There is a tribute held every year on the 22nd of June in honour of those killed by communist partisans in Croatia. Last year, I wrote an article on the subject, entitled “Jazovka: Why Does Croatia Honour Executioners as Well as Victims?” I posed this question because on the same day as this tribute is held, the nation has a bank holiday called the ‘Day of the Anti-Fascist Struggle,’ on which the executioners—the communist partisans—are also celebrated.
This year, on 22 June, I was in Jazovka to pay tribute to the 814 people who were murdered and dumped, some still alive, in the Jazovka grave. Like Huda Jama, the infamous pit of horrors in Slovenia, Jazovka was only discovered in 1989. However, the remains of its victims (murdered during and after World War II) were not exhumed until 2020. Located in the mountainous area of Žumberak, home to a nature park and a large hilly forest interspersed with small villages, the Jazovka grave is barely a kilometre from the town of Sošice.
The place is profoundly beautiful—it is hard to believe that so many crimes were committed there. “Within a radius of a few hundred metres there are more graves like those in Jazovka where exhumations have not yet been carried out, but there may be as many as 4,000 murdered in this area alone,” Marko Milanovic Litre, leader of the Croatian Sovereignists (Hrvatski suverenisti) and vice-president of New Direction, tells me as we walk with several hundred people to the grave deep in the forest: “Before the pandemic, thousands of people came here. We are working to get the attendance at this tribute back to the masses.”
The 34-metre deep grave is covered by a glass table filled with votive candles and around it are several crosses and plaques in memory of those killed. There is also a small hut where several priests celebrated an emotional mass for the victims. The Bishop of Sisak, Vlado Košić, demanded an end to the celebrations in honour of the executioners in what he called a real schizophrenia:
If there is no statute of limitations for war crimes, why have the perpetrators not been prosecuted in the 35 years since the formation of the Croatian state? No one has been prosecuted in absentia, not even posthumously. And why are the communist regime and its army, which committed so many massive crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, still glorified to this day. … What kind of liberation was this, what kind of progressive revolutionaries were those who so mercilessly killed prisoners, the sick, and civilians?
The bishop’s words refer to the fact that the victims were mostly wounded soldiers, medical personnel, and nuns forcibly removed from Zagreb hospitals: “For three nuns, Lipharda Horvat, Konstantina Mesar, and Geralda Jakob, nurses from the Psychiatric Hospital in Vrapče, who were thrown into the well, the procedure for beatification in the Catholic Church has begun,” said the bishop, who expressed his satisfaction that this year the monument and the grave in which the 814 victims of Jazovka will be laid to rest will be completed.
After the religious ceremony, though before a wreath laying, Frano Čirko, a young nationalist politician who has become the president of the Jazovka Association, read a statement denouncing the Croatian state’s inaction: “More than three decades after the first memorial visit to Jazovka, the victims have not received a dignified funeral or memorial, and those responsible for the crime have never been brought to justice.” Čirko also pointed out the reason for this situation: the lack of decommunisation after independence. “We call on the authorities of the Republic of Croatia to remove all monuments and rename streets and squares dedicated to Yugoslav communists responsible for crimes against the Croatian people, as well as to prevent a new round of naming streets after communist criminals by the authorities in Zagreb,” he said.
But Čirko’s harshest words were against the hypocrisy of celebrating victims and executioners at the same time:
It is shameful, hypocritical and absurd that the Croatian government sends its representatives to the commemoration of 814 innocent victims of Jazovka, and at the same time the highest officials of the same government in the Brezovica forest commemorate and celebrate the executioners of these victims. It is unacceptable for any Croatian government to commemorate this day and celebrate the executioners of Jazovka, especially the government that calls itself pro-Croatian and patriotic. Instead of commemorating Yugoslav and communist executioners, we call on the Croatian government to commemorate the sacrifice of Croatian soldiers and civilians with dignity.
He is right, because the truth is that, while the Jazovka victims were being honoured, Croatia celebrated the formation of the first partisan unit at the memorial in Brezovica, in whose forests the Sisak partisan detachment was born: “These people were special and unique … They deserve our respect as Croats, as communists, and, later, as dissidents and fighters for the rights of Croats,” said President Zoran Milanović, leader of the Social Democratic party, who makes no secret of his admiration for the communist partisans who, under Tito’s leadership, killed around 100,000 people in the weeks following the end of World War II.
“Our thoughts must be with the members of the Sisak partisan detachment, as well as with all those who fought for centuries for the eternal ideal of national freedom, which is a fundamental European value,” said Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman, who was the representative of Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. As it has done in recent years, the new Croatian government paid tribute to the partisans while sending a second-tier representative to Jazovka, but what did attract attention was the presence of MEP Stephen Bartulica of the Fatherland Movement (Domovinski Pokret). His party, which is part of the ECR group in Europe, governs in coalition with the HDZ (EPP), and many believe that the entry of this patriotic party could represent a change in how Croatia has dealt with its historical memory since independence.
On what this historical memory should be like, I am left with the words of Bishop Košić:
We must pray, brothers and sisters, to: first, know the truth; second, condemn all crimes, regardless of the side on which they were committed; and finally, draw conclusions from this that do not divide, but unite the people in suffering, repentance, and penance, to come as close as possible to reconciliation and unity.
Forgive and unite, not foster hatred, because honouring the executioners always ends up condemning, this time to oblivion, their victims. Croatia has a unique opportunity to do justice to its history once and for all.
