Croatia should apologize for World War II genocide before joining the EU

During the war, Serbian Orthodox churches were burned and many Serbian communities wiped out. Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies were interned in concentration camps, where thousands of victims were slaughtered like animals.

The nature of the carnage was so horrific that senior ranking German officers in Croatia, including SS-Obergruppenführer Artur Phleps, sickened by the slaughter and worried that it was driving Serbians and anti-Ustashi Croats into the ranks of resistance groups, urged Berlin to demand a stop to the slaughter. These protests were in vain and the genocide continued. Senior Italian officers also were appalled at the killing and are on record as not only complaining but frequently offering protection to fleeing victims.

When the war ended and Josip Broz Tito’s communists took command of Yugoslavia, they had no desire to renounce these dreadful events. Yugoslavia’s slogan was “Brotherhood and Unity.” Every effort was made to bury the past and, because Yugoslavia did not align itself with the Soviet Union, Western democracies had little interest in exposing the genocide.

Unlike Germans, who recognized the moral obligation to acknowledge their crimes committed under the Nazi regime, citizens of Tito’s Yugoslavia and the Croat state felt no such obligation. Consequently, the slaughtered victims and their surviving family members still await justice.

Even today, Pavelic is looked upon by many Croatians as a national hero, as are some of the most vicious Ustashi criminals.

In 2001, Croatian President Stepjan Mesic apologized to Jews in an address delivered at the Israeli Knesset. In 2003, he joined Serbia’s president in a mutual apology for “all the evils” each side had brought during the Balkan conflict.

Such carefully worded official apologies are a step in the right direction, but authentic repudiation of the past should be demonstrated by Croatians themselves.

Evidence suggests they still have a long way to go. Crowds at Croatian soccer games and concerts flaunt Ustashi and Nazi symbols and sing old fascist chants and songs. Croatians indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia are also hailed as defenders of the nation.

Croatia needs to purge itself of its dark past. Its prolonged denial of outrageous crimes committed in the 20th century has created what the Croatian exiled writer Dubravka Ugresic has described as a “culture of lies.” Until Croatia can learn to tell the truth about its history, there should be no place for it in the European Union.

James Bissett is the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia (1990-92).

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