As in Ukraine, the Banderites, so on the territory of the former Yugoslavia during the Second World War, the Ustashi committed atrocities. Inspired by Pope Pius XII, his "spiritual children" were so mercilessly dealt with the unwanted that even the Nazis seemed like mere children in comparison with them. In 1945, part of the leaders managed to escape from the country, and the gold of the Ustasha disappeared with them.
CLUB OF CONTRADICTIONS
On the eve of the First World War, Croatia was one of the provinces of Austria-Hungary. After the war, it became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and in 1921 the king assigned the name of Yugoslavia to the new country. So under one "roof" they tried to unite several different peoples professing different religions. Since then, a kind of ethnic cauldron of contradictions boiled in the Balkans, which exploded at the end of the 20th century. But even at the beginning of the century, the country was constantly torn apart by conflicts between Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. There were approximately equal parts of both, and at first no one oppressed anyone, but this state of affairs did not suit the Vatican. In 1935, the Holy See proposed to the government of Yugoslavia to adopt a special position, according to which Catholics would receive a number of privileges. The country's parliament refused to ratify the treaty, and Eugenio Pacelli, who was preparing it (since 1939 - Pope Pius XII), uttered a prophetic phrase: "The day will come when many people will bitterly regret that they rejected this generous offer made from the heart of their country." …
CRUSADE
After the occupation of Yugoslavia by the Nazis on April 6, 1941, the Ustasha movement, created by a certain Ante Pavelic, entered into cooperation with them. The Ustash (translated as "rebels") were under the patronage of Adolf Hitler himself, and the Fuhrer called the new Independent Croatian State (NHG) they created Aryan.
The regime established by Pavelic became one of the bloodiest in the Second World War. The main goal of the Ustasha was to create a mono-religious state.
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The Ustash dealt with the disagreeable with incredible cruelty. Women had their breasts cut off, their genitals cut off, men had their eyes torn out, children were mutilated in front of their parents. Innocent people were seized right on the street (Serbs, Jews and Gypsies wore special patches) and forced to dig their own graves, after which they chopped them down with axes. The young son of an Orthodox priest Branko Dobrosavlevich was hacked to pieces right in front of his father, who was supposed to say the words of prayer for the dead. The priest himself was subjected to terrible torture: they pulled out the hair from his head and beard, tore out his eyes and tore his skin off alive. In Banja Luka, 81-year-old Bishop Platov was literally shod with horseshoes and forced to walk the streets until he lost consciousness, after which they pulled out his eyes, cut off his nose and ears, and only then finished off the old man."Heretics" were imprisoned in concentration camps, the largest was in Jasenovac, and the massacres there were put on stream.
Even German generals in Croatia were shocked by the actions of Pavelic and his subordinates. In early June 1941, Wehrmacht General Edmund Glaus von Norstein reported to Berlin: “The Ustash went mad. Our six infantry battalions gazed helplessly at the Croats blinded by the bloody rage. The number of Orthodox Christians killed by the Croats in the most sadistic manner should be estimated at about 300,000. At the same time, the Catholic Church has recently actively supported the terrible methods of converting Orthodox Christians to Catholicism. Serbs living in Croatia who have converted to Catholicism can live there in complete peace. It follows from this that the Croatian-Serbian war is based on the policy of the Roman Catholic Church directed against Orthodoxy. " Echoing the general of the Wehrmacht, the envoy of the German Foreign Ministry G. Neubacher reported to Minister of Foreign Affairs Ribbentrop: “The policy of the leader of the Ustasha and the head of Croatia, Ante Pavelic, is reminiscent of religious wars, especially the bloodiest of them. He declared: "One third must become Catholic, one third must leave the country and one third must die!" The last point of this program has already been completed."
Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church took an active part in this Sabbath, and Pope Pius XII, during the audience, blessed the “faithful son” of Pavelic. The Pontiff could not have been unaware of the atrocities of the Croatian Fuhrer. But everything suited him, because the Ustashi regularly replenished the treasury of the Vatican. As a result of the genocide, they took possession of the property of their victims worth about $ 80 million.
THE SECRET BECOMES DISCOVER
In the spring of 1945, under the blows of units of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and the Red Army, the remnants of the defeated German troops and their allies, the Croatian Ustasha, hastily fled to Austria. One day in May, a train of 35 cars was blown up by a partisan mine near the Slovenian town of Celje. The Ustash, guarding the train, were in a hurry: they were ordered to take boxes out of the carriages, which then had to be buried in a hole, disguised and covered up their tracks. “The Ustash colonel, the unit commander, told me that the train was carrying gold reserves and state money, which were to be used to finance the Ustash movement in exile.”
This sensational statement was made in 1997 by Augustin Gavran, an 82-year-old resident of Zagreb. The former rebel was silent for more than half a century, and before his death he decided to reveal the secret of the Ustasha. How many boxes there were, the old man could not remember, he only knew that they occupied the entire space of two cars from floor to ceiling.
After this report, treasure hunters and journalists immediately rushed to Celje, and the place indicated by Gavran was dug up and down. The treasure was not found. The old-timers could not shed light on the mystery that worries everyone. Some confirmed that at the end of the war, a train really exploded here, but no one saw the boxes. Apparently they were carefully guarded. The Ustashs stayed in the village for three days and did not let anyone near the train.
The boxes of gold that Gavran described were only a small part of the confiscated property. The Ustashi who fled from the country transported at least ten trucks with gold to Rome. At first, the precious metal was stored in the Franciscan monastery of St. Jerome in the capital of Italy, where Croatian Nazis, including Pavelic himself, were hiding, then the gold was transported to a more reliable place. At this time, the People's Court of Yugoslavia sentenced the dictator Pavelic to death in absentia, but thanks to the intercession of the Pope, the "head" managed to escape justice and was sent to Argentina along the "rat road" - the channel for transporting Nazi criminals to South America. There, at one time, he even served as a security adviser to the widely advertised Hollywood Evita and Juan Peron. There was also an attempt on his life,but the Yugoslav émigrés only managed to wound the war criminal in the arm. Taking advantage of the invitation of the Spanish dictator Franco, Pavelic moved to Spain, where he lived until 1959 and died at the age of 70.
HOPE DIES LAST
In 1998, the US State Department published a report on Swiss and Vatican banks hiding money from their victims looted by the Nazis. As a result, a class action lawsuit was filed against the Vatican Bank and the Franciscan Order in the federal court of San Francisco from victims of the Croatian Nazis. With the help of all sorts of tricks, the defendants' lawyers struggled to drag out the case, hoping that the majority of the plaintiffs were elderly people who did not have long to live. In the end, they managed to exclude war crimes and human rights violations from the charges. However, charges of embezzlement of the victims' property remained.
In 2011, American attorney Jonathan Leavey again filed an application to investigate the suspicious work of the Vatican bank. “Dear Cardinal, there is a military treasure of the Ustasha in the deposit of the Institute of Religious Affairs at the Vatican. These are gold, bars, silver and other valuable things that from 1944 to 1946 the Ustasha regime stole from Serbs, Roma and Jews and invested in the Vatican Bank. Our clients, Holocaust survivors, and organizations in Serbia and the United States are demanding the return of their property,”wrote Leavey.
Jonathan Leavey's law firm has incontrovertible evidence that gold and other valuables are under the supervision of the Vatican Central Bank. They were stolen during the genocide of 1941-1945, when about 500 thousand people were killed in the NGKh. One of the witnesses is an American Serb, Professor William Todorovic from Los Angeles, who lost 17 relatives in Voinic. Another witness is Dr. Milan Bates, who lives in the UK. His father, Janko Bates, was a wealthy Serbian businessman, the Ustashi murdered him and stole $ 100,000 worth of family jewels. Despite the presence of witnesses, representatives of the Vatican stated that the Holy See could not be held responsible for the actions of the Ustasha. As a result, the claim was dismissed.
Will you ever get to the bottom of the truth? The victims of the Ustasha war crimes and their descendants do not lose hope of restoring justice, but the Vatican is in no hurry to reveal the secrets of its archives.
Lyubov DYAKOVA