President Milanović at Antifascist Struggle Day Commemoration in Brezovica: Croatia Was on the Side of the Truth and Good
The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović took part in the Antifascist Struggle Day commemoration held at Memorial park in Brezovica.
After paying tribute by laying a flower at the monument in the Memorial park, President Milanović began his address by saying: “The truth is deep water and shouldn’t offend anyone, but it can hurt. However, in our truth there is nothing painful, it is actually beautiful, difficult, bloody, but beautiful. So let’s start with some truths that won’t hurt or insult anyone because I think that we owe it to the people who assembled eighty years ago on 22nd June not here but in Žabenska forest some ten kilometers away”, the President said. He added that we’re not doing a favour to those seventy-seven Sisak communists, revolution fighters, fighters for change by constantly stressing that they were Croats and that it was a Croatian struggle because they were first and foremost communists fighting for a revolution, for a Soviet Croatia, and not for democracy.”
“Second, Janko Bobetko, our famous Homeland War general was not here, his brothers were. Which doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t have been had he been able to, because on all accounts, he was here, and there were others. There was Mika Špiljak, Marijan Cvetković, Vlado Janjić Capo, famous commander, all Croats if that means something to anyone. To me it means something but to always divide and stress who was a Croat, who was a Jew, makes no sense. They didn’t think in those terms”, President Milanović stated. They were heroes, heroes of calibre, but they were rough people as well, adventurers who often crossed the line and committed an injustice.
“All that is our history, our truth, it doesn’t offend, it shouldn’t hurt”, the President noted, underlining that he never came to Brezovica to force his truth on anyone, to give someone a task or send a message. “I’m here only to point out certain things that put Croatia where it belongs”, he remarked.
“This wasn’t the first detachment in Europe, resistance movements existed in France and in Czechoslovakia, in some states there was nothing, such as Belgium, Denmark, they waited for the war to end, that’s human and one should understand that. But here was a symbiosis of the antifascist struggle. When they were surrounded by large Ustasha forces, the fighters went to the Banija region to rise up in arms, together with our Serb brothers and sisters, to preserve humanity. This wasn’t an easy task because all these Croatian commissars, communists, national heroes, here or in the Kalnik detachment came among people who suffered devastation or were killed. Already in early June the number of civilians killed was shocking, whether someone doesn’t like the numbers, or whether or not they like the Independent State of Croatia. Communist agitation, readiness, organizational skills on the one hand, while on the other the Croatian people who weren’t ready for an uprising, since they lived in the illusion that it gained some kind of state, which sold them for a pittance, and the Serbian people in Croatia, our brothers in arms in that war, unfortunately not so in the last war, but our brothers in arms in that war together with Croatian commissars, they carried that people’s uprising”, President Milanović noted.
“Croatia wasn’t just on the side of the winners, Croatia was on the side of the truth and good”, the President noted, adding that stressing that we’re winners and not losers is a risky look on life and destiny because it would mean that we could have lost. He wondered whether our resistance would be any less worthy had the Axis won the war: “Croatia was not only on the side of the winner, that’s a balance sheet, that’s an accounting view on the world. Croatia was on the side of risk, danger and courage”.
“And one more thing about the Croats in World War II. To go to war as a Croat in 1941 and 1942 was an act of incredible bravery and adventure, something that is difficult to describe in words. Croats weren’t persecuted in the way Serbs and Jews were. And in such a situation to be a Croat and live in relative comfort in comparison with the Serbs and the Jews and rise up in arms, here and especially in Croatian Dalmatia. Istria and the Croatian littoral weren’t only liberated through a declaration or a written decision by ZAVNOH but by Croatian arms of Dalmatian partisans who entered Rijeka and Istria. People who had everything to lose, who were Dalmatians, Croats, patriots, not antifascists at first but only freedom fighters. Simply fighters for their native soil, to be allowed to learn the Croatian language in Split and in parts that were occupied by Italy who were sold and surrendered, not to be terrorized”, President Milanović stated.
“The truth shouldn’t hurt, it cannot offend in any way. I’m glad that we’ve gathered here again on the eightieth anniversary. Croatia can be better, Croatia is an organized, stable state. There are people in Croatia, and not just a few, I think they’re not the majority, but there are people who don’t approve of Antifascist Struggle Day, who don’t want to celebrate it. But that’s how it is in a political system”, the President noted, and concluded with the words of Franjo Tuđman: “When Vlado Janjić Capo died in 1991, two days after the massacre of our men in Borovo Selo, Tuđman sent a telegram to the family of his late friend, his older comrade from Belgrade, and among others he wrote that his way and his example are an example of national, human and political respect. Let us remember this respect”, the Croatian President noted.
Also speaking at the Antifascist Struggle Day commemoration in addition to the President of the Republic were the president of the SABA Alliance of Antifascist fighters and Antifascists of Croatia Franjo Habulin, the envoy of the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament and Member of Parliament Krunoslav Katičić, and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia Andrej Plenković. Also attending the commemoration were former Croatian presidents Stjepan Mesić and Ivo Josipović, Sisak-Moslavina County Prefect Ivan Celjak, Mayor of the City of Sisak Kristina Ikić Baniček and the Mayor of the City of Zagreb Tomislav Tomašević.
Accompanying President Milanović at the Antifascist Struggle Day commemoration in Brezovica Memorial park were the Head of Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia Orsat Miljenić, the Chief of the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces Admiral Robert Hranj, the Adviser to the President of the Republic of Croatia for Human Rights and Civil Society Melita Mulić and the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces Major General Siniša Jurković.
PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Dario Andrišek