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Much effort has gone into projecting the image of a new Croatia that has supposedly renounced its murderous past and, hence, may join the European Union. This effort has especially targeted Jews, who, having had the unfortunate experience of being the Nazis' main victims, are now used to grant absolution to the culprits.

So, in 2001, Croatian President Stjepan Mesic visited the Knesset, where he sort of apologized (see http://emperors-clothes.com/croatia/mknesse.htm) for the clerical fascist Croatian Ustashe's murder of over 30,000 Jews.

Actually, he sort of did not apologize, since he a) never mentioned the Ustashe; b) never mentioned the murder of over 30,000; and c) began his 'apology' saying, "This is the proper place and the proper occasion to get rid of the ballast of the past," indicating how he views that hindering weight, the Holocaust.

Pursuing the appearance of reform, last November, Croatia opened an exhibition at the Jasenovac death camp in Slavonia, from which territory, by bitter irony, the Croatian army had, in 1995, driven out all Serbian civilians, thus rendering it serbenrein. They fulfilled the dream of the very Ustashe whom the exhibition is supposed to get Croats to remember, lest it "happen again"; although, having gotten rid of all Serbs, Jews and Roma, it is unclear what the Croatian clerical-fascists could do again, other than to themselves (or outside Croatia).

Here is some background for perspective on the exhibition. In June 1991, the Yugoslav Republic of Croatia, controlled by the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), led by Franjo Tudjman and Stjepan Mesic, launched a secessionist war that destroyed Yugoslavia. The HDZ revived symbols and policies of the Croatian Ustashe, whose base the Catholic clergy incited to hate "foreign elements" (primarily non-Catholic Serbs). In April 1941, the Ustashe had formed a German Nazi-backed state, mass murdering Serbs, Jews and Roma with a violence equaling the Einsatzgruppen of their German sponsor-allies. (Please see Encyclopedia of the Holocaust for more.)

When Tudjman and Mesic launched their Germany- and Vatican-backed secessionist war in 1991, Serbian charges that they were mobilizing the Ustasha apparatus that had flourished in the Croatian Diaspora after World War II were mocked by a world media that suppresses evidence linking Croatia to the Ustashe. Case in point: a video broadcast 9 December 2006 on Croatian TV, which shows Mesic in 1992 telling Australian-Croatians:

"You see, in the Second World War, the Croats won twice and we have no reason to apologize to anyone. What they ask of the Croats the whole time, 'Go kneel in Jasenovac. Kneel here...' We don't have to kneel in front of anyone for anything! We won twice and all the others only once. We won on 10 April [1941] when the Axis Powers recognized Croatia as a state [meaning, when the Nazi invaders installed the bloodthirsty Ustashe in power! - JI], and we won because we sat after the war, again with the winners, at the winning table."

-- BBC Monitoring; December 10, 2006

"Croatian Assembly Speaker Vladimir Seks said on HTV's [Croatian TV] Otvoreno ['Openly'] programme this evening - in response to a journalist's question on the truthfulness of the claim that he and state President Stjepan Mesic sang [Ustashe - WWII pro-Nazis] songs about 'Jure and Boban' [Ustashe commanders] - that: 'It is possible that this occurred, it is not out of the question.'"

-- "Croatian Speaker admits he may have sung Ustashe songs with president," BBC Monitoring, Dec. 15, 2006