8. Exterminate the
Jews
Following the example of the Nazis, the Ustashi
and their clerical backers repeated all the slogans and lies of the ill-famed
Streicher brand in their anti-Semitic campaign.
While the civilized
world was expressing horror at the manner in which the Jewish question was being
solved by the Axis through mass murder, the Catholic press in Yugoslavia
prepared the people to accept similar measures. The Catholic daily Hrvatska
Straza of August 24, 1940, published an article under the title "The Jewish
Question in the Near Future." The article approved the anti-Jewish measures in
the Axis countries and put special emphasis on the proposal that Jews from all
parts of the world be sent to the island of Madagascar. The article concluded
with the statement that the Jewish question existed in many other countries and
that final solutions should be put into effect everywhere.
The Catholic
University Society Domagoj published various pamphlets propagating
fascist-Ustashi ideas. Before the war, the Domagoj distributed a brochure
entitled: "Why Jews are Persecuted in Germany," which voiced approval of
Hitler's terror against the Jews. The following is from that brochure:
"There are measures which the Germans can and must undertake for their own protection.... Let us remember that people with weak or incorrect Christian concepts opened the doors to domination by Jews in Germany. What was spoiled by some is now being put aright by others."
The Catholic Crusader paper Nedelja voiced approval of the Nazi racist theories and wrote in an article about "Jewish Atavism":
"Up to the birth of Christ, Jewish atavism proved its sinful inclinations toward knavery, its lack of gratitude to God, its ruthless selfishness, its disobedience toward the heads of the state, its anarchism, its love of profit-making through the accumulation of worldly goods by means of corruption, bloodthirstiness, despotism, lasciviousness and homosexuality, incorrigible stubbornness and haughtiness ... Having realized all this, we dare to conclude that the Jews have always been destructive regardless of whether they governed themselves or were governed by others. The Jews will never change, because according to the laws of psychology their national soul cannot change for the better as long as the human race continues to exist."
This religious and race hatred spread through the entire Catholic press. Glas Sv. Ante (Voice of St. Anthony), nos. 7 and 8, 1942, for instance, wrote of the Jews:
"The 'Talmud' is a work which the Jews created through the centuries. That type of work, however, must also come to an end. The struggling peoples' movements have uncovered the work of the Jews among the nations and have warned of its dangers, which threatened to ruin the best and most positive forces in all nations. The Croatian people have also had an accounting with such Jewish activity and have shown, under the leadership of the Ustashi movement, how deceitful and ruinous is the activity carried on by the Jews among the Croatian people."
While the slaughter of the Jews was at its height in the puppet state, Katolicki Tjednik of May 25, 1941, carried an article entitled "Why are the Jews Being Persecuted?" This article, written by the editor of this Catholic Action publication, Priest Franjo Kralik, said in part:
"In order to maintain a correct point of view in evaluating the Jewish movement in the world, it is necessary to keep in mind a number of important facts. It is an undeniable truth that the Jews, a small people, scattered throughout the world and pursued by God's curse, are an object of ridicule and scorn on the part of all other peoples. They succeeded through their commercial talents in forcing themselves upon governments and rulers either as financiers or as secret manipulators and occasionally as open, bloody dictators....
"The descendants of those who hated Jesus, who condemned him to death, who crucified him and immediately persecuted his pupils, are guilty of greater excesses than those of their forefathers. Greed is growing. The Jews, who pushed Europe and the entire world into a disaster--a world disaster, moral, cultural and economic--developed an appetite which nothing less than the world as a whole could satisfy ... As soon as a revolution is engineered by them, they slaughter mercilessly the intelligentsia. The Satan helped them to invent Socialism and Communism. And they invented them and directed this liberal world movement of the workers--they, the most cruel and soulless of men, the most awful capitalists, the Jews....
"And did the Socialists and Communists not begin to defend them and praise these Jews who are the greatest criminals in the world? ... Love has its limits ... We must not permit the grain of the secretly organized world Jewry to teach us the meaning of justice in order to enable them criminally to plunder while all others are slaves. The movement for freeing the world from the Jews is a movement for the renaissance of human dignity. The Almighty and All-wise God is behind this movement."
The "renaissance of human dignity" in the
Independent State of Croatia reached its peak with the deliberate mass slaughter
of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
NEXT: Nightmare of Horrors
THE CASE OF ARCHBISHOP STEPINAC
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