28.06.2005 THE JERUSALEM POST
  Welcome to Israel, Prime Minister Sanader
 
 

By Dr. Efraim Zuroff

The visit of Ivo Sanader, the first by a serving Croatian prime minister to Israel, is a milestone in the rapidly-improving bilateral ties between the two countries, and an encouraging sign that Croats and Jews have opened a new page in their relations following the tribulations of the past century.

Just a mere decade ago, such a visit was impossible due to the lack of full diplomatic relations between Israel and Croatia in the wake of the publication of former President Franjo Tudman's book The Wastelands of Historical Reality , in which he accused the Jews of inflating the number of Holocaust victims from one to six million and claimed that Jewish inmates ran the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp.

Since then, much progress has been made by Croatia in dealing with the past. Dinko Sakic, the commandant of Jasenovac, was convicted in Zagreb and is still in prison. President Mesic made a historic visit to Israel during which he acknowledged the active role of the Croatian Fascist Ustasha in the annihilation of Croatian Jewry and issued a heartfelt apology for their crimes both at Yad Vashem and in his speech to the Knesset. In addition, a street in Split which had been named for Ustasha minister of education Mile Budak was renamed and, during Sanader's term of office, a statue dedicated to Budak was forcibly dismantled.

These welcome steps have been important milestones in the rapidly improving relations between Israel and Croatia and between Jews and Croats.

Yet despite this progress, much remains to be done both in confronting the past and in dealing with the present. Although the current government has consistently said the right thing, when it comes to implementation the results have been lacking. There is still too much nostalgia in certain quarters for the NDH, the Fascist independent state of Croatia which was established by the Axis; and when popular pop band Thompson croons longingly about Jasenovac, where at last 85,000 innocent civilians were murdered by the Ustasha, he increases his popularity with total impunity.

The same unfortunately applies to the prosecution of Ustasha Nazi war criminals.

EXACTLY A year ago this week, the Wiesenthal Center, in the framework of its Operation: Last Chance project, exposed the residence in Croatia of Milivoj Asner, the World War II Ustasha police chief of Slavonska Pozega, who played an active role in the persecution and deportation to concentration camps of hundreds of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. The evidence against Asner, collected by researcher Alen Budaj, is absolutely unequivocal and includes documents signed by Asner personally in which he issues various anti-Jewish directives, such as, for example, the eviction of Jews from their homes (October 18, 1941).

On Christmas Day, 1941, the final roundup of the Jews of Pozega began. They were taken to Ustasha headquarters, where they were tortured and their belongings stolen. On December 29, 1941, they were forced into cattle cars, and at the Kapela-Batrina station the men were separated from the women and children, with the latter deported to the Djakovo concentration camp and the former shipped to Jasenovac, where some were murdered upon arrival and the others killed on January 2, 1942.

Despite the fact that a criminal investigation for murder was opened against Asner on the day he was exposed, he managed to escape to Austria. To this day he has not been indicted, let alone prosecuted, for his crimes. From the safety of his current residence in Klagenfurt (Paulitischgasse 8) he continues, totally unrepentant, to deny any wrongdoing and contend that he would gladly repeat his activities against Jews and Serbs, whom he continues to regard as enemies of Croatia.

It is precisely such people who must be held accountable for their Holocaust crimes, regardless of the time that has elapsed since they were committed.

I hope that when Sanader visits Yad Vashem today he keeps in mind that while those crimes indeed took place years ago, many of those responsible are still unprosecuted and some, like Asner, can be brought to justice. The prosecution of Asner in democratic Croatia would send the right message to Croatian society regarding the role of the Ustasha in Holocaust crimes and the necessity of facing them honestly and courageously. It would be another significant milestone in Croatian-Jewish relations.

But time is running out and every day Asner is not brought to trial brings him closer to eluding justice. Yad Vashem in Jerusalem would be a most appropriate place for Sanader to make it unequivocally clear that that will not be the case.

The writer is director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and coordinator of Nazi war crimes research for the SWC worldwide.


The Jerusalem Post , June 28, 2005