Bleiburg: The Creation of a National Martyrology

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Notes

The author would like to thank Vjeran Pavlaković, Sabrina Ramet, and Europe-Asia Studies' two anonymous readers for most helpful comments to draft versions of this essay. Vjeran Pavlaković also most generously put his valuable collection of clippings from the Croatian press at my disposal.

To avoid any misunderstanding I should emphasise that to say that an event has undergone mythologisation is not the same as to deny it historical substance. Historical myths are constructed around historical kernels but they later become so embellished that the historical record is almost unrecognisable.

See for instance, the speaker of the Sabor Nedjeljko Mihanović, as quoted in ‘Ostvarili smo snove’, Slobodna Dalmacija, 15 May 1995, p. 2. In fact, this trope is so common that it is being used, often several times, at every Bleiburg commemoration.

For more details, see the judicious and balanced account of Tomasevich (2001, pp. 751–71). The longest but somewhat controversial specialised study on Bleiburg is Jurčević (2008). See also Dizdar (2005). Časopis za suvremenu povijest in Zagreb has published a number of articles dealing with this issue in detail: Geiger (2003), Šarić (2004) and Grahek Ravančić (2006). Bleiburg survivors and other Ustaša sympathisers have produced several accounts presenting their version: see for example, Nikolić (1995) and Prcela and Guldescu (1995).

A Muslim mufti has participated at some Bleiburg commemorations.

Josip Jurčević, the author of the massive monograph Bleiburg, believes there were 200,000 soldiers and 500,000 civilians (author's interview, 18 October 2008). Another Croatian historian, Slavko Goldstein, on the other hand claims that almost all the civilians, however many they were, were spared by the partisans and sent home to where they came from (Goldstein 2007).

Author's interview, Zagreb, 16 October 2008.

In the book The Bleiburg Tragedy of the Croatian People the editor of Hrvatska revija, Vinko Nikolić, rather incongruously laid the blame for the tragedy squarely at the door of ‘the Serbs (partisans-Četniks)’, even though at Bleiburg Četniks clearly were among the victims and not among the perpetrators (Nikolić1995, II A).

Vjeran Pavlaković recalled that his parents who emigrated in 1978 had not heard about Bleiburg before they arrived in the United States, even though his own grandfather had been among the victims (Pavlaković2008, p. 18).

A commemorative booklet published in 2008 under the auspices of the Croatian Catholic Church claims that in 1966 a failed attempt was made to bomb a tavern in Klagenfurt full of Bleiburg visitors. Nine years later, a member of the Honorary Platoon, Nikica Martinović, was shot down in his shop in Klagenfurt by what were presumably UDB agents (Esih 2008, p. 38); see also Nikolić (1995, p. 6). Such attacks, naturally, had the effect of strengthening the martyrology syndrome.

Author's conversation with Ilija Abramović, a member of the Bleiburg Honorary Platoon at Bleiburg, 18 October 2008.

‘Za pomirenje svih Hrvata’, Vjesnik, 14 May 1990, p. 5. This is the only time I have come across this epithet in descriptions of the Ustaša victims in Croatian press reports from the event. Even left-wing politicians and journalists today seem to avoid this label. The epithet ‘quisling’, however, is used by historians like Franjo Tuđman (1996, p. 78) and Jozo Tomasevich (2001).

In 2008 Jutarnji list and Vijesti both claimed that the number had increased (Radoš2008; ‘Ove godine u Bleiburgu još više ljudi u ustaškim odorama’, Vijesti, 17 May 2008). In a conversation with the author, Bishop Slobodan Štambuk of Hvar, who conducted the memorial mass in 2008, insisted that the numbers of such people were negligible, that the journalists went out of their way to find the few uniforms present, and probably also pay these people to take their pictures. Author's interview, Hvar, 13 October 2008.

‘Za pomirenje svih Hrvata’, Vjesnik, 14 May 1990, p. 5.

2002: 7,000–8,000, Novi list 13 May 2002; 2004: 9,000, Večernji list, 17 May 2004; Radoš (2008); Vijesti, 17 May 2008.

Slobodna Dalmacija, 15 May 1995, p. 2, According to one nationalist paper no less than 20,000 people participated in 2005 but this was clearly an exaggeration (Držić2005, pp. 21–22). Other estimates gave the figure as ‘more than 10,000’ for that year (Rašeta 2005).

Večernji list, 18 May 1998, p. 4.

In 2007 the Association of Antifascist Veterans of Croatia took the initiative to produce a scholarly volume on Bleiburg in which they presented their own version of what had happened in May 1945 (Hrženjak 2007).

‘Fumić: U Bleiburgu je pokopano 20 ustaša koji su se sami ubili’, Večernji list, 16 May 2007.

Author's conversation with Bishop Slobodan Štambuk, Hvar, 13 October 2008; author's interview with Josip Jurčević, Zagreb, 18 October 2008.

The idea that Milanović should visit the Austrian memorial field had originally been suggested to him by Slavko Goldstein. Author's interview with Goldstein, Zagreb, 17 October 2008.

See http://groups.google.com/group/croatian-news/browse_thread/thread/6a10a0050b24ead9, accessed 8 September 2008. The claim is repeated by other commentators on the same site.

For a discussion of factions within the Croatian Catholic Church see Ramet (1985).

I picked up my own copies of this paper in the cathedral church of Hvar.

A noted authority on Croatian Church politics, Vjekoslav Perica, characterises Puljić as ‘an ethnonationalistic hawk’ (Perica 2002, p. 195).

‘Ove godine u Bleiburgu još više ljudi u ustaškim odorama’, Vijesti, 17 May 2008, available at: http://www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/ove-godine-u-bleiburgu-jos-vise-ljudi-u-ustaskim-odorama/387196.aspx, accessed 15 March 2010.

‘Propovijed, Bleiburg, 17. svibnja 2008’, manuscript in author's possession.

See also ‘Bozanić: Žurno istražiti zločine u Jasenovcu i Bleiburgu’, Novi list, 14 May 2007. It should be noted that Bozanić was not the first priest to bring up the topic of Jasenovac at Bleiburg. This had been done already in 2001 by military chaplain Nikola Mate Roščić. See Lovrić (2001, p. 2).

In the nationalist and ecclesiastical press this pressure is denounced as a ‘witch hunt’ (hajka) (Pandža 2007).

‘Povjesni govor kardinala Bozanića na Bleiburškom polju’, Narod, May 2007, p. 5. Bozanić was here quoting a letter by Alojzije Cardinal Stepinac to Ante Pavelić during World War II.

In an interview with the author, the editor of Narod, Ante Baković, emphatically stated that ‘[the Ustaša] were not Fascists. They were not Nazis. They were Croats who wanted their own state’. Interview with the author, Zagreb, 16 October 2008.

‘Propovijed Kardinala Josipa Bozanića u Župnoj Crkvi u Jasenovcu: Žrtve Nas obvezuju na Traženje Istine’, Glas Koncila, 4 October 2009, available at: http://www.Glas-Koncila.Hr/Rubrike_Izdvojeno.Html?News_Id=17472, accessed 15 March 2010.

‘Službeno priopćenje HUVRP-a i HKVRP-a’, Glas Koncila, 4 May 2008.

‘Propovijed Kardinala Josipa Bozanića U Župnoj Crkvi u Jasenovcu: Žrtve Nas Obvezuju Na Traženje Istine', Glas Koncila, 4 October 2009, available at: http://www.glas-Koncila.Hr/Rubrike_ Izdvojeno.Html?News_Id=17472, accessed on 23 June 2010.

‘Stala plačuć tužna Mati/Gledala je kako pati/Sin joj na Križ uzdignut!’

‘Propovijed, Bleiburg, 17. svibnja 2008’, manuscript in author's possession.

‘Neka Bleiburg ujedinjuje, a ne razdvaja’, Novi list, 10 May 1993, p. 3.

The Bleiburg commemorations had been supported by ‘the Croatian Independence Movement’ ever since its foundation. See Pavlaković (2008, p. 21).

‘Ostvarili smo snove’, Slobodna Dalmacija, 15 May 1995, p. 2.

‘Propovijed, Bleiburg, 17. svibnja 2008’, manuscript in author's possession.

Author's interview, Zagreb, 17 October 2008.