Extracted from the Antifascist Info-Bulletin.

                 ** Topic: Croatia and Nazism **
     ** Written  5:15 AM  Mar 27, 1996 by peg:guardian in
                         cdp:p.news **
          From: the guardian 
 
                       Croatia and Nazism
 
(The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper
of the Socialist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday,
March 27th, 1996. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry
Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Fax: 612 281 5795. Email:
  Subscription rates on request)
 
                              -----
 
by Rob Gowland
 
Croatia's descent into open Nazism continues apace under the
clerical-fascist government of President Franjo Tudjman.
 
The latter's latest effort involves a plan to disinter the bodies
of former Ustashi in various parts of the country and rebury them
at the Serbian and Jewish concentration camp memorial at
Jasenovac.
 
"The Washington Post" said of Tudjman's outrageous scheme:
"Exhumation of the earthly remains of Croat Fascists from other
places and their burial in Jasenovac will make this plateau the
only place in Europe where victims of the concentration camps are
resting side by side with the soldiers who were persecuting and
killing them."
 
In Tudjman's twisted logic of course, the defeated Ustashi are
"victims" of Tito's partisans, and the inclusion of the Croat
Quisling troops among those buried at Jasenovac is being promoted
as a step towards "national reconciliation".
 
The Serbian Orthodox Church in the Croation capital Zagreb has
published an open letter to Tudjman posing the question: "How
would the world react if someone were to propose that, in the
name of all-German reconciliation, memorial monuments be erected
to Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and other SS officials in the
concentration camps of Dachau, Mathausen and Bergen-Belsen?"
 
The Church letter appeals to democratic opinion throughout the
world to prevent such a desecration of the innocent Jasenovac
victims.
 
The article from "The Washington Post" referred to above included
a quote from a Western diplomat stationed in Zagreb who drew the
obvious conclusion: "Tudjman has transformed Croatia into another
Paraguay."
 
Tudjman recently warned Croatians that the opposition were
"uniting their ranks" in order to overthrow his government. To do
so, however, they will need to have a better grasp of the
situation than the Democratic Croat General Alliance (DEHOS), a
petty-bourgeois opposition group active among Croats living in
Germany and Austria.
 
In an open letter in February, DEHOS labelled Tudjman's movement
a "Fascist-Bolshevik concoction with Sicilian Mafia
inclinations"! (An ambit claim, you might say.)
 
                              -----
 
And in Prague.....
 
Not far away, in another country carved from a larger former
socialist one, the Supreme State Prosecutor's office in the Czech
Republic is investigating a cultural event in the town of
Prostejov organised to celebrate International Women's Day (IWD).
Complaints were made by right-wingers that the event violated the
1992 Anti-Communist Law, under which it is illegal to "propagate
communism" or "foment class hatred".
 
Among those under investigation is the Czech actress Jirina
Svorcova, who recited poems by Josef Kainar, Jiri Wolker and
Jacques Prevert. Organised by the local district committee of the
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), the event also
included the singing of Czech songs.
 
The government of the "playwright president" and darling of the
Western media, Vaclav Havel, has scrubbed IWD from the Czech
calendar, replacing it with the much more capitalist-friendly
Mother's Day.
 
Since the advent of Havel's counter-revolutionary government, the
number of women in the Czech parliament fell from over 30 per
cent under socialism to less than ten per cent in 1992.
 
The percentage of women entering higher education has fallen to
44 per cent and there has been a big increase in the number of
women working in the home.
 
The chairperson of the KSCM called the criminal proceedings
against the organisers of the Prostejov IWD function "yet another
violation of human rights in the Czech Republic".
 
He cited also the ending of the constitutionally guaranteed
rights to a free education and free health care and the denial of
employment to people on political grounds under the Lustration
Act.
 
Despite the best efforts of the right-wing, however, the KSCM,
according to "Postmark Praha", "has emerged from four rounds of
national and local elections since 1989 as the second strongest
party".
 
 
                              *****
 

From: slavonac@primenet.com
>FUEHRER-EX
>
>Memoirs of a Former NeoNazi
>
>INGO HASSELBACH
>WITH TOM REISS
>
>Chatto & Windus, London
>
>Copyright @) 1996 by Ingo Hasselbach
>
>Ingo Hasselbach has asserted his right under the Copyright,
>Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author
>of this work.
>
>First published in Great Britain in 1996 by
>Chatto & Windus Limited
>Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
>London SW1V 2SA
>
>Random House Australia (Pty) Limited
>20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney
>New South Wales 2061, Australia
>
>Random House New Zealand Limited
>18 Poland Road, Glenfield
>Auckland 10, New Zealand
>Random House South Africa (Pty) Limited
>PO Box 337, Bergvlei, South Africa
>Random House UK Limited Reg No. 954009
>
>FuhrerEx grew from:
>Die Abrechnung: Ein Neonazi steigt aus
>by Ingo Hasselbach and Winfried Bonengel
>published in Germany in 1993 by AufbauVerlag GmbH
>
>A CIP catalogue record for this book
>is available from the British Library
>
>ISBN 0 7011 6536 7
>
>Printed and bound in Great Britain by
>Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent
>
>Pages 207-9:
>
>IN THE SPRING of 1991, the civil war in Croatia began. The Movement saw it
>as the perfect chance to give those who wanted it real experience killing
>people. Moreover, there was a historical tie: during World War II Nazi
>Germany had played an active role in Yugoslav ethnic politics; the Nazis
>had supported a puppet dictatorship in Croatia, the Ustashe, that had built
>concentration camps in which mostly Serbs but also Jews were killed.
>
>The current government in Croatia was reviving the tradition of the Ustashe
>and in many other ways honoring the former Fascists. Units of the Croatian
>Army were flying swastika flags, and many more were flying the old Croatian
>Fascist symbol. Croatia had become the first European government since
>World War II to openly embrace these symbols. Meanwhile, the Serbs were
>instituting policies of "ethnic cleansing" and racial warfare. It was a
>neoNazi dream come true.
>
>All of the West German neo-Nazis saw it as a wonderful opportunity, but
>Nero Reisz, the barking antiSemite from Hesse, was particularly pleased.
>The problem for him was that there weren't enough Jews being killed. But
>Serbs would do.
>
>A system was set up whereby potential recruits for Croatia were first
>trained in paramilitary camps in Germany, then passed on to middlemen who
>were responsible for arranging their transport, clothing, and food on the
>way to the front.
>
>The way it worked was first through a wordofmouth network. We had to be
>careful about doing any advertising because hiring mercenaries was strictly
>illegal in the Federal Republic. It was simply known in the scene that you
>could go to Croatia, if fighting was your trip, and that in Berlin I was
>one of the contacts. The other main contact people in Berlin were Arnulf
>Priem and Oliver Schweigert. Once we'd checked out recruits to make sure
>they weren't spies, we took them to a paramilitary camp to get tested and
>trained. We were mainly interested in whether they were physically fit to
>go down there. Mental fitness didn't interest us much.
>
>I knew one guy from the GDR who'd been loosely involved in the Movement for
>about a year and then went down to Croatia because it was a chance to kill
>Communists, i.e., the Serbs. He wasn't even much of a neoNazi, really. He
>simply hated the Stasi, who'd tortured him in jail, and was half crazy to
>get some revenge on anyone for his suffering. He had shoulderlength hair,
>like a hippie, and hardly any sense of purpose at all. He just wanted a
>chance to kill Communists, and he got it in Croatia. In a documentary some
>television team made at the front, he was interviewed and he talked about
>how many Serbs he'd killed and how much he'd learned about weapons. Less
>than a year later, he was killed himself.
>
>But the more sane and careful ones came back after a few months or a year
>with valuable training in weapons and explosives. They'd of course also
>learned what it was like to kill people. (Many stayed down there, living in
>the hills, constantly involved in skirmishes no one ever heard about, and
>are only now coming back into Germany and Austria and forming the basis of
>the most militant and dangerous neoNazi cells.)
>
>The effort to organize young German neoNazis and send them to Croatia to
>fight and kill for the Ustashe-as the SS had once done- was organized
>largely by the Movement representatives in Hesse, Bavaria, and-for
>logistical reasons, as it was directly on the border with
>Yugoslavia-Austria. The main man in charge in Germany was Nero Reisz. He
>organized transport and took care that everyone got uniforms and weapons.
>Then Michel Faci and his righthand man, Nikolas, organized most of the
>Croatian neoNazi units, training both young Croatians and Germans who'd
>come down for the ride. Faci trained Croatians as young as ten years old to
>kill "Communists" while teaching them the basics of Nazism. With his
>childish antics, he is good at making murder seem like a game.
>
>The neoNazis mostly fought independently from other units, as a
>legionnaire corps. But they received arms and ammunition, even tanks, from
>the Croatians. From what I heard from men who came back, they fought
>against Serbs but also against Bosnian Muslims, even though the Muslims had
>been in the SS during World War II. They simply fought against whomever
>they could get an excuse to kill. They kept track of how many Serbs they
>killed and tried to collect perbody pay from the Croatians, but they
>actually got hardly anything, apart from invaluable experience.
>
>I NEVER WENT down there. Personally, I wouldn't have gone to Croatia for
>anything in the world. I saw no reason to risk my neck for another nation.
>I was only interested in the potential of getting battlehardened recruits
>back from the front. The actual fight in Yugoslavia didn't interest me.
>
>So I organized paramilitary camps and helped provide training 5 tested the
>recruits with the help of a few sympathetic people from the Bundeswehr.
>There was a lot of physical training-jogging, crawling, scaling. Recruits
>learned how to use firearms and how to dismantle, clean, and reassemble
>them. There was explosives training and practice in throwing grenades and
>using bazookas. We modeled our course on Bundeswehr training exercises and
>what we could piece together about the old Waffen SS training with the help
>of training manuals and the memories of our retired SS supporters. But the
>basic source for our training was the West German Federal Army.
>
>_______________________________________________________________________________
>