Article 5 of 6

Subject: Re: Croatia - Ustashe

From: Pavel Chichikov <fishhook@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>

Date: 1997/04/12

Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.96.970412111537.1997B-100000@access5.digex.net>

Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic

On Sat, 12 Apr 1997, Amy Jerreat wrote: > On Sat, 12 Apr 1997, Pavel Chichikov wrote:

> > Story on p.3 of today's [April 11, 1997] NYTimes about the revival of the Croatian Ustashe in Croatia and, according to the story by Chris Hedges, the strong backing it received during WWII and receives now from > > the Catholic Church there.

> > Are there any people of Croatian descent reading this who would like to comment? Or for that matter any people of Jewish or Serbian descent. Could you expand on who the Ustashe are?

During the war the Germans set up a puppet regime in Croatia. It was pro-Nazi and fascist in orientation. The Ustashe were the armed units of the pro-fascist government. Under this government the Ustashe -accent on the first syllable - fought against the Partisans led by Tito. They also were instrumental, if I recall correctly, in setting up concentration camps where very large numbers of Serbs and Jews were murdered. The Croatian government also allowed many Jews to be shipped to Germany to be murdered there.

Supposedly, tens of thousands of Serbs were forcibly baptized into the Catholic Church.

Now, I am not by any means an expert in Croatian history, so if anyone can contradict me I am most willing to be contradicted,

It seems to me to be an example of the sinfulness of human beings - in or out of the Church - and to confirm a principle: Involvement by the Church in afffairs of the State is usually if not invariably a catstrophe.

Pavel

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