POWERFULLY PROTECTED - the Ustasha in Australia

I was a political child. In 1972 during the campaign that toppled twenty-three years of Australian Liberal governments, I wore my It's Time badge faithfully to Sunday School every week - It's Time For A Change. I rejoiced when in December Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party roared into office and, even today, I can still sing the song that encapsulated that exciting time in Australian politics. 'The Adventures of Edward Gough Whitlam. Dinki Di tales of an Aussie Boy.'  

From 1952 to 1978 Whitlam held the safe Labor seat of Werriwa in southwest Sydney which contained a substantial migrant community from the former Yugoslavia. 

Unlike their Liberal predecessors, the new Labor Government was not frightened of the Yugoslav communist government or communism in general. They did not permit the freedom of terrorist groups in Australia merely because they weren't communist and therefore not considered a threat. One such group that they banned were the Croatian terrorists, the Ustasha. 

Who were the Ustasha?

They were fascists, which means right wing ultra-nationalists, the opposites and opponents of communism. Fascism flourished in Europe in the interwar years under Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, the Ustasha in Croatia and many others. 

In my 1915 atlas (right) there is no Croatia. It forms part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Various factors, including the fear of land claims from Italy, resulted in Croatia being incorporated into Yugoslavia in 1918 under a Serbian monarchy. The Ustasha were founded in 1929 with the aim of achieving Croatian independence. 

Following the German invasion of Yugoslavia 6th April 1941, Hitler put the Ustasha in charge of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) which included Bosnia and 1.8 million ethnic Serbs (5). The Croatian historian, Slavko Goldstein (2) acknowledges that, although the Serbian monarchy had been guilty of the suppression of Croatia, the punishment the Ustasha meted out to the Serbs was out of all proportion to the crimes.

Estimates of the genocide of Serbs by the Ustasha during World War 2 vary. Hubert Butler (3), the Irish essayist who lived in Croatia before and after the war quotes half a million, while other sources suggest even more. Marcus Tanner (4) writes 'the figure of 600,000 Serb deaths in the NDH is probably much too high as it does not tally with the ethnic composition of Croatia and Bosnia after the war...[but] there is no doubt that the NDH intended to exterminate the Serb population and failed only because it lacked the means.' The Ustasha also killed 75% of the Jews, all the Gypsies, any antifascist who crossed their line of vision, and a cousin of my mother's.

In an attempt to explain the fanatical hatred with which the Ustasha slaughtered Serbs, that even shocked the Nazis, Goldstein quotes the commander of Jasenovac death camp, Ljubo Miloš, 'I know I will burn in hell for what I have done, but I will burn for Croatia.' (2)

The Ustasha find protection in Australia.  

'Like many refugees from countries in Eastern Europe who had collaborated with Hitler and Mussolini,' writes Gough Whitlam, 'and who therefore could not return to their countries of birth, the Ustasha formed close ties with the Liberal Party.' 

'In 1954, I had brought to the notice of the Minister for Immigration [Holt] the distress which had been caused to many migrants in my electorate by a program on a Sydney commercial radio station on the Sunday nearest to 10th April to celebrate "the Croatian National Day" This was the anniversary of the establishment of the Ustasha puppet regime under Ante Pavelić in 1941.' (1)  

In September 1963, the following article appeared in the Tribune (6), the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia.

The Wodonga incident had been staged by the Ustasha, filmed then splashed across the world to demonstrate the 'help' they were receiving from Australian authorities. An embarrassed Minister for the Army 'pleaded that the officer commanding was not aware of the composition of the [Ustasha] 'picnic group' and had merely regarded them as potential recruits'. (1)  

Some selected Ustasha bombings                 Quotes are from (1) unless otherwise stated.

1964 May, Sydney - a supporter is seriously injured by his own bomb. 

1965 February, Geelong - Yugoslav dance.

1967 April, Melbourne - two separate residences.

1967 January, Sydney - Yugoslav Consulate-General.

1967 November, Richmond VIC - Yugoslav function.

1968 November, Melbourne - bombs thrown into a residence.

1968 November, Sydney -    Yugoslav Consulate-General.

1969 April, Sydney - residence. 

1969 June - Yugoslav Consulate-General.

1969, October, Canberra - USSR Embassy.                                         

1969, November, Canberra - Yugoslav Embassy.

1970, October, Melbourne - Yugoslav Consulate-General.

1971, January - USSR consulate.

1971, February, Sydney airport - bomb threat against Yugoslav musicians.

1971, November, Sydney - Yugoslav agency.

1971, December, Suburban Sydney - Yugoslav film show. 
1972, February, Canberra - Serbian orthodox church. 

1972, April, Melbourne and Canberra - residence and an exhibition.

1972, September, Sydney -- Yugoslav premises. 

The Tribune was not impressed. 

October 28th 1970 - 'There appear to be several flocks of guardian angels watching over the Ustashi. Firstly, there are the Liberal and Democratic Labor Parties. Top Liberals, including Gorton, McMahon and Snedden, have either praised them or defended them. Liberal politicians such as Federal Minister Mr W C Wentworth and NSW Parliamentarian have appeared and spoken at their rallies.  Apparently, the fanatical anti-communist and anti-labor attitudes of the Ustashi make them a valued ally.' (7)

Gough Whitlam agreed. 'The Ustasha had enjoyed immunity under [successive Liberal prime ministers] Menzies, Holt, Gorton and McMahon...If communist rather than anti-communist organizations had been thought responsible for [the terrorist incidents in Australia] all the Liberal Attorneys-General would have been active in pursuing and prosecuting the perpetrators.' (1)

But was it only to do with the fear of Communism? 

While I might rant and rage at the injustice of allowing a persecuted ethnic group to enter Australia only to permit the persecution to continue here, it is true that post war Australia was essentially British and not concerned about migrants it didn't understand and whose language it couldn't speak. 'By focusing their attacks on the Yugoslav community, the Ustaša avoided provoking general outrage and public censure,' writes Kristy Campion (8). 'The violence was considered a Yugoslav migrant problem. It was not until the tourism centre bombings injured sixteen random civilians that decisive political action was taken.'  She notes that contributing factors were the fear the victims had of retribution and the fear of deportation back to the communist Yugoslavia they had left.  

It is fortunate that Gough Whitlam held an electorate with a Yugoslav community. With the Labor party at last in office, the long run of government permissiveness to the Ustasha came to an end and the community had a few short years of peace until the breakup of Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990's. Writing many years after he was an eyewitness to the Ustasha crimes, Slavko Goldstein concluded that Ustasha intellectuals believed that 'if you loved Croatia very much, you must be forgiven completely even if in its name... you persecuted people, drove them into prisons and camps, killed them, or had them killed on a massive scale. If you have expressed remorse with a few general phrases, you have been “purified" and you will receive the honour that you deserve.' (2)

Sources

(1) Whitlam, Gough     The Whitlam Government 1972-1975   Penguin Books 1985

(2) Goldstein, Slavko    1941: The Year Tthat Keeps Returning  NY Review of Books 2007

(3) Butler, Hubert   The Balkan Essays.  Irish Page Press 2016.

(4) Tanner, Marcus     Croatia   Yale UP 1997.

(5) Nationalities and Minorities in the Independent State of Croatia | Nationalities Papers | Cambridge Core

(6) 18 Sep 1963 - "Poem" for terrorism - Trove

(7) 28 Oct 1970 - Powerful protectors of the Ustashi bomb terrorists - Trove

(8) The Ustaša in Australia: A Review of Right-Wing Ustaša Terrorism from 1963-1973, and Factors that Enabled their Endurance Kristy Campion.

researchoutput.csu.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/29095069/28757579_Published_article.pdf/

JASENOVAC, THE OTHER AUSCHWITZ

To my Fellow Fighters by Anka Poznevija 33^rd Brigade

Yugoslav Partisans 

Comrades, my fighters, this poem testifies to you,

And my heart, which has seen and suffered many hurts, sings to you in thanks.

You rescued me from the concentration camp,

I was stuck there a long time

With thousands of those comrades,

Many fears I survived.

 The camp – the atrocities awe me by that single word,

The camp – full only of hungry skeletons,

The camp – from the smallest children in the grave.

Wire, walls, solitary confinement, dungeons…

A scream, hunger and moaning -

These are the beauties of the camps. 

Those words  - ‘Mother! Water, only give me a drop of water,’

You hear through the night’s silent cavern the supplications of the children,     

But the mother hasn’t water to give him,

She has only poor, powerless arms….

From thirst and grief the babies bite their own arms…

Then everything gets quieter,

Slowly the moaning and the noise fade,

Only the iron bar frantically tightens

The rusted barrier.

Comrades, you got me out of this fearsome horror.

I have no other words than these: comrades, thank you! 

The concentration camps of World War 2 hold a macabre grip over the modern imagination. Books on the topic sell in their millions. Tourists with questionable ethics wield selfie sticks in the death chambers. Of these Nazi camps of horror, Auschwitz remains the best known. 

Recently, however, a discussion with a girl on Goodreads led me to the website of Jasenovac, one of many Ustasha-run death camps and inevitably, when huge numbers and sadistic savagery are involved, the most notorious. Situated in Croatia near the border with Bosnia, Jasenovac was established in 1941 by the Independent State of Croatia, or NDH, a Nazi puppet state run by the Ustasha, the fascist terrorist organization nurtured by Mussolini and put in power over Croatia and Bosnia by Hitler. Its principal victims were the Orthodox Serbs, the Jews, and the Roma people. 

I must be twisted because, once I was on the site, I wacked the family name into the search bar – MIKATOVIĆ – and to my dismay discovered a relative: Paolo Mikatović from Dekovići. My mother was born in Tar in Istria, seven kilometres away. All the Mikatović’s had lived in the same area since the sixteenth century, so poor Paolo must have been a cousin. 

Google images of Dekovići reveal a farming hamlet so modest that it seems to turn its eyes from the camera. I was filled with sadness for its remoteness, its anonymity, and its slim connection with an infamous location. 

Seeking further information about Paolo, I wrote to Poreć, the nearby regional centre. They replied, but couldn’t help me. I knew that there had been a strong Partisan presence in that part of Istria because I took a photo of the Partisan cenotaph in Tar, and the Tar/Varbiga Partisans even have a Facebook page. I can only assume, therefore, that Paolo joined the local anti-fascist fight, was captured by the Ustasha and subsequently imprisoned in Jasenovac. 

I made the villain in Through Forests and Mountains a Ustasha supporter because I needed someone who was psychotic. When you read about the crimes of the Ustasha, psychotic is the only word suitable, and I urge those with an interest in them to read the Balkan Essays of Hubert Butler. 

Butler, an Irish writer who had taught in Croatia, set out to make ‘a study of the Christian crisis’ in Croatia from 1941 to 1945. 

What Christian crisis? 

First, a bit of background. The temptation for Christians under Fascism during the first half of the twentieth century was that no matter how much they disliked Hitler, Mussolini, Franco or the Croatian Ustasha, they always retained their church. Indeed, the Ustasha were very devout Catholics. Theirs was ‘an extraordinary alliance of religion and crime’, writes Butler. Their leaders went to daily Mass and local priests blessed the troops before battle. One renegade priest, Father Ribar, was arrested and killed in Jasenovac for refusing to celebrate High Mass on the anniversary of the founding of the NDH and to sing the ancient hymn of praise Te Deum Laudamus. Communism, by contrast, was the atheistic villain. Communism was feared by the churches. Yet Butler writes that, after the war, the Yugoslav communist authorities were very careful not to lie about their evidence regarding the activities of the church. 

The Christian crisis to which he refers was the mass murder by the Ustasha of their fellow Christians, the Orthodox Serbs. He continues, ‘I think there can be few parallels in European history for the religious massacres in Croatia in 1941 and ‘42 or for the lack of moral courage which Christians have shown in admitting them with honesty’. Four British authors, Hubert Butler, Stella Alexander, Evelyn Waugh, and Fitzroy Maclean, wrote that the Croatian church was sympathetic to the Ustasha, if not actually collaborating with them. A fifth, Marcus Tanner, noted that ‘the clericals were held back from opposing the NDH by their conviction that Croatian independence was a good thing.’ Many saw in the village massacres carried out by the Ustasha an opportunity to make converts of the terrified Orthodox peasants who queued up to be baptised Catholic in the hope of saving their lives. 

I am a Christian so what do I think? 

The French writer Celine Martin, sister of St Therese, noted that her mother had a ‘veritable cult for the church, for the Pope and for the priesthood,’ but Father Harry from St Agatha’s-down-the-road told me that Jesus didn’t come to found a church, he came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. Let Jasenovac stand as a salutary lesson for all Christians who justify division and murder between brothers. Jesus told Christians to make peace. 

References:

Marcus Tanner, Croatia, Yale University Press 1997 

Hubert Butler, the Balkan Essays, the Irish Pages Press 2016 

Stella Alexander, the Triple Myth, Cambridge University Press 1987 

Evelyn Waugh quoted in Hebblethwaite, Peter Paul VI the First Modern Pope 

                         Harper Collins 1993. 

Fitzroy Maclean, The Heretic: the life and times of Josip Broz-Tito. 

                         Harley and Brothers NY, 1957 (Published in the UK as Disputed Barricade) 

Celine Martin, the Mother of the Little Flower 

                         Tan Books and Publishers 2005