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Museums in Eastern Europe Museums in Eastern Europe

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Catholic radicals in Austria supported since the 19 cent. tional movements of the Slavonians had a base in the Or-
hate crimes against orthodox Serbs on the Balkans and were thodox churches and a united state of South Slavonia was
in this way closely connected to the Ustasha. While the a nightmarish vision for the pope. Therefore, an independ-
German Nazis had some ideological agreements with the ent “Catholic Croatia” harmonized directly with the aim of
Vatican but persecuted Catholics who resisted the fascist the Vatican to repress the Orthodox from the Balkans. 13
dictatorship, the Ustasha claimed to be fascist and catholic
and to be directly connected to the Vatican: among the Many of the Muslims in Yugoslavia did not only support the
slaughterers in Jasenovac were Croatian Catholic priests Ustasha but the Axis in general and joined the Nazi troops
under the command of the Archbishop of Zagreb. At the because they had a fanatical passion to kill orthodox Serbs
same time, the eliminatory antisemitism connected the and Jews. The members of the SS-division “Handschar”
Ustasha even closer to the Nazi ideology than the fascist (Croatian number 1) were mainly muslim volunteers from
rulers in Spain or Italy. In return, even the foreign minister the “Independent state of Croatia”.
of fascist Italy, Gian Galeazzo Ciano, count of Cortellazzo
und Buccari, called the Ustasha bandits. 12 in the early 20 cent., the policy of the Vatican has been
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clearly directed against the Serbs. Especially in Austria
Mixing Catholizism with racism the traditional religious antisemitism with catholic origins
mixed with economical and political antisemitism; Austri-
On the first glance it looks absurd that many Muslims in an antisemits agitated at the same time against the or-
former Yugoslavia supported the Ustasha because on the thodox Serbs by proclaiming a conspiracy between Jews
Balkanic borderline of the Western Church the main for- and Serbs. At the beginning of WWI, the Austrian war
mer historical conflict appeared to be between Islam and propaganda had invented, among others, the pun "Serbi-
Christian clergy. But it is not that easy: the border guards en muss sterbien" ["Serbia has to die-a"].
of the Christian empires against the Ottomans had been
the orthodox Serbs ‒ and since the division and christiani- Thus Ustasha and the Catholic Church in Croatia had much
zation of the Roman Empire the preferential enemy of the in common. Both were anti-liberal, anti-communist, an-
papal Rome had been the Byzantinian Church. The capital ti-serbian and anti-semitic. High officials of the Catholic
clergy could force the massive conversion of the Serbs in
Croatia only with the help of Ustasha. The legate of the
pope, Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone, sojourned all the time in
Pavelić’s Croatia while the genocide was committed, knew
about it and presented himself as ally of the Ustasha. Pope
Pius XIII gave him a rosary which Pavelić hold in his hands
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when he died in 1959. The Catholic priest and Ustase
Dionizje Juricević said: “In this country noone can live ex-
cept the Croatians, and who will not rechristen with him
we know what to do. Today it is no sin to kill even a small
child which is in the way of the Ustasha movement. You
do not have to think, that because I am a priest, I would
not take a machine gun and eradicate anything, even a
nurseling which is against the Ustasha rule and the Ustasha
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state.” A leader of the extermination camp in Jasenovac,
the Franciscan Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović was Ustasha
captain as well as pastor and commmanded the massacre
of Banja Luka where the Ustasha murdered 2200 Serbs.
Alojzije Stepinac (far right) with two Catholic priests at He was first camp commander until October 1942, then
the funeral of President of the Croatian Parliament Marko he commanded the concentration camp in Stara Gradiska.
Došen in September 1944. 1944 he was imprisoned by the Yugoslavian army; he con-
Source: Wikimedia Commons/ http://bejiita.xanga.com/ fessed that under his command mainly Jews and Gypsies
were killed with hammers or shot at the shores of the Sava
river. He estimated that half a million Serbs were killed
of this Greek Orthodoxy, Constantinopel, was runsacked in the time of the Ustasha regime. He also confessed
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by European (papal) troops during the 4 crusade; it was that he had killed himself more than 100 prisoners of the
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in the hand of the Muslims since 1453 but still majorities camps Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska, that the gravediggers
in Balkanian countries belonged to the Orthodox church.
raped women before they were killed and that in his time
as commander 20,000-30,000 people were executed. 17
Since the middle ages the northwest of later Yugoslawia
had been a borderline between the Roman-Catholic and The Archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, was a mes-
the Greek-Orthodox Church. In the 19 cent. the Vatican senger between Ante Pavelić regime and Pope Pius XII and
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saw the Catholic Austrian rule as a stronghold against the underpinned the Ustasha ideological. As early as 1940 he
Russian and Greek Orthodoxy. On the other hand the na-
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EXPOTIME!, issue August/September 2017