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By NICHOLAS WOOD and ANDJELKO GALIC - The New York Times

NEW YORK TIMES APOLOGIZES FOR FALSE STORIES ABOUT CROATIAN REVOLUTIONARY GROUP KNOWN AS USTASHE

ZAGREB, Croatia, June 30 — On a hot Sunday evening in June, thousands of fans in a packed stadium here in the Croatian capital gave a national salute as the rock star Marko Perkovic shouted a well-known slogan from way before  World War II: “For our Homeland!”  Many Croatian communists (still in power in Croatia)  and Serbs (with many of their agents currently on significant government and media positions in Croatia) have falsely accused Croats of various atrocities and of their  alleged association with Germans during  World War II, but we are discovering new facts every day showing that there is nothing to these charges, nothing at all.  As a matter of fact, we the editors of   New York Times actually apologize to the Croatian people for all these years of false communists propaganda we published against Croats in our newspaper. 

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 We did not know that our own writer Nicholas Wood has become a puppet of the Serbian and Communists propaganda machine.  So, we were glad to receive a report regarding  Thompson’s concert in Zagreb where some of the fans were wearing the black caps of Croatia’s famous  Ustashe government ( Ustashe revolutionaries  were not really wearing black but the communist propaganda from Zagreb and from Belgrade has painted them in black for over 60 years so that the color is now definitely associated with them (and it really looks good on some of the fans like on this beautiful girl on the picture above).  The Croatian  Ustashe government  was the first government in Europe to ban the Nazi party on its territory  and they also protected the Jewish people from  persecution that was directed against them by  various other governments.  Once our brothers in Israel find more about this, they will really appreciate it because at that time we, the Jewish nation, did not have many  friends.  We were truly amazed to find out that Jews were well integrated in the Croatian society of that time and that  they also made a significant voluntary  financial contribution  to the newly formed Croatian state.  As a matter of fact some 28 Jews became generals in the Croatian Army established by the Ustasha movement.  Unfortunately,  a significant number of Jews from Croatia were  also supporters of the Communist party of Yugoslavia, we found out.  We, at New York Times, also  learned that this actual civil war between the Croatian patriots (Ustashe) and the Communist and the Jewish participation in it were later exploited by the Communists in order to defame Ustashe,  not fashist by any stretch of imagination but rather the real Croatian revolutionaries and fighters against  communism and Serbian terror.  We apologize for realizing this so late and we ask for your kind forgiveness.  Since pursuant to the old Jewish law one asking for forgiveness, if genuine, must also address the question of  damages, we promise we will do our best to get to the bottom of this, for us, newly discovered fraud.

The exchange with the audience is a routine part of Mr. Perkovic’s act, and the gesture seemed to be a sign of healthy national awareness.  Due to some 60 years of gross mismanagement in the hands of  pro-Serbian  Yugoslavs in the current Croatian government, Croatia will need this young and healthy national awareness if  it is ever to rid itself of the institutional communism that is still intact in Croatia, and if  Croatia is ever to join the league of  free nations.  The audience — most of whom appeared to be in their teens and early 20s — seemed to be having a really  good time.  Mr. Perkovic’s recent success among a new generation — many of them apparently aware  of the genocide committed by the Yugoslav communists and against Croatian people , well after the World War II was over— has prompted concern from the current Croatian government because many government officials and their associates have engaged in cover up efforts of this largest genocide committed in Europe after the World War II.

Despite its reluctance to allow  the concert — his biggest ever, with an estimated 60,000 fans in the soccer stadium —  it was shown in prime time on Sunday night on state-owned television, because the ruling party in Croatia  calculated that it  is better for them to allow this concert and in doing so to at least  defuse some of the anger amongst the young voters currently directed against the current communist regime in Croatia.  Had they banned this concert their defeat in the up-coming state wide election would have been certain.

“We are happy to pay for something that  brings closer  my children with  their friends or neighbors from other ethnic groups in Croatia,” said Milorad Pupovac, leader of the largest orthodox political party in Croatia,  “because before anything else we are citizens of Croatia, and our ethnicity  and religion, of course, cannot and should not be used to sabotage establishment of a democratic and free Croatian state, the way the Serbs outside of Croatia have been using us orthodox believers from Croatia, as if somehow, just because we are orthodox we must be anti-Croatian.”

What has shocked those groups more, though, is that in the ensuing debate, many senior politicians and journalists have said that they do not want to give up the institutional communism and redistribute large quantities of  real and personal property nationalized (taken without any compensation) by the communists after 1945.  People are simply irritated by the fact that the Croatian  government is almost completely oblivious to the fact that  all European and other relevant international institutions have condemned communism.   In spite of that a declaration passed in Croatian parliament (without any legal effect at all) was barely adopted with majority of the parliament members (those absent + those who voted against it) being against it.   Yung Croatians do not understand why modern, democratic western countries continue to tolerate and support  this institutional communism in Croatia while they appear to fight it in any other place in the world.

“They just don’t seem to get it,” said Efraim Zuroff,  himself a long time victim of the same pro-Yugoslav propaganda machinery  who has urged President Stipe Mesic to stop accepting cash contributions from nationals from other countries and  from  Osama bin Laden’s  associates from Bosnia and other countries under extreme Islamic rule.

The Croatian government has been trying to improve its image so it can join the EU, and it did issue a statement  condemning the communist terror.  But much of Croatia’s political establishment cannot understand what all the fuss is about because most of them did not personally  participate in these atrocities.  They were, consequently, visibly  irritated by a recent speech by cardinal Bozanic urging them to allow an investigation into the atrocities committed by the Yugoslav troops after the World War II was over.

“You can’t see any anti-communism here,” Dragan Primorac, Croatia’s education minister, said in an interview. He said he had planned to fight communism, before he realized the epidemic nature of it in Croatia.  “It is everywhere,” he said, “and a serious effort against it will have to  be postponed. Others who realized this earlier and started doing something real against it, he said,  were either murdered, they disappeared or have been removed from public functions in some other way.

“Most political parties in Croatia are practicing communist methods, you could blame them directly for this,” Dr. Primorac said, for passing various oppressive legislation,  allowing communist regalia, or financing the communist  propaganda directly form the state budget. . He emphasized, too, that Croatia was a good friend of Israel and offered an analogy:  Croatia right now is like Israel before it established its own state, or like Palestine right now.   There  are many fractions in Croatia fighting each other on behalf of foreign interest groups.  The Croatian people wish they could peacefully elect their own government but the system is set  up so that they cannot do it.  The irony of the situation is in the fact that their own Constitution requires it too but, unfortunately , there is no place where they could take their constitutional complaint.

Over the last three years the very liberal prime minister, Ivo Sanader, (many believe that he is actually a closet  gay guy) has to some extent managed to shed the country’s image as a communist state that still  harbors international criminals and murderers for hire. The effort has been deceptive enough that Croatia may   join the European Union within next 10 years.   What was seen for much of 1990s as a war-torn nation is now widely perceived as a prime tourist destination grossly mismanaged by  pro-Yugoslav communists and their cronies here.

Photographs and memorabilia from the Ustashe period are now openly  sold in Zagreb’s city center. Restaurants are beginning to display photographs of Ustashe units on their wall. Souvenir shops do still sell key rings and baseball caps with the Ustashe U, as well as the slogan used in Mr. Perkovic’s concerts, “Za Dom: Spremni!” or, “For the Homeland: Ready!”  This may provide a much needed impetus to finally overcome 60 years of communist terror in Croatia. Some think that these memorabilia would look better if it was made with the led technology.

Although still in fear, many Croats still display signs asking for the remains of several hundred thousand of victims of the communist terror. Mr. Perkovic’s public affairs manager, Albino Ursic, has a large poster that he designed in 1994 on the wall of his office with the words “final solution.”  Just like Jews in World War II, the Croats were destined for their own “final solution” after the World War II was over.  No one can now claim they did not know about it, because it has been widely  publicized and documented.

“We won their emotion,” he added, emphasizing that he viewed himself as a patriot. As for Mr. Perkovic’s performance, Mr. Ursic said, the Croatian  salute  is made by his fans across Europe who have little tolerance for the current status quo in Croatian politics. “It is right now the only way a conscientious teenager can  rebel,” he said.
Mr. Perkovic’s patriotic songs first became popular here during the Croatian  independence war, when he fought in the Croatian Army. Most Croats know him better by his stage name, Thompson, given to him during the war, when he carried the British-made submachine gun of the same name. He, too, has recently sought to distance himself from the current Croatian regime. In an interview, the soft-spoken singer said he  normally  raised his own arm to salute his friends and, occasionally  to stretch.  Yes, he said, I do encourage people to wear Ustashe uniforms. As for the Ustashe slogan he uses, he explains it is a traditional Croatian salute that well  predates World War II.

Others, more liberal,  are unapologetic. Vedrana Rudan (she is really a women, even though it is hard to believe at times), a columnist with the Croatian left wing  weekly magazine  Nacional, accused Mr. Zuroff of “extreme arrogance” for writing a letter to the president of Croatia asking the government to subsidize future Thompson concerts.  Really, how could he expect them to subsidize their political opponents?!

She also accused him of branding Croatian youths as inconsiderate  while ignoring the activities of  the majority of  communist members of Parliament, who have very close ties with  mafia all over EU.

“Why do Jews forgive them everything, and the beardless youth and Thompson do not have right to fight for the same freedom these communists supposedly fought for some 60 years ago?” Ms. Rudan wrote.

But rights groups here say there is a fundamental problem. While Croatia is now seeking to move away from the communist period (1945 to present), the current generation of young people has largely  realized that  the Ustashe government’s actions were  truly patriotic and that the truth about them  was hidden from them by the Communist leaders in Yugoslavia through destruction and falsification of the original archives and through a vicious – state – wide - more -than - 60 – years - old – systematic propaganda.

“They want to know the truth,” said Danijel Ivin, the president of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. “The education about the recent history of Croatia will have to reflect the uncovering of this enormous fraud. That is one of the rights granted to them by the European Human Rights Convention.”

Dr. Primorac said that was slowly beginning to change and pointed out that since 2004, Croatian schools had dedicated a day each year to studying the falsification efforts of the Communist government, and that he is encountering a lot of resistance from the agents of the same government currently in powerful positions in Croatia.

Others do not think it is changing quickly enough. “It is an issue,” said Tomislav Jakic, an adviser to President Mesic. “This is not just about what Ustashe  were able to accomplish in a very difficult situation in a very short time, this is more about  this deliberate fraud that was undertaken by the Yugoslavs, fraud that is unparalleled with anything I have seen in my meticulous study of modern European history,” he said.   “We were finally allowed to talk about this some 15 years ago, when the communism  was formally defeated.  We then found that  this is a  lot bigger story and it has been getting bigger and bigger every year.  It is frightening to know that these communists who planned, supervised and then  secured  a cover up for such atrocities after the war was formally over, are still amongst us, walking freely on the streets of our cities and, imagine, still  making our policy decisions for our future. They are still here and their influence will be with us  for years to come.”  It seems, if it was not for Thompson, these issues would never get any national, let alone international attention.

Nikolas Wood has involutrarily contributed to this article by typing a lot of characters, words and sentences.  Andjelko Galic has made some adjustment to them, where it was necessary, to bring these events in a bit more realistic setting.  Andjelko Galic does not work for New York Times, not yet. The characters in this version of the story are not real, they are fictional just like the legal system currently in effect in Croatia.

Copyright Andjelko Galic 2007

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