Here is the full article from the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” from 27. May 2023:
no commemoration, nowhere?
The Bleiburg massacre was the largest war crime in Europe after the 8. May 1945. The victims were mainly Croats. But dealing with it divides Croatian society to this day.
By Michael Martens, Zagreb
Bleiburg is located in the south of the Austrian state of Carinthia and belongs to less than 5000 inhabitants certainly not to the places, that you must have heard of. Nevertheless, the name Bleiburg is so common, at least in Croatia, as if the small town near the Slovenian border were a metropolis of millions. After Vienna, Bleiburg is probably the Austrian town, whose name is mentioned most frequently by the Croatian media – at least every year in May. That is when the greatest crime in post-war European history will be celebrated for more than seven decades.
It is often said, the Srebrenica genocide, by troops commanded by Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladić in July 1995 more than 7000 Bosnian Muslims killed, was the largest massacre in Europe since the end of the Second World War. That is true - but only then, if the end of the war in Europe is not dated to the day of the German capitulation on 8. May 1945 dated. Because the systematic mass murder, whose story at 15. May 1945 began in Bleiburg and lasted for several weeks, clearly exceeds the events of Srebrenica in its dimensions.
While Europe was officially at peace, were at the "tragedy of Bleiburg", as it is often called in Croatia, Tens of thousands of defenseless by Josip Broz's Yugoslav partisans („Tito“) murdered and buried in mass graves in Slovenia and Croatia. If there had already been an international war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia back then, as it was later set up in The Hague, Tito should have been indicted there as supreme commander of the perpetrators and thus politically responsible for these crimes. Based on the case law of the Tribunal, he would have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
But 1945 other standards applied, at least for the victors of World War II, to which Tito belonged. Im May 1945 were tens of thousands of Croats and several thousand Slovenes, Serbs and Montenegrins fled from the partisans to Carinthia, there to surrender to the British troops. Among the refugees were many "Ustasha" - supporters of the Croatian fascist regime, that between 1941 and 1945 as an ally of the Germans around the 350.000 had murdered people.
The victims of the Ustasha were mainly Serbs, Jews and Roma, but also communist-minded or otherwise politically unwelcome Croats. In the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac alone, according to the broad consensus of reputable researchers, more than 80.000 prisoners killed.
Among those, who had fled to Bleiburg, were also former camp guards from Jasenovac and other Ustascha perpetrators. They hoped that the British would protect them from the revenge of the partisans. But the British, who wanted to be on good terms with their then ally Tito, sent the refugees, also women and children, back to Yugoslavia. For many it was a journey to death, they were executed without trial. Exact figures are not available, since the perpetrators in socialist Yugoslavia had almost half a century to spare, to cover their tracks and stifle any debate about the crimes. Nevertheless, a consensus has emerged in research in recent years on the approximate number of victims.
The nationalist Croatian historian and later President Franjo Tudjman had 1989 still from about 30.000 written to those killed, who died in the course of the Bleiburg tragedy. But when he wrote that, the mass graves were still closed. The experts are now in agreement, that Tudjman's number is too low. According to the latest research, at least 70.000 people from the mass killings of May and June 1945 to the victim. The bodies were thrown into karst caves, buried in anti-tank ditches or taken to abandoned mines and walled in. Only after the collapse of Yugoslavia could the crimes be openly discussed in Slovenia and Croatia.
Witnesses ventured out to the public, some perpetrators eased their conscience. Hundreds of mass graves were discovered. The largest skull site of Yugoslav communism was found in the year 1999 during construction work for a highway in Tezno, a suburb of Maribor (Marburg). Alone in a former tank ditch were on a length of 70 meters almost 1200 people buried. Overall, the mass graves not far from the second largest city in Slovenia are said to contain the remains of almost 15.000 salvage victims. Most were Croats.
As it was banned in socialist Yugoslavia, Even to mention the crimes of the partisans - let alone, to commemorate them publicly –, wurde Bleiburg, where the tragedy began, a place of remembrance as early as the 1950s, where at least the emigrants could come together. However, this commemoration was not unproblematic from the start. Of the 1953 officially founded "Bleiburger Ehrenzug", who organized the commemorations and the associated service, was shaped by former Ustasha fighters, who were themselves implicated in the crimes of the fascist regime in Croatia.
On Tuesday – The presence: The children of the war still hold the East collective under their spell. Meanwhile, the younger generations are trying, to make the West the great bogeyman.
That is still the crux of the commemoration today: All the victims of Bleiburg were defenseless - but by no means all were innocent. All suffered a terrible injustice, because they would have been entitled to treatment as prisoners of war under the law of the time. That many of those killed defenseless had themselves killed defenseless people, does not justify her murder, belongs to the historical context. This context was often ignored at the commemorations in Bleiburg. The dead were played down as "martyrs for Croatianness"., as irreproachable resistance fighters against communism. Your story has been told, as if she had only 1945 started. On the fringes of the event, T-shirts with portraits of the Croatian fascist leader Ante Pavelić and similar right-wing extremist memorabilia were sold.
True, it was unfair and inaccurate, to denigrate the commemoration in southern Carinthia in its entirety as "Europe's largest fascist meeting"., as some media did. That didn't do justice to the many families, who actually came to Bleiburg only in silent remembrance of their murdered relatives or ancestors. But there was definitely a right-wing instrumentalization of the meeting – and that helped those forces, who would like to prevent any commemoration of Bleiburg and other crimes committed by Tito's partisans.
The right-wing extremist impact of the Bleiburg meeting also resulted, that the responsible diocese of Carinthia of the commemoration event in the year 2019 refused her blessing. The trade fair near Bleiburg is politically exploited and is part of “a political-national ritual”, which serves a selective interpretation of history, it was said. The event harms the reputation of the church, could even conjure up the insinuation, the diocese "lacks the appropriate distance to fascist ideas", that's the reason.
In Croatia, leftists cheered about the church's cross-shot against the "fascist meeting". The Croatian Bishops' Conference, on the other hand, accused the Catholic brothers in Carinthia of "disrespect for the victims".. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Zagreb denied the allegation, Fascism is celebrated in Bleiburg, as "outrageous insinuation".
In Croatia, many people continue to be harshly unforgiving when it comes to debates about the Bleiburg case. The question comes up, how the small country should deal with the memory of the greatest massacre, that happened in Europe after the German surrender. The right-wing extremist misrepresentation of history is just one of the problems. The reactions of the left spectrum also raise questions. Is this really the only reason certain circles are opposed to a Bleiburg commemoration?, because in the past it was often accompanied by right-wing extremist distortions and trivializations? Or they basically don't want to, that “left-wing” crimes of the Yugoslav partisans are remembered? They want to prevent it, that the image of the radiant partisan hero Tito is smeared with blood, that was shed in his name? Do they want to keep the memories of the crimes from the early days of Tito's rule out of the European memory culture?? That's what it says: no commemoration, nowhere?
The Croatian writer and columnist Miljenko Jergović, whose political stance is difficult to summarize, but he is definitely not a right-winger, distinguishes in conversation between the events of 1945 and the memory of it. What happened in Bleiburg and in Yugoslavia in May and June 1945 happened, he calls it a “mass crime” and a “terrible revenge” by the partisans. “But what is remembered on the Bleiburger Feld itself?“, he asks, answering himself: Since the fifties- and sixties would have been there, with the kind toleration of the Austrian authorities, Commemorated right-wing extremists of the fascist Ustasha regime. The organizers of the commemoration were never concerned with historical facts. “They were never interested in the truth about Bleiburg, not even for the columns, who returned to Yugoslavia from the Bleiburg field. They don't care about the victims, for their number, nor for the places and circumstances of their suffering.” Instead, that was what mattered to them, the dictator Pavelić and his Ustasha as well, But to portray Tito and the partisans as evil: “Bleiburg was neither before nor after 1990 a place of remembrance for the victims.”
At the same time, Croatia's most famous writer condemns the attempts, to put the crime into perspective. The former Croatian president and former Yugoslav socialist Stjepan Mesić has commented on the Bleiburg case 2008 said a sentence that is still controversial today: “Not a single victim in the Jasenovac concentration camp had any responsibility for the victims in Bleiburg, However, many victims of Bleiburg were responsible for the victims in Jasenovac.” He never liked this sentence, says Jergović. “In a more subtle way, he justifies one crime with another. I don't understand, why you should do that.”
Martina Grahek Ravančić, Historian at the Croatian Institute of History in Zagreb, wrote a book about the bloodshed in Bleiburg that was widely acclaimed in Croatia. It applies, she says, that there were many in the refugee column to Austria and then in the prisoner column on the way back to Yugoslavia, who took part in crimes committed by the Ustasha dictatorship. Reputable historians in Croatia did not doubt this. However, even under the law of the time, the prisoners had the right to a trial. Instead there were mass shootings. “It may not have been realistic to expect, that everyone will be brought to justice, and it is clear, that every end of war is accompanied by revenge - but the time frame, The number of victims and the programmatic implementation of the liquidations in several stages indicate this, that it wasn’t just about revenge.”
In fact, the evidence is overwhelming, that “Bleiburg” was not a case of isolated, spontaneous acts of revenge by the partisans, as it was sometimes downplayed later. Rather, everything points to a systematic one, The victorious partisans carried out an act of human extermination ordered from above against their captured opponents.
However, an objective debate about this is still difficult in Croatia today. “Neither the extreme right nor the extreme left are contributing to solving this problem. None of them are really interested in what happened in May 1945, and their behavior shows no human respect for the victims.", sagt Grahek Ravančić. For many, “Bleiburg” is just a political space to defend their worldview: “They firmly believe in it, that only they have the monopoly on the truth and only their attitude is correct.”
This makes the debate more difficult, that the perpetrators of Bleiburg were never brought to justice. There was no Nuremberg for the crimes of communism. Some perpetrators could still have been charged, are Grahek Ravančić. You know, which military units were involved in the crimes, the chain of command is also known. Nevertheless, none of the perpetrators ever had to fear imprisonment or even a trial. Bleiburg remains an open wound. Dealing with the biggest war crime in Europe after 8. May 1945 still divides Croatian society today.
