Here's Dawn, Here's Day, Here Come Vice and Florijan (1)

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, October 11, 1999

"I understand Mr. Goldstein. He probably feels rather lonely in this exclusively Croat group," Kazimir Sviben concluded the discussion at the Yearly Session of the Parliamentary Committee for the Establishment of the Number of Victims Killed During and After WWII. One of the reasons for the assumed loneliness of Committee member Slavko Goldstein - since he was recognized at this gathering as a representative of primarily Jewish interests - has been a subject of the work of this Committee during the last few years. Counting diligently the victims killed during and after WWII, Vice Vukojevic and comp. established that on the territory of Croatia 293 Jews perished "based on ethnic criteria", while 331 Jews died "based on religious criteria".

Exactly 726 Eastern Orthodox Christians died on the present territory of the Republic of Croatia during WWII. However, exactly 18,410 Serbs were murdered on the same territory. For comparison, exactly 68,932 Catholics, or 79,318 Croats were killed in the same war. Out of dead or killed Catholics, 31,430 persons were members of the "armed forces of NDH [the Independent State of Croatia, a pro-Nazi WWII Croatian state] with unknown affiliation", Ustashe units [Croatian counterpart of Nazi SS troops] and Croatian Domobrans [NDH's conscripted Army]. Several thousands more Croat victims were found among the members of the same forces.

Out of the main opposing domestic military forces, 41,855 members of already mentioned Croatian units died or were killed during or after WWII (mostly after Bleiburg), while the Partisans had 38,732 casualties. Muslims are mentioned only in the religious sense, and as many as six of them perished during the war...

Only Slavko Goldstein protested against these data at a meeting of the Committee, whose founder, initiator and vice president is Vice Vukojevic [otherwise HDZ's representative in the Parliament]. Goldstein's vote was also the only one against the acceptance of the report, which was adopted without abstentions. Goldstein asked the members of the Committee, all 65 of them, how they could talk about such numbers when the Committee had access to sources, such as the Archive of the Jewish Community in Zagreb, or the Archive of the Republic of Croatia, that list the names and surnames of a much larger number of victims among the Jews and Serbs. The Committee's report also states that "the total number of victims includes the information from all available sources". Using the book by Spanovic Tonci Erjavec as an example, Goldstein demonstrated to what extent the work of the Committee is skewed and sources deliberately selected and inaccurately interpreted.

However, lonely Slavko Goldstein was silenced with heckling and mutual applauses by his opponents such as Florijan Boras, Fr. Ante Bakovic, Ljubica Stefan and Ivan Gabelica. However, they partly did explain the discrepancies pointed out by Slavko Goldstein: the Committee only dealt with the victims which could not have been acknowledged in the period between 1945 and 1990. Nevertheless, it was not explained why the Committee was named the way it was and why its focus is not limited to "the victims murdered and executed by the Partisans and post-war Yugocommunist and Serbochetnik authorities". Why is a certain modern Ustashe gang ridiculing executed Jews, Serbs, Gypsies, Croats and other if it does not have courage to totally ignore them, or even today boast about these massacres? The Committee refers to these victims in its report in the following way: "War victims which were in the former regime referred to as 'victims of occupying forces and domestic traitors'"... no one explained that, but the secretary of the Committee, Florijan Boras, in spite of everything did point out a likely answer to these questions: "I must point out that if we enter Europe, our Committee will not be able to work like this any more. German laws say that those who glorify Hitler's rule or diminishes the number of victims of Nazism is to be punished by up to five years of imprisonment... All of us here, apart from Mr. Goldstein, could in that case be sentenced. See, that is what awaits us is we enter such Europe," warned Florijan Boras.

(1) The original headline is "Evo Zore, Evo Dana, Evo Vice i Florijana". This is a play with the title of the (in)famous Ustashe song "Evo Zore, Evo Dana, Evo Jure i Bobana".