Ante Starcevic, 
who founded an extreme political party, the Croatian Law Party, subsequently 
elevated to the level of a fanatical National programme by Ante Pavelic. The 
Party's ideology, although one of racial and religious exclusiveness, accepted 
geographical expansion. This meant the inclusion in an independent Croatia of 
disputed territories, and hence of non-Catholic elements, which became 
automatically the greatest obstacle to the complete Catholicization of the new 
Croat State. To solve the problem, a policy directed at the swift elimination of 
all the non-Croat, non-Catholic population was adopted and promptly set in 
motion. This was repeatedly and publicly enunciated by members of the 
Ustashi Government — e.g. on June 2, 1941, in Nova Grarfiska, Dr. Milovan 
Zanitch, Minister of Justice, declared: 

This State, our country, is only for the Croats, and not for anyone 
else. There are no ways and means which we Croats will not use 
to make our country truly ours, and to clean it of all Orthodox 
Serbs. All those who came into our country 300 years ago must 
disappear. We do not hide this our intention. It is the policy of our 
State, and during its promotion we shall do nothing else but 
follow the principles of the Ustashi. 

Dr. Mile Budak, Minister of Education and of Cults, lost no time in 
enlightening his listeners of the nature of such principles. During his first Press 
interview as a Minister, when asked what the policy of Croatia would be in 
relation to the non-Croat racial and religious minorities, his reply was an 
ominously simple one: "For them" (the minorities), he said, "we have three 
million bullets." This was not the boasting of a fanatical individual. It was the 
epitomization of a policy, coolly planned by Pavelic in concert with the 
Catholic Hierarchy, which was set in motion immediately when the Nazis 
invaded Yugoslavia. Dr. Milovan Zanich, Dr. Mirko Puk, Dr. Victor Gutich, 
Ustashi Ministers, unhesitatingly declared that the New Croatia would get rid 
of all the Serbs in its midst, in order to become 100 per cent Catholic "within 
ten years." On July 22, 1941, the plan was again officially confirmed by Dr. 
Mile Budak: "We shall kill one part of the Serbs," were his words, "we shall 
transport another, and the rest of them will be forced to embrace the Roman 
Catholic religion. This last part will be absorbed by the Croatian elements." 
Ways and means to enact such a scheme were swiftly adopted. The most 
radical and most ruthless: mass removal of Serbians from the contested zone. 
According to the Ministers, one-third of these were to be transported to Serbia 
proper, one-third would be "persuaded" to embrace Catholicism, and the 



remainder would be "disposed of" by other means. "Other means" soon 
signified biological extermination, and "persuasion" forcible conversion. 

Conversion and extermination spelt one thing: the total annihilation of the 
Orthodox Church. That, in fact, turned out to be the official policy of the New 
Catholic State of Croatia. Such a policy was 



"The Pit of Death" An Orthodox Serb being thrown alive into a mass 
grave in the notorious concentration camp of Jasenovac, in 1942. 

"The Pit of Death" was reserved for those Serbs who challenged their 
Catholic converters. The camp, when run by the Franciscan Monk, 
Father Filipovic, squalled in horrors Dachau Concentration Camp. 
These horrors, however, were often committed in rural districts as well. 

On April 28, 1941, for instance, Ustashi storm troopers encircled the 
villages of Gudovac, Tuke Brezovac, Klokocevac and Bolac, in the 
district of Bjelovar, and arrested 250 Orthodox peasants, among whom 
was Stevan Ivankovitch and the Orthodox priest, Bozin. Having led 
them all to a field, the Ustashi ordered them to dig their own graves. 
This done, their hands were tied behind their backs. Thereupon, they 
were ALL PUSHED ALIVE INTO THEIR GRAVES . 

The barbarity created such a commotion, even among the Nazis, that 
they set up a Committee to exhume the bodies and took photographs as 
evidence. The oral process was incorporated in an official Nazi 
document, "Ustachenwerk bet Bjelovar." 




Corpses of children starved to death in the notorious Concentration 
Camp of Jasenovec, whose Commandant at one time was a Franciscan 
Monk, Father Filipovic. Father Filipovic, following the advice of 
Father D. Juric, let more than 2,000 other Orthodox children die while 
the camp was still under his rule, 

Jasenovac Concentration Camp distinguished itself because of the 
number of young inmates sent there. In 1942 the Camp held over 
24,000 Orthodox youngsters. Twelve thousand of them were murdered 
in cold blood by the Commandant. 

Special camps for children were set up in many parts of Croatia. Those 
who were sick or too old to change their religion were made to perish 
through neglect or where simply massacred. An Ustashi named Ante 
Urban, a pious Catholic, protested indignantly at his trial after the war 
when accused of having killed hundreds of children. He asked the 
Judge to consider the accusation a lie, "Since," he explained, he had 
killed personally "only sixty-three of them." 



formally put forward in Parliament by, among others, Dr. Mirko Puk, the 
Ustashi Minister of Justice and Religion: "I shall also make reference to the so- 
called Serbian Orthodox Church," he said. "In this regard I must emphatically 
state that the Independent Croatian State cannot and will not recognize the 
Serbian Orthodox Church. "[21 

Pavelic's triple programme was made to operate simultaneously everywhere, 
following the establishment of the New State. Its execution was simple, direct, 
and brutal. It ranged from hurried decrees — like that issued by his new Minister 
of Public Instruction only four days after Hitler's attack (April 10, 1941), which 
barred members of the Serbian Orthodox Church from entering the University 
unless they had given up the Orthodox faith before April 10, 1941 — to 
wholesale deportations, like those carried out on July 4 and 5, 1941, by the 



Ustashi in Zagreb; to the massacre of men, women, and children, like that of 
Kljuch, on July 31, on August 31, on September I and 2, 1941, when the 
"Flying Ustashi" summarily executed approximately 2,000 Serbs. T31 

In a State insanely bent on a policy of racial-religious extermination, laws and 
legality, when observed, were nothing but tragic mockeries. The Courts 
Extraordinary already mentioned, for instance, always condemned regardless of 
evidence, did not permit the right to appeal, and their sentences had to be 
carried out within three hours of pronouncement. Thus, these courts sentenced 
an immense number of people to death without offering them any opportunity 
for defense, and their sentences were strictly applied. In most cases the courts 
punished "collectively," under the guise of "trials." One bench alone, for 
instance, that of Zagreb, within two days — August 4 and 5, 1941 — sentenced to 
death 185 persons; that of Stem, from August 3 to 25, 1942, 217 persons; the 
proceedings at the mobile court at Ruma on August 3, 1942, lasted only two 
and a half hours, during which twenty-six persons were sentenced to death. At 
Stara Pazova, on August 8, 1942, the court proceedings lasted only half an 
hour, and eighteen people received the death sentence. At Ruma on August 10, 
1942, a defending counsel appointed by the Ustashi handled the defense of 
twenty-five persons, whom he met for the first time at the trial, the chairman of 
the bench allowing him only two minutes for each person. The Tribunals, a 
most tragic mockery of justice, were veritable instruments of extermination, as 
proved by the fact that within four years one bench alone of the mobile court 
extraordinary of Zagreb, headed by Ivan Vidnjevic, sentenced to death 2,500 
citizens. 

But while the Tribunals had at least a semblance of legality, the Ustashi found 
means to exterminate thousands of persons by a quicker method — i.e. by 
dispatching them to concentration camps and disposing of them there. The 
institution and supervision of these camps were exclusively in the hands of 
Pavelic, who personally attended to their management. The arrests and 
deportations to these camps rested with the Ustashi, who could send to them 
anyone they judged to be an "unreliable person," and who had absolute 
authority to kill immediately on arrival anyone taken there. Indeed, there "was 
agreement," to quote Ljubo Milos, Commandant of the Jasenovac concentration 
camp, "that all sentenced to three years, or not sentenced at all, were to be 
liquidated at once. 3 By virtue of this, inmates of the camps were murdered 
indiscriminately, either individually or collectively, without even a legal 
excuse. Thus, in March, 1943, the inmates of the Djakovo Camp were 
purposely infected with typhus, causing the deaths of 567 persons; on 
September 15, 1941, all those inmates of the Jasenovac camp who were unable 



to work, numbering between 600 and 700, were killed; in the camp of Stara 
Gradiska, 1,000 women were killed. Of 5,000 Orthodox Serbs being taken to 
Jasenovac camp at the end of August, 1942, 2,000 were killed en route, the 
remainder were transferred to Gradina, where on August 28 they were put to 
death with hammers. In the Krapje Camp, in October, 1941, 4,000 prisoners 
were murdered; while in the Brocice Camp, in November, 1941, 8,000 
prisoners were killed. From December, 1941, to February, 1942, at Velika 
Kosutarica, at Jasenovac, over 40,000 Orthodox Serbs were massacred, while 
in the Jasenovac camp, in the summer of 1942, about 66,000 Orthodox Serbs, 
brought from the villages of the Bosnian Marches, were slaughtered, including 
2,000 children. 

Children were not spared, and special concentration camps were set up for 
them. Nine of these were at Lobor; Jablanac, near Jasenovac; Mlaka; Brocice; 
IJstici; Stara Gradiska; Sisak; Jastrebarsko; and Ciornja Rijeka. The destruction 
of infants in these places would be incredible, were it not vouched for by 
eyewitnesses, one of whom has testified: 

At that time fresh women and children came daily to the Camp at 
Stara Gradiska. About fourteen days later, Vrban [Commandant of 
the Camp] ordered all children to be separated from their mothers 
and put in one room. Ten of us were told to carry them there in 
blankets. The children crawled about the room, and one child put 
an arm and leg through the doorway, so that the door could not be 
closed. Vrban shouted: 'Push it! f When I did not do that, he 
banged the door and crushed the child's leg. Then he took the 
child by its whole leg, and banged it on the wall till it was dead. 
After that we continued carrying the children in. When the room 
was full, Vrban brought poison gas and killed them all.[41 

At his trial, Ante Vrban protested that he had not killed hundreds of children 
personally, "but only sixty-three. "T51 

In 1942 there were some 24,000 children in the Jasenovac camp alone, 12,000 
of whom were cold-bloodedly murdered. A very large portion of the remainder, 
having subsequently been released following pressure by the International Red 
Cross, perished wholesale from intense debilitation. One hundred of these 
infants, aged up to twelve months, for instance, died after release from the 
camp because of the addition of caustic soda to their food. 

Dr. Katicic, Chairman of the Red Cross, shocked by these mass murders, 
lodged the strongest protest, threatening to denounce to the world this mass 



slaughter of infants. As a reply, Pavelic had Dr. Katicic flung into the 
concentration camp of Stara Gradiska. 

That was not all. Even worse horrors — if worse there could be — took place in 
Pavelic's concentration camps. There were cases when the victims were burned 
alive: 

The cremation at Jasenovac took place in the spring of 1942. In 
this they meant to imitate the Nazi camps in Germany and Poland, 
so Picilli had the notion of making the brickworks into a 
crematorium, where he did succeed, out of 14 ovens (7 a side) in 
making an oven for cremating people. There was then a decision 
to cremate people alive, and simply open the huge iron door and 
push them alive into the fire already alight there. That plan, 
however, excited terrible reaction among those who were to be 
burned. People shrieked, shouted and defended themselves. To 
avoid such scenes, it was resolved first to kill them and then to 
burn themJ61 

The representatives of the "only true Church" not only knew of such horrors: 
not a few of them were authorities in these same concentration camps, and had 
even been decorated by Ante Pavelic — e.g. Father Zvonko Brekalo, of the 
concentration camp of Jasenovac, who was decorated in 1944 by the leader 
himself with the "Order of King Zvonimir"; Father Grga Blazevitch, Assistant 
to the Commandant of the concentration camp of Bosanski-Novi; Brother 
Tugomire Soldo, organizer of the great massacre of the Serbs in 1941 ; and 
others. The worst abominations could hardly have been surpassed by the deeds 
of these individuals, the vilest betrayers of civilization and of man. 



Footnotes 

1. Katolicki List, June 11, 1942 jBackl 

2. Speech by Dr. Mirko Puk, Minister of Justice and Religion. Excerpt from 
stenographic record of the proceedings of a regular session of the Croatian 
State Assembly, held in Zagreb, February 25, 1942 jBackl 

3. All the crimes described in this book are authentic. For further atrocities of 
this kind, see the Memorandum sent to the General Assembly of UNO in 1950 
by A. Pribicevic, President of the Independent Democratic Party of Yugoslavia, 



and by Dr. V. Belaicic, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Yugoslavia. 
Also Dokumenti, compiled by Joza Horvat and Zdenko Stambuk, Zagreb, 
1946.[Backl 

4. Statement made by witness Cijordana Friedlender, from the shorthand notes 
of the Ljubo Milos case, pp. 292-3. TBackl 

5. From shorthand notes of the Ljubo Milos case JBackl 

6. Idem. See also official indictment of Ante Pavelic. rBackl 

Chapter 5 



THE TRIUMPH OF TERRORISM 

To complement the wholesale manhandling, torturing, and legalized killing of 
the Ustashi, another terrible instrument, perhaps the most execrable of all, 
struck with fears an already terrorized population: the "punitive expeditions" 
carried out by Pavelic's own special militia, the Ustashi, who in no time 
acquired such an in