Birth of the Beast: The Independent State of Croatia
On April 10, 1941, in Zagreb, the Independent State of Croatia was founded, with the blessing of Adolf Hitler's Germany. By 1944, this monstrous creation will have killed over 1 million Serbs, Jews and Roma.
The genocide against Serbs was executed according to the policy of the thirds; a third was to be killed, a third forcibly converted to Catholicism and a third expelled. This policy resulted in mass rounding up of innocent civilians, torture and executions. This genocidal enterprise was notorious for its execution techniques, with residents of entire Serb villages being thrown into pits, alive in many cases. It produced some of the most atrocious death camps in the Nazi-occupied Europe, such as Jasenovac, Stara Gradiška and Jadovno.
The standard-bearers of the Croat fascist ideology and the executioners of the genocidal policy were called ustaše. The Ustaša movement still exists in Croatia as well as many other legacies of the Independent State of Croatia, e.g. the state currency, kuna, has been adopted by the Republic of Croatia.
The Catholic Church, led by the Zagreb Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, approved of the Croat fascist state's existence and blessed its deeds. It was documented that many Catholic priests personally participated in the killings and the destruction of Serb Orthodox temples. The Ustaše included units of Bosnian Muslims who aided the murderous enterprise against the Serbs.
The fascist state collapsed with the withdrawal of the Germans from Yugoslavia, but most of its key leaders, including Ante Pavelić, were able to escape to South and North America via the Vatican-organized ''rat channels.''
Photosource: jewishvirtuallibrary.org
