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Croatian Writers Condemn Book Lauding Notorious Fascist Official

Writers in Croatia have slated the promotion of a new revisionist biography of the infamous commander of wartime concentration camps, Vjekoslav ‘Maks’ Luburic, which is being promoted in churches and other venues.

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Vjekoslav (Maks) Luburić signs a document. Photo: Wikipedia

Croatia’s Writers Association and the Croatian P.E.N. centre on Thursday condemned the promotion of a new book praising the notorious commander of World War II Croatian Fascist concentration camps, Vjekoslav “Maks” Luburic.

“As writers, we strongly condemn this kind of banalization of crimes and the failure of ethical consciousness, and of empathy for Luburic’s victims,” they said.

“Life of Vjekoslav Maks Luburic – General Drinjanin,” by Vlado Vladic, and edited by John-Ivan Prcela, runs to over a thousand pages – and broadly defends the memory of the former top Ustasa official in the Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia, NDH.

In September, right-wing media started promoting the book about what some of them called a “Croatian knight” in Zagreb, Karlovac, Split.

The first promotion was held in Zagreb on September 29, in the rooms of the weekly newspaper “Hrvatsko slovo”, which is located at the National University Library building.

Two other promotional events were set to be held in church venues – although the rector of St Joseph’s church in Karlovac, Antun Sente, said he only learned about the book promotion in his church from the media, and denied that the event would take place there.

Clergy from the other set venue, the Dominican monastery in Split, confirmed to BIRN that the promotion would be held there at October 22.

One priest said if Serbian nationalists were rehabiliating their own war-time nationalists, Croats had a right to learn more about theirs.

“If the [Serbian nationalist] Chetniks can rehabilitate [Serbian World War II royalist leader Draza] Mihailovic, we can also learn something about our own history,” a priest who declined to give his name told BIRN.

The book, produced in the Croatian diaspora, it is an “independent private project” by publisher Mirko Bilic Eric.

While presenting it on September 29, Bilic Eric said in his introductory speech: “He was not a maniac, a madman, or an executioner, as they have shown it. He was a peaceful man who fought for the freedom of his people.”

He also ended his presentation with the words “Glory to Vjekoslav Luburic!”

Luburic was the overall commander of the concentration camps in World War II-era Independent State of Croatia, NDH, which was allied to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Between 1941 and 1945 the NDH adopted Nazi-style racist laws and severely persecuted Serbs, Jews, Roma and Croatian anti-Fascists.

The number of victims of the regime is disputed but, according to an official name-by-name list, 83,145 victims of the regime perished at the main Ustasa concentration camp at Jasenovac.

The NDH collapsed in May 1945. Luburic moved to Franco’s Spain in 1949 and lived in Valencia, where he ran a printing office, publishing pro-Ustasa magazines.

Agents for the Yugoslav State Security Service, SDB, infiltrated his printing office and killed him in 1969, however.

Meanwhile, the controversial Slovenian right-winger, Roman Leljak, has started to promote his own book and documentary, “The Jasenovac Myth” across Croatia, using venues owned by the Catholic Church and local municipalities.

Leljak’s book and film dismiss almost all scientific research on the Ustase concentration camps and hugely downplay the death toll.

Leljak claims that only 1,654 people died in the Jasenovac camp between 1941 and 1945.

Read more:

Spanish Law May Mean Moving Croatian Fascist Tombs

Croatian Church Venues Host Jasenovac Camp Revisionist Events

How Croatian Wikipedia Made a Concentration Camp Disappear

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