I must be honest, this documentary is absolutely disgusting to watch. And yet, it is essential to a better understanding of not only Nazism in the Balkans but also of how the Catholic Church is continuing its Inquisition against infidels. Seizing the window presented by WWII, the Church made an alliance with the Ustashe regime of Croatia to be in a position to torture and murder thousands of Orthodox Serbs. According to an estimate, 700.000 to 800.000 Serbs were killed in Croatia by the Nazi Ustashe, along with Jews and Gypsies. For the Church, it was a golden « opportunity » not to be missed, as the demarcation line between the Catholic world of the West and the Orthodox world of the East lies in the Balkans. Through mass extermination and aided by Hitler, the Church could push forward the demarcation line. Somewhere around 244.000 Serbs converted or were converted to Catholicism. Nazi Croatians perpetrated during the fews years of the Ustashe regime absolutely awful atrocities that disgusted even the German Nazis. We are talking about here of mass murder of children, rape, gauging out of eyes, cutting ears, tongues and nozes off, beheading, dismembering, death pits, torture…in short, all things that were seen during the Inquisition. Concentration camps were used thoroughly as well.
The leader of the Ustashe regime was Ante Pavelic. Because of the enthousiastic collaboration of the Church, he was able to use Catholic monasteries, namely Franciscan, as warehouses and strongholds. Pavelic could count on the good services and « faith » of Archbishop Stepinac. Currently, during the war, Croatian citizens were told by Ustashe regime and Church representatives to literally « kill all the Serbs ». It was done thoroughly along with the killing of Orthodox priests and destruction of churches. The documentary recalls that on the occasion of a visit to Rome, representatives of the Ustashe regime brought with them, to be presented to the Pope, a basket which contained some 40 pounds of human eyes…that probably belonged previously to Serbs. The Ustashe regime was so brutal and sadistic that some among the German hierarchy felt uneasy and frankly disgusted, as Dr Herman Neubacher who asked Hitler to get rid of Ante Pavelic. When the Ustashe regime fell and the National Liberation Army took control of Croatia, some of the top Ustashe officials found refuge in monasteries, such as St Jerome, or in South America, in Argentina for example, through the ratlines provided by the Vatican. There they could continue their existence under new names and identities. On May 5th 1945, Ante Pavelic escaped and found refuge in the Monastery of St Diogene near Salzburg, before moving to Rome in another monastery to live under the name of Father Gomez or Father Benares. Ironically, Tito, a Croatian Catholic, became the ruler of Yougoslavia, so Croats in the end became the victors of WWII in the Balkans. Sad but true.