 "God save us from plague, hunger and Croats"
This is a Topic on to itself
"God save us from plague, hunger and Croats".
The Srem Germans despise us because of this and behave in a more humane fashion with Serbs. The Italians photographed a vessel with 3.5 kilograms of Serbian eyes, as well as a Croat who wore a necklace strung with Serbian eyes, and another one who came to Dubrovnik with a belt on which severed Serbian tongues were hanging!
The horrors of the camps in which thousands of Serbs were killed or were left to die from exposure, hunger and cold weather, are too terrible to mention. The Germans have been talking about a camp in Lika where there were thousands of Serbs: but when the Germans got there they found the camp empty, drenched in blood and bloody clothing. In that camp it has been said a Serbian bishop also lost his life. Thousands upon thousands of Serbs in the camp of Jasenovac are still being tortured as they are spending fierce winter in wooden Gypsy shacks with no straw or covering and with a ration of two potatoes per day. In the history of Europe there have been no similar cases. One would have to go to Asia at the time of Tamerlane, or Genghis-Khan, or to Africa, to the countries of their bloodthirsty rulers to come upon similar situations. These events have shamed the name of Croatia for centuries to come. Nothing can absolve us fully from this ever again. We will not be able to tell even the last wretched man in the Balkans about our thousand year old Croatian culture, because even the Gypsies never perpetrated such cruelties. Why I am writing this to you, when you are not a political personage and cannot bear responsibility for all this (sic!). Here is why: in all these unprecedented barbarian crimes which are more than Godless, our Catholic church participated in two ways. A large number of clergy, priests, friars and organized Catholic youth took an active part in all this. It has also happened that Catholic priests became camp guards and Ustashi accomplices and so approved of the torture and slaughter of Christians. A Catholic priest even personally slaughtered an Orthodox clergyman. They could not have done all this without the permission of their bishops, and if they did, then they would have had to lose their jobs and taken to court. Since this did not happen, it means that their bishops granted them permission.
Secondly, the Catholic church made use of all this to convert the surviving Serbs. And while the soil was still steaming from the innocent victims' blood, while groans shuddered from the chests of the surviving victims, the priests, friars, nuns carried in one hand the Ustashi daggers and in the other their prayer books and rosaries. The whole of Srem is inundated with leaflets written by Bishop Aksamovic and printed in his printing shop in Djakovo, calling upon Serbs to save their lives and property by converting to Catholicism. It was as if our church wanted to show that it could destroy souls just as the Ustashi authorities destroy bodies. It is an even greater blot on the Catholic church, since at the same time many Orthodox churches, all the Orthodox monasteries have been confiscated, their property plundered as well as many historical treasures. Even the Patriarchal church in Sremski Karlovci has not been spared. All this violence against conscience and the spirit has brought even greater disgrace to the Croat nation and name.�
During the years 1941-1945 the Independent State of Croatia accomplished a monstrous plan publicly formulated by the Ustashi minister Mile Budak: "We will murder one third of Serbs, evict another, and we will convert the rest to the Catholic faith thus turning them into Croats" [397b].
In this Roman-Catholic Ustashi land of horrors, where the Orthodox were forced to wear a blue arm-band with the letter "P" ("Pravoslavec" - Engl. Orthodox), similar to the Jews who wore the hexagonal yellow star. During four years Ustashi had tortured and killed about 800.000 Serbs, 40.000 Gypsies and 30.000 Jews, deported 280.000 and forcibly rebaptized 240.000 [398].
With a particularly ferocious hatred the clerical fascists attacked Orthodox churches and Orthodox clergy. They created a special Institution For the Destruction of Orthodox Churches. Almost all Orthodox churches on the territory of the Independent Croatia were destroyed, burned, or converted into Catholic churches. As a whole 450 Orthodox churches suffered destruction in these terrible years in the Independent State of Croatia [399]. In the Uniat diocese of Krizhevac, for example, all Orthodox churches and chapels were turned into Catholic ones. Terrible fate befell Orthodox bishops and hundreds of priests in Croatia. They were either murdered with exceptional fanatical cruelty, or evicted to Serbia.
Numerous facts of an unusual cruelty are known to have been perpetrated by the Catholic clergy in the course of their persecution of Orthodoxy. We will list only a few of the huge number of these cases [400].
�Serbs were massacred either straight away, unexpectedly on the spot, or after they were first assembled in transit camps, usually under false pretexts, or, finally, in concentration camps especially intended for this purpose.
Catholic priest Mate Mogush instructed his flock: "So far we have served the Catholic faith with a prayer-book and a cross, but now the time has come to use guns and revolvers".
Director of the Department for Denominations, a Franciscan monk Dioniz Jurichev who heard confessions of Pavelich, declared: "In some regions I have already mopped up everything, from a chicken to an old man, and if need be, I shall do the same here also, since it is no longer a sin to kill even a seven-year old child, if he opposes our Ustashi order"...
In the summer of 1941 in the Livno district Dr. Srechko Peric, a Franciscan monk, addressed Croatians as follows: "Brother Croats, go ahead and massacre all Serbs, starting with my sister who married a Serb, and then all Serbs one after another. When you have finished with them, come and see me in the church where I shall hear your confessions and all your sins will be forgiven". Under Srechko Peric's guidance 5,000 Serbs were massacred in Livno and its surrounding area.
In the village of Balevci, as a result of the instigation by a Catholic priest Sidoni Sholtz, an Orthodox priest Georgi Bogic was brutally murdered. At midnight he was dragged out of his home; his nose and tongue were cut off, his beard singed; he was disembowled and the intestines were wound round his neck.
In February 1942, Jesuit Filippovic led a gang of the Ustashi to the mine near the town of Banja-Luka, and having checked the passports and ascertained that there were 52 Orthodox amongst the miners, ordered them all to be massacred. Then he set off for the village of Drakulica where these miners lived, and murdered about 1,500 people, i.e. all the inhabitants. Only one woman and her five children managed to escape, but she became insane after the horrors she had experienced [401].
In the villages around Mostar Catholic priests in their sermons suggested to the people that it was no sin to kill a Serb because it was now war-time.
A Franciscan monk called those of Croats who did not kill a single Serb "old women". Some Catholic clerics personally led their brutal "flock". Such was priest Ante Dzhuric who became an Ustashi commander and committed a series of crimes in this role.
In the Stolac region, where about 4,000 innocent Serbs were massacred, the killers were led by two Catholic priests, Marko Zovko and Tomas Ilja. The latter forced many Orthodox inhabitants of the village Klepec to convert to Catholicism, gave them Communion and then sent them to a school building where Ustashi killed them all to the very last. "You are mistaken, -- he would say to Serbs, -- if you think that we convert you to Catholicism in order that your property, pension or wages might be saved. We do not want to save your life, only your souls."� It should be noted that this was the usual practice of clerics-fascists: the Orthodox who were converted to Catholicism were often murdered soon after their conversion, which, according to the Papist "missionaries", guaranteed the salvation of their souls...
Catholic priest Dragutin Kamber who was elected the mayor of the town of Doboj, left an evil memory of himself for the forcible rebaptizing and mass murders. Documents have proved that Catholic "pastors" were involved in the genocide of Serbs carried out in concentration camps. One of them in the Jasenovac concentration camp was Catholic priest Brzica who was notable for the speed with which he knifed his victims.
Particularly horrifying are the descriptions of the methods applied to annihilate Orthodox Serbs, including their women, children and old people, in the Croatian concentration camps. There were not less than twenty of them with the terrible death-camp at Jasenovac amongst them. People were stabbed with a special knife called "Serb-chopper"; victims had their eyes gouged out, their heads smashed... The torture of prisoners committed by Catholic "murderers in God's name" at times are beyond the limits of human imagination...
An involuntary bewilderment is caused by the facts of a monstrous perversion of Christianity by an organization which is called Christian and pretends to be a true exponent of Christianity. Professor Victor Novak, the author of the book "Magnum Crimen" which we have quoted expressed the opinion that in the Independent State of Croatia Papacy received an opportunity "to discard all its masques and freely manifest its true essence..."
In our own times, 50 years later, in 1991 the suffering of Serbs resumed. "In many villages with mixed population Croats and Moslems brutally massacred their long-time Orthodox neighbors and relatives. In the villages occupied or, on the contrary, given up by the Croatian or Moslem troops, civilian Serbian population was often totally massacred. Cleaved skulls, gouged out eyes, disembowled bodies, cut off ears, bodies burned by a blowlamp... In 1991 forty child-martyrs were tortured to death in Vukovar, on the eve of its liberation by Serbian National Army" [402].
The words of the Memorandum of the Holy Bishops' Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church which met in May, 1992 have a tragic, lonely ring to them:
�As of yesterday, Serbian people in Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina have ceased to exist!.. Today Serbian Christians commemorate the 50th anniversary of their suffering on the territory of the notorious Nazist "Independent State" of Croatia, as well as in Kosovo and Metohia -- by experiencing new suffering...
Tens of thousands dead, many more wounded, more than a million of the evicted and refugees; destroyed churches [403], houses, devastated villages and desolate homes. With deep sorrow we must state that once again concentration camps are opened for Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. For instance, in Sukhopol, near Virovitica, Odzhak in Bosanska Posavina; Duvno and Livno, Smil'an in Lika and other places. Refugees testify that once again, as in 1941, bottomless pits are opened into which innocent Serbs are cast...
We appeal to all European states... to exert their influence upon the government of Croatia, to prevent the destruction of our churches and our religious centers. Unfortunately this also occurs in the battle-free places, as it recently happened in Zagreb (I l April 1992) where the Metropolitan's Residence and the Museum of Zagreb-Ljubljana Metropolia were blown up. We also request the guarantee of a free passage to our bishops and clergy in the parts of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina presently controlled by Croatian and Moslem troops, in order to allow them to perform their duty, their pastoral and humanitarian service regardless of the republican and state borders...� [404]
At present, after the "victory of Western democracy", citizens of former Yugoslavia, contrary to all universally recognized human rights, are required to produce a document confirming their non-Orthodoxy, in order to get to Croatian territory! [405]
Whilst officially calling for the termination of this war in Yugoslavia, the Vatican has, in fact, supported its co-religionists Croats. An example of its action against Orthodoxy is quoted in the book by French author Jacques Merlino: "The Bank of Vatican sends $1,988,300 through the Institute for the Dissemination of Religion for the purchase of arms in Beirut and their delivery to Croatia." [406]
A year after the Balamand Agreement, in September 1994, John Paul II visited Croatia and kneeled in prayer at the grave of Cardinal Stepinac who died in 1960 at the time of his house-arrest [407].
Accompanied by incessant applause of the worshippers in the 12th century Cathedral in Zagreb, the Roman Pope extolled Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac as "undoubtedly the most outstanding martyr in Croatian history", calling him "the hero of sanctity" [408]. The Croatian State Television interpreted the choice of words uttered by John Paul II as a sign of the Vatican's intention to canonize the Archbishop of Zagreb who was sentenced in 1946 by the Communist government of Yugoslavia for his collaboration with the Croatian fascist regime responsible for the mass murder of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies [409]. Cardinal Stepinac, "according to European diplomats, was the most compromised hierarch of the Roman Catholic clergy in the Nazi occupied Europe."
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2002-10-14, 00:28
