BYE BYE GAZA - Barry Chamish

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Four days later, Slavko Kvaternik - Dido Kvaternik's father
and the elder statesman of the Ustase movement - declared
the Independent State of Croatia in the name of the
poglavnik (a Croatian equivalent of duce or fuehrer) Ante
Pavelic. Consolidated by Italian and German troops, Pavelic
established himself in Zagreb and immediately unleashed a
column of fire on the Serbian population. Aspiring to form an
ethnically pure paradise out of a state in which Croats were,
in fact, a minority, he was advised by Hitler not to show too
much pity. "If the Croat state wishes to be strong," he told his
pupil, "a fifty year policy of intolerance must be pursued,
because too much tolerance on such issues can only do
harm."
Within weeks, Pavelic's bloodiest henchman, Vjekoslav
"Maks" Luburic, began laying the groundwork for Jasenovac,
the largest concentration camp in Southern Europe. Peasant
Party leader Vladko Macek, who had originally welcomed the
Ustase's formation of the Independent State of Croatia,
found himself among the first internees at Jasenovac and
watched as Croatia's Jewish population along with untold
numbers of Serbs, Roma, and political dissidents passed
through the gates on their way to extermination. Macek was
later released to serve under house arrest.
All told, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has estimated that at
least 30,000 Jews (75% of the pre-war population), 29,000
Roma (97%) and 600,000 Serbs - or about one-third of the
pre-war population - were murdered in the four years of the
Independent State of Croatia's existence. Yet there was no
equivalent of Nuremburg for the Ustase.
Pavelic made his way from Austria to Italy, where he and
many other high-ranking Ustase sought shelter in the
Monastery of San Girolamo degli Illrici under the protection
of a former Ustase official and priest, Father Krunoslav
Draganovic. Agents at American Army's Counter-Intelligence
Corps (CIC) tracked Pavelic's movements and prepared for