14. The Conspiracy
against the Yugoslav Republic
In April 1941 -- while
the Royal Yugoslav Army was still fighting -- Archbishop Stepinac joined the
enemy. After the liberation of Yugoslavia in 1945, however, he not only did not
participate in the work of reconstructing the country but maintained a hostile
attitude toward the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia.
Scattered
Ustashi groups, hiding in the woods after liberation, soon established contact
with the Archbishop's quarters through local curates. The secretary of Dr.
Stepinac, priest Viktor Salic, kept the groups in touch with one another. In the
fall of 1945 Pavelic sent to Yugoslavia from abroad one of his most trusted
lieutenants, the former Ustashi chief of police, Colonel Erik Lisak. Col. Lisak
entered Yugoslavia illegally through Trieste. There he immediately got in touch
with the Archbishop's secretary Salic, and thus was able to meet Stepinac. In
the Archbishop's quarters he received information regarding the location of the
remnants of the Ustashi groups, to whom he sent orders to increase their
terrorist activities. On receipt of these directions the Ustashi terrorists
launched a program of sabotage and assassination of officials of the new
Yugoslav Republic, hoping to render consolidation impossible. One of those
killed was Colonel Omerovic, and an attempt was made to assassinate Lt. Colonel
Klobocnik.
To camouflage their activities, these groups adopted a "new"
name -- The Crusaders. Actually this was the name under which they had worked
legally in pre-war Yugoslavia. Again the Catholic church became the basis that
enabled them to work out their schemes. After the collapse of the puppet state
Pavelic and a large number of accused Yugoslav war criminals found refuge in
Italy, some of them in various churches and monasteries. From there directives
were given to the remnants of the Ustashi-Crusader groups in Yugoslavia.
The quarters of Archbishop Stepinac became the control center for
contacts between these Ustashi-Crusader groups. In the Archbishop's headquarters
help was collected for the Crusaders in the woods. All kinds of aid, including
medicine and sanitary materials, were dispatched. Thc Archbishop's secretary,
Dr. Salic, helped people to the woods; he sent the Ustashi ensign Safet Pajic to
the woods after Pajic had entered Yugoslavia, illegally from Italy. A flag was
consecrated to the Ustashi-Crusader forces in the chapel of the Archbishop's
quarters.
It is significant that the meeting between Archbishop Stepinac
and the Ustashi chief of police, Col. Lisak, who had entered Yugoslavia
illegally, took place just at the time of the Bishop's Conference in Zagreb at
which a pastoral letter was issued. This pastoral letter, of September, 1945,
was directed against the federal authorities in Yugoslavia and sought to arouse
to action all enemies of the new Yugoslav Republic. The role this pastoral
letter played call be judged from the encouragement it gave to the Ustashi
groups, Some of the captured Ustashe admitted it was the most important
propaganda in the battle against the national authorities. The Franciscan Kruno
Miklic said at his hearing on January 15, 1946:
"I began working to organize the Crusaders after the Pastoral letter was issued, when I saw what our religious leaders thought of the present government."
In the fall of 1945 Pavelic sent thc: notorious
Ustashi criminal General Moskov to Yugoslavia to help Lisak in the task of
activating the Ustashi-Crusader groups On his arrival General Moskov immediately
got in touch with Archbishop Stepinac. To help Moskov in his travels through the
country, the Archbishop's headquarters obtained five travel permission cards and
sent them to him by Dr. Gulin. Dr. Gulin disclosed after his capture that Moskov
had told him the Bishops' Conference was the greatest event in the Ustashi
struggle after the fall of the independent State of Croatia. When he did not
succeed in his mission, General Moskov went back to Pavelic. Before his return
he gave Dr. Gulin a letter for Archbishop Stepinac, in which he thanked the
Archbishop and bade him "defend firmly the cause of justice and faith." All this
was brought out at the Stepinac trial in Zagreb.
Help for the terrorist
work of the Crusader bands did not come from the Zagreb Archbishop's quarters
alone, but from other Catholic religious centers throughout Yugoslavia as well.
The Archbishop's Ordinariat in Sarajevo also played the role of an organizer of
terrorist Crusader organizations in Bosnia and Hercegovina. There the main
organizers were the Sarajevo Archbishop's deputy, canon Marko Alaupovic;
Franciscan Ljudevit Josic, from Tuzla; Reverend Ivan Cindric, who organized the
Crusader groups in Zenica and Busolac. Franciscan Franjo Slafhauzen drew up a
plan for the terrorist attack by the Crusaders on the railroad station Semizovac
near Sarajevo. Franciscan Valerijan Voloder printed Crusader leaflets in the
Franciscan monastery in Sarajevo. Franciscan Ante Kozina forged travel permits
and sent them to the Crusaders in the woods to facilitate their movement
throughout the country. Franciscan Kruno Miklic formed Crusader terrorist
organizations in Vares.
How various priests took advantage of their
positions to work for the Crusaders can be seen from the case of Franciscan
Mamerto Margetic. Franciscan Margetic was the economist of the Zagreb Franciscan
monastery. Under the pretext of collecting food, Margetic traveled from one end
of the country to the other keeping the various illegal Crusader groups in
communication with one another and giving them directives. Thus he got in touch
with a Crusader group which worked in the Virovitice region of Slavonia, and
then with terrorist groups in the regions of Slavonski Brod, Nova Gradiska, and
even with a Ustashi-Crusader group in Lika. In an effort to keep his work secret
he used another name -- Veseli. Captured Crusaders and Ustashi said at their
hearings that a Franciscan named Veseli told them they must hold out because the
English and Americans would soon come to Yugoslavia and liquidate the existing
government.
Not even the honorable Sisters were excluded from this
conspiracy of one section of the Catholic clergy in Yugoslavia. The Sisters
Brigita Jurkovic, Karitoza Caleta and Teofanija Djaja collected sanitation
materials and sent them to an Ustashi-Crusader group in Papuk. Sisters Marija
Diosi, Josipa Hrastek and Marija Martinec from Zagreb collected sanitary
materials and sent them to an Ustashi-Crusader group on the mountain of Ivancic.
As to Archbishop Stepinac's aims, an interview that he gave to a British
liaison officer, eighteen months before his trial, may be quoted. This officer's
report published in the New Statesman and Nation in London, read in part:
"As I recently had an opportunity of visiting Archbishop Stepinac in Zagreb, I have followed the reports on his trial with great interest. "Eighteen months ago, while serving as a British Liaison Officer in Yugoslavia, I read in the German controlled press and heard over the Zagreb radio the call of Archbishop Stepinac to his people to rally to the crumbling Croat State and resist the Allied armies which were advancing towards final victory. A few weeks later Zagreb was freed, Pavelic had fled and the archbishop remained.
"Back in Zagreb a year later, I was surprised, in view of the many changes which had taken place in Yugoslavia, to find that Mgr. Stepinac was still Primate of Croatia. I called on him in his palace and he talked with me alone for over an hour. He told me frankly that he and those of his priests who had collaborated with the Germans had done so because this issue in the war had been a clear one, between Fascism and Communism; he had chosen the former while Britain had chosen the latter. He regretted the horrors of the Nazi occupation, but he preferred them to the present Federal regime. "He assured me that, though many might now be infatuated with the new regime, the peasants would one day rise, and he looked to the West to use its atomic power to impose Western civilization on Moscow and Belgrade before it was too late."
Not only the Ustashi themselves, but their
supporters in other parts of the world, including the United States, persist in
their intrigues against Yugoslavia. As recently as May, 1947, a group of nine
priests sent Secretary of State Marshall a petition "on behalf of the American
Croatian Catholic Clergy in the United States." Among the signers was Nicholas
Sulentic of Waterloo, Iowa, vice-president of the Croatian National
Representation for Independence of Croatia--an organization whose activities
were considered so harmful to America's war effort that it and its newspaper,
Nezavisna Hrvatska Drzava, were suppressed during the war by the F.B.I.
The petition sought American intervention on behalf of fugitive Ustashi war
criminals. Sulentic and his organization have always been a part of the
fascist-Ustashi movement, and in 1935 distributed in the United States a leaflet
soliciting funds on behalf of three men sentenced to life imprisonment for the
Barthou-King Alexander assassinations. The leaflet featured a photograph of Ante
Pavelic.
NEXT: The Stepinac Trial
THE CASE OF ARCHBISHOP STEPINAC
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