Stolac.info - The one and only

THE DEATH of Franjo Tudjman, the president of Croatia, reported recently in
the Sentinel, was probably unnoticed by most of your readers. In spite of the
presence of many Croatian Americans in Santa Cruz County-particularly in the
Watsonville area and Croatia’s involvement in the Balkans war, most Santa Cruzans
and probably most Americans would be hard-pressed to find Croatia on the map.

But Franjo Tudjman should be remembered.

I first came upon his legacy when I was assigned by the United Nations to
be the International Police Task Force commander in Stolac, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Stolac, which lies in southern Herzegovina, is, or I should say was, one of
the most significant historical sights in Herzegovina. It contained an eclectic
blend of architecture which included a medieval fortress, several mosques, Serbian
Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, the Radimlja gravestones, a bathhouse,
art museums, libraries and many historical homes. It had once been considered
for , preservation by UNESCO as a world heritage site like its neighbor to the
south Dubrovnik Although I had been briefed about the condition of the city,I
was completely unprepared for what I saw.

Stolac in 1997, when I`arrived, had been 75 percent destroyed during the war
Most buildings were gutted, their roofs collapsed and their contents gone. There
are no mosques left in Stolac. The main mosque located in the city center is
now an empty lot. It had been mined, then its remains removed stone by stone.
The same fate was suffered by virtually every building that could be connected
to the Ot toman period. The literary and art collections housed in the city’s
museums were burned. Virtually every house that had been occupied by a Muslim
family was destroyed and its contents looted. The Muslim Majotity~ population
suffered a similar fate. From a pre-war population of nearly 6,000 there remained
only two families. Many would believe that the destruction death; internment
and theft was perpetrated by the Serbs in their efforts to cleanse the Balkans
of every non-Serb they could find. But the truth is that the once beautiful
city of Stolac and its unfortunate Muslim residents were the victims of the
Croatian-sponsored army of “Herceg-Bosna.”

Though never indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague,
Franjo Tudjman is widely believed to be responsible for the destruction and
ethnic cleansing of most of Muslim Herzegovina. Many members of his administration
have been indicted, but Croatia has been slow to turn them over to international
authorities. Tudjman himself was a virulent racist and anti-Semite. Although
he fought with’ Tito’s partisans:against both the Nazis and their Croatian puppet
Ante Pavelic, he later became an apologist for the Pavelic regime. Pavelic was
responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Jews and Serbs at his death camp in Jasenovac.
But Tudjman. in his ongoing effort to re-write history in a pro-Croatian way.
puts the number, of Jasenovac victims at just 59,639, in spite of the fact that
the Nazis themselves were so shocked by the numbers and methods of killing at
Jasenovac that they raised a protest with the Pavelic government. In 1989 he
wrote in his book, “Impasses of Historical Reality” that.the number of
Jews killed by the Nazis during.World War II was only one million and that the
Jews in the concentration camps “retained their bad characteristics -selfishness,
perfidy, meanness, slyness and treachery.” In 1992 he apologiezed to B’na’i
Brith for the “misinterpretations”‘ of his book and promised that in subsequent
editions those references would be deleted. How ever, he later stated publicly
that he was happy that his wife was neither a Serb nor a Jew.

While it may sound un-Christian, I am glad that Franjo Tudjman is neither
alive nor kicking.

I lived with a Croatian family while working in Stolac and spent many off-duty
days traveling throughout Croatia. As a result of my travels and experiences
with the Croatians, I can understand now how it was possible for my father’s
generation to reconcile their abhorrence for the Nazis and the fascists in Italy
and Japan with their affection for those countries and their people. I hope
the democratic and free Croatia that Thudjman helped found can find it in itself
to seek peace and reconciliation with its neighbors and the world. Steven Smith
is a Scotts Valley resident.

– by Steven A. Smith