Using his ultranationalist terrorist group known as the Ustaše, Ante Pavelić orchestrated a horrific genocide of nearly one million ethnic Serbs, Jews, and Romani people. On October 9, 1934, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated in Marseille, France. The assassin was an agent of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) — but another group had been working behind the scenes to orchestrate hi death: the Ustaše, a Croatian ultra-nationalist regime led by an unhinged fascist named Ante Pavelić. After Axis forces conquered Croatia in 1941, Pavelić was installed as its poglavnik, or head. Pavelić, much like his contemporary and friend Adolf Hitler, was a violent anti-semite. In total, Pavelić helped orchestrate the murder of over 700,000 Jews, Romani, and Serbs during World War II. And his murderous reign only with the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, after which Pavelić fled to Austria and Italy where he hid under assumed names until his death in 1959. (…) The official slogan of the Ustaše regime in Croatia was, “Za Dom Spremni,” or “Ready for the Fatherland.” And although the state was technically independent, it was obvious to all that it was beholden to German and Italian demands. Pavelić, like his friend Hitler, was fiercely anti-semitic and openly espoused fascism. When he took charge of Croatia, Pavelić immediately instituted the ruthless persecution of minorities living in the country, primarily Serbians and Jews. In fact, while speaking to an Ustaše student group at the University of Zagreb, the nation’s capital, Pavelić declared that “all enemies, all Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, should be slaughtered.” According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Pavelić’s subservients arbitrarily arrested, deported, and killed thousands of innocent people, destroyed Serbian churches, forcibly converted Serbs to Catholicism, and exiled Serbs, Jews, and Romani while stealing their property. Pavelić established the Jasenovać concentration camp where he rounded up the “parasite” minorities and had the Ustaše and Croat authorities slaughter them. He was so ruthless that even the Nazis referred to him as “bestial.” In addition to being violently ultranationalist, the Ustaše regime was also strictly Roman Catholic. They tolerated Bosnian Muslims as their religion “kept the Croat bloodline pure,” and granted Jews who converted to Catholicism the status of “honorary Croats.” Those who didn’t convert, however, were rounded up and shot, strangled, or beaten to death. German spies who had been established to watch over Pavelić even wrote to German SS leader Heinrich Himmler of the Ustaše’s methods of violence, stating that they were equally torturous to “helpless old people, women, and children.” Pavelić’s men would reportedly gouge out children’s eyes and hack them to death with shovels. They would hang men upside-down, castrate them, then strangle them or allow them to be mauled by dogs. Altogether, the Ustaše were responsible for brutalizing and massacring over 200,000 Serbs, 30,000 Jews, and 29,000 Romani people in just one year between 1941 and 1942. Some estimates suggest they orchestrated over one million deaths, including 700,000 Serbs alone.
via allthatsinteresting: The Bloody Reign Of Ante Pavelić, The Croatian Dictator Who Was Too ‘Bestial’ Even For The Nazis
Von Autor/-in unbekannt – <a rel=”nofollow” class=”external text” href=”https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/53077/6ed927f16dc8a0d51b0e7c30326e3a4f/”>NAC</a>, Gemeinfrei, Link