Počasni Bleiburški vod

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The Bleiburg Ehrenzug or in Croatian Počasni Bleiburški vod , PBV for short , is an association that has set itself the goal of maintaining and caring for the memory of the Croatian victims of the Bleiburg massacre . The association has its seat in Austrian Klagenfurt and a branch office in the Croatian capital Zagreb . He is the initiator of the Croatian memorial on the Loibacher Feld and organizer of the commemorative events taking place there.

The association was founded unofficially, secretly and despite the prohibition of anti-communist exile associations in 1951 and was under observation by the Yugoslav secret service . He saw the PBV as part of the "Croatian hostile emigration", by which religious, cultural, social and political organizations of anti-communist Croats were meant. In 1953 the PBV was registered and approved as an association.

The documentation archive of the Austrian resistance describes this non-governmental organization as a “right-wing extremist association with a strong revisionist or historical tendency” and indicates the high number of neo-Nazis at its annual events on the Loibacher Feld in Bleiburg. The Catholic Church in Carinthia, on the other hand, advocated the commemoration of the Croatian traditional association Bleiburger Ehrenzug on Loibacher Feld until 2018 as part of a memorial for the dead .

history

The memorial stone erected by the PBV for the victims of Bleiburg on the Loibacher Feld in Bleiburg (2005).

The PBV was founded in secret in 1951 by Croatian exiles in a refugee camp in Klagenfurt. Ante Mikrut , Nikola Martinović and Franjo Vranjković were among the founders . Since 1952, Croatians from all over Europe and overseas have been attending the annual commemoration celebrations organized by the PBV at the memorial on Loibacher Feld in Bleiburg ( Austria ). In 1957 the PBV erected a memorial stone in a military cemetery near Völkermarkt for the Croatian General Tomislav Rolf , who took his own life instead of surrendering in 1945. At the end of 1965, members of the PBV bought a 2,016 m² plot of land on the Loibacher Feld and held there every year commemorations for the Croatian victims. With the consent of the Austrian authorities, the PBV erected a memorial stone there from 1985 to 1987 for the victims of the Bleiburg massacre. The memorial was renewed and expanded from November 2004 and today consists of a roofed altar, the central memorial stone in the middle of tall spruce trees and another memorial plaque. The PBV erected further memorial stones on Ulrichsberg , in St. Veit and Bad Eisenkappel .

Communist Yugoslavia viewed the commemorative events, which were only three kilometers from the state border, as a provocation, because the dead of the massacre were commemorated there and because the symbols of an independent Croatia, which were strictly forbidden in Yugoslavia at the time, were openly displayed. The PBV and the annual commemoration event for the Croatian victims were targeted by the Yugoslav secret service. This was followed by several bomb attacks against anti-communist rallies and on February 17, 1975 the murder ("passivation") of 65-year-old Nikola Martinović, PBV co-founder and main organizer of the Croatian graves and memorials in Austria. The murder of Martinović, who lives in Klagenfurt, by the communist Tito regime shows how explosive the subject of the Bleiburg victims was for the Yugoslav regime.

After the collapse of Yugoslavia , the Croatian Parliament became the patron of the annual PBV commemoration ceremonies, at which the Croatian Parliament President or his deputy and government representatives were all present. Prime Ministers Ivica Račan and Ivo Sanader personally visited the memorial and laid wreaths. Presidents Franjo Tuđman and Stjepan Mesić sent representatives or wreaths. Official representatives of the Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina also take part in the commemorative events. Representatives of the Catholic Church in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina hold masses . Prayers are said by representatives of the Islamic Community of the Republic of Croatia ; in 2005 personally by the Croatian Grand Mufti Ševko Omerbašić .

In 2019, the administrator of the diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt , Engelbert Guggenberger , refused to approve the celebration of the Mass after crimes and convictions of Ustaša sympathizers in 2018 . The General Secretary of the Croatian Bishops' Conference , Petar Palić , asked his Austrian counterpart Christoph Schönborn to lift the ban. The fair also applies to civilian victims.

Personalities

In 2007, Zlatko Hasanbegović became chairman of the supervisory board of the PBV, later leaving this position to Vice Vukojević , but remained deputy chairman of the PBV until the beginning of 2016.

See also

swell

  • Florian Thomas Rulitz: The UDBA terror against Croatian political emigration (Bleiburger Ehrenzug) in Austrian Carinthia . In: Jože Dežman, Hanzi Filipič (ed.): Hot traces of the Cold War: The border between Slovenia and Carinthia in the years 1945 to 1991 . Hermagoras Verlag, Klagenfurt / Celovec 2013, p. 97–99 ( mohorjeva.at - exhibition catalog).
  • Hans-Peter Rullmann: Murder order from Belgrade: Documentation about the Belgrade murder machine . Ost-Dienst, Hamburg 1980, p. 1 .
  • Florian Thomas Rulitz: The tragedy of Bleiburg and Viktring: Partisan violence in Carinthia using the example of the anti-communist refugees in May 1945 . Hermagoras Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-7086-0616-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Florian Thomas Rulitz: The tragedy of Bleiburg and Viktring: Partisan violence in Carinthia using the example of the anti-communist refugees in May 1945 . Extended and revised 2nd edition. Mohorjeva Hermagoras, Klagenfurt 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0655-2 , Terror against the anti-communist grave and memory maintenance - Martinović, the last victim of the Bleiburg tragedy, p. 308 f .
  2. ^ Pål Kolstø: Bleiburg: The Creation of a National Martyrology . In: Europe-Asia Studies . Vol. 62, No. 7 , September 2010, p. 1159 .
  3. ↑ "Here we are allowed to do everything except for the Nazi greeting". In: derStandard.at. May 17, 2016, accessed December 21, 2017 .
  4. ↑ https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20170511_OTS0146/dioezese-opfergedenken-in-bleiburg-nicht-instrumentalisiertKatholische
  5. ↑ Bože Vukušić: Bleiburg Memento: fotomonografija . Zagreb 2005, p. 9 .
  6. ^ Bože Vukušić: Bleiburg Memento . Zagreb 2005, p. 8th f .
  7. ↑ Kleindenkmaeler.at: Croatian memorial on the Loibacher field. Retrieved November 4, 2017 .
  8. ^ Reports of the work program of the State Security Service (inventory AS 1931, TE 2232) from 1975.
  9. ↑ Peter Stachel: Review of: Rulitz, Florian Thomas: Die Tragödie von Bleiburg and Viktring. Partisan violence in Carinthia using the example of anti-communist refugees in May 1945. Klagenfurt 2011, in: H-Soz-Kult (communication and specialist information for the historical sciences), November 14, 2013.
  10. ^ Croatian bishop hopes to commemorate Bleiburg. ORF from March 11, 2019
  11. ↑ 7Dnevno , May 29, 2013
  12. ↑ Tportal , February 8, 2016
  13. ↑ Tportal , May 4, 2016