One of the most powerful memories I have of my first visit to Croatia in the summer of 1998 was of a conversation that I had with a Jewish female Holocaust survivor living in Dubrovnik. Already at that time, Ivo Rojnica who had served as Ustashe governor of the city and had played a major role in the implementing the Ustashe program for the repression and persecution of the local minorities was known to us and among the World War II criminals we sought to bring to justice. So it was only natural that upon meeting Miriam, I asked whether she had any knowledge of Rojnica’s activities during the war. The scared look on her face at the mere mention of his name spoke louder than a thousand words, and made her painful reply quite understandable. “We know a lot but are afraid to tell anybody,” she meekly told me. I tried to convince here that more than fifty years after the war, she no longer had to fear the former Ustashe governor but she steadfastly refused to help us, insisting that it would be impossible for her to testify against him.

This story immediately came to mind this past week when my colleague Sergio Widder, the director of our Latin American office and a veteran of our efforts to get Rojnica prosecuted or at least expelled from his adopted homeland Argentina, informed me that he had received word from the Argentinean authorities that Rojnica had died in Buenos Aires. Ironically, this news arrived right after we had launched the Center’s “Operation: Last Chance” project in the Argentinean capital. And although the main target of the campaign is Dr. Aribert Heim, the Mauthausen doctor who murdered hundreds of inmates with lethal injections to the heart, much of the discussion at our meeting with Argentinean Minister of the Interior Anibal Fernandez dealt with the Rojnica case. And while the Argentinean minister was clearly anxious to see Rojnica out of Argentina, it was obvious that such a result could only be achieved if Croatia sought this extradition, and Rojnica’s death dashed our hopes. Of course the silly joke could always be made to link my arrival for the first time in Buenos Aires to the demise of Rojnica, but from my perspective his death marks a bitter defeat for those seeking justice for the victims of the Ustashe and a black stain on Croatia’s judiciary which failed to indict him and seek his extradition.

In retrospect, it is not entirely clear why that was the case. It is true that there was no evidence that Rojnica had personally committed murder, but his position put him in position of responsibility for serious crimes committed against Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies in Dubrovnik. And the question which hovers like a shadow over any assessment of Rojnica's judicial fate concerns his success as a businessman in Argentina and his active involvement in Croatian émigré affairs. Can someone who achieved such a high degree of prominence that he was about to be appointed Croatian ambassador to Argentina be brought to trial in Croatia for his crimes, if there was no evidence of his participation in hands-on murder? Frankly, I doubt it. Thus even though President Mesic and I discussed Rojnica’s case several times and he expressed unqualified support for his prosecution, it never took place.

In that regard, the Rojnica case reminds me of that Estonia Nazi war criminal Harry Mannil, who as a member of the local Political Police in Tallinn participated in the arrest and interrogation of Jews who were subsequently murdered. Despite clear-cut evidence of his role in the process of the annihilation of Estonian Jewry, Estonia refuses to prosecute Mannil, most probably because of the fact that he is the wealthiest and most famous Estonian in the world and a leading patron of Estonian culture. In that respect, if there had been clear-cut evidence that he had personally murdered the people he had arrested, it would have been much harder to spare him prosecution, but as with Rojnica that was not the case and he remains a free man in Caracas, Venezuela.

In closing, I want to note one last point which I think is important. If there are those who think that Rojnica deserved any sympathy or consideration, perhaps due to his advanced age, it should be noted that he was totally unrepentant for his crimes. Thus in an interview in the Argentinean daily La Nacion he had the incredible chutzpa (nerve) to compare himself to the Argentinean national liberator Jose De San Martin and expressed no remorse whatsoever for the fate of his innocent victims. Thus although we are proud that we publically exposed his Ustashe past and helped prevent his appointment as Croatian ambassador to Argentina, we did not achieve our ultimate goal, a fact ensured by his demise last week.