Presentation of “The Black Book" on Communist terror in Croatia
Zagreb
Zagreb, November 25, 1999 (IKA) — “The Black Book on the Horrors of the Communist Regime in Croatia” was presented on Tuesday, November 23, 1999 in the Vijenac Auditorium of the Archdiocesan Theological Seminary in Zagreb. The book was prepared for press, with an introduction and accompanying notes, by Dr. Juraj Batelja, postulator for the cause of the beatification of Alojzije Stepinac. It was presented by Dr. Frano Glavina, Prof. Nevenka Nekić, and the Most Rev. Josip Gjuran. The presentation was attended by Cardinal Franjo Kuharić, Archbishop Josip Bozanić of Zagreb; the papal nuncio in the Republic of Croatia, Archbishop Giulio Eiunadi; the military ordinary of the Republic of Croatia, Bishop Juraj Jezerinac; the ambassador of the Republic of Croatia to the Vatican, Dr. Marijan Šunjić, and other distinguished dignitaries.
This is an original document that was written in the spring of 1946 in Croatia by an unnamed member of the Church hierarchy. The book reports on the situation immediately following World War II in Croatia, when there was no personal freedom, freedom of the press, freedom of speech or assembly, and particularly no freedom in the judicial system. Mass murder as well as the murder of individuals was perpetrated by the war tribunals, military courts and drumhead courts. The book also documents that there was no freedom of conscience or religion during that bleak period. This document, now bound in book form, was brought up at the trial of Archbishop Alojzije Stepianc of Zagreb, but he refused to testify about it. The book is supplemented with documents from the U.S. Office of Foreign Affairs, from which it can be gathered that the U.S. Government was well informed about the systematic persecution of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia. In 1997, a “Black Book” was published in France on communist crimes throughout the world, in which the crimes committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia received only cursory mention. The Croatian “Black Book” was written 51 years earlier than the French one, although it is only being published now. “It has not exhausted the topic but provides impetus for further research, because communist crimes continued to be perpetrated for another 44 years after the document was written,” pointed out Dr. Glavina in his presentation of the book. Dr. Batelja noted that the book is of current interest because “it summarizes the crimes of the French Black Book,” but also introduces new information, for example about the death march known as the Way of the Cross, and its value lies not so much in the information it contains about the number of victims but about the manner in which the crimes were committed.