Address of the President of the Republic Zoran Milanović at the Antifascist Struggle Day commemoration in Brezovica Memorial Park
Dear friends, antifascists, dear Prime Minister, former Presidents or rather always presidents Mr. Mesić and Mr. Josipović, ladies and gentlemen,
“The truth is deep water and shouldn’t offend anyone, but it can hurt. However, our truth has nothing painful, it’s actually beautiful, difficult, bloody, but beautiful. So let’s start with some truths that won’t hurt or insult anyone because 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 day the Soviet Union was attacked. Those seventy-seven Sisak communists, revolution fighters, fighters for a better order, fighters for a revolution and for changes that if they don’t eat their children, they take a bite. Yes, all of them except Nada Dimić were Croats, they felt as such. However, they were first and foremost communists fighting for a revolution, a Soviet Croatia, not for democracy, for something that collapsed after 1945, in a rupture of light and society, something the Prime Minister talked about.
Second, Janko Bobetko, our famous Homeland War general was not here. His brothers Mijo and Dragan 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 other people. There was Mika Špiljak, Marijan Cvetković, Vlado Janjić Capo, famous commander, all Croats if that is significant. But to always divide and stress who was a Croat, who was a Jew, makes no sense, they didn’t think in those terms. They were people whose fate, constitution, impulses, can’t actually be understood by us today. They were heroes, heroes of calibre, but they were rough people as well, adventurers who often crossed the line and committed an injustice.
All of that is our history, our truth, it doesn’t offend, it shouldn’t even hurt. Today, I’m not here, or the dozen times I’ve come here as a citizen, as president of the SDP, as Prime Minister, to force my truth on anyone or give someone a task or send a message. I’m here only to point out certain things that put Croatia where it belongs, not on a map. Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro are present-day states, formerly members of a federation, prior to that part of a unitary kingdom, that have their day and with reason, with very good reason, the Antifascist Struggle Day, their day of uprising.
This wasn’t the first detachment in Europe, resistance movements existed in France and Czechoslovakia. In some states there was nothing, such as Belgium, Denmark, they waited for the end of the war, which is human and one can understand that. But here was a symbiosis of the antifascist struggle that occurred in Žabno, then here a month later, when they were surrounded by large Ustasha forces on 22nd July, after which they went to the Banija region to rise up in arms, together with our Serb brothers and sisters, to save humanity. This wasn’t an easy task because all these Croatian commissars, communists – I didn’t mention Šibl, Štrok, Joža Vlahović, Mate Jerković – are all national heroes, here or in the Kalnik detachment, they came to the people who suffered devastation or were killed as if someone went hunting without a licence for men, women, children, here, in the villages and towns of Banija and Kordun.
The church in Glina was not the first, the massacre of 350 people in Prekopa occurred two months earlier. The number of civilians killed was shocking already in early June, whether someone doesn’t like the numbers, or whether or not someone likes 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 they 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 carried that people’s uprising.
In Dalmatia where I was yesterday, another communist resistance was organized from the ranks of young, militant communists, members of the Split football club. Detachments were formed, they were organized by people on the side, individuals whose names mean nothing today, and I don’t see the need or the imperative to learn about that too much or force younger generations to learn those names: Pavle Pap Šiljo, a Jew from Zrenjanin, Mirko Kovačević, Spanish fighter, he’s a Serb, but was born in Russia. Therefore, they lived in a way that’s inconceivable to us today, maybe it’s better, because all the hatred and the fury that accumulated in the people at that time, in the nations and the citizens, are unimaginable.
From today’s perspective it is incomprehensible that in June 1941 the city of Sisak had seventy-seven communists who were willing to come to the Žabenska forest, then here, seventy-seven members of a secret terrorist organization according to the authorities went to prison and lost their lives just for being a member, after twenty years of persecution in a small city, town at that time, industrial city. Eighty people ready to do anything. The first two months they co-existed with the Ustasha authorities, a hot/cold relationship, in which indeed the Ustasha didn’t bother them because of the Hitler – Stalin Pact. There are all kinds of views on this pact, both right and wrong. That day when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, it is important to say, the communist head was not worth a dime. And that is also one of the reasons of the communists’ escape into the woods, into the Žabenska forest, and for a brief time here, after that to Banija and Kordun in that brilliant, credible, human and honest described methodology and scenario of Ivan Šibl immortalized in Antun Vrdoljak’s films, his best films “U gori raste zelen bor”, “Kad čuješ zvona”, that is just plain art and Croatian heritage. And that’s the truth and that truth doesn’t hurt, and it offends even less, that’s our truth.
Croatia wasn’t just on the side of the winners, Croatia was on the side of the truth and good. To always stress that we were winners and not losers is a risky look on life and destiny. That means that we could have lost. Had the Axis won the war, would our resistance have been any less worthy or the resistance of the republicans in Spain, three years of civil war in which many of those who were in the Sisak forest and the great commanders of World War II and Koča Popović and Izidor Štrok toughened themselves? Would or does this fact that the war was won by monarchists with the assistance of Hitler and Mussolini, the struggle of international brigades on the Ebro River be less valuable, less dignified? Are they losers because of this? No, they’re not. Those are brave people who sacrificed their lives, spent their youth to ultimately assemble in camps. Therefore, Croatia was not only on the winning side, 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, something that has no graphic form. Croats weren’t persecuted in the way Serbs and Jews were. Two days from today’s date, on 24th June, an internment camp was already established, an execution place in Jadovno, which was closed two months later, in which ten thousand people were killed, even if it’s five thousand mainly Serbs, civilians, Jews. And after that the concentration camp was closed. What’s odd about this? It took too much time for the uprising then. Those are incomprehensible things. What brains imagined these things? To be a Croat in such a situation and live in relative comfort in comparison with the Serbs and the Jews, and rise up in arms, here and especially in Croatian Dalmatia, all those detachments Split, Omiš, Trogir, Sinj, all those brigades, that Ninth Division of Vicko Krstulović and other heroes. With the exception of the Dalmatian Corps in which there were fifty thousand fighters.
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. Many of our grandfathers, maternal and paternal uncles, people who had everything to lose, who were Dalmatians, Croats, patriots, not antifascists at first but only freedom fighters. Not even communists, simply fighters for their native soil, to be allowed to learn the Croatian language in Split and in parts that were occupied by Italy that were sold and surrendered, not to be terrorized, not for their teachers such as Ćiro Gamulin, beloved music teacher of the male “Realschule” (secondary school) in Split, to be beat up by the Italian blackshirt authorities because he was telling his pupils that the Italian occupation is temporary. Those are the heroes of our cities, those are the heroes of our hearts, they don’t have streets named after them. Remember that name, Ćiro Gamulin, wasn’t a communist, he was a member of the Croatian nobility from Jelsa.
Therefore, once again 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. Nevertheless, the whole state leadership is here and all the former presidents came here, I as Prime Minister came here, the ministers of this government came her, all these years someone has come here. Therefore, this was never an ugly duckling, but now it’s perhaps more stressed, perhaps it shines in all its force and attractiveness. We will view history in different ways. 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. And our Constitution was written for one period in time, who knows what will happen in ten, twenty years’ time. We also heard messages from the ruling party of that time that the Croatian constitution should be amended, it didn’t pass. Therefore, the constitution is always the reflection of the will and the prevalence of the majority, a leadership, a nation, and a nation as a political community is actually boiling, seething and changing while we’re talking here.
Dear friends, dear residents of Sisak and all those who came here from faraway regions of our homeland, I won’t quote anything special here, except that I will conclude 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, which was published in history books, to the family of his late friend, his older comrade from Belgrade days, less from his Partisan days, 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. Thank you!