Croatians Putting Their Own Spin On Nazi History

CROATIA IS PLAYING UP its struggles and rewriting textbooks to try to erase the fascist role it took during World War II.

ZAGREB, Croatia - From a cozy wood-paneled corner by the beer taps, Croatia's World War II fascist leader peers sternly across a popular old-town pub.

Ante Pavelic headed a Nazi puppet state that murdered hundreds of thousands of people, but the yellowed newspaper photograph showing him in uniform is proudly displayed at Bela's - and not only there.

Pavelic portraits have also been spotted in army barracks and store windows. School textbooks portray the wartime state not as a willing participant in atrocities but as a Croatian entity struggling for nationhood.

"There is a very obvious attempt to reinterpret Croatian history," said Zarko Puhovski, a member of the independent Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.

President Franjo Tudjman has set the ambivalent tone. During World War II, he fought with the anti-fascist partisans, rising to the rank of general in the army of the old Communist Yugoslavia. But in his drive to win independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, he invoked the wartime era when Croatia stood alone and ceaselessly criticized subsequent Serb domination of the Yugoslav federation.

He is driven by the idea that he can reconcile contradictory elements of his country's past in the new Croatia. His idea to turn Croatia's largest World War II death camp in Jasenovac into a memorial for all victims of fascism, communism and the 1991 Serb-Croat war has come under sharp criticism from Croatia's Jewish community and the United States.

Several months ago, Tudjman acknowledged that the Croatian fascists, known as Ustasha, or insurgents, were responsible for some "wrongdoing," but said they deserved praise for creating an independent state after centuries of domination by foreign powers - even if it was under the thumb of Nazi Germany.

In April, in response to foreign criticism, Tudjman adviser Hrvoje Sarinic sought to highlight the role of anti-fascists during World War II. State television has begun commemorating the fascists' victims.

But Tudjman's camp has yet to clearly condemn the crimes committed by Pavelic and other wartime leaders - and there is precious little pressure at home to do so.

The Ustasha ran 28 death camps during its 1941-45 reign.

Most of their hundreds of thousands of victims were Serbs, but Jews, Gypsies and Croat political opponents also were tortured and killed.

While few Croatians are active neo-fascists and support for right-wing extremist parties declined in last month's elections, Puhovski said, most Croatians don't mind the image forged in the Second World War.

Croats like Darko Belusic, the owner of Bela's, aren't prepared to jettison Pavelic.

For them, he is a symbol of the one previous era in recent history when Croatia was independent. Croatia had been incorporated into the Austrian empire in 1527, and it became part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, which was established after World War I.

"People were happy in the Independent State of Croatia to be rid of Serb domination," Belusic said. "The Nazis were friends of Croatia."

The 1991 war against Serb-led Yugoslavia gave fresh impetus to fascist rhetoric and symbols. Their appeal endures, two years after Croatian troops drove out most of the rebel Serbs.

Some Croats who have doubts about the past prefer to keep mum. In a period of secession and civil war, they risked being branded traitors.

The symbols and personalities of the fascist state have thus become part of Croatia's political fabric. Last month, a right extremist party held rallies with Nazi salutes to mark the anniversary of the fascist state's founding.

A Roman Catholic priest, Vjekoslav Lasic, celebrated Mass on the anniversary of Pavelic's death last December, and later said Croatia's fuhrer rests in heaven.

In April, when residents gathered at Zagreb's former Square of Victims of Fascism demanding the name be restored, Lasic led youths singing Ustasha songs and branding the residents communists.

The Croatian Helsinki Committee reported that Tudjman's own Croatian Democratic Union, or HDZ, played fascist songs at a rally featuring top government and army officials.

Meanwhile, thousands of memorials to Yugoslav communist partisans, who defeated Nazi occupiers and the Ustashas in World War II, have been vandalized, Puhovski said.

While the old communist Yugoslavia is vilified as anti-Croat, aging Ustasha members have been welcome.

Vinko Sakic, a former Jasenovac commander living in exile in Argentina, visited an HDZ rally in 1995, according to the Helsinki Committee.

He told a Croatian magazine that the fascist state was the bedrock of today's nation. The government did not dissent.