| Cardinal Alojzije V. Stepinac (May 8, 1898 – February 10, 1960) at his trial on September 18, 1946. This image was made into a devotional card for the Zagreb diocese. Fascist Croatia came into existence when Germany occupied Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941 and immediately dismembered it. Most of the former country fell to the new state of Croatia. This represented a great triumph for the Croat Fascist movement, the Ustasha. Poglavnik (“Leader”) Ante Pavelic (July 4, 1889 – December 28, 1959) headed this Fascist organization, which both resembled Nazism and differed from it. The Ustasha was antisemitic, anti-modern, anti-Communist, and genocidal. But unlike Führer und Reichskanzler (“Leader and Reichchancellor”) Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP – “Nazi National Socialist German Workers’ Party”), Pavelic was anti-Serb and pro-Catholic because Catholicism was part of the Croat heritage. The Ustasha overlapped ideologically with Nazism sufficiently to allow easy cooperation between Pavelic and Hitler. Exiled from prewar Yugoslavia, the terrorist Pavelic had plotted with Nazis for the overthrow of the Yugoslav state. By April 1941, the German army had routed the Yugoslav forces. Pavelic and Hitler met in the Führer’s Alpine resort, the Berghof, that summer. There the 2 genocidal Fascist leaders in Europe ironed out the arrangements that would govern relations between Germany and the puppet state of Croatia. These included Germany’s right to almost unlimited raw materials, special privileges for the Volksdeutsch of Croatia, and an understanding regarding Jews. For the Ustasha and Pavelic, relations with the Vatican were as important as relations with Germany. “Croat” and “Ustasha” were far from synonymous. The hook that Pavelic needed to win Croat popular support for his Fascist state was religion in the form of Vatican recognition. Croatian church leaders favored an alliance with the Ustasha because of its promise as an anti-Communist, Catholic state that might very well succeed in reconverting the 200,000 souls who had switched their allegiance from Roman Catholic to Serbian Orthodox since the end of the Great War. Bishop Stepinac rejoiced at the prospect of a Catholic Croatia that would replace the religiously and ethnically diverse creation of the Treaty of Paris that was the Yugoslav state — “the jail of the Croatian nation.” Bishop Stepinac arranged an audience in May with Pope Pius XII for Pavelic. Pius and Stepinac both saw Communism as the greatest menace facing Christianity. That the Vatican would favor a Croatian state is not surprising; after World War I, the Holy See had regretted the Paris Peace Treaty’s dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy, a predominantly Catholic force dominating southeast Europe. Fascism represented an opportunity to reestablish Catholic influence. The Vatican, however, stopped short of formal recognition of Croatia. Pope Pius sent Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone (March 15, 1882 – July 10, 1952), a Benedictine abbot, to the new country as his apostolic visitor. This served Pavelic’s purposes well enough, because Marcone acted like a nuncio (Papal Ambassador). Stepinac, too, was satisfied, feeling that the Vatican had de facto recognized the new state. Thus, in a timely manner and within just a matter of weeks, the Ustasha leader had solidified Croatian ties with Hitler and Pope Pius XII. Pavelic and the Ustashi now governed the new state of Croatia, although the word “govern” belies the chaos in which the country found itself. In April the Ustashi decreed that “all those who in any way offend the honor and vital interests of the Croatian people” would be subject to capital punishment. This vague “law” made it possible for the Ustasha terrorists to kill anyone they wished. During their 1st weeks in power, thousands of Serbs were murdered. Genocide was under way in Croatia. Yugoslav Jews, a small minority, experienced similar treatment. In April and May 1941, the Ustashi issued Nazi copycat edicts eliminating Jewish citizenship and forcing Jews to wear the Star of David. Soon thereafter, about 25,000 Jews were put into detention camps, from which they were deported to Lithuania in July of 1941. This was precisely the time when Hitler remarked to Pavelic that “if there were no Jews left in Europe, the unity of the European states would be disturbed no longer. It does not matter to where the Jews are deported.” In this way it happened that 1 of the very 1st Jewish colonies to be deported from its homeland took place in a Catholic country as a result of cooperation between the Ustashi and the Nazis. Genocide in Croatia began in earnest after the Heer (“Nazi German Army”) pulled out of the country in June 1941 to participate in Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s surprise attack on Russia. With the Ustashi in complete control of Croatia, large-scale massacres took place in July and August. Serbian and Jewish men, women and children were literally hacked to death. Whole villages were razed to the ground and the people driven into barns to which the Ustashi set fire. The Italian Foreign Ministry archive has a collection of photographs of the butcher knives, hooks, and axes used to chop up Serbian victims. There are photographs of Serb women with breasts hacked off by pocket knives, men with eyes gouged out, emasculated and mutilated. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands, were murdered during these 1st months of Ustasha power. Pavelic’s plan was to kill half of the Serb population and force the other half to convert to Catholicism or emigrate. Unlike the Nazis, the Ustashi made no secret of their genocide. By broadcasting their murders, they hoped to terrorize the remaining Serbs into fleeing for their lives or converting. The Ustasha’s nonsensical racial ideas allowed that the Serbs, while less pure than the Croats, were not “non-Aryans.” Once they converted, they could be assimilated into the Croatian population as long as there were not too many of them. While allowing the Ustasha Fascists to go about their business against the Serbs, the few remaining German authorities in Croatia coordinated their Jewish policy with Berlin. Foreign Office Plenipotentiary Felix Benzler (March 10, 1891 – December 26, 1977) sought permission to have Croatian Jews deported to Poland or to Russia. If they went to Russia later, they would be shot by mobile killing squads; if they went to Poland, they would be ghettoized, since death camps in Poland did not yet exist. The top Nazi bureaucrat of the Holocaust, Schutzstaffel SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann (March 19, 1906 – June 1, 1962), refused permission for this deportation and gave instructions over the telephone to shoot the Jews where they were. As a result, an additional 4,000 to 5,000 Jewish men were murdered in the fall of 1941, and their families – wives, children, and the elderly-were placed in ghettos. The events of the 1st months of Ustasha rule caused consternation for the relatively youthful head of the Croatian Catholic church. When Bishop Stepinac was raised to the episcopacy by Rome in 1934, he was the youngest Catholic bishop in the world. Only a few years later, while still in his thirties, Stepinac was chosen by the Holy See to head the national church. His position was unenviable. While Rome apparently offered him very little direction about what policy he should adopt regarding the Ustasha government, he found that not a few bishops and priests in his homeland disregarded his authority. This became apparent when, after Stepinac denounced Ustasha terror, priests and even a few bishops collaborated with Pavelic. Some Catholic priests even served in the dictator’s body guard. Father Ivan Guberina (November 14, 1897 – June 30, 1945), the leader of Catholic Action, was among them. Another priest, Mate Mugos (May 2, 1912 – 1946), wrote in a newspaper that previously the clergy had worked with a prayer book, but now was the time for the revolver. Most murderous were the Franciscan Friar Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic (June 5, 1915 – June 29, 1946), known as the devil of the Jasenovac, a concentration camp where 20,000 Jews perished; Bozidas Bralo (1907 – 1945), who was the chief of the security police in Sarajevo and initiator of antisemitic actions there; and Dionizije Juriev (March 19, 1915 – September 16, 1943), who wrote in the newspaper Novi List in July that it was no longer a sin to kill 7-year-olds. Many other clergymen were involved both directly and indirectly. There is independent verification from Italian explorer Corrado Zoli (January 3, 1877 – December 8, 1951)and Englishman Evelyn Waugh (October 28, 1903 – April 10, 1966) that clergy participated in genocide. Of the Bishops who supported Pavelic, the worst is said to have been Ivan Saric (September 27, 1871 – July 16, 1960). In the midst of the initial Ustasha terror against Jews, his diocesan newspaper carried the message that “there is a limit to love. The movement of liberation of the world from the Jews is a movement for the renewal of human dignity. Omniscient and omnipotent God stands behind this movement.” Bishop Saric was also accused of appropriating Jewish property for his own use. Other Croat bishops recognized immediately after the Ustashi came to power that their authority would be based on murder and terror. The 1st to realize this was the Bishop of Mostar, Alojzije Mišić (November 10, 1859 – March 26, 1942). Seeing that any short-term gain the church experienced under the Ustashi would be reversed in the long run, Misic warned Stepinac that the Fascists’ atrocities could not be ignored. For his part, Bishop Alojzije Stepinac began to distance himself from the Ustashi in May 1941, just a month after Pavelic came to power. He objected publicly to the Fascist’s racial laws, complained about converted “Jews” having to wear the Star of David, and then extended his concern to all Jews. Stepinac appealed to the Ustashi to moderate the decree: “We…appeal to you to issue regulations so that even in the framework of antisemitic legislation, and similar legislation concerning Serbs, the principles of their human dignity be preserved.” In July of 1941, when the 1st deportations of Jews and Serbs were taking place, Stepinac wrote to Pavelic objecting to the conditions of deportation; he asked that deportees be allowed contact with families at home, medical care, and decent transportation. Later that month, he sent the government a memorandum asking that deportation of Serbs who had not converted be stopped. Realizing that what he had urged earlier — namely, that Serbs not be coerced into conversion – could be their death sentence, Stepinad instructed the clergy to baptize people upon demand without the usual period of waiting and instruction. “Do not require any special religious knowledge, for Orthodox are Christians like us and the Jewish faith is the one from which Christianity originated.” In comparison with other eastern European church leaders, especially those in neighboring Hungary, Bishop Stepinac showed courage and insight in his actions. Instead of abating, Ustasha murders increased exponentially during the summer and fall of 1941. The atrocities became so obnoxious that Muslim and Italian allies of the Ustashi criticized Pavelic’s government. Even the Germans, who were pleased with Ustasha treatment of Jews, found the mass expulsion of Serbs so economically disruptive that they considered replacing Pavelic. Bishop Stepinac began to fall under heavy criticism for the church’s support of the Fascists. Croat members of the former Yugoslav government contacted Stepinac, objecting to the fact that clergymen were accomplices in the Ustasha murders of women, children, and the elderly, and demanding that Stepinac publicly condemn such atrocities. But Stepinac was not yet prepared to break with the Ustashi. It was not clear in the 1st weeks of Ustasha rule whether the murders and atrocities had been planned or were spontaneous. Even Serbs, the chief victims, thought that the violence was unauthorized. On this assumption, some Serbs, reconciled to the inevitability of fascism in a Nazified Europe, appealed to Ustasha authorities for suppression of the violence. Stepinac, a strong supporter of the Ustashi initially, probably gave them the benefit of the doubt, assuming that the bloodshed resulted from Pavelic’s suppression of partisan opponents whether they were Yugoslav, Chetnik, or even Croat non-Fascist dissidents. But as the bloodletting continued and increased, Stepinac decided on a limited response; in November 1941 he called for a national meeting, or synod, of Croatian bishops. The meeting served the purpose of coordinating church policy toward the Fascist government, and, no doubt, of reining in many of the lower clergy who had been carried away with “baptism-or-the-sword” missionary activity. Stepinac attempted to set a correct policy for Croatian clergy, but it is doubtful that they followed it with much uniformity. In a letter to Pavelic, the Bishops objected to forced mass conversions of Serbs and to Ustasha atrocities. The synod also appealed to Pavelic to treat Jews “as humanely as possible, considering that there were German troops in the country.” Pope Pius’s representative in Croatia, Abbot Marcone, reported this to Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Luigi Maglione (March 2, 1877 – August 22, 1944), who in reply praised what the bishops had done for “citizens of Jewish origin.” There is some question, however, regarding which Jews the synod sought to protect. The synod may singled out converted “Jews” in their appeal to Pavelic, whereas Marcone reported that the appeal had been for all Jews. Pavelic, in either event, ignored the bishops. Why had Stepinac waited until November? Why was he not prepared to object publicly to Ustasha crimes? The Holy See and Stepinac wanted to see a Catholic state succeed in Croatia. After learning in August 1941 about oppressive conditions for Jews, Maglione notified Abbot Marcone that “if your eminence can find a suitable occasion, he should recommend in a discreet manner, that would not be interpreted as an official appeal, that moderation be employed with regard to Jews on Croatian territory. Your Eminence should see to it that…the impression of loyal cooperation with the civil authorities be always pre-served. ” The language of the Holy See’s secretary of state clearly indicated that the Vatican did not wish to cut its ties to Pavelic’s government. Neither, then, could Stepinac, who, after all, had used his good offices only a few months earlier to recommend the Catholic dictator to the Holy See. For its part, the Vatican found the bishops’ November synod perfectly satisfactory. After receiving a report on it from Bishop Step-inac, Pius responded to him, praising the “courage and decisiveness” of the bishops in confronting the Ustashi regarding their treatment of Serbs. The Ustasha genocide continued. Estimates regarding its extent vary immensely. Some have put it as high as a 1,000,000, others as low as a 100,000. The most reliable figure places the mortality between 30,400,000. To this figure we must add the approximately 50,000 Jews whom the Ustashi murdered or turned over to their German allies to dispose of. Many of these Jews and Serbs perished during the 1st year of Ustasha rule, although it would be impossible to determine exactly how many. The extent of the murders and the fact that the Ustashi made no secret of them meant that the world outside Croatia would soon hear of the genocide. The Vatican got wind of them from several different sources. Undersecretary of State Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, later Pope Paul VI (September 26, 1897 – August 6, 1978) was involved with day-to-day matters concerning Croatia and Poland. Late in 1941, he had heard of the Ustasha atrocities, as did Pope Pius, since Montini reported to him on a daily basis. In March 1942, Montini confronted the Ustasha representative to the Vatican with the rumors that alarmed western Europe, asking explicitly about Pavelic’s extermination of Serbs. “Is it possible,” he asked, “that these atrocities have taken place?” “Lies and propaganda,” said the Ustasha representative, to which Montini replied that he had viewed the accusations with “considerable reserve.” Montini’s colleague Monsignor Domenico Tardini (February 29, 1888 – July 30, 1961) also interviewed Pavelic’s representative to Pope Pius. Tardini let the Croat know that the Vatican was willing to treat the Ustasha excesses indulgently: “Croatia is a young state…Youngsters often err because of their age. It is therefore not surprising that Croatia has also erred.” Tardini’s words, if quoted accurately, indicated the Holy See’s policy of wanting to believe that Croatia was the Catholic state it had promised to be or that it would become that in time. Further evidence suggesting this interpretation comes from Bishop Stepinac, who was himself summoned in April of 1942 to Rome. The Croatian bishop reportedly gave the Holy See a 9-page document detailing his account of Pavelic’s misdeeds. This document, omitted from the Vatican’s collection of World War II materials, evidently enabled the Holy See to believe that the Ustasha movement’s massacres were anomalies that Pavelic did not know about or at least had not authorized. But upon his return to Croatia, Stepinac strongly criticized the Ustashi, saying that “it is forbidden to exterminate Gypsies and Jews because they are said to belong to an inferior race.” This indicates that in the spring of 1942 the Vatican saw the seriousness of Ustasha crimes and preferred to have Stepinac try to rein the Fascists in rather than risk the effect that a papal denunciation would have had on the unstable Croatian state. After Croatian rabbi Miroslav Shalom Freiberger (January 9, 1903 – May 8, 1943) wrote in August to Pope Pius asking for his help to save Jews, Apostolic Visitator Marcone was instructed by the Holy See to thank him for his letter, but to do so prudently and tactfully? In other words, Pavelic’s Fascist government was not to be impugned. It is impossible to believe that Stepinac and the Vatican did not know that the Ustasha murders amounted to genocide. Historian Jonathan Steinberg (March 8, 1934 – March 4, 2021) wrote that “the repression and terrorism of the Ustasha regime” were “without parallel in the history of southeastern Europe.” The Croat Fascists had made no secret of their intention to murder or convert the Serbs and Jews. As early as 1941, the Italian army turned on the Ustasha regime and engaged militarily in support of the Serbian Orthodox Christians. In 1942, when Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic ran the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp, 40,000 Jewish and Serbian prisoners perished there. Among the captives were 24,000 children, half of whom were murdered. Soon after the war, a Vatican official acknowledged that the Holy See had a “list of all the clergymen who participated in [the] atrocities and we shall punish them at the right time to cleanse our conscience of the stain with which they spotted us.” In 1943, after the German military became active once again in Croatia, between 13,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, of whom only 2 dozen survived. Rabbi Freiberger, who had appealed for papal intervention a few months earlier, was not among the survivors. He died on the ramp of Auschwitz arguing for the safety of his community. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of additional Jews were murdered in gas vans in Croatia itself. Stepinac was indicted by the Yugoslavian Communist government in September 1945 for collaboration with the Ustashi regime and for his chaplains see ing in the Fascist Army. He was 1 of 19 defendants whose trial began on September 30, 1946. He was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years; he served 5. President Josip Broz Tito (May 7, 1892 – May 4, 1980), offered him retirement in Rome or confined to his home parish of Krašić. Stepinac chose to stay in Krašić. The verdict was annulled on July 22, 2016, by the Zagreb County Court, in a process requested by his nephew. This annulment is, however, highly controversial due to its overtly nationalist Croatian sentiments, the fact that lower court (County Court of Zagreb) annuls the verdict of the Supreme Court, the fact that the whole process of annulment was over in only 6 days, prosecution was on the same side with the defense (they did not appeal on the annulment) and the judge, who is openly anticommunist, obviously made his decision before the start of the trial. Thus, this annulment can be seen as an example of a show trial. Several Croatian Jews, including Historian Esther Gitman (born September 20, 1939), a Jew from Sarajevo now living in the United States, recommended that Stepinac be added to the list of the Righteous Among the Nations because he saved some Jews on condition of conversion to Catholicism. Yad Vashem declined, and replied: “Persons who assisted Jews but simultaneously collaborated or were linked with a fascist regime which took part in the Nazi-orchestrated persecution of Jews, are disqualified for the Righteous title.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii0707.jpg |
| Image Size | 82.79 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 800 x 801 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 30, 1946 |
| Location | |
| City | Zagreb |
| State or Province | Zagreb |
| Country | Yugoslavia |
| Archive | Archdiocese of Zagreb |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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