VULIĆ: FASCISM AND NAZISM STILL ALIVE IN CROATIA

PALE, NOVEMBER 7 /SRNA/ – Historian Georgije Vulić has assessed that recent events in Croatia demonstrate that fascism and Nazism have not been defeated in Croatian society, and that the state authorities are doing little to address this serious issue.

"One could even say that by failing to react, they are supporting the open fascistization of society in Croatia," Vulić told SRNA, commenting on a recent roundtable in the Croatian Parliament about the Jasenovac concentration camp system, and the scandal in Split where a Serbian cultural event was banned. He pointed out that there were no professional historians among the participants of the roundtable, which in itself speaks volumes about the "scientific seriousness" of the event. "The speakers repeated claims that have been circulating in the Croatian public for years and decades, suggesting, for example, that pupils `volunteered to work in master workshops in Jasenovac` and the like. It was particularly emphasized that all estimates of the number of victims in Jasenovac were exaggerated, and one participant even claimed that the real number of victims in this camp `was smaller than in Srebrenica in 1995,`" said Vulić, a senior associate at the Institute of Historical Sciences of the University of Istočno Sarajevo. According to him, such assertions have long been rejected by serious scholarship, but it is evident that these narratives play a major role in shaping the historical consciousness of Croatian youth—especially considering that concerts by singer Marko Perković Thompson, who glorifies the Ustasha movement, attract hundreds of thousands of young Croats. "In light of these developments, one must question the general state of the Croatian state and society, which allow such an event to be held in one of its highest institutions. Not a single state institution in Zagreb has done anything to prevent this gathering of pseudo-scholars, which raises the question of whether such a view of the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ is also dominant within the EU, of which Croatia has been a member for many years," Vulić emphasized. He believes that examining such phenomena in Croatian society should be a task primarily for Serbian sociologists and political scientists rather than historians, since these positions do not belong to the field of historical science. "Serbian historians can only counter these negative trends in Croatian historiography - so prevalent when it comes to this topic - through hard work, research, and consistent publication of scientific findings on the suffering of Serbs in the NDH. It is crucial to avoid falling into the trap of internal disputes among Serbian historians over disputed issues, and instead to unite efforts in shedding light on one of the most important topics for the Serbian people as a whole," Vulić said. He said that the incident in Split on November 3 also testifies to the fact that anti-Serb hysteria prevails in Croatian society - when a cultural evening dedicated to theatre and folklore, planned as part of the Days of Serbian Culture, was supposed to be held in the Gorski Kotar Blatine hall. A large group of men dressed in black and wearing masks surrounded the venue and prevented the event from taking place. After the performers left, the group applauded themselves triumphantly, chanting "For the Homeland – Ready". At the roundtable held on October 28 in the Croatian Parliament, it was claimed that Stara Gradiška, Jasenovac, and Lepoglava were camps, but that there had been no mass killings there—certainly not tens of thousands of victims—and that the numbers and names of victims had been falsified. The Croatian Anti-Fascist League recently condemned the roundtable titled "A Scientific Approach to Researching the Victims of Jasenovac," describing it as a gathering of unscrupulous manipulators falsifying a tragedy that occurred more than 80 years ago.