Vjekoslav Luburić

Vjekoslav Luburić in Ustaša uniform, awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class (portrait shot between 1941/45)

Listen to Vjekoslav Luburić ^{? / i} (* March 6, 1914 in Humac near Ljubuški , Bosnia-Herzegovina , † April 20, 1969 in Carcaixent , Valencia Province , Spain ), called Maks , was a general of the fascist Ustaše . As head of the Jasenovac concentration camp , he was nicknamed Mesar (The Butcher). In the exile publications of the post-war period that he edited, he called himself General Drinjanin (General von der Drina ).

Life

At the age of 12 he saw royal Yugoslav police officers kill his father. He had to leave the grammar school in Mostar prematurely because of his Croatian nationalist attitude. In 1931 he joined the Ustasha movement and lived in Hungary as a political emigrant from 1932 to 1941 .

Vjekoslav Luburić (behind) with an SS-Sturmbannführer in the Stara Gradiška concentration camp (June 1942).

After the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941, Luburić was appointed general and entrusted with the Drina region . In the same year, after the death of Mijo Babić , he took over the management of Department III of the Ustaška nadzorna služba , which was responsible for the Croatian concentration camps. From observers of the National Socialists he was described in official information because of his role in the Jasenovac concentration camp as an "extreme sadist " and as "insane".

After the end of the Second World War , it made its way illegally to Hungary and then to France . In 1957 Luburić married a wealthy Spanish woman; the marriage resulted in four children. From 1958 he lived under a false name in Spain, protected by the regime of General Franco . There he founded the right-wing Croatian emigre organization Hrvatski narodni otpor (Croatian People's Resistance) and was editor of the magazines Drina and Obrana (The Defense).

On April 20, 1969, Luburić was knocked down with an iron bar and murdered with stitches in the neck and face in the apartment in his house, where the magazines he edited were printed. Afterwards, his body was wrapped in a sack and pushed under his bed. The crime was discovered by an employee of the print shop below after blood had seeped through the ceiling. The alleged perpetrator was Ilija Stanić , an employee of Luburić and an agent of the Yugoslav secret service UDBA .

See also

• List of attacks on Croatian exiles (1945–1992)

literature

• Zdravko Dizdar: LUBURIĆ, Vjekoslav . In: Darko Stuparić (ed.): Tko je tko u NDH: Hrvatska 1941. – 1945 [Who is who in the NDH: Croatia 1941–1945] . Minerva, Zagreb 1997, p. 240-242 (Croatian).
• Hrvatska Enciklopedija , Volume 6, 2004

Web links

Commons : Vjekoslav Luburić  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• About the murder of Luburić and his organization in exile: money from the baron . In: DER SPIEGEL 19/1969
• The Croatian Jasenovac concentration camp on shoa.de
• Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See e.g. B. Front page of Ustavna i programska NAČELA HN OTPORA (Constitutional and programmatic guidelines of the Croatian People's Resistance).
2. ↑ Hans-Peter Rullmann : Murder Order from Belgrade: Documentation about the Belgrade murder machine . Ost-Dienst, Hamburg 1980, p. 29.
3. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 9: Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , p. 314.
4. ↑ Named after the river Drina , which was the eastern border of the area of ​​today's Bosnia and Herzegovina , which belonged to the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945.
5. ↑ Hans-Peter Rullmann: Murder Order from Belgrade: Documentation about the Belgrade murder machine . Ost-Dienst, Hamburg 1980, p. 30.