THE VIEW OF CROATIA IN THE WEST
 

By John Peter Kraljic

Published in Croatian Chronicle 22 March 2005

"Are Croatian leaders really
that thick that they can not see the importance in
forcefully engaging their resources to turn these
perceptions around?"

Should we really be surprised by Croatia’s miserable
failure in getting the members of the European Union
to see Croatia’s side of things with respect to
General Gotovina and the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia?
Unfortunately, we should not be, and the reason, in my
opinion, is a simple one. Despite years (actually,
more than a decade and a half) of advocacy by Croatian
Americans and Croatians in other countries, the
various governments which have ruled Croatia since
independence have chosen to focus practically all of
their diplomatic efforts in the corridors of various
foreign ministries. Such a focus may have worked in
the 19th century, but in today’s age when mass
circulation newspapers and magazines, hundreds of
television channels, countless think-tanks and the
internet have been the earmarks of the “Information
Age,” diplomacy requires much more effort than
engaging in discussions with ambassadors and envoys.
As we have seen most recently with respect to the
United States and its on-going efforts to re-shape the
Middle East, public diplomacy has become a major
feature of foreign policy efforts. No longer does the
US solely revolve its work in other countries around
the diplomatic corps. It has invested major resources
in this work. It cannot be expected that such efforts
will yield immediate results. It takes a lot of time
and energy to convince people that your point of view
is the right one.
Croatia’s work in this regard has been close to nil.
Unfortunately, the problem stems from what appears to
be the continued aversion by the Croatian governmental
elite to engage in these kinds of activities.
Croatia’s officials rarely are pro-active in this
regard. We have seen this clearly in the past few
weeks when, despite the plethora of negative publicity
which has appeared in the Western press concerning
Croatia’s supposed failure to cooperate with the ICTY,
we did not see any reactions published in the
English-language media coming from Croatian officials.
Is it really that difficult, or that “beneath them,”
to write a letter to the editor or an opinion piece?
Another disheartening problem appears to be complete
ignorance. At a meeting I attended in November 2001
with President Mesic and then Foreign Minister Picula,
I forcefully made the point that public relations was
an important component to Croatia’s success in gaining
entry into Euro-Atlantic institutions. I specifically
pointed out that many of America’s leading newspapers,
magazines and officials believe that the Croatian flag
is an Ustashe flag, a belief stemming from Greater
Serbian propaganda in the 1990s.
Mesic’s then foreign policy advisor, Tomislav JakĹĄic,
completely denigrated my point, noting that Mesic had
met with President Bush that morning and would
certainly not have allowed the Croatian flag to be
displayed if he believed it to be an Ustashe one.
When I pointed out that nevertheless such newspapers
as The New York Times have routinely made such an
assertion, JakĹĄic stated that The New York Times was
“just one newspaper.”
Obviously, such a response from anyone who knew
anything about America could only be termed idiotic.
That it came from a person who had the ear of the
Croatian President made it distressing.
As far as I am aware, the only public relations that
Croatia has engaged in over the past few years in
relation to joining the EU or NATO has been to produce
one CD-rom.
Croatia is paying dearly for this lack of foresight.
In a recent issue, for example, The Economist, a
leading British magazine, wrote that General Gotovina
had been indicted for his role in Croatia’s “war
against the Serbs” in 1995. What was widely
recognized as a legitimate military action against
terrorists armed and supported by MiloĹĄevic has now
been turned on its head as an ethnic war waged by
Croatia.
Other publications have implicitly praised Serbia for
the recent surrender of relatively minor war crimes
suspects while noting Croatia’s failure concerning
General Gotovina. Such articles took no account of
what Croatia has done for the ICTY in the past few
years. General Gotovina himself has been made a
whipping boy of the press, on par with Mladic and
KaradĹžic, even though the latter two have been charged
with genocide while General Gotovina’s charge solely
relates to his command responsibility during Operation
Oluja (Storm) when 150 Serb civilians were allegedly
killed.
If Croatia has a public relations campaign, it can be
summarized in two words: tourism and sports.
Croatia’s successes with its tourist industry and the
continuing success of its athletes have certainly
generated nice publicity.
But such news stories cannot compensate for the
Croatian government’s failure to promote its own views
about issues critical to Croatia. As we can see from
the few examples cited above, Croatia is allowing
those who do not necessarily have Croatia’s best
interests at heart in writing and presenting stories
about Croatia to the Western elite. The Western elite
reads these publications and often makes its decisions
based on such readings. Are Croatian leaders really
that thick that they can not see the importance in
forcefully engaging their resources to turn these
perceptions around?
 

Going Far for Someone Close

By John Kelly
Friday, April 8, 2005; Page C09

More coincidences that will have you humming "It's a Small World After All":

A few years ago, Dave Nelson was touring Great Britain with his family. After they'd checked into an Edinburgh bed-and-breakfast late one night, the landlord said, "I have another family here from the States. I'll have to introduce you in the morning."

He did just that over a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, sliced tomatoes, toast and marmalade. The other couple stood up and introduced themselves.

"Where in the States are you from?" the woman asked.

"Virginia," Dave said.

"My goodness!" the woman exclaimed. "So are we. Where in Virginia?"

"Charlottesville," Dave answered.

"Gracious!" the woman replied. "So are we! Where do you live in Charlottesville?"

"Dairy Road," Dave responded.

"Oh, good grief!" the woman gasped. "So do we!"

According to Dave, Dairy Road is a short street just north of the University of Virginia Rotunda.

"It has about two dozen houses. Our neighbors lived some eight houses north of us. On the same side of the street, even. We had never seen them before; nor did we ever see them again, for they moved out of their house -- a rental unit -- before we could bump into them a second time."

Dave says that everyone was shocked by this encounter. Everyone but the landlord: "Britons tend to think that if you live in, say, Charlottesville, you must know their cousins in St. Louis. For our Edinburgh B&B proprietor, it seemed, this encounter between Dairy Road residents was par for the course."

From Edinburgh, Scotland, to Zagreb, Croatia, where Anita Guberovic grew up: A boy named Mario lived in the block of buildings opposite her. The two went to elementary school together but after that were dispatched to different high schools. She often wondered what had become of him.

Years later, Anita was in Venice during Carnival.

"As much as I enjoyed the trip and the Venetian costumes, it turned out to be a very trying experience," Anita said. It seemed as if the entire world was crammed in the city's narrow streets. Getting around was hard and finding a restroom even harder. After searching for hours, Anita finally found a small restaurant that took mercy on tourists, letting people in to use the facilities even if they weren't customers.


"As usual, the line in front of the ladies' room was considerably longer," Anita said. So she headed straight to the men's bathroom. She pulled on the door, but it was occupied. After a few moments the door opened and out walked her long-lost neighbor and classmate, Mario.

"You can imagine my surprise that someone whose living room I could see through the kitchen window of my building . . . I would meet again in the super crowded streets of Venice swarming with people from all countries of the world."

Fairfax's Tina Mancuso said her father was "a typical deadbeat dad." She was 9 when her parents divorced, and he skipped out not long after that. "I saw him once in 1984, when I was 13," she said, "and then I never heard a word from him for the rest of my teenage years."

In 1993, she moved from New Jersey to Newark, Del., to live with her then-boyfriend.

"One day I noticed that a carnival had set up about a mile from our apartment," she said.

Tina and her boyfriend drove to the carnival, and while waiting to get on a ride she saw a familiar-looking man working at one of the game booths. She thought it might be her father but couldn't be sure; it had been nine years since she'd seen him last.

She approached the booth, but the man there gave no sign of recognition, even after she'd handed over some money and tried her luck. Tina and her boyfriend walked a safe distance away and tried to figure out what to do.

"I mean, how do you go up to a guy and ask him if he's your father?" Tina said. "I was about ready to turn away when my boyfriend said, 'Look, if you go up to him and it's not your father, you'll be a little embarrassed, but at least you'll know. But if you don't go up to him, you'll always wonder.'"

In the meantime, another carnival worker had taken his place, and the man Tina thought might be her father was walking away.

"Not knowing what else to do, I followed him to a small concession area, where he sat down at a picnic table. I took a deep breath, walked over, and said, 'Hi, you look like someone I used to know. Is your name Bob Mancuso?' He nodded and asked who I was.

" 'I'm Tina -- your daughter.' "

He jumped up and hugged her, as amazed as she was.

Reunited, the father and the daughter kept in touch. He sent letters and cards and called occasionally. And that's how Tina learned the following summer that he was going into the hospital for triple-bypass surgery. He didn't survive.

"Had I not met him at the carnival that day, I would probably never have seen him again or even known when he died," Tina said.

Tina said she hated moving to Delaware almost as soon as she got there. "But in the long run, I was very glad I did it. This was one of the most amazing coincidences I've ever seen in my life."

Join me at 1 p.m. today for my online chat. Go towww.washingtonpost.com/liveonline .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35725-2005Apr7.html

_____Children's Campaign_____

• Washington Post columnist John Kelly is raising money for the Children's National Medical Center, one of the nation's leading pediatric hospitals. You may make a tax-deductible contribution online anytime between Nov. 29th and Jan. 21st. Thank you for your support.
 

Croatian Salsa, Cuban Ska, and Oregonian Mambo
 

Croatian Salsa, Cuban Ska, and Oregonian Mambo!? These are Three of the Unlikely Gems Listeners Will Find on the New Afro-Latin Party CD

Op-ed

BRAVO Cubismo. You made it and you have our support.

Nenad Bach

CD Release Date: April 2005

Putumayo’s Afro-Latin Party Ricochets from Cuba to Africa…and Beyond

New York, NY--(HISPANIC PR WIRE)--April 7, 2005--Central to the Afro-Latin phenomenon is Africando, who provide three songs on Afro-Latin Party, each with a different African lead singer. In the 1960s and 1970s, the biggest names in African music were performing Latin music, thanks to vinyl that came over from abroad.

It is not surprising to find Nuyorican JosĂŠ Mangual Jr. on the collection. His song, “Ritmo con AchĂŠ,” celebrates the African roots in Latino culture. Nor is it a shock to hear Chico Ă?lvarez on the set. He sings “CĂłgele el Gusto,” a song made popular by Celia Cruz in the early 1960s. It was also one of the earliest tracks to use the word salsa to describe Afro-Cuban dance music.

Things get interesting when Ska Cubano’s “Babalu” rings through the sound system. With old school Cuban players and a young, stylish ska singer from South London, this band is sure to make waves as Americans hear more from them in the future.

Cubismo—whose presence on this album confirms the global reach of Afro-Latin music—is not only Croatia’s best salsa band, they pride themselves on being able to compete with the hottest groups out of New York or Havana.

Portland, Oregon’s Pepe and the Bottle Blondes deck themselves out with an updated 1950s kitsch mambo delivery.“CuĂŠntame Que Te PasĂł”. Also Congo-born Ricardo Lemvo, who is equally at home singing in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Lingala, and Kikongo. The CD is rounded out with a salsified Martinique classic performed by Martinique-born, Paris-based zouk Ronald Rubinel.

Even with all the geographic and era crisscrossing on the album, at its core Afro-Latin Party is still a dance record beckoning party-goers to traverse the planet while they navigate the dance-floor.

In the past 11 years, Putumayo World Music has become known primarily for its upbeat and melodic compilations of great international music characterized by the company's motto: "guaranteed to make you feel good!" Putumayo is available in over 3,000 retail locations in the U.S. and over 60 countries worldwide.

For more information visit http://www.putumayo.com 

http://www.hispanicprwire.com/news_in.php?id=3993&cha=7
 

Strict Protocol Will be Followed to Elect New Pope
 

By VOA News
02 April 2005

Pope John Paul II
Following the death of a pope, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church meet in a session known as a conclave to elect a successor.

The conclave, derived from a Latin word meaning locked together, must begin between 15 and 20 days following a pope's death.

The tradition of isolating the cardinals developed following a nearly three-year deadlock over a papal election in the 13th century. Church members, tired of waiting, locked the cardinals in a palace and removed the roof, forcing a quick election.

During the conclave, the 117 eligible cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel to vote four times a day, twice each in the morning and evening. Every time there is no winner, an official burns the ballots with a special chemical to produce black smoke that rises from a chimney above the chapel.

When the cardinals succeed, only the ballots are burned, sending white smoke rising from the chimney and signaling to the world that the 1.1 billion-member Roman Catholic Church has a new pontiff.

A senior cardinal then steps out onto the central balcony in front of Saint Peter's Basilica and announces in Latin to thousands of the faithful assembled in the square below - "habemus papam," or we have a pope.

The new pontiff then steps out in his papal robes and gives the city and the world his first blessing.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-04-02-voa35.cfm

Pope John Paul II, spiritual leader of Roman Catholic Church, dies

BY DAVID O'REILLY
Posted on Sat, Apr. 02, 2005
Knight Ridder Newspapers

(KRT) - Pope John Paul II, 84, spiritual leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics for a quarter of a century, died Saturday.

Firmly conservative in matters of morality and theology, yet passionately progressive on behalf of the poor, immigrants and world peace, John Paul was an uncompromising moral voice and a giant on the world stage.

Even as ill health visibly overtook him, he carried his message around the world - slowed, but never stopped, by bullets, a tumor, a broken hip, arthritis, Parkinson's disease and advancing age.

As he took on such controversial topics as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, communist oppression and capitalist greed, John Paul found himself allied with differing factions of the secular world. But it was the issues that varied, not his stance: All his positions were grounded in his unwavering belief in the worth and dignity of every human life.

The pontiff's failing health had become an acute public concern in recent years as he grew visibly weaker and struggled at times to walk and speak.

Yet images of John Paul in his prime, stepping off airplanes, kissing the ground of each new nation he visited, or stretching his arms out to cheering crowds in cities as diverse as Manila, Dublin, Sao Paolo and Philadelphia are an indelible part of his legacy.

In 103 pontifical journeys around the globe, including four official visits to the United States, John Paul earned a reputation as the most evangelical pope in the 2,000-year history of Christianity.

He also declared a record 476 people to be saints of the Catholic Church, including Philadelphia's St. Katharine Drexel, foundress of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, in 2000.

The intense national pride John Paul's 1979 visit aroused in his native Poland is credited with hastening the collapse of communism there and across Eastern Europe. He reached out to other faiths: He paid the first papal visit to a synagogue, concelebrated the first papal Mass with an Orthodox patriarch, and promoted reconciliation between the Roman Catholic Church and major Protestant and Orthodox denominations.

At the same time, however, he challenged trends of the secular world. From the very start of his papacy he warned that a pleasure-seeking, materialistic "culture of death" was eroding Western European and North American cultures, as evidenced by their embracing of extramarital sex, birth control, drugs, abortion, euthanasia and divorce.

He also suppressed liberal dissent within the church, once dismissed Buddhism as an "atheistic" religion, irked the Orthodox Church by seeking a larger Catholic presence in postcommunist Russia, steadfastly opposed the ordination of women, and proposed in a 1995 encyclical that all denominations recognize the pope as supreme bishop of Christianity.

In the final stage of John Paul's pontificate, the church in the United States was rocked by scandal involving sexual abuse by priests and complaints that the Vatican had done too little to address the problem. In June 2002, the Holy See approved an unprecedented set of rules spelling out how American bishops should respond to cases of clergy sex abuse.

Many Catholics in Western Europe and North America chose to disregard his strict moral teachings, especially on matters of sexuality.

Because of his firm stances, John Paul II leaves behind a Roman Catholic Church far more assertive on faith and morals than the institution he inherited. His clarity "strengthened the foundations" of the church for the next century, according to Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, Philadelphia's retired archbishop.

Agree with him or disagree, John Paul was impossible to ignore.

"When you do the reckoning of the 20th century, his will be one of the top five or 10 names, along with the likes of Gandhi and Roosevelt and Churchill," said Martin Marty, a prominent Protestant lecturer and historian of Christianity.

Whether the church continues along the path that John Paul pointed it, or embarks in new directions depends on the 135 elector cardinals now preparing to converge on Rome.

Their first order of business will be papal funeral. Then, in about two weeks, the cardinals will gather under Michelangelo's great ceiling mural in the Sistine Chapel, where they will begin casting ballots for John Paul's successor in a manner little changed in nearly 1,000 years.

And they will announce the result just as John Paul's was announced 25 years ago.

On Oct. 16, 1978, at 6:18 p.m., puffs of white smoke erupted from a chimney atop the Sistine Chapel.

Far below, in St. Peter's Square, 200,000 people cheered as Cardinal Pericle Felici of the College of Cardinals, appeared at a balcony. "Habemus Papam!" he declared in Latin - "We have a pope!"

The crowd roared once more.

Then Felici announced the new pope's identity: "Cardinale Karolum Wojtyla."

The roaring paused.

"Voy-teeya?" That wasn't Italian. The crowd stood dumbfounded until someone recognized the name. "Il Polacco!" a voice cried. "The Pole!"

The words zigzagged through the crowd like lightning, and then turned into a cacophony as all grasped their stunning implication: The archbishop of Krakow had been named the first non-Italian pope in 455 years."

As the crowd cheered, the 58-year-old Pope stepped to the balcony.

"I was afraid to receive this nomination," he said, "but I did it in the spirit of obedience to Our Lord and in the total confidence in His mother, the most holy Madonna."

In the square and around the world, millions listened and wondered: Who IS this Cardinal Karol Wojtyla?

Journalists scrambled for details: The new pope was 5-foot-10 and weighed 175 pounds. He did not smoke. He drank wine with meals and liked to ski, kayak and climb mountains.

He was fluent in French, English, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Latin and German, and wrote his own speeches longhand.

During World War II he had done factory labor, and he had dated before entering the priesthood. There was even talk (never confirmed) that he had once been engaged. He was a playwright, a poet, a philosopher and an accomplished actor.

What these charming details failed to convey, however, was the iron that Karol Wojtyla was made of - iron forged by his experiences as a seminarian, priest, bishop, archbishop and cardinal in occupied Poland.

Persecuted first by the Nazis during World War II and by a communist government afterward, the Polish church had responded with toughness. Demanding rigorous obedience from its members, the Catholic hierarchy renounced the material atheism of communism and distanced itself from the Kremlin-backed government for its repressions, executions and abuse.

Within that confrontational context no one within the Polish church - clergy or laity - dared to challenge the authority of the prelates.

And this model of the Polish church as an unyielding bulwark against secular materialism would serve as Karol Wojtyla's model for the worldwide Catholic Church.

About 15 years before he became pope, for example, he led the opposition when the reform-minded Second Vatican Council considered adopting a new vision of the church as a "community of equals" in which laity, clergy and hierarchy seek consensus. The archbishop of Krakow dismissed the "community of equals" model, arguing persuasively that in "a perfect society" the laity take direction from the clergy, the clergy from the prelates, and the prelates from the pope.

That vision of the church as a hierarchically disciplined moral voice would become the hallmark of his papacy.

It was not a universally popular position. French theologian Marie-Dominique Chenu, one of the architects of Vatican II, grumbled that John Paul harked back to the "prototype of the church as an absolute monarchy."

And Chicago sociologist William McReady described John Paul as a "peasant intellectual" who "understands the life of a peasant, but he doesn't understand urbanized, pluralistic societies."

George Weigel, John Paul's official biographer, scoffs at such glib characterizations.

"To read the pontificate of Pope John Paul through the political lens of `liberalism' and `conservatism' is to miss the radical character of the Pope's approach to the papacy," Weigel wrote in 1995.

The pontiff's "distinctively contemporary enunciation of Christian dogma, and his bold departures in papal diplomacy ... will reshape Catholicism's world role well into the third millennium of Christian history."

"Strip away the caricatures," Weigel declared, and history will judge John Paul II a "Christian radical" deserving of the title "Pope John Paul the Great."

Karol Jozef Wojtyla Jr. was born on May 18, 1920, in Wadowice, Poland, 30 miles outside Krakow.

His family's modest home was religious, even by the devoutly Catholic standards of rural Poland. Biographer Tad Szulc wrote that the apartment had a font of holy water at the front door and a small altar in the parlor; Karol Wojtyla Sr. and his wife, Emilia Kaczorowska Wojtyla, read to their two sons from the Bible in the evenings.

Emilia Wojtyla was sickly, and began suffering an undiagnosed paralysis when Karol - nicknamed "Lolek" - was about 5. She died when he was 8. His older brother, Edmund, a physician, died in a scarlet-fever epidemic when Karol was 12.

That left Karol alone with his father, a reserved and devout man who was a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army. After Edmund's death, his father quit the army and lived on a meager pension, close to poverty.

Despite its modest size and rural setting, Wadowice was an intellectual center boasting three public libraries, two theaters, and well-regarded secondary schools. About a fourth of Wadowice's 7,000 residents were Jewish.

Young Karol excelled at the local boys' school, where, starting at age 10, he took eight years of Latin and five years of Greek, and participated in dramatics and athletics. He sometimes played goalie for the Jewish soccer team - an unusual gesture in those days.

During adolescence he professed no interest in joining the priesthood, but he was something of a straight arrow, according to Szulc, who reports that his school chums avoided using coarse language in his presence. At age 16, he organized a youth group that pledged to go a year without using tobacco or alcohol.

He graduated first in his class of 44, and in 1938 enrolled on full scholarship in Jagiellonian University, a Catholic college in Krakow. There he studied literature, acted in student dramas, and participated in poetry readings.

And he might have become an actor or playwright except that his life - and all life in Poland - turned upside down when Hitler's army invaded the nation in September 1939.

"The nobility, priesthood, and Jews must be liquidated," declared Reinhard Heydrich, who had been appointed Nazi governor of the region. The cathedral and seminary were closed at the end of October. A month later, Jagiellonian University was closed; 186 professors were deported to concentration camps.

Wojtyla was sent to do hard labor in a stone quarry. Later, he was assigned to a chemical factory.

It was during these turbulent times that Wojtyla encountered the ardently spiritual Jan Tyranowski, a gruff, self-educated Krakow tailor who lectured passionately about mysticism and spoke of his own experiences of divine presence. The two became close friends, and Wojtyla would later credit Tyranowski for helping to turn him to religious life.

That move began in earnest after his father's sudden death from a heart attack in February 1941. Karol was 21. "I never felt so alone," he said years later.

Tyranowski's company and fervent spirituality filled that void, and in the months that followed "I gradually became aware of my true path," he told a group of seminarians two decades later.

"My priestly vocation took shape ... like an inner fact of unquestionable and absolute clarity. The following year, in the autumn, I knew that I was called."

He presented himself to a Carmelite monastery in November 1942, only to be turned away. The monastery was not accepting candidates during the war, the Rev. Josef Prus told him.

There is a legend that Prus declined with the prophetic words "Ad majora natus es" - "You are born for higher things." But Szulc, who interviewed the pontiff in 1994, reported that Prus simply encouraged him to reapply "after the war."

Wojtyla did not wait, instead presenting himself to Krakow's archbishop, Adam Stefan Sapieha, for seminary training. Soon he began to study for the priesthood in secret locations around the city.

After the great Warsaw uprising of Aug. 1, 1944, the Nazis rounded up 8,000 young men in Krakow but failed to discover Wojtyla, who was kneeling at prayer in the basement of his boarding house. Afterward, Archbishop Sapieha concealed Wojtyla and six other seminarians in his residence. In November of that year, Wojtyla took tonsure, the symbolic haircutting that marked his formal entry into religious life.

By the time Soviet troops liberated Poland from the Germans in January 1945, the Nazis had exterminated - along with three million Polish Jews and three million other Poles - 2,000 members of the country's Catholic clergy.

The Soviet occupiers proved slightly more tolerant of religion than the Nazis had been. The cathedral reopened and Archbishop Sapieha ordained Father Wojtyla on Nov. 1, 1946. Eager to rebuild the church intellectually, the archbishop sent this promising young priest to the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Thomas Aquinas, known as the Angelicum, in Rome.

That the archbishop's young protege was "destined for higher things" today is self-evident.

In 1946, however, neither the old archbishop nor the 26-year-old priest could have imagined just how high or fast he would soar. Father Wojtyla would become bishop at 38, archbishop at 44, cardinal at 47, and supreme pontiff of the world's largest religious denomination at 58 - the youngest pope in 132 years.

Like most Christian denominations, the Roman Catholic Church in the 1940s was untroubled by today's fractious debates over sexual morality or the authority of the hierarchy. Most Catholics - and virtually all in the Catholic clergy - shared the 19th-century English Cardinal John Henry Newman's view of the Roman church as "God's oracle." While in Rome, Father Wojtyla studied under the eminent French Dominican Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, an uncompromising traditionalist - he is said to have disdained telephones as too modern - who reinforced the young priest's conservatism.

For his doctoral dissertation, Father Wojtyla chose to study the 16th-century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross, a favorite of his old friend Tyranowski's. Although enchanted by John's luminous advice for those seeking union with the divine (it was John who coined the phrase "dark night of the soul"), Father Wojtyla's dissertation faulted John for failing to posit an objective basis for morality.

Father Wojtyla's critique offers an early example of the future pope's lifelong insistence that certain acts are morally wrong for all humans, regardless of culture or tradition.

Upon his return to Poland, he was assigned to a parish but continued his academic career. In 1951, Sapieha - by now a cardinal - urged him to earn a second doctorate so that he could become a university teacher.

This time his thesis was on the 20th-century German philosopher Max Scheler, who believed that just as the mind can intuitively recognize certain mathematical truths, it can intuitively recognize certain moral truths, such as the categorical evil of murder.

Such a view appealed to Father Wojtyla, who, as a professor of ethics, later as a prelate, and ultimately in the role of moral arbiter for one-sixth of the world's population, would decry moral relativism, insisting there were knowable moral truths binding on all human beings.

In 1957, Father Wojtyla was named a professor of ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin. In 1958, he was consecrated auxiliary bishop of Krakow. After Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak's death in 1962, he was named vicar capitular in charge of the archdiocese - a post he held until becoming archbishop two years later.

The year 1962 also marked the start of Vatican II. During the three years of that council, the young prelate began to shape one of the most controversial church teachings of this century: that the use of artificial contraception is a grave sin.

In a series of lectures in Krakow, he argued that contraception closes sexual intercourse to the divine creation of life, and degrades women by turning them into sex objects.

His views profoundly influenced Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical, "Humanae Vitae," which declared artificial birth control a mortal sin.

Paul had presented Archbishop Wojtyla with the red cap of a cardinal on May 29, 1967.

Also elevated that day was Wojtyla's good friend John Krol, archbishop of Philadelphia, who in later years took special pride that his gold, cross-shaped cardinal's ring matched that of the Pope.

Cardinal Wojtyla made two trips to the United States. The first, in 1969, included his first helicopter trip - a flight with Cardinal Krol from Philadelphia to Doylestown's Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa. He returned in 1976 for the International Eucharistic Congress at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul on Logan Circle.

By then he was an intimate of Pope Paul, who had assigned him to direct three of the Holy See's most prestigious congregations, approximately equivalent to cabinet-level departments.

His growing reputation as a "papabile" - a contender in the discreet competition to be the next pontiff - was enhanced in 1976 when he was invited to the Vatican to deliver a series of Lenten lectures before Pope Paul and the papal household.

Paul even encouraged him to deliver the lectures in Italian, not Latin, to show the other cardinals how well he fit in.

"We are in a lively battle for the dignity of man," Cardinal Wojtyla declared. Secular society was promoting self-indulgence, he said, and pressuring the church's hierarchy to relax its traditional moral norms.

But the church and pope are called upon to contradict such trends, Cardinal Wojtyla insisted: "It is the task of the church, of the Holy See, of all pastors to fight on the side of man - often against men themselves!"

His words may have been an exhortation to the aged and ailing Paul. Intellectual, progressive, and anxious to implement the reforms of Vatican II, Paul provided hesitant and uncertain leadership for the church at a time when the West was going through a cultural revolution.

European and American students were in the vanguard of change. Many laughed at taboos against premarital sex, experimented with drugs, demonstrated against their governments. Some urged armed revolt. In Latin America, priests and nuns preached "liberation theology" and made public stands against totalitarian regimes.

Cardinal Wojtyla was clearly prepared to take on the unruly forces of the era - and the Lenten lectures might have been a way of informing other cardinals what kind of pope he could be if elected.

When Paul VI died on Aug. 6, 1978, the cardinals chose the progressive, intellectual Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice, Italy, who took the name John Paul I. Only 33 days into his papacy, the church was stunned by John Paul I's death of apparent heart failure. The College of Cardinals had to convene once again.

This time, on the eighth ballot, the cardinals elected Karol Wojtyla.

As the first Slavic pontiff in church history, he briefly considered taking the papal name Stanislas, after the patron saint of Poland. Instead, however, he chose to honor the 45 Italian popes who came before him, specifically his three immediate predecessors: John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul. He became John Paul II.

He declined coronation, opting instead for the less formal ceremony of installation at a pontifical Mass. He was installed as the 263rd Bishop of Rome in ceremonies in St. Peter's Square on Oct. 22, 1978.

The new pontiff would not be content to play chief bureaucrat of Vatican City, as so many of his predecessors had.

Instead, he would be pope to the world: an evangelist who traveled the globe proclaiming the "indelible truth" of the church's teachings.

"The church needed direction" in the late 1970s, according to retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, a leading church liberal, and the cardinals were looking for "somebody energetic, somebody who could make decisions, somebody who would bring a little more discipline in the ranks." They found that commanding leader in John Paul II.

From the first, he called on bishops to adhere to church teachings and discipline. He admonished clergy members not to get involved in politics, reminded them of their obligations of chastity, and insisted they wear their habits in public "to remind you of your commitment, which sharply contrasts with the spirit of the world."

On his first papal trip outside Rome, to Assisi on Nov. 5, he told the cheering crowds that the church "speaks with my voice."

Then, when Cardinal Jean Villot, the Vatican's secretary of state, asked the new pontiff if he might allow the national bishops' conferences to elect a permanent synod to serve as a papal cabinet, John Paul declined. "The Pope will remain supreme and sole legislator," he replied.

He wasted no time in staking out his position. In his first year as pope, he revitalized the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the Vatican's watchdog panel on dogma - which began cracking down on Catholic theologians who deviated too far from church teachings.

In the most celebrated case, the Congregation in 1979 barred the Rev. Hans Kung - a liberal Dutch professor who had challenged the notion of papal infallibility - from teaching at pontifical Catholic universities.

"The present Pope suppresses problems instead of solving them," Kung complained, and he instantly became a martyr in the eyes of liberal Catholic intellectuals. But theologians who valued their jobs took it as a warning to toe the Vatican line, at least in public.

John Paul used his first papal trip abroad, to Central America in January 1979, to make it plain he disapproved of "liberation theology," the belief that the church had a moral obligation to engage politically in the struggle for economic and political justice for the poor. The Marxist-tinged dogma had particular appeal among clergy opposed to the right-wing (and at least nominally Catholic) dictatorships of Latin America.

John Paul was unambiguously opposed. "The church cannot approve of this idea of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary," he declared.

Yet only months later, the Pope himself would help launch a revolution.

On June 2, 1979, over the strenuous objections of the Kremlin and the communist leadership in Poland, Karol Wojtyla returned to his homeland as pontiff.

It was the eve of Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Spirit. A million Poles greeted him in Warsaw's Victory Square, where a giant cross had been erected. He celebrated Mass and, at the close of his homily, spoke words that lit a fire in the hearts of his countrymen:

"Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful, and renew the face of the Earth," he said, adding with a sweeping gesture, "of THIS Earth." He used the Polish word "ziemen," meaning "land" or "country - and told them again and again, "Be not afraid!"

What might sound like a trifling difference in emphasis to English-speakers was a cry of defiance that every Pole recognized. "He was beseeching the Holy Spirit to liberate Poland," observed British journalist Peter Hebblethwaite.

The communist government was not amused. The cross in Victory Square was dismantled before nightfall, but the Polish people seemed never again to be so cowed. Within a year, thousands of workers defied the government by staging massive strikes and creating a trade union, Solidarity.

As the Solidarity movement grew in strength, it had strong backing within the Vatican and the U.S. government. The support was probably not unconnected. In their 1996 biography, "His Holiness, journalists Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi wrote that "the Reagan administration maintained an intelligence shuttle at the highest level between the White House and the Pope," with Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia serving as "intermediary between the White House, Poland, and the Vatican."

When, in 1989, Poles broke the communist monopoly on power by electing a Solidarity Party government, John Paul II was given significant credit for hastening the triumph.

"The tree was rotten," he would say. "All I did was shake it."

This former actor and playwright knew the power of theater. His celebrated foreign visits became dramatically staged affairs designed to thrill the faithful and affirm papal primacy.

Upon his arrival at an airport, he would kiss the ground of each new nation he visited. Government leaders - often visibly awed - would greet him. Local cardinals, archbishops and bishops, in chasubles and miters, would follow him in entourage as he visited shrines, cathedrals and seminaries, and concelebrate Mass with him. It became customary for the diocesan bishop to publicly proclaim at length his devotion and obedience.

In October 1979, he made his first papal visit to the United States.

Of the six cities he visited, one was Philadelphia, the archdiocese of his old friend Cardinal Krol. It was a spectacular event. Thousands of people lined his route from the airport. As sun broke through a day of clouds, a crowd that police estimated at one million saw him celebrate Mass outdoors, before a shining white altar in Logan Circle.

The homily he delivered that day - after an introduction that honored Philadelphia as the birthplace of U.S. independence and a cradle of liberty and freedom - highlighted themes he was rapidly defining as hallmarks of his papacy:

"Human-Christian values," he said, "are strengthened when power and authority are exercised in full respect for all the fundamental rights of the human person, whose dignity is the dignity of one created in the image and likeness of God. ...

"Freedom can ... never be construed without relation to the truth as revealed by Jesus Christ and proposed by His church, nor can it be seen as a pretext for moral anarchy. ...

"Divine law is the sole standard of human liberty."

He spoke in English, as he spoke in the local language to so many foreign audiences. The spectacle was exhilarating. The Pope, not yet 60, was commanding; the crowds were rapt.

The U.S. visit, which included an address to the United Nations, was just one trip in a jam-packed schedule of work, travel - and, indeed, exuberant fun. The athleticism and vigor of this young pontiff were unlike anything modern Vatican-watchers had seen. "How many popes since St. Peter have skied?" he would ask with a grin, and then glide down the slopes in his parka as photographers scampered to keep up.

The answer? One.

The Polish toast "Stolat" "_ "May you live 100 years" - sometimes seemed in his case a prediction.

But on May 13, 1981, a Turk, Mehmet Ali Agca, shot John Paul twice in St. Peter's Square, nearly ending his vibrant papacy in its 31st month. One of the bullets struck his hand. The other went through his torso, barely missing his heart, and ripped into his intestine. Doctors feared fatal peritonitis, but his recovery was swift.

There was dark talk that Agca had been in the pay of the Bulgarian secret police and that the assassination plot had been masterminded by the Soviet KGB, though no convincing evidence has ever emerged.

Although he never knew for sure who wanted him dead, the Pope never doubted who saved his life: He forever gave credit to the "special protection" of the Blessed Virgin Mary. "One hand fired," he said later, "and another hand guided the bullet."

He eventually had the bullet removed from his body set into the crown of Mary at the Portuguese shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, and donated the bloodied sash to the Polish shrine of Our Lady of Jasna Gora.

He wore a bulletproof vest after the shooting, and henceforth toured the crowds in a bulletproof "Popemobile." But he often left its window open - evidence, perhaps, of his surrender to divine will.

Who could have blamed John Paul if he afterward had shuttered himself within the Vatican's garden walls, as his predecessors had done for a century?

Instead, after the assassination attempt, he seemed to loom larger than ever. With breathtaking vigor, he resumed his evangelism, his assertion of papal authority, and his clarification of moral teaching. The 1980s became his decade.

Within the church, he continued to dominate the hierarchy, appointing like-minded conservatives to important offices and quelling liberal dissent. Inside and outside the Vatican walls he continued to fight communism, a battle that culminated in the collapse of Kremlin rule in Eastern Europe in 1989.

As years went by, he was perhaps most famous in the secular Western world for his uncompromising stance on issues of marriage, sex and sexuality. He never deviated from the church's traditional teachings on sex and marriage - but he repeated them with an emphasis that had not been heard since before the days of Vatican II.

He believed it was contrary to God's law for anyone - Catholic or otherwise - to engage in birth control, abortion, homosexuality, in-vitro fertilization, masturbation, artificial insemination or sterilization. Intercourse between married partners, with no barrier to pregnancy and childbirth, was the only permissible sexual act in his eyes.

"I don't think there was any uncertainty regarding what the teaching of the church was before the election of John Paul II," said Archbishop John Patrick Foley, a prelate of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia who heads the Vatican's communications office.

"I think there was uncertainty on the part of many in "perceiving what the teachings of the Church was. ... I think the Holy Father has made it clear where the limits are."

His teachings earned him a reputation as a stern moralizer, especially in North America and Western Europe. But those close to him understood that his moral certitude emanated from a deep spirituality: Since his early friendship with Jan Tyranowski, a powerful vein of mysticism had run through his faith.

Aides told of finding him lying on the marble floor of his chapel, his arms stretched in the shape of a cross, groaning at prayer. Sometimes, in the middle of a meeting, he would suddenly close his eyes in silent prayer - not as if he chose to pray, but as if prayer somehow took possession of him.

Armed by this inner religiosity, he stood firmly behind the church's traditional bans on remarriage after divorce. He rejected all talk of allowing priests to marry. And he adamantly opposed the ordination of women.

In his sixth encyclical, the 1987 "Redemptoris Mater (Mother of the Redeemer)", he wrote at length of Mary's special status in the church. His assertion that only the male apostles, not Mary, were instructed to spread the faith - and that women are, therefore, excluded from the priesthood - stirred one of the principal controversies of his pontificate.

He affirmed the ban again in a 1994 pastoral letter, "Sacerdotalis Ordinatio," in which he declared: "Christ chose only men as his Apostles, and the Church has imitated Christ in its constant practice of choosing only men.

"I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that all the faithful are definitively bound by this judgment."

That assertion, and the Vatican's attempt to thwart a U.N. initiative on population control in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994, provoked so much outcry that he took pains to explain that he indeed endorsed education and careers for women.

"Women have a full right to become actively involved in all areas of public life," he declared in a 1995 letter to the United Nations. But, he noted, "equality of dignity does not mean `sameness with men.'

"It is necessary to counter the misconception that the role of motherhood is oppressive to women, that a commitment to her family, particularly to her children, prevents a woman from reaching personal fulfillment. ..."

Some observers have speculated that his devotion to motherhood, and to Christ's mother, sprang from the death of his own mother when he was 8. Still, his views of women were received coolly by most feminists.

"John Paul always sees women in their biological dimension; either as mothers or as virgins who must follow the model of the Madonna," complained Ida Magli, an Italian anthropologist.

"It's always the way they relate to their body: Either they make children or they abstain from sexual intercourse. Wojtyla never sees women as persons in the same way he sees a male as a person. I think that deep in his heart he fears the rebellion of women."

John Paul's dealings with other religions also stirred public emotions. In 1986, he became the first pontiff ever to visit a Jewish synagogue, the ancient Synagogue of Rome. In 1994, he ignored his own secretary of state and established full diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the government of Israel. In January 2002, the Vatican published a document that said Christians should respect the Jewish belief that the Messiah has not yet come.

But there were many areas of strong disagreement with Jewish leaders. In 1987 and 1988, he received former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, then the president of Austria, despite widely credited allegations that Waldheim had ordered the roundup of Jews in his native Austria during World War II. In 1994 John Paul quietly conferred on Waldheim a papal knighthood, though by that time the Austrian was something of an international pariah. The Pope never explained his reasons publicly.

Jews also complained about his handling of a decade-long controversy over the presence of a cross and convent outside the site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp. Eventually, the Pope ordered the convent to move.

And in 1989, he angered Jews when he remarked that "the history of the Old Testament shows many instances of Israel's infidelity to God," who sent prophets to "call them to conversion, to warn them of their hardness of heart, and to foretell a new covenant still to come."

Although he never addressed the alleged failure of Pope Pius XII to publicly denounce - and possibly thwart - the Nazi Holocaust, the pontiff apologized in a special Year 2000 Mass of Forgiveness "for the sins committed ... against the people of the Covenant" and later prayed at the Holocaust Memorial and the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

In 1994, he offended Buddhists in his popular book, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," in which he called Buddhism an "atheistic system" - in other words, not a religion. When Buddhist leaders around the world protested, and those in Sri Lanka threatened to boycott the pontiff's forthcoming visit, the Vatican issued an apology.

No one ever accused him of failing to speak his mind. The complexity of his teachings made it impossible to categorize him simply as a conservative or a liberal.

He was a lifelong opponent of communism, for example, which did not stop him from finding fault with its opposite. He cautioned repeatedly against the materialism, hedonism and exploitation that are the dark side of capitalism. In 1991, two years after the Berlin Wall fell, he issued an encyclical warning against a "radical capitalistic ideology" and calling for a capitalism that cared less about profits and consumer goods and more about its responsibilities to the poor.

"Western countries ... run the risk of seeing this collapse as a one-sided victory of their own economic system, and thereby failing to make necessary corrections in that system," the Pope wrote in "Centesimus Annus."

These were themes he echoed in his visit to the United States in 1995. In his homilies and speeches, he reminded audiences that the power and wealth that many Americans enjoy carry with them "heavy responsibilities."

"Use it well, America!" he exhorted a crowd of 50,000 in Baltimore. "Be an example of justice and civic virtue, freedom fulfilled in goodness, at home and abroad! ... Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like but in having the right to do what we ought."

His voice was strong, but the extraordinary energy he had expended throughout his pontificate and the physical assaults he had suffered seemed to have taken their toll. After undergoing surgery to remove a benign intestinal tumor in 1992, and breaking his thigh in 1994, he slowed what had been a superhuman pace.

A persistent hand tremor and slurred speech raised questions about whether he was suffering a neurological disorder such as Parkinson's disease.

Steely beneath his infirmities, John Paul continued to travel and hold public audiences. Though more and more public tasks were delegated to his assistants, he was determined to carry on rather than resign.

© 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/11296214.htm

John Paul II died peacefully today

Pope John Paul II: 1920-2005
A look at the life and legacy of the pope
By TONY KARON

Saturday, Apr. 02, 2005
John Paul II died peacefully today, after a protracted illness that had sapped his physical strength but never quenched the evangelical fire within him that burned as brightly in his final days as when he first assumed the papacy almost 27 years ago. In his quarter-century in the Vatican, John Paul II made himself synonymous with the papacy in the minds of many of the faithful— dramatically redefining the role with his relentless evangelizing energy and reinvigorating the Catholic Church. He also played a critical role as moral arbiter in the wider world events of his time.

While most of his predecessors rarely ventured beyond the walls of the Holy See, John Paul II took the Catholic Church out on the road, ministering every year to millions of the faithful ecstatic at his presence. Those travels, more than anything, may have helped him energize and grow the Church in Africa, Latin America and Asia even as it struggled to retain its flock in the industrialized West.

The former Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla was elevated to the papacy in 1978, at a time when the Church was engaged in an internal debate over how to interpret the doctrinal changes adopted the previous decade in the process known as Vatican II. He steadfastly held the line against those in the European and North American clergy and laity who saw in Vatican II an opening to democratize the Church and emphasize the primacy of individual conscience — or at least help them to reconcile their opposition to Church edicts on issues such as birth control and divorce. Under John Paul II, even discussion over the ordination of women priests was impermissible, and liberal critics charged that under his watch the Church failed to rise adequately to the challenge of AIDS.

But to most of the Catholic faithful worldwide, John Paul II was venerated not simply for his evangelism and his interventions in the political world, but as a contemporary Catholic philosopher without peer, capable, at times, of immense forgiveness (such as the forgiveness of his would-be assassin) and driven by an evangelical passion recalling the great wanderings of the Apostle Paul. In his witness they see the latter-day equivalent of an Old Testament prophet, standing as a bulwark and beacon against those aspects of Western culture deemed both ungodly and death-oriented.

In the world outside the Catholic Church, John Paul II is best remembered for his epic role in helping bring down Polish communism at the same time as ensuring a soft landing for the society it had scoured. His epic “Fear not!” injunction to Polish Catholics symbolized the importance of the Church in providing the moral center that emboldened them to peacefully and yet forcefully challenge the reign of the regime imposed by Moscow — and in the process it established the model for the civil society revolutions across Eastern Europe that dismantled most of the Soviet empire with scarcely a shot being fired.

But inside the Church his own rule will be remembered as nothing if not authoritarian. John Paul II reasserted, and even amplified the doctrine of "Papal infallibility," and beatified its author, Pope Pius IX. Under the rubric of "collegiality" — and its assumption of a diversity of views — John Paul II quickly made clear that he was less interested in hearing from his bishops than in overseeing their enforcement of Church (and papal) doctrine. The world's Catholic bishops are traditionally called to Rome for consultations every five years, and while those sessions had, certainly since Vatican II, involved a measure of give-and-take, under John Paul II they were more concerned with disseminating a line and quizzing the bishops on instances in which they may have been deemed insufficiently aggressive in defending Church doctrine.

But if his insistence on theological conformity inside the church was absolute, his warmth and generosity in reaching out to Christians outside the Catholic communion and to other faiths was without precedent. The tension between those two qualities occasionally prompted his own theological enforcer, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to issue pastoral letters clarifying the limits of the Vatican's embrace of the protestants or the Orthodox. But John Paul II has offered eloquent and heartfelt apologies to many of those he believes have been wronged by the Church — or more precisely, in his view, by its adherents. He expressed remorse to the Orthodox over the sacking of Constantinople, and to Muslims and the Jews for the violence committed against them during the Inquisition and the Crusades. His unparalleled campaign to repair the Church's relationship with the Jewish people made him the first Pope of the modern era to enter a synagogue; the Vatican recognized the State of Israel in the course of his tenure and he went to Jerusalem to deliver a heartfelt apology for the history of Catholics' mistreatment of Jews. Although they were not satisfied by what they saw as his failure to acknowledge the corporate responsibility of the Church — as distinct from individual members — for such maltreatment, and also his failure to criticize the wartime pontiff Pius XII for his silence in the face of the Holocaust, Jewish leaders today freely acknowledge John Paul II as a great and true friend to the Jewish people and the first pontiff to truly live the conciliatory language on Jews of Vatican II.

Nor was his outreach confined to followers of other faiths. Perhaps his greatest disappointment has been the failure of his efforts to heal the rift with the Orthodox churches, particularly of Russia, which has remained opposed to any rapprochement and inclined to see Catholic overtures in Russia as an attempt to poach for souls. There again, however, some of the theologians around the pope may be inclined to see his outreach to the Orthodox as somewhat naïve, given the theological chasm that divides the two churches on such basic issues as the papacy itself.

There was an internal logic to the pontiff's philosophy of "the dignity of the human person." That inner consistency may also account for the fact that measured by the yardstick of the politics of his age, Pope John Paul II looks over the map. His views on the sanctity of life may have made him an opponent of abortion and contraception, but equally so of capital punishment and war — most recently, the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And his fierce bearing of witness against communism may have made him a favorite of Western conservatives, yet he has been equally disdainful of the "soulless materialism" that has accompanied the emergence of free market capitalism in Eastern Europe. Cold War concerns may have prompted him to drive the leftist bishops of Latin America out of the Church, and yet he has found himself also at odds with some of their successors who critics have accused of mimicking Pentecostalism's "theology of prosperity." On visits to Latin America during the 1990s, John Paul II was moved to emphasize — like the leftists he had silenced a decade earlier — that the Church's priority and natural constituency is the poor. And that, of course, is also where its great growth potential lies today.

John Paul II was also extraordinary in his embrace of a mystic spirituality centered on the cult of the Virgin Mary. He was known to have prostrated himself for hours at a time before statues of the Virgin, and believed she interceded to save him from an assassin's bullet fired on the anniversary of the appearance of Mary in apparition at Fatima. Once recovered from his wound, he made a pilgrimage to Fatima to give thanks, and the assassin's bullet is now welded into the crown of the statue of the Virgin at Fatima. His devotion to the Cult of the Virgin may not necessarily move the elites of the post-modern West, but they strike a deep chord in the Church's primary growth zones in the developing world.

John Paul II's longevity allowed him to appoint all but three of the 117 cardinals that will choose his successor. And that, as much as his theological and evangelical legacy, means he leaves behind a Catholic Church remade in his image. Still, it is unlikely that any of his potential successors will be even remotely like him. The combination of gifts, passions and experiences that Karol Wojtyla brought to the Holy See made him a truly unique personification of the role of "God's Vicar," whose afterglow will inspire and illuminate the Catholic faithful for years after his passing.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1044120,00.html

Karol Jozef Wojtyla Jr. - Pope John Paul II 1920 - 2005

Pope John Paul II looks at white doves that were freed at the end of the Angelus prayer in St. Peter's square, at the Vatican City in this Jan 30 photo. (AP/Plinio Lepri)

CROATIAN INMATES IN GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

By John Peter Kraljic

INTRODUCTION. The 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz brings to mind the relatively unknown story of ethnic Croat inmates in German concentration camps.

CROATS AS VICTIMS OF ITALIANS. A substantial portion of Croatia came under direct Italian control during World War II. Italy annexed outright large swathes of Croatian territory and, following the outbreak of uprisings in adjacent areas of the Independent State of Croatia in the summer of 1941, took over control of a belt of land stretching along the Adriatic Sea.

In annexed areas, which included most Croatian islands, a large area of the northern Kvarner around Rijeka, and the cities of Sibenik and Split, the Italian fascists authorities instituted a policy of ethnic cleansing not unlike what they had put into place in Istria, Rijeka, Cres, Losinj and Zadar after they had annexed those lands following World War I. The Italians closed all Croatian language schools, transformed Croatian place and personal names into Italian ones and eliminated all indications showing any connection of these ethnic Croat areas to Croatia (e.g., the removal of Ivan Mestrovic's statue of Croatian Bishop Grgur Ninski in Split). These policies understandably gave rise to resistance among the Croat population who began to support Partisan activity in the area as well as in adjacent NDH territory.

In order to break the back of resistance, Italian military and civilian officials instituted a policy of mass terror involving raids, executions and deportations. In Dalmatia, for example, local military authorities executed 40 hostages in May 1942 after 22 telegraph poles had been cut down near Sibenik. Worse was to come in July when Italian troops executed 91 inhabitants of Podhum near Rijeka and deported the remaining 889 people of the village. Another military campaign conducted by Italian troops in June led to 33 executions in the Biokovo region. In November 1942, Italian troops opened an artillery barrage on the town of Primosten after Partisans had killed 14 Italian sailors in a confrontation nearby. 80 people were killed as a result of this war crime, while another 166 were taken to camps.

The Italians established a number of camps in Croatia to house these deportees. They included camps in Lovran, Bakar, Rab and Molat. At least 1,000 mostly Croats died in the Molat camp. At the camp in Rab, the largest Italian camp in Croatia, Slovenes and Croats (primarily from the Gorski kotar region) were housed for a 13 month period. Close to 1,500 people died in Rab, approximately 500 of whom were Croats.

Many more Croats were placed in camps or otherwise interned in Italy. A recent estimate places the total number of Croats imprisoned in Italy during the War at 60,000. The largest of these camps, Gonars near Udine, held around 4,000 Croats in February 1943, 1,500 of them children.

The people interned in these camps or prisons in Italy included many Croat leaders, such as Viktor Ruzic, the former governor of the Savska Province (later convicted by Yugoslav communist authorities as being a "collaborator!"). Italian aims in establishing these camps clearly extended beyond merely cutting support for the Partisans. It became part and parcel of Italy's goal to change the ethnic composition of their newly annexed territories.

The camps formed only one means to reach this goal. Italy also expelled thousands of Croats into the NDH and employed Chetnik forces to do the dirty work for them. A Chetnik, unit, for example, working in conjunction with Italian forces in an action in Biokovo, killed 160 Croats, including three priests in September 1942, while in another joint operation in the Mostar area about 200 Croats and 100 Muslims had been killed by them. A report by a local commander to Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovic claimed that over 2,000 Croats and Muslims had been killed in the region by the Chetniks. Yet another Chetnik unit executed 200 Croats in the hinterland of Omis in the same month. That the Italians encouraged the Chetniks in their rampages was shown by the 10,000 Lira reward provided to Chetniks who executed 23 Croat Partisans in the Rujiste area in 1942.(All the above is based on the work of Ivan Kovacic, Kampor 1942-1943: Hrvati, Slovenci i Zidovi u koncentracijskom logoru na otoku Rabu, Rijeka, 1998, and Zlatko Dizdar, "Talijanksa politika prema hrvatskim prostorima i njezine posljedice tijekom Drugog svjestkog rata," in Talijanska uprava na Hrvatskom prostoru, Zagreb, 2001).

One must keep these matters in mind when discussing issues related to concentration camp victims. The few examples of repression noted above shows that many, many more Croats had been killed "on the spot" rather than in camps. This continued to be the case when the Germans arrived along Croatia's eastern Adriatic Coast in late 1943.

As an epilogue, it should be noted that many of the Italians individually responsible for these crimes never saw any justice. The Western Allies, in an effort to shore up Italy in the face of a threatened takeover by the Communist Party, ignored all requests to extradite these criminals.

GERMANS IN CROATIA. The Germans had forces in the NDH prior to autumn 1943. However, their presence became pronounced after Italy's capitulation in September 1943. Italy's surrender led to a national uprising throughout Dalmatia and in Istria. While the Communists have taken sole credit for these uprisings, and though their role cannot be ignored, the events along Croatia's Adriatic coast represent a true national revolt against the Italian occupiers. The Communists could count on only 85 Party members in all of Istria at the time with several hundred sympathizers. No Partisan units of any significance had been in the Peninsula at the time. Nevertheless, literally using stones, sticks and bluffs, local Croats obtained control of all of Istria, other than the city of Pula. The city of Split saw a similar uprising. These actions represent a truly unique historical event and nothing on such a scale took place anywhere else in Axis Europe.

The Germans feared that the Allies across the Adriatic in Italy would use the vacuum which had been created on the Croatian coast as an opportunity to send their troop there. In October 1943 the Germans launched the so-called Rommel Offensive in Istria during which they killed approximately 5,000 people, half of them Partisans and half civilians. The Germans subsequently established a separate administrative unit under their direct control consisting of Istria, Rijeka, the Kvarner Islands, Trieste and the Friuli known as the Adriatische Kustenland.

During the next several months they slowly moved down the coast line. Still, their control quite often only extended over larger towns and their immediate surroundings. As the Allies moved toward Rome, the Germans again worried that the Allies would move across the Adriatic. They launched a number of offensive operations in order to establish tighter control over these areas. These actions included one in Istria in late April and early May 1944 when they burned down practically all of the villages of the Istrian Kras region (bounded roughly by Ucka Mountain, Pazin, the Slovenian border and the Rijeka-Trieste road). During this operation, on 30 April 1944 the Germans executed 269 Croats in the village of Lipa alone.

The repressive policies of the Germans continued in Dalmatia. It led to a wave of refugees, mostly Croats from the Dalmatian islands and mainland, across the Adriatic to Allied-held Bari. The Allies eventually placed these tens of thousands of Croats in refugee camps in Italy and in El Shatt, Egypt where an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 died. (Vladimir Zerjavic, Population Losses in Yugoslavia 1941-1945, Zagreb, 1997, p. 148).

The entry of the Germans into the coastal areas of Croatia and Italy led to a significant number of Croats being sent to German concentration camps. The Croats sent to the camps can generally be divided into two categories: (i) those who had been previously imprisoned in camps in Italy and who failed to reach the Allied lines (approximately 10,000 of those who escaped, consisting of Slovenes and Croats, later formed the so-called Overseas Partisan Brigades. The Allies later transported them to Dalmatia where they fought in 1944 and 1945); and (ii) those captured by the Germans in their military operations.

HOW MANY CROATS WERE IN GERMAN CAMPS? The number of Croats who ended up in these camps remains an open question. Demographic historian Vladimir Zerjavic has written that 3,000 Croats died in Germany, Poland and Austria during the War, but gives no hint concerning how many survived. (Zerjavic, Population Losses, p. 149). Some information concerning certain areas has been made available. A 1945 report concerning war crimes in Kastav near the city of Rijeka showed that 196 people from the town had been taken to Germany (while 56 had been shot and 2,311 had been taken to "camps" (presumably Italian ones)). (Hrvoje Mezulic, Fasizam: Krstitelj i palikuca, Zagreb, 1946, reprint, Pazin, 1997, p. 45). A list reproduced by historian Mihael Sobolevski contains details of 68 individuals, Croats and Italians, from the eastern portion of Rijeka (which had been part of Italy until 1947) killed in German concentration camps. ("Stvarni ljudski gubici na podrucju grada Rijeke u Drugom svjetskom ratua," in Zbornik Sveti Vid, vol. VII, 2002, pp. 96-98).

A further 250 Croat and Muslim soldiers are known to have been killed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. They had been recruited and drafted to serve in the 13th Pioneer Battalion of the 13th SS Division Croatia. After having been stationed in Villefranche-de-Rouerguea in France, the Battalion revolted with the plan to join the French resistance. The Germans crushed this revolt, the first known mutiny of German forces during World War II. (Zdravko Dizdar, "Prva pobuna u nacistickoj vojsci: Pobuna Trinaestoga pionirskog bataljuna 13 SS Divizije Croatia u -Villefranche-de-Rouergueu 17. Rujna 1943 godine," in Casopis za suvremenu povijest, 1993).

CROATIAN ARTISTS AND THE HOLOCAUST. Mention should be made of Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, sculptor Dusan Dzamonja, and Croatian painter Krsto Hegedusic.

Mestrovic's first wife had been Ruza Klein, a Croatian Jew, from whom he had been divorced before the War. Ruza and 30 members of her family later disappeared in the Holocaust. Mestrovic was an ardent anti-Nazi and refused Hitler's entreaties to exhibit his works in Germany. Mestrovic designed a Holocaust memorial for New York City's Riverside Park in 1951 which was never built.

Dusan Dzamonja, born in Macedonia, has lived in Croatia since 1945. He was one of six first prize winners in a 1959 competition for a monument to the victims of Dachau.

Krsto Hegedusic was imprisoned in a number of Italian camps during the War. His naĂŻve paintings and sketches concerning Holocaust themes have been included in several retrospective works.

AN UNAPPRECIATED HISTORY. The topic of Croats in German concentration camps has not been studied in any great detail. The reasons for this partly arises from the fact that the Germans considered many of the Croat and Slovene prisoners in their camps to be Italians. Italian inmates had an inverted red triangle on their camp uniforms with the letter "I" or the letters "IT" emblazoned on them (some had the letter "J" on the red triangle meaning that they came from Yugoslavia; the red triangle represented political prisoners). Boris Pahor, a Slovene survivor of the camps, noted that this designation offended Slovene and Croat inmates: "Tomaz had a big capital I in the middle of his red triangle - he was captured as an Italian citizen - but insisted, as any Slovene would, that he was a Yugoslav. No Slovene wanted to be exterminated in this place as an Italian, for since the end of the First World War the Italian government had been trying to eradicate him on his native soil. And Istrian Croats too, like the Slovenes, resisted sharing the fate of a people whose country they had annexed against their will. The proximity to death removes all masks, . . . though it wouldn't matter when we went down to the terrace with the oven." (Boris Pahor, Pilgrim Among the Shadows, New York, 1995, p. 48).

Pahor's memoirs point out another reason this history has remained overlooked - the failure by Croatians to honor those of their brethren who had been victimized in the past. Pahor writes of another Slovene prisoner in Mauthausen, Zora Perello. Pahor compares her to Anne Frank as she too had written of her experiences. "But we Slovenes are too negligent a people to have collected Zora's letters or her diaries from the period that preceded her imprisonment by the Germans. . . . We wouldn't know how to present her to the world. To this day our nation's meager soul has not managed to free itself from the cocoon of its pain. We embrace our warriors, the heroes that fell on the battlefield; after centuries of subjugation they are a miraculous flame rising from the ashes; but it does not occur to us to celebrate the fate of a young girl, a beautiful high school student. Like all small people we have a penchant for the gigantic." (Pahor, p. 140).

A similar indictment can be made of Croatia's treatment of its victims. While Italian prisoners of concentration camps have their own active association, no such organization had ever been established in Croatia. Moreover, the memoirs of those who survived the camps are scanty - I have only come across two such memoirs, one of which appeared in 1946!

It was in an attempt to bring this matter to attention of the public that I put the list below together.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE LIST AND ITS SHORTCOMINGS. The list suffers from a number of shortcomings. First, the information is based only on published sources. Second, my access to sources has been limited to books which mostly concentrate on the northern Adriatic area and I had limited ability to review works concerning the War in Dalmatia which would no doubt have yielded more information.

We are fortunate to have a number of lists of people killed during World War II in certain communities in Croatia which include information on where they had been killed (I especially recommend the work Gubici Liburnijskog kraja u Drugom svjetskom ratu which lists all those killed (including some killed by the Partisans and those killed while serving in the Italian Army) from the area of Opatija). However, such lists fail to list those who survived the camps.

I also note that I limited the list to ethnic Croats - I attempted to exclude ethnic Italians from Istria as well as Jews.

Further, a question arises as to how to treat Croatian forced laborers sent to Germany during the War. Ivica Racan, for example, the former Prime Minister of Croatia, was born in a camp for forced laborers during the War where his father was one of those who died.

SOME PEOPLE TO NOTE ON THE LIST. Despite its incompleteness, the list presents a fascinating array of persons who suffered and some who died in these camps. I note that two persons who survived subsequently became Roman Catholic priests (Zivan Bezic and Albin Kordic) while a number were priests while in the camps, including a Croatian priest (Matthias Semeliker) from the Austrian region of Burgenland which has a large Croat minority.

The father of Croatian politician Ivan Jakovcic was in Dachau.

The family of Ante Mandic, an official with ZAVNOH and a member of the Royal Regency, are among those who survived German camps.

Of extreme interest is the story of Rude Paskvan who with a number of other Croats were among the 255 survivors of a mistaken bombing raid by the Allies on a group of ships holding 12,000 concentration camp survivors in May 1945.

At least two of the survivors of the camps ultimately were executed by Communist authorities after false accusations were made against them (Oskar Juranic and Mario Stremberger).

One of the inmates was born and died in the United States (Ivan Bostijanic) while another had lived in New York for a time (Igancije Bulimbasic).

Edo Calic was a survivor of the camps. He became a leading authority in Europe on the history of Nazism and was a member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Some members of the Sersic family on Rab were arrested after having helped American intelligence officers.

SAN SABBA CAMP. A note on the little known San Sabba camp which was located in Trieste. This camp had been established by the German authorities in a former rice factory (hence it is also called Risseria) after they entered the area. It was used as a transit camp but also had been used to kill inmates for which purpose a crematoria had been established, the only one in Italy. It held many Croats and Slovenes and 2,000 people ultimately died there.

SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS USED. The list is in alphabetical, English order. I have cited each work where the information appears. A list of the works cited follows at the end of the list.

The descriptions use a number of abbreviations, most of which relate to Communist and Partisan organizations.

AFZ is the Anti-Fascist Women's Front, a pro-Partisan, Communist-controlled organization.

AVNOJ is the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia, a Partisan, Communist-dominated parliament.

CP stands for the Communist Party and CPC the Communist Party of Croatia, CPI is the Communist Party of Italy and CPY is the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

NOO stands for National Liberation Committees. These committees were pro-Partisan administrative units which worked both in Partisan controlled territory as well as underground.

NOP is the National Liberation Movement. This is the name of the pro-Partisan movement which was historically used by Communist authors. It is still a term used in Croatian historiography today to describe pro-Partisans.

USAOH was a Communist run front organization.

SKOJ is the Communist Youth League of Yugoslavia.

ZAVNOH is the Territorial Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation for Croatia, which served as a Partisan, Communist-dominated parliament.


LIST OF CROATIAN INMATES IN GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
1. Ana Surname unknown. From Istria. Died in Ravensbruck. (Ravensbruck, p. 23).

2. Andretic, Andrija. Born 1888 in Veprinac. Taken to Dachau in 1944 where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 95).

3. Andretic, Josip (Franjo). Born 29 June 1907 in Poljane, Opatija. He was arrested in 1944 and disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 92).

4. Bahoric, Belizar. Born in 1920 in Draga, Susak (Rijeka). Bahoric supported the NOP. He was arrested by the Italians and imprisoned in Koper. After Italy's capitulation, he was sent to Mauthausen where he remained until May 1944. He became a sculptor in Rijeka. (Susacka revija, vol. 29).

5. Balen, Ante. From Susak (Rijeka). A supporter of the Croatian Peasant Party, Balen had been the pre-War editor of the Susak based pro-Croatian paper Hrvatski misao. He was arrested by Yugoslav police prior to the War because of his political activities. During World War II, he was a supporter of the NOP and was arrested by the Italians and taken to Italy. After Italy's capitulation, he was sent to Mauthausen which he survived. He became a long-time editor of the Rijeka daily Novi list and died in 1994. (Susacka revija, no. 8).

6. Balvan, Pero. A law student from Split, his entire family had been in the Partisans. He was imprisoned in Dachau. (Katolicko, p. 162).

7. Baric, Ignac. From Donje Kraljevec, he died in Dachau. (www.donjikraljevec.hr).

8. Baricevic, Mate (Antona). Born 14 September 1892 in Vela Ucka, Opatija. Taken to a German camp on 1 May 1944 where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 94).

9. Barkovic, (Jure) Ivan. Born 14 July 1925 in Medveja. He was in the Partisans and captured. He died in Dachau on 24 November 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 27).

10. Barkovic, Nikola. Born 18 May 1905, Zagorje, Brsec, Istria. A member of the NOO in Zagorje, he was arrested by the Germans on 30 November 1944 and died in S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 19).

11. Basan, (Mate) Nikola. Born 5 December 1912 in Tulisevica, Lovran. A Partisan and member of the Tuliseva NOO. He died in the Stetin concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 28).

12. Belacic, Dragutin Zahor. Born 27 December 1913 in Zagreb, he was held in various camps in Italy, Austria and Germany during the War and survived. He was a leading mountain climber in Croatia. (HBL).

13. Bezic, Father Zivan. Born 18 May 1921 in Grohote, Solta, Dalmatia. He joined the Partisans in 1943 and served in the First Dalmatian Brigade. He was badly wounded in battle at Posusje on 10 October 1943 and captured by the Germans. He survived the Mauthausen, Redl-Zipf and Dachau concentration camps. He returned to Croatia after the war and was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in Split on 29 June 1945. He completed his studies in theology and wrote numerous theological works as well as his memoirs of his time in the camps: U sjeni crematoria - Uspomene jednog logorasa (In the Shadow of the Crematoria - the Memoirs of a Camp Inmate), published in two editions in Split in 1975 and 1976. (HBL).

14. Blazic, Anton (Jakova). Born in Lovran, he lived in nearby Medveja. Arrested on 25 November 1944, he was sent to a German camp from which he never returned. (Liburnijskog, p. 81).

15. Blazic, Karlo (Nikola). Born 29 November 1914 in Lovranska Draga, Lovran. A collaborator with the NOP, he was arrested on 26 October 1944 and died from exhaustion on 31 May 1945 in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 81).

16. Blecic, Lucija. From Nedescina, Labin. Her daughter was a member of the CP and she was active in the AFZ and served in the regional committee for the CPC of Pazin-Porec. She was arrested in April 1944 and sent to Aushwitz from where she returned in 1945. (Dobrila, p. 544-45).

17. Bonaci, Marija. From Dalmatia, she survived Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

18. Bosnjak, Josip (Josipa). Born 30 April 1928 in Opatija. A Partisan, he was captured and disappeared in a German concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 41).

19. Bostjanic, Ivan. Born in 1915 in Cleveland, his parents were from Istria. Between the Wars he lived in Zagreb and Belgrade. During World War II he was imprisoned in camps in France and Germany. A poet, he died in Chicago in 1973. (HBL).

20. Bradicic, Ivan (Ivana). Born 11 November 1911 in Moscenice, Opatija. Arrested by the Germans on 8 October 1944, he was taken to the Manhau concentration camp where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 35).

21. Bradicic, Conrad (Antona). Born 19 February 1900 in Kraj, Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. A sympathizer of the NOP, he was arrested by the Germans, taken to a camp and disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 84).

22. Brajuka, Zorko-Albino (Ivana). Born 21 September 1909 in Paz, Pazin, he lived in Ika, Opatija. Arrested on 24 January 1944, he disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 73).

23. Bralic, Vlado. From Susak (Rijeka), he was imprisoned in Neuengamme. (Susacka revija, vol. 33).

24. Brdar, Tomo (Josipa). Born in Valici, Jelenje, Rijeka. A member of the local NOO, he was arrested by the Italians in early 1943 and died in Dachau. (Grobinstina, p. 401).

25. Brlek, Marija. From Trsat, Rijeka. Killed in a German concentration camp. (Trsat, p. 345).

26. Brnja, Petar (Stjepana). Born in 1906 in Podhum, Rijeka. Arrested by the Italians on 12 July 1942. Later taken to Germany where he died. (Grobinstina, p. 419).

27. Brubnjak, Josip (Petra). Born 1904 in Mala Ucka, lived in Medveja, Lovran. A sympathizer of the NOP, he was arrested by the Germans in 1944 and disappeared in the Stetin camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 82).

28. Brubnjak, Milan (Josipa). Born 7 February 1925 in Medveja. A Partisan, he died in the Stetin concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 28).

29. Brubnjak, Josip (Antona). Born 19 March 1882 in Mala Ucka, he lived in Opric, Ika, Opatija. A collaborator of the NOP, he was arrested and later killed on 20 February 1945 in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 73).

30. Brumnic, Ljuba. From Lindar, Istria. She died in Aushwitz. (Jakovljevic, p. 128).

31. Brumnjak, Antonia (Josipa). Born 11 September 1899 in Mala Ucka, Opatija. Disappeared in Auschwitz. (Liburnijskog, p. 94).

32. Brumnjak, Ivan (Martina). Born 2 November 1889 in Mala Ucka, Opatija. An activist of NOP, he was captured by the Germans in 1944 and disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 60).

33. Brumnjak, Karlo (Kuzme). Born 11 November 1883 in Mala Ucka, Opatija. He disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 94).

34. Brumnjak, Marija (Jakova). Born 26 October 1893 in Mala Ucka, Opatija. Disappeared in Auschwitz. (Liburnijskog, p. 94).

35. Brumnjak, Marija (Grge). Born 1892 in Mala Ucka, Opatija. Taken to a German camp in 1944 where she disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 94).

36. Brumnjak, Marija (Josipa). Born 26 October 1893 in Mala Ucka, Opatija. Taken to a German camp where she disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 94).

37. Brumnjak, Vera (Ivana). Born 1923 in Mala Ucka, Opatija. Disappeared in Auschwitz. (Liburnijskog, p. 94).

38. Bujas, Zorka. From Dalmatia, she survived Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

39. Bulimbasic, Igacije (Vatroslav). Born 31 July 1886 in Split. He lived in New York for a time and was one of Croatia's earliest pilots. During World War II he was imprisoned in an Italian camp and handed over to the Germans after Germany's capitulation. He died in Split in 1976. (HBL).

40. Buratovic, Father Andjelko. Born 21 December 1895 in Vrbanj, Hvar. He became a Roman Catholic priest in 1919 and for most of the period between the two World Wars he headed the Franciscan monastery in Zaglava on Dugi Otok off the coast of Dalmatia. He was arrested in 1944 by the Germans on Krk for providing assistance to the Partisans. He survived Dachau. (Katolicko, p, 158).

41. Buric, Anka. From Dalmatia, she survived Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

42. Butkovic, Vid. Lived in Veli Vrh, Pula. A supporter of the NOP, he was arrested in 1944 by the Germans and died in Dachau. (Nepokorena, p. 217).

43. Buzleta, Ankica. From Lizanj, Istria. She was in Auschwitz. (www.zelena-istria.hr).

44. Calic, Dr. Eduard. Born 14 October 1910 in Marcani, Pula. His family was forced to leave Pula in 1921 after it had been annexed by Italy and they moved to Zagreb where he completed law school. He was in the Oranienburg-Sachshausen concentration camp from 1942 to 1945. He went on to become a leading expert on Nazism and anti-Semitism with his books published in numerous languages. He was a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died on 29 August 2003.

45. Capota, Jolanda. From Dalmatia, she survived Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

46. Car, Josip (Ivana). Born 12 November 1895 in Sv. Antun, Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. Arrested 29 November 1944 and taken to a German camp where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 84).

47. Cargonja, Joakim. From Susak (Rijeka), he survived Neuengamme and the British attack on the internees in Lubeck (see entry on Rude Paskvan) (Susacka revija, vol. 33).

48. Cargonja (Stanka) Marijan. Born in 1922 in Svilno, Rijeka. A supporter of the National Liberation Movement, he was arrested in 1943 and died in a German concentration camp. (Grobinstina, p. 429).

49. Cebulj, Franc. From Trsat, Rijeka. Killed in a German concentration camp. (Trsat, p. 345).

50. Cervar, Ivan. Born 3 August 1897 in Cervar, Tinjan, Istria. A member of the CPI, he fled to Yugoslavia in 1931 and settled in Zagreb. He was a Partisan leader in Istria. He was arrested on March 1943 and survived the Dachau, Neuengamme and Aurich concentration camps. (Prikljucenje, pp. 342-44).

51. Condric, Dr. Gloria. From Rabac, Labin. Survived an unnamed German concentration camp. (Pazinski memorijal, vol. 14, pp. 190-91).

52. Dabic, Zora. From Zagreb. Survived Aushwitz. (Jakovljevic, p. 129).

53. Danica. Surname unknown. From Pazin, Istria. In the Finow concentration camp. (Ravensbruck, p. 35).

54. Daus, Andrija. From Borut, Istria. He worked with the NOP and was killed in a German concentration camp. (Prikljucenje, p. 351).

55. Debeuc, Vladimir. From Trsat, Rijeka. He was in a camp in Italy and taken to Germany after Italy's capitulation. He was killed in Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. (Trsat, pp. 337 & 345).

56. Deskovic, Milena. Lived in Icici, Opatija. Died in S. Sabba on 22 December 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 73).

57. Detan, Romano (Ivana). Born 27 August 1925 in Moscenicka Draga. A Partisan he was captured on 15 July 1944 and taken to the Sangerhausen concentration camp where he was killed on 15 December 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 35).

58. Diklic, Zorka. From Susak (Rijeka). She was in Ravensbruck. (Ravensbruck, p. 28).

59. DiLenardo, Karlo (Ivana). Born 15 July 1907 in Matulje. Served in the Italian Army and was captured in 1943. Died in a concentration camp in Nis, Serbia. (Liburnijskog, p. 120).

60. Domijani, Ricardo (Antona). Born in 1886 in Cernik, Rijeka. He worked with the NOP and was arrested by the Germans in October 1943 and taken to a concentration camp where he disappeared. (Grobinstina, p. 411).

61. Dorcic, Franjo. Born 15 May 1912 in Pazin, Istria, he lived in Zagreb and in Susak (Rijeka). He worked with the NOP and became a Partisan leader in Istria. He was caught by the Germans and survived Auschwitz. (Prikljucenje, pp. 359-60).

62. Dubrovic, Ivan (Josipa). Born 22 February 1922 in Rukavac, Opatija. A member of the NOO for Kuceli, Opatija, he was captured by the Germans and taken to a camp in 1944 where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 52).

63. Dubrovic, Klementa (present surname is Morozin). Born 23 December 1925 in Draga, Susak (Rijeka). She was arrested on 2 August 1944 by Ustashe as she and a friend were delivering materials to a Partisan courier. She survived Auschwitz. (Article in Novi list, 30 January 2005).

64. Dugopoljac, Nikola (Franina). Born in 1905 in Rupe, Bribir, Sibenik. Arrested by the Italians, he ended up in Dacahu where he died in 1944. (www.visovac.hr).

65. Dujmic, Zivko. Born 1904 in Kostrena. A candidate member of the CPC, he was captured by the Germans on 29 June 29 1944 and taken to Dachau where he was killed in 1945. (Kostrena, p. 72).

66. Dukic, Anton (Franje). Born 16 January 1907 in Jusici, Matulje. Arrested on 12 October 1944, he disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p.74).

67. Erceg, Petar. From Dalmatia, he survived Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

68. Ferencic, Eufemija. From Pazin, was 65 years old when taken to Ravensbruck. Her three sons were in the Partisans (Ravensbruck, p. 6).

69. Ferencic. Name unknown. Husband of Eufemija. Killed in Dachau. (Ravensbruck, p. 6).

70. Ferlan, Ugo (Angela). Born 1 September 1901 in Opatija. An activist in the NOP, he was arrested on 16 December 1944 and disappeared in a German concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 42).

71. Frlan, Vinko (Vicko). Born 12 May 1921 in Matulje. A Partisan, he was arrested and taken to a German concentration camp in 1944 where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 32).

72. Fucak, Vilim (Viktora). Born in 1923 in Svilno, Rijeka. He joined the Partisans in 1943, was captured and taken to Germany where he was imprisoned and disappeared. (Grobinstina, p. 409).

73. Fucak (Viktora) Slavko. Born in 1924 in Svilno, Rijeka. A supporter of the NOP, he was arrested by the Italians and later taken to a German concentration camp where he disappeared. (Grobinstina, p. 429).

74. Furlanic, Danica (Franje). Born 20 May 1924 in Vela Ucka, Opatija. Disappeared in 1945 in Auschwitz. (Liburnijskog, p. 94).

75. Gaus, Ivan (Josipa). Born 1891 in Klana. Arrested 2 June 1944 and killed in the Hamburg concentration camp on 4 January 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 95).

76. Gaus, Juraj (Anton). Born 1888 in Klana. Arrested 15 February 1944 and killed in August 1944 in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 95).

77. Grizinic, Anka. From Cerovlje, near Pazin. She died in Auschwitz. (Jakovljevic, p. 128).

78. Grizinic, Franco (Matije). Born 22 October 1913 in Klana. Killed in S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 95).

79. Grubisa, Ana (Antona). Born 11 September 1919 in Mali Mune, Istria. Arrested on 10 August 1944, she disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 85).

80. Grubisa. Personal name unknown. From Rijeka. Was in Auschwitz. (Article in Novi list, 6 July 2002).

81. Grudicek, Nevenka. Born 1908 in Cernik, Rijeka. She worked for the NOP and had been arrested by Chetniks in 1944. She was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Austria from where she did not return. (Grobinstina, p. 411).

82. Grzanic, Lovro (Franje). Born 23 October 1923 in Lovran. A Partisan, he was captured by the Germans on 29 June 1944 and taken to a concentration camp where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 28).

83. Gudac, Stanko. From Susak (Rijeka), he was imprisoned in Neuengamme. (Susacka revija, vol. 33).

84. Haramija, Franco (Franje). Born in 1922 in Cavle, Rijeka. He served in the Partisans, was captured by the Germans and died in the Blankechan Camp. (Grobinstina, p. 375).

85. Hatezic, Josip (Franje). Born 1914 in Podhum, Rijeka. A Partisan since 1942, he had been captured by the Germans in October 1943. He died in a German concentration camp. (Grobinstina, p. 396).

86. Herak, Bogumil. An Istrian living in Zagreb, he died in Auschwitz. (Nepokorena, p. 42).

87. Hero, Prima. From Susak (Rijeka), she was in Ravensbruck and died in a camp. (Ravensbruck, pp. 7 & 25).

88. Hlaca, Josip (Josipa). Born in 1912 in Soboli, Cavle, Rijeka. He joined the Partisans in 1942 and was captured. He died in a German camp in 1944. (Grobinstina, p. 378).

89. Hlaca, Romano (Pija). Born 1911 in Drazice, Gornje Jelenje. He joined the Partisans in 1943. He was captured and died in a Dachau on 23 December 1944. (Grobinstina, p. 386) (Trsat, p. 345).

90. Hrelja, Ivan (Josipa). Born 29 August 1909 in Brsec, Istria. Disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 73).

91. Hrelja, Vjekoslav (Josipa). Born 4 August 1909 in Brsec, Istria. Disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 73).

92. Ilic - Gilli, Antonio (Toni Harmonika). Born 24 January 1896 in Fazana, Pula. He had been a member of the CPI and fought in the Spanish Civil War. He fought with the Partisans and was captured by the Germans in March 1944. He died in Dachau. His two brothers also were taken to German concentration camps. (Nasi Spanjolski, pp. 142-44).

93. Ivancic, Drago (Tomasa). Born in 1914 in Brgudac, Istria. He was a Partisan leader in Istria and joined the CPC. He was caught by the Germans in December 1944 and is believed to have died in a German concentration camp. (Prikljucenje, pp. 347-48).

94. Ivancic, Jakov. Brother of Drago, he was killed in Dachau. (Prikljucenje, p. 348).

95. Ivic, Kosovka. From Dalmatia, she survived Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

96. Jakovasic, Ivan (Ivana). Born 1921 in Liganj, Lovran. A Partisan, he voluntarily surrendered to the Germans and was taken to a camp from which he did not return. (Liburnijskog, p.82).

97. Jakovasic, Josip (Andrije). Born 1925 in Liganj, Lovran. A sympathizer with the NOP, he was taken to a German camp from which he did not return. (Liburnijskog, p. 82).

98. Jakovcic. Personal name unknown. From Istria. He survived Dachau and under the Communist Yugoslav regime was imprisoned in the Goli Otok prison for political prisoners. He is the father of Ivan Jakovcic, the president of the Istrian Democratic Party (IDS). (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 28 December 1999).

99. Jezic, Krunoslav. Born in 1926 in Kukljanovo. A teacher, he worked with the NOP and was arrested in 1943. He died in Dachau. (Grobinstina, p. 403).

100. Jurdana, Stanka (Josipa). Born 11 December 1913 in Gornji Rukavac, Opatija. A member of the AFZ committee in Gornji Rukavac, she was captured by Chetniks and handed over to the Germans in April 1945. She disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 53).

101. Juradina, Rudolf - Dola. From Podstrane near Split. A Partisan, he had been imprisoned in Mauthausen. (Katolicko, p. 163).

102. Juretic (Josipa) Ludvik. Born 1898 in Martinovo Selo, Jelenje, Rijeka. A supporter of the
NOP, he was arrested by the Italians on 12 July 1942. He died in a German concentration camp. (Grobinstina, p. 415).

103. Juretic (Franje) Vlado. Born 1 December 1906 in Trnovici, Jelenje, Rijeka. Arrested by the Germans in August 1944, he died in a German concentration camp. (Grobinstina, p. 426).

104. Juranic, Oskar. Born 11 October 1909 in Rijeka. A member of the CPY since 1933, he fought in the Spanish Civil War. After the War he was kept in a French camp and after Germany's occupation of France was sent to Dachau on 8 December 1943 where he remained until 29 April 1945. He worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Yugoslavia until 1948 when he was sentenced with a group of former inmates of Dachau (mostly Slovenes) who were wrongfully charged with having worked for the Gestapo. He was executed in 1948. He was rehabilitated in 1976. (Nasi
Spanjolski, p. 154-58).

105. Kalcic, Ferdinanda (Antona). Born 22 July 1895 in Kraj, Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. Arrested by pro-Mussolini Italians in November 1944, he disappeared in the Herckbruk concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 84).

106. Kalcic, Ivan (Ferdinanda). Born 10 May 1925 in Kraj, Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. An activist in the NOP, he was captured on 2 December 1944 and taken to a German concentration camp where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 36).

107. Kate. Surname unknown. From Rakalj, Pula, Istria. Was in Ravensbruck. (Ravensbruck, p. 19).

108. Kinkela, Angelo (Josipa). Born 30 June 1905 in Jusici, Matulje. Imprisoned in a German concentration camp in October 1943 where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 24).

109. Kinkela, Franco (Ivana). Born 1909 or 1905 in Zvonece, Opatija. Taken to a German camp on 15 March 1944 where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 96).

110. Kirsic, Ludovika. Born in the area of Labin, she lived in Mala Ucka, Opatija. She was arrested in 1944 and disappeared in Auschwitz. (Liburnijskog, p. 95).

111. Klisanic, Rude (Stjepana). Born 16 August 1903 in Karlovac, he lived in Kukuljanovo. He joined the Partisans in 1943. He was captured and taken to Ravensbruck where he died. (Grobinstina, p. 405).

112. Knezevic, Juraj. Born 1905 in Vinjerica and moved to Kostrena as a child. A Partisan, he was captured by the Germans on 20 October 1943 and taken to Dachau where he died on 27 April 1944. (Kostrena, p. 87).

113. Kolmanic, (Ivana) Nikola. Born 28 May 1892 in Brdo, Icici. An activist of the NOP, he was arrested by the Germans on 10 October 1944 and died in Buchenwald. (Liburnijskog, p. 21).

114. Kopitar, Marija (born Kurelic). Born 6 May 1889 in Pazin. She supported the NOP and had been elected as a member of the NOO for Istria in 1943 and was elected to serve in ZAVNOH. She had been captured by the Germans on 27 October 1943 and was taken to the Auschwitz (from 3 December 1943 to 18 January 1945) and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. A prominent teacher, Kopitar died on 1 January 1978 and is buried in Rijeka. (Jakovljevic).

115. Kordic, Albin. Born in 1911 in Rab, he joined the Partisans, was captured on Losinj and was sent to Dachau. The Yugoslav government awarded him the Medal for Services to the People (Orden zasluga za naroda) in 1950. He thereafter attended the seminary in Rijeka, was ordained as a priest and served in parishes in Lika, Gorski kotar and Senj. (Katolicko, p. 163)

116. Kordic, Petar. Brother of Albin and a Partisan. He was imprisoned and taken to Dachau. (Katolicko, p. 163).

117. Kordic. Name unknown. A half-brother of Albin Kordic. He was imprisoned in Dachau (Katolicko, p. 162).

118. Koritnik, Boris. From Trsat, Rijeka. He had been initially interned in Italy and then take to Germany after Italy's capitulation. He was killed in the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg. (Trsat, pp. 337 & 345).

119. Kosic, Marija. From Polijica, Krk. She survived Auschwitz. (Article in Novi list, 28 January 2005).

120. Kovacic, Vinko. From Trsat, Rijeka. A member of SKOJ, he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. (Trsat, p. 305).

121. Krajcar, Franica. From Semic, Lupoglav, Istria. Died in Aushwitz. (Jakovljevic, p. 128).

122. Krbavac, Ivan Djino. Born 1920 in Kostrena. A Partisan he was captured by the Germans in Lika. After being transported first to Zagreb, he ended up in Dachau where he died in 1944. (Kostrena, p. 91).

123. Kucic, Vilim. From Lokve, Delnice, he was imprisoned in Neuengamme. (Susacka revija, vol. 33).

124. Kukuljan, Bozo (Blaza). Born 1908 in Kukuljani, Jelenje, Rijeka. He was captured by the Germans in summer 1944 and taken to Dachau where he disappeared. (Grobinstina, p. 414).

125. Kukuljan, Konstantin (Blaza). Born 1912 in Kukuljani, Jelenje, Rijeka. He had been a member of the NOO in Kukuljanovo and joined the Partisans in 1943. He was captured by the Germans in September 1943. He died in a concentration camp in Germany. (Grobinstina, p. 391).

126. Kurtovic, Tonci (Prpic). From Dalmatia, he was in Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

127. Laginja, Anton (Ivana). Born 1922 in Klana. Arrested May 5, 1944 and taken to Mauthausen where he was killed on 16 October 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 95).

128. Laginja, Ruza (Ivana). Born 1916 in Klana. Taken to Dachau in 1943 where she was killed in 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 95).

129. Lalin, Prof. Milivoj. From Split, he survived Buchenwald. (Article in Novi list, 11 April 2002).

130. Lazaric, Josip (Josipa). Born 28 July 1901 in Moscenicka Draga. President of the local NOO, he was arrested in November 1944 and died in Dachau on 17 April 1945 in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 35).

131. Ljubica. A medical student in the Finow concentration camp. (Ravensbruck, p. 36).

132. Lopac, Milan. From Trsat, Rijeka. Initially interned in Italy, he was taken to Germany after Italy's capitulation. He was killed in Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. (Trsat, pp. 337 & 345).

133. Lucija. Surname unknown. From Rakalj, Pula, Istria. Was the local president of the AFZ and a member of the local NOO. Was in Ravensbruck. (Ravensbruck, p. 8).

134. Lukezic, Stanko (Ivana). Born 1911 in Lukezici, Jelenje, Rijeka. Arrested by the Italians in 1941, he was later taken to Germany where he disappeared (Grobinstina, p. 415).

135. Lunacek, Adi. From Opatija, born in 1921. Died in 1945 in Flossenberg concentration camp. (information found on her tombstone in Opatija).

136. Maljkovic, Jela. From Trogir, she survived Auschwitz (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

137. Mance, Zlatko. Born in Fuzine, Gorski Kotar. Arrived in Dachau in September 1943. He survived the camp. (Article in Novi list, 28 January 2004).

138. Mandic, Danijel (Danijela). Born 14 November 1928 in Kuceli, Opatija. A Partisan, he was captured by the Germans in August 1944 and disappeared in a camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 54).

139. Mandic, Nevenka. Mother of Oleg Mandic (see below), she lived in Volosko, Opatija. Her husband had escaped to the Partisans after Italy's capitulation. She survived Auschwitz. (article in Novi list, 22 January 2005).

140. Mandic, Oleg. Born in Susak (Rijeka) on 5 April 1934, he lived in Volosko, Opatija. The grandson of Ante Mandic (a Vice-President of ZAVNOH, a member of the AVNOJ council and one of the three members of the Royal Regency), he was arrested on 15 May 1944 and taken to Auschwitz with his mother and grandmother. All three survived. (article in Novi list, 22 January 2005).

141. Mandic, Olga Nikolajeva Stepenko. A non-Croat, married to Ante Mandic and grandmother of Oleg (see above). She lived in Volosko, Opatija and survived Auschwitz. (article in Novi list, 22 January 2005).

142. Marcan, Dragica. From Zarecje, Istria. She was in Aushwitz. (Jakovljevic, p. 128).

143. Marcan, Marija. From Zarecje, Istria, she survived the Aushwitz concentration camp. Her husband was executed by the Germans (Jakovljevic, p. 127).

144. Marcan. Son of Marija Marcan, he died in Dachau (Jakovljevic, p. 127).

145. Marcan. Son of Marija Marcan. Was taken to a German concentration camp. (Jakovljevic, p. 128).

146. Margan, Djuro. Was in the Neuengamme concentration camp and seen there by Gino Sirola. (Susacka revija, vol. 33 and Article in Novi list, 18 December 2004).

147. Maricic, Branka. From Rijeka, she survived S. Sabba concentration camp. (www.istrianet.org).

148. Marija. Personal name unknown. From Rakalj, Pula, Istria. She was active in the AFZ. She was in Ravensbruck. (Ravensbruck, p. 8).

149. Marija. Personal name unknown. From Prodol, Pula, Istria. A 15 year old when she was sent to Ravensbruck. (Ravensbruck, p. 12).

150. Marija. Surname unknown. From Pazin, Istria. In the Finow concentration camp. (Ravensbruck, p. 35).

151. Markovic, Ivan (Antona). Born 28 April 1910 in Potoki, Moscenicka Draga. President of the local NOO, he was arrested in June 1944 and taken to a German concentration camp where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 35).

152. Marsanic, Dragutin (Dragutina). Born in 1904 in Ratulje, Jelenje, Rijeka. A member of the CPC, he had been captured by the Italians on 20 May 1942 and sentenced to a 10 year prison term. After Italy's capitulation, he was transferred to Germany where he died in May 1944 in Bergen-Belsen.

153. Martincic, Leon (Antona). Born 9 April 1906 in Moscenicka Draga. A member of the local NOO, he was arrested in April 1944 and taken to the Flossenberg concentration camp where he was killed on 13 May 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 35).

154. Matejcic, Dragutin. Born 28 December 1907 in Marcelja, Rijeka. A volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, he was interned in a French camp after the War where the Germans shot him on 25 March 1942. (Nasi Spanjolski, p. 222).

155. Matetic, Ivan (Vinka). Born 1923 in Breza, Klana. A Partisan, he was captured on 23 September 1943 and died on 15 February 1945 in the Fullen concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 68).

156. Matetic, Josip (Antona). Born 3 April 1890 in Brezi, lived in Rukavac, Opatija. A NOP activist he had been in an Italian camp and handed over to the Germans after Italy's capitulation. He disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 55).

157. Matetic, Josip (Antona). Born 16 October 1899 in Zaluki, Permani, Opatija. A member of the NOO of Jurdani. He was captured and taken to a German concentration camp where he was killed on 4 November 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 45).

158. Matic, Ivan Lovre. Born 16 October 1919 in Tribalj, Crikvenica. A Partisan, he disappeared while imprisoned in Germany in 1944. (Tribalj, p. 129).

159. Matijevic, Zora. From Trsat, Rijeka. She was active in various Communist organizations.
She survived the Ravensbruck concentration camp and described her experiences in her booklet Ravensbruck: Zenski logor smrti (Ravensbruck: The Woman's Death Camp), Zagreb: AFZ, 1946. (Ravensbruck, and Trsat, p. 338).

160. Matosic, Ratomir. A designer in the shipyards of Split, he appears to have been a Partisan and was imprisoned in Dachau. (Katolicko, p. 162).

161. Matkovic, Tomislav. From Trsat, Rijeka. He was imprisoned in a German concentration camp and survived the War. (Trsat, p. 338).

162. Mavrinac, Barbara. From Jelenje, Grobnik, Rijeka. Her husband was in the Partisans and she was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. (Ravensbruck, p. 7).

163. Mavrinac, Marija (Ivana). Born 31 July 1907 in Lovran. A sympathizer of the NOP, she disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 82).

164. Medvedic, Milka (Alojza). Born 1893 in Klana. Taken to Auschwitz in September 1944 where she was killed on 28 March 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 97).

165. Mender, Danijela. From Matulje. Killed in S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 84).

166. Micetic, Josip. Born 1915 in Ponikve, Kukuljanovo, Rijeka. Arrested by the Germans in October 1943, he disappeared in Dachau. (Grobinstina, p. 428).

167. Miculinic, Josip. Born in 1907 in Cernik, Kukuljanovo, Rijeka. Arrested by the Italians in June 1941, he later was taken to Dachau where he died in late 1943. (Grobinstina, p. 428).

168. Mihocic, Ivan (Ivana). Born 15 March 1924 in Matulje. A member of the Partisans, he was captured in August 1944 and killed in S. Sabba on 1 September 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 33).

169. Mihocic, Ivan (Ivana). Born 1915 in Mune, Istria. Arrested in Rijeka in April 1944, he disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 85).

170. Mihocic, Milka (Antona). Born 17 November 1921 in Male Mune, Istria. An activist of the NOP, she was taken to a German concentration camp in Villach where she died during a bombing raid in February 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 85).

171. Mikulic, Celesta (Ivana). Born 1921 in Vele Drazica, Jelenje, Rijeka. A member of the local NOO and a member of SKOJ. He was captured by the Germans on 10 January 1945 and taken to Aushwitz where he was killed. (Grobinstina, p. 414).

172. Milos, Ljubinko. Born in 1922 in Kostrena. A Partisan, he was captured by the Germans and taken to one of their concentration camps. His ultimate fate remains unknown. (Kostrena, p. 102).

173. Milotic, Vanda. From Istria, she survived the Aushwitz concentration camp. (Jakovljevic, p. 127).

174. Miscenic, Franco (Andrija). Born 11 February 1909 in Dobrec, Lovran. He disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 82).

175. Mohovic, Vjekoslav (Ivana). Born 28 March 1909 in Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. Arrested by the Germans in August 1944, he disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 84).

176. Mrak, Ana (Mate). Born 1896 in Liganj, Lovran. A sympathizer of the NOP, she disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 82).

177. Mrak, Petar (Ivana). Born 1890 in Liganj, Lovran. A sympathizer of the NOP, he was arrested on 29 March 1944 and disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 82).

178. Mrakovcic, Antica. Born circa 1921 in Kornic, Krk. A participant in the NOP, she was arrested on 20 May 1944 and survived Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. (Article in Novi list, 28 January 2005).

179. Mrakovcic, Franjo. Born 26 March 1906 in Kornic, Krk. A volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, he was initially interned in a French camp after the War but escaped to Germany where he was imprisoned in a camp in Stuttgart. He subsequently was in several other camps until liberated by the Americans in 1945. He returned to Croatia, lived in Zagreb and died in Pula on 15 April 1983. (Nasi Spanjolski, pp. 236-38).

180. Music, Nikola (Nikola). Born 10 September 1909 in Opric, Ika, Opatija. A collaborator with the NOP, he was arrested and disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 74).

181. Negric, Ivan (Ivana). Born 15 April 1923 in Moscenice, Opatija. A Partisan, he voluntarily surrendered to the Germans in June 1944 who took them to a camp where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 84).

182. Nela. Surname unknown. From Pazin, Istria. In the Finow concentration camp. (Ravensbruck, p. 35).

183. Niksic, Ivan (Mate). Born in 1888 in Lukezi, Jelenje, Rijeka. Arrested by the Ustasha in 1944, he was imprisoned in Germany where he disappeared. (Grobinstina, p. 415).

184. Novak, Father Nevesinj. A Roman Catholic priest from Medjimurje, he completed his studies and had been ordained in Rome during the War. He was arrested for "being a friend" of the Partisans and survived Dachau. After the War, he appears to have left the priesthood. (Katolicko, p. 158)

185. Opasic, Bojana. From Pazin. She died in Aushwitz. (Ravensbruck, p. 43, and Jakovljevic, p. 128).

186. Orlic, Zivko. From Punat, Krk, he survived Neuengamme and the British attack on the internees in Lubeck (see entry on Rude Paskvan) (Susacka revija, vol. 33).

187. Palmic, Anton (Nikole). Born 15 August 1909 in Opric, Ika, Opatija. A collaborator with the NOP, he was taken to a German concentration camp where he was killed on 6 September 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 74).

188. Palmic, Robert (Antuna). Born 11 June 1910 in Lovran. He died in Buchenwald on 17 December 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 30).

189. Palmic, Santo (Andrije). Born 1922 in Lovran. He was killed in a German camp on 24 April 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 83).

190. Paskvan, Rude. Born in Kraljevica in 1923, he completed high school in Susak (Rijeka) and was a member of SKOJ. He survived the Bremen-Fargo and Neuengamme concentration camps. On 3 May 1945 the Germans placed Paskvan with 12,000 other inmates on four ships in Lubeck which came under attack by the RAF. Paskvan with only 255 other internees survived this erroneous Allied raid. This was the greatest loss of life in maritime history. Paskvan later became a journalist for Novi list in Rijeka and died in 2001. (Susacka revija, vo. 33).
191. Peloza, Ante. From Vele Mune, Istria. He survived the S. Sabba concentration camp. (www.istrianet.org).

192. Peloza, Ivan (Stjepana). Born 9 July 1903 in Vele Mune, Istria. A member of the NOO for Mune, he was arrested and died in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 40).

193. Perisic, Anton (Antona). Born 23 March 1921 in Visoce, Lovran. A secretary of the Visoce NOO, he was arrested in May 1944 and disappeared in the Stetin concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 30).

194. Peruc, Katica (Franje). Born 1909 in Vela Ucka, Opatija. She disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 95).

195. Perusic, Josip (Andrije). Born 1901 in Buzdohonj, Cernik, Rijeka. He worked with the NOP and was arrested by the Germans and taken to a camp in Trieste where he disappeared on 23 May 1944. (Grobinstina, p. 411).

196. Petricevic, Tonka (Vanja) (born Siriscevic). Born in Spilt circa 1927. A Partisan, she was captured by German troops on Korcula in December 1943. After serving in a number of camps, she ended up in Auschwitz which she survived. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

197. Pilat, Bojana. An Istrian living in Zagreb, she died in Auschwitz. (Nepokorena, p. 44).

198. Pilat, Father Joakim. Born in 1880 in Pazin. A Roman Catholic priest, he survived Dachau. (Katolicko, pp. 157-58).

199. Pintaric, Ivan-Cinkovac (Andre). Born 26 July 1907, he lived in Kuceli, Opatija. Killed in S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 93).

200. Piskuric, Mirko. From Trsat, Rijeka. He served as the secretary of the Susak (Rijeka) town committee of the CPC. He was arrested on 28 April 1943 and interned Italy. He was killed in Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. (Trsat, pp. 282, 337 & 345).

201. Poje, Aleksandar Bato. Born in 1921 in Petrinja of parents from Rijeka and Kostrena. He was involved in illegal work for support of the Partisans in Sarajevo where he was arrested in April 1942. After being in Jasenovac, he was handed over to the Germans and was taken to their camps in Sajmiste near Belgrade, Alend near Vienna and Bersflord in Norway where he was executed on 19 July 1942. (Kostrena, p. 193).

202. Priskic, Anton (Antun). Born 10 November 1915 in Lovran. Served in the Italian financial police. He died in the Sand-Bastel-Witsendorf camp in December 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 119).

203. Prodan, Mario (Petra). Born 15 March 1921 in Volosko, Opatija. Arrested by the Germans in Opatija on 12 February 1944, he disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 92).

204. Puhar, Josip (Ivana). Born 19 October 1924 in Poljane, Opatija. A Partisan. He was killed in S. Sabba on 22. January 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 50).

205. Pulic, Ivan (Marina). Born 18 May 1880 in Kozuli, Dobrec, Lovran. A sympathizer of the NOP. He was killed in Dachau in May 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 83).

206. Puz, Ivan (Josipa). Born 27 November 1925 in Permani, Opatija. A Partisan, he was captured in November 1944 and later killed in S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 46).

207. Radetic, Darinka-Donata (Tome) (married name Koverlica). Born 12 December 1921 in Volosko. Survived S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 102).

208. Radosevic, Ivan. An Istrian living in Zagreb, he died in Dachau in 1945. (Nepokorena, p. 44).

209. Radun, Elda. From Dalmatia, she survived Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

210. Rak, Cvetko (Marka). Born in 1923 in Buzdohanj, Cernik, Rijeka. Worked in the NOP. He was captured in Gorski kotar and died in a camp in 1944. (Grobinstina, p. 372).

211. Raspor, Drago (Jerolima). Born in 1920 in Klana. Killed in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 98).

212. Raspor, Dusan (Drage). Born in 1920 in Klana. Killed in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 98).

213. Raspor, Franco (Ivana). Born 1914 in Klana. Taken to a German camp on 14 June 1944 and killed on 8 April 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 98).

214. Rauch, Zdenko. Born in 1908 in Kostrena. A Partisan, he was captured by the Germans in 1943 and first was in a number of camps in Croatia and Serbia before being taken to a camp in Munster. He was later moved to Lager Vic where he died in March or April 1945. (Kostrena, p. 123).

215. Ritt, Katarina. From Trsat, Rijeka. Killed in a German concentration camp. (Trsat, p. 346).

216. Rubinic, Ivan (Ivana). Born 27 August 1892 in Kalac, Moscenicka Draga. A member of the NOO for Moscenicka Draga, he was arrested on 20 April 1944 and he disappeared in the Binderhausen concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 37).

217. Rubinic, Spiro (Antona). Born 24 April 1894 in Moscenice, Opatija. Arrested by the Germans on 11 November 1944, he disappeared in 1945 in the Flossenberg concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 85).

218. Rudan, Marija (Antona). Born 16 February 1922 in Grabovo, Moscenicka Draga. President of the USAOH for Grabovo, she was arrested on 22 November 1944 and taken to a German concentration camp where she disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 37).

219. Ruzic, Rudolf (Ivana). Born 27 January 1913 in Pobri, Opatija. Killed in 1944 in S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 92).

220. Salvi - Slavic, Anton (Antona). An Italian of Croatian descent born 12 May 1905 in Puzi, Permani, Opatija. Killed in S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 92).

221. Samsa, Franco (Antona). Born in Klana, he lived in Rijeka. Taken to Dachau on 15 February 1944 and killed there in March 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 98).

222. Sandalj, Fani (Ferdinanda) (born Kalcic). Born 26 September 1909 in Kraj, Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. Arrested by pro-Mussolini Italians in 1944 and disappeared in the Herzbruck concentration camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 85).

223. Sankovic, Andrija (Andrije). Born 1900 in Zejane, Istria. President of the local NOO, he was captured on 8 February 1944 and taken to Dachau where he was killed on 24 December 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 67).

224. Sankovic, Anton (Andrije). Born 17 May 1904 in Zejane, Istria. A collaborator with the NOP, he was arrested in Rijeka in April 1944 and taken to a camp where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 86).

225. Semeliker, Father Matthias. A Roman Catholic priest and an ethnic Croat from the Burgenland region of Austria where he was born in 1910. He defended the use of the Croatian language in the region in the face of Nazi persecution. He was arrested on 9 March 1943 and survived Dachau. (Katolicko, p. 161).

226. Sepic, Dusan (Rudolfa). Born in Kuceli, Opatija. A Partisan, he was captured on 18 December 1944 and disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 56).

227. Sepic, Ivan (Mate). Born 11 September 1911 in Moscenicka Draga. An activist in the NOP, he was arrested by the Germans in February 1945 and taken to a German concentration camp where he disappeared. (Liburnijskog, p. 38).

228. Sersic, Franka. From Rab. She and her husband hid three American intelligence officers in their home for several weeks. The officers had been sent to Rab to establish a radio relay station to connection the leadership of the Croatian Partisans with the Allies in Italy. Shortly after the officers had been moved out, the Germans arrested Franka and her husband in March 1944 and took her to a concentration camp. (Ticac, pp. 62-63).

229. Sersic, Jakov. From Rab. Husband of Franka, he was taken to a German concentration camp. (Ticac, pp. 62-63).

230. Simcevic, Bozidar (Pave). Born 1892 in Maslenica, Zadar, lived in Opatija. Initially he had been in an Italian camp. He was released upon Italy's capitulation and became a member of the NOO of Opatija. He was arrested again in Spring 1944 and was killed in S. Sabba in the same year. (Liburnijskog, p. 44).

231. Sintic, Albert (Josipa). Born 10 January 1914 in Sucici, Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. Collaborated with the NOP. Arrested by the Germans in July 1944, he disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 85).

232. Sirola, Gino. From Zamet, Rijeka. A member of the CPC, he was arrested in Rijeka on 7 July 1944. He did forced labor in a number of camps including Dacahu and survived. (Article in Novi list, 18 December 2004).

233. Sirotnjak, Marijan (Lina). Born 1925 in Lovranska Draga, Lovran. A member of the local NOO, he was arrested on 21 January 1944 and disappeared in Dachau. (Liburnijskog, p. 30).

234. Sirotnjak, Mario (Ivana). Born in Lovran, he died from tuberculosis in Dachau on 16 May 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 83).

235. Sizgoreo, Jozica. Lives in Split, she survived Auschwitz. (Article in Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 January 2005).

236. Skalamera, Anica. Born 1920 in Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. Killed in a German camp in July 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 92).

237. Skalamera, Franco (Antona). Born 25 May 1909 in Kalac, Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. Arrested by the Germans on 8 October 1944, he died in Dachau on 25 November 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 85).

238. Skalamera, Ivan (Antona). Born 26 May 1912 in Kalac, Moscenicka Draga, Opatija. President of the NOO for Kalac, he was arrested and later killed on 19 December 1944 in S. Sabba. (Liburnijskog, p. 38).

239. Skerijanc, (Franje) Ivan. Born 26 December 1908 in Matulje. A member of the NOO for Jusici, he was arrested and taken to Buchenwald where he died on 13 December 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 25).

240. Skocanic, Radames (Miroslava). Born 3 October 1923 in Liganj, Lovran. A sympathizer of the NOP, he was arrested by the Germans on 1 May 1944 and disappeared in a German camp. (Liburnijskog, p. 83).

241. Skvaza, Milojka Messoranja. From Susak (Rijeka), born circa 1927. A member of SKOJ, she was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. She survived the camp. (Article in Novi list, 11 December 2003).

242. Slavica. Surname unknown. From Karbuna, Istria. (Jakovljevic, p. 128).

243. Slosar, Stefanija. Born 1914 in Lipa, Rupa. Killed in S. Sabba in 1944.

244. Smaric, Petar (Antona). Born 9 April 1907 in Liganj. A sympathizer of the NOP, he was taken to a German camp and executed in October 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 83).

245. Snjader, Franco (Ivana). Born in 1908 in Klana. Killed in Dachau on 15 February 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 98).

246. Snajder, Ivan (Ivana). Born in 1898 in Klana. Taken to Dachau on 15 February 1944 where he was killed on 2 March 1945. (Liburnijskog, p. 98).

247. Snajder, Slava (Andrije). Born in 1920 in Klana. Taken to Mauthausen on 5 May 1944 where she was killed on 16 October 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 98).

248. Snajder, Vladimir (Ivana). Born in 1921 in Klana. Taken to Dachau on 15 February 1944 where he was killed in July 1944. (Liburnijskog, p. 98).

249. Spincic, Lucija. From Kastav, her husband was in the Partisans. Wa

Fully revived Croatian city exquisitely calm

DUBROVNIK
Posted on Sun, Mar. 27, 2005

BY CAROL PUCCI
Seattle Times


cpucci@seattletimes.com
Travel Wise is aimed at helping people travel smart, especially independent travelers seeking good value. Drawing on my own experiences and readers', I'll cover everything from the best resources to how to tap into the local culture. My column runs the last Sunday of each month.

DUBROVNIK, Croatia - At the Gavun fish bar, trays of salt cod, sardines and fresh squid fill a glass case in a closet-size kitchen. Diners relax outdoors on sidewalk picnic tables shaded by red umbrellas.

In between bites of a $3 tuna carpaccio sandwich, I caught the attention of Alan Durovic, the Gavun's young owner, and asked about the Complaints Book.

''The Complaints Book is on the front table,'' read a note at the top of his menu.

I had no complaints, but I was curious.

''Do you really have a complaints book?'' I asked, as he darted past my table with a platter of the finger-length sardines Croatians eat like French fries. ''Of course not,'' he smiled.

I'd been trying to solve the mystery of the Complaints Book ever since I'd seen a dusty blue volume labeled ''Complaints'' sitting on a hotel bar a few days before. On my way to the restroom, I peeked inside. There were instructions in five languages and carbon paper for making copies, but all the pages were blank.

''Is it something that's required by law?'' I asked Durovic.

''Of course!'' he smiled again.

A regulation left over from the days of Yugoslavia and communism, he speculated, but Durovic now has bigger concerns. Among them: how to kick-start a fledging business in a postcard-perfect town that many foreigners still equate with bombs and destruction.

Dubrovnik has been called the city of light and stone; a city of poets, writers and scientists. Today, it might be called the city of survivors.

A dozen years after a siege by the Serbian-controlled Yugoslav army damaged more than 70 percent of the buildings, the historic walled Old Town has been completely restored. Few signs of the war remain.

More than 250 people died, but not everyone fled.

''Some of us stayed,'' said Vesna Gamulin. Dressed in flared blue jeans and a white shawl, her blond hair tied back to show off a pair of handmade silver earrings, she showed me the ''street'' where she was born, a steep alley of stone steps and landings where my husband and I rented an apartment for a few days last spring. ``We defended the city with our presence.''

Her fluency in several languages earned her a job as a translator after the Balkan war. Today she guides visitors on walking tours through old Dubrovnik, pointing out friends who reopened jewelry shops and restaurants after the war ended.

Ringed by medieval walls 80 feet high in some parts, Dubrovnik's historical center was rebuilt in Baroque style after a 1667 earthquake. Millions went into reconstruction after the war ended in May 1992. Today, the only way to tell a building that was damaged from one that was not is by the color of its roof -- red tiles for new; yellow for old.

GETTING SITUATED

Renting an audio guide and walking the 1 ½-mile sea wall is the best way to orient yourself, but we were able to get our bearings by just looking out our bedroom window.

Most visitors stay in the modern city outside the walls, in resort hotels stretching along the Adriatic coast. But for us, spending the night in pedestrian-only Old Town left us feeling less like tourists in an outdoor museum and more like part of the living city that old Dubrovnik becomes once the day-trippers leave.

Huffing and puffing our way up 84 stone steps on Palmoticeva, a pedestrian alley that passes for a street in Old Town, was a small inconvenience for the rewards that went with the apartment we rented through a Croatian travel agency.

Our neighbors panted their way up the stairs just like we did, only they lugged bags of groceries from the corner store. They watched satellite TV, played basketball, grew gardens in tiny patches of grass surrounded by acres of stone and strung their laundry on clotheslines that stretched between buildings.

A few steps away from our apartment was a row of outdoor restaurants and cafes on Prijeko Street. Prijeko means ''across,'' a reference to the time when this part of town was divided from the rest of Dubrovnik by a swamp, now limestone-paved Stradun, the main pedestrian promenade.

From our third-floor window, we looked down over the rooftops at the rotunda of the big, 16-sided Onofrio drinking fountain, built in the 15th century, that continued to work and supply water during the Balkan war.

To the right was the 14th-century Franciscan monastery and cloister with an antique pharmacy that still serves as the Old Town's main drugstore. Below us was the Stradun and the Cafe Orlando, our favorite spot for morning cappuccino and 60-cent slices of cherry strudel served by waitresses in blue blazers and gold neckties.

Casual strolls down random alleyways led us into courtyards where we found women selling dried figs, hand-knitted booties and oils made of lavender.

JEWELRY MAKERS

Modern craftsmen carry on Dubrovnik's tradition as a jewelry-making center. On the Stradun, jewelers Luci Vierda, 19, and her father, Matija, sold craft reproductions of traditional silver and gold filigree earrings and pendants in a shop that has been in the family since 1914. Nearby, Galerija Nakita, displays more modern designs inside a maze of rooms flooded in neon light.

Around the corner from our apartment we found the Convent of the Transfiguration where Franciscan nuns first came to live in the 13th century.

Vesna had tipped us off about a small museum that the nuns open on request. When we walked into the stone courtyard and rang the doorbell, Sister Karolina stuck her head out a top-floor window and motioned for us to push open the wooden door and come inside.

She spoke only Croatian and Italian, but she spent 45 minutes showing us through exhibits stored in the basement where the nuns hid during the war. On display were antique irons, tools for spinning and weaving wool, urns used for storing olive oil; paintings and artwork. Shells and pieces of shrapnel from the war were arranged on a wooden table.

Sister Karolina went to a drawer and found some printed material in English that explained how workers uncovered ancient paintings and other architectural elements of an original medieval church next door to the convent when they removed plaster while making repairs after the war.

Dubrovnik was a major maritime power when it broke from Venetian and Hungarian rule and became the independent Republic of Ragusa in the 14th century. Strip away the trappings of the tourist destination it is today and it remains essentially a fishing village. Mussels, squid, sardines and octopus are the local specialties, and old Dubrovnik supports a thriving restaurant and cafe scene.

The restaurants along Prijeko would tempt any visitor with their displays of shellfish on ice and candlelit outdoor tables. But locals consider them tourist traps, and pointed us instead to neighborhood spots such as Lokanda Pskarija, a harborside cafe with a few tables scattered around a stone patio next to scales where fishermen weigh their catch.

We watched more than one sunset here as we sampled local specialties such as black risotto -- colored so with squid ink -- and Mussels Buzara, cooked in wine, oil, garlic (never onion) and tomatoes. Rarely did we pay more than $20 for a meal for two.

''Hole-in-the-wall'' and ''hidden hideaway'' are clichĂŠ descriptions, but they literally fit the Cafe Buza, an outdoor bar clinging to a sea cliff just outside the eastern walls.

The only way to reach the Buza is through a hole poked into a cement archway, and the only clue that you've found the place is a wooden sign with an arrow that says Cold Drinks.

It was chilly and beginning to rain when we claimed the last free table on the terrace. We ordered beers and waited out the storm under a thatched awning while listening to Frank Sinatra tunes blend with the sounds of waves pounding against rock.

A waiter came by with a tray filled with tiny plastic cups.

''Something to warm you up,'' he said, handing us each a shot of a clear liquid that tasted like vodka.

Rather than rushing everyone out the door to clear tables for new customers, he offered drinks on the house.

I wondered if the Buza had a Complaints Book, but just couldn't bring myself to ask.

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