Bearing in mind our mission, the promotion of justice and peace, and in regard to the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have found it necessary to shed light upon the state of the truth about the serious crimes perpetrated during the past century in Croatia, especially because numerous crimes have still not been sufficiently illuminated, i.e., the truth about them has still not come into view so that we have still not been completely liberated from the shackles of totalitarianism and the danger of its re-establishment if the truth is suppressed, scorned or subordinated to other interests.

We maintain that it is good and just that in our country there are still ongoing investigations, remembrances and commemorations with due respect of places and events connected with the crimes from the Second World War perpetrated by foreign aggressors, promoters of the totalitarian ideologies of fascism and Nazism, as well as their cohorts within individual countries of the former Yugoslavia. It is just for the terrible crimes, which the international community has declared to be without a statute of limitations, i.e., genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, to be always punished.

However, it is neither good nor just that 64 years after the end of the Second World Word and the establishment of communism by violence, the war crimes and postwar crimes of communist totalitarianism during its 45-year reign of terror of varying intensity are still being concealed and denied. It is even less good and just that on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are attempts to defend and rehabilitate communism.

1. European Day of Remembrance. For its commemoration, in May of last year our Commission presented proposals to the authorities regarding concealed sites of mass burials and our position regarding due piety toward all victims of the war and postwar periods. We recall that this year the European Commission proclaimed August 23 as the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of All Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, because on that day, seventy years ago, Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union entered the Treaty of Non-Aggression and divided spheres of interest, followed by the German-Soviet occupation of Poland, the Soviet enslavement of the Baltic countries and the deportation and genocide perpetrated against the Baltic nations and Poles.

The Parliament of the EU also cited resolutions by the Council of Europe from 1996 and 2006 on “measures to dismantle the heritage of the former communist totalitarian regimes” and the “need for international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes,” according to which this European political institution
• cautioned that the international community has not condemned the crimes of communism, as it did regarding the crimes of Nazism;
• recommended the punishment of the crimes of communism, rehabilitation without trials for those killed without trials and innocent persons who were convicted, as well as restitutio in integrum (the restitution of all rights) to persons who were disenfranchised and whose property was confiscated;
• stressed that the European public is insufficiently acquainted and aware of these crimes; and
• cautioned that the condemnation of the crimes of communism is very important for the upbringing of the young.

The European Day of Remembrance was completely passed over in silence in Croatia – although the Croatian Parliament received this text and an invitation for commemoration from the European Parliament – which is not good for a country where these problems are powerfully and painfully relevant.

2. Conspiracy of silence and ignorance. We recall here that according to the estimates by the authors of the Black Book on Communism, the number of communist victims in the world has climbed to over a hundred million people, and that on March 18 of this year the European Parliament stated that the communist regimes in Europe during the first ten years after the war killed a million people but that there is neither sufficient knowledge nor awareness of these mass crimes, especially among the younger generations. This ignorance is not solely caused by the indifference of the media but also by the approving attitudes of individual politicians. As Bronislaw Geremek, a Polish opponent of communism, has said: “History is the work of the truth. Every time a lie appears in this field … the historian senses violence, but also a crime.”
With time, the denial and impunity of the crimes of communism achieve the “right of citizenship,” as cautioned in a statement issued in July by the 56 members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which places an equal sign between Nazi and communist crimes.

3. Intentionally remaining silent about historical events, “black holes” in Croatian history. The Croatian Parliament, albeit regrettably seventeen years after the first multi-party elections, did proclaim the Declaration on the Condemnation of Crimes Committed during the Totalitarian Communist Movement in Croatia from 1945 to 1990 but, in reality, that statement was merely an expression of verbal support for the resolutions of the Council of Europe. It does not contain rulings on the investigation of crimes, a list of the victims of communist totalitarianism – which has never been compiled, or the punishment of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which the statute of limitations does not expire. There is no indication of the need for the society to undergo collective therapy, as in Germany regarding the attitude toward Nazism.

Therefore, our recent history is actually a series of suppressed and concealed historical events that interrupt collective memory and hinder the construction of a positive identity and the spirit of reconciliation. In it there is no mention of resistance to communism, the persecution of the Church or its role in preserving the spirit of hope and freedom. There are no comparative analyses of Nazi and communist totalitarianisms regarding violence perpetrated upon various spheres of life and the trampling of the rights of the individual and nation. There is not a single word that Nazism and communism were led by hatred toward God and man. As a person who has lost his memory no longer knows who he is, it is thus to be feared that a nation without history does not build its identity and has no future. If the past is empty in the ethical sense, without messages and lessons, there is the danger of repeating the same errors.

4. Denial of crimes and their totalitarian roots. Resolutions and appeals of the highest European institutions show that amnesia of the past and de facto amnesty for crimes without a statute of limitations endanger the future, creating an atmosphere of indifference and the acceptance of the intentional suppression of individual historical events. Based upon this, voices have appeared since the end of the Second World War and during the Homeland War that negate mass crimes with ideological and/or nationalistic premeditation, not only the negation of crimes that cry out to heaven but also their totalitarian roots. Thus, although there is justifiable emphasis upon the need to prosecute all the crimes from the Homeland War, there is no call to respect international conventions on the punishment of crimes from the Second World War and postwar period, or during the communist reign of terror.

The recent war in defense of the Croatian nation showed that the disavowals of the crimes perpetrated against Croats during the Second World War and postwar periods were repeated during the Homeland War. Therefore, it is possible that mass war crimes and crimes against humanity are being publicly denied in our country and in cases where entire villages, national groups and religious groups have been liquidated, crimes of genocide, as well as the organized and planned character thereof. All of us should be worried by the phenomenon of negationism, the denial of perpetrated communist crimes which are subject to law and severely punished in the democratic world, emphasizes the statement. It is astonishing to hear in Croatia today that the partisans fought exclusively for freedom. This can be rightly said about part of them, especially in Dalmatia and Istria. However, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, as a section of the Communist International, subjected them to its ideology and discipline, so that, unfortunately, they subsequently fought for the victory of a totalitarian ideology, dictatorship and against the freedom of their nation.

5. Croatian anti-totalitarianism. While June 22, the date of the uprising by Croatian communists against the totalitarian invaders and their domestic allies, is still celebrated, the fact is passed over in silence that these same communists did not resist the invaders in April 1941 but two and a half months later rose up in the defense of a foreign country, the USSR, at the urging of Stalin and the Comintern. Until then, they had been reconciled to the Nazi-fascist occupation and the regime of the Independent State of Croatia, and had demonstrated no anti-fascism whatsoever, because their ideological homeland, the USSR, was allied with Hitler. Would it not be better and more just for the Croatian people to celebrate their actual anti-fascism, since the Istrian Croats were the first in Europe to resist Italian fascism in Proština and Labin during the early years of Mussolini’s regime? Why are these socially and nationally motivated anti-fascist insurrections forgotten? Why is the communist monopoly of anti-fascism still permitted, when it is known that totalitarian communism, despite the promised “paradise,” was merely the hypocritical twin brother of racist Nazism?

Nazism did not conceal its criminal intentions but communism did. Nevertheless, this verbal distinction does not diminish the magnitude of the crimes of communism but merely reveals its hypocritical nature. During and after the war, it was precisely the communists who persecuted and liquidated dedicated anti-fascists, anti-Nazis and anti-communists, including Christian personnel, civil democratic politicians and intellectuals, worker and peasant leaders, priests, nuns and monks. Our older fellow citizens well remember what the communist regime was really like and are stunned when they hear that the communist movement and its leaders were not criminals. This is how history is falsified. This is not revisionism because the revision of history is the right and duty of historians when heretofore unknown historical facts are established, as is the case with the discovery of communist crimes. This is negationism, i.e., the negation of confirmed mass crimes.

Even if we were able to ignore all the horrors and human tragedies of forced collectivization, de-Christianization and the totalitarian control of the state and society, we should not forget the crimes at the end of the Second World War and postwar period, and the testimonies concerning mass liquidations, such as that by Simo Dubajić on the massacre of 38,000 people in Kočevski Rog, or of the slaughters in Tezno, Jazovka, Macelj, Huda Jama…. These testimonies explicitly indicate that this was the implementation of decisions by the political leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, political commissars and partisan commanders, and that Tito’s “dispatch” on the correct treatment of prisoners of war was only a cover-up of a planned crime by the regime and its Soviet allies and is reminiscent of the cover-up of the execution of 20,000 Polish officers in Katyn.

6. Against the justification of crimes and criminals. It is even worse, however, when the crimes are not merely denied but are still being publicly defended and justified. Therefore, when someone announces that he is sure that many who were killed without trials deserved to be condemned to death, this represents an apologia for crimes.

Among the victims in question were many young people, civilians, women and even children who had been forcibly mobilized by the state. They were victims of political hatred and blind vengeance. The extent to which these were innocent and unnecessary victims is testified to by the fact that the majority of the actual criminals and their political leaders fled for the most part, leaving the people at the mercies of the totalitarian twin brother who continued where they had left off.

The Commission agrees that the crimes of the occupier and its domestic allies should not be forgotten and, precisely for the same ethical and legal reasons, the investigation of communist crimes should not be prevented and the monopolization of anti-fascism by its twin brother, communism, should not be permitted. The Croatian nation and the Church have painfully experienced all three totalitarianisms directly and have fought against them, enduring enormous sacrifices and paying a high price. Therefore, this nation and its citizens have the right and duty to condemn negationism and apologiae for the crimes of all three totalitarianisms. They have the right to know the truth about past events because, as the Holy Father Benedict XVI said during his visit to the Czech Republic: “Far from threatening the tolerance of differences or cultural plurality, the pursuit of truth makes consensus possible.”

In this statement, the Commission is primarily guided by the Christian value and duty of forgiveness. Christian forgiveness, especially that in the service of sacrifice, surpasses all the moments cited here. Nonetheless, a healthy process of forgiveness, and then reconciliation and the building of a sustainable peace, assumes the responsible investigation of the truth, condemnation of crimes, prosecution of criminals and the settlement of damages where possible. This statement is precisely in the service of these values.

In Zagreb, November 9, 2009, on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Msgr. Vlado Košić
President of the Justitia et Pax Commission
Croatian Conference of Bishops