Croatian Encyclopedia of the Dead

(n1info.hr)

For the entire thirty-five years between Tuđman's 1991 and Plenković's 2026 - from Vice Vukojević and his famous Commission for Determining the War and Post-War Victims of World War II, to Ivan Penava and his famous Commission for Determining the Fates of Victims of Crimes Committed Immediately After World War II - Croats have been counting the killed and missing before and after 1945.

Dusty archives are being dug up and forests and grasslands are being fenced off with police tape, cavers are descending into pits, shovels are hitting the dry earth, excavator caterpillars are whining, cameras are buzzing while forensic experts in white suits are sorting out beef and human shins on tent wings: not so much of Croatia has been dug up in all the thousand and a half years of Croatian agriculture and farming.

One would therefore expect that by today all war and post-war victims would have been finally and once and for all determined: the Germans, for example, meticulously counted all seven million of their killed soldiers and civilians as early as the Statistical Yearbook of the Federal Republic of Germany for 1960, that is, only fifteen years after the war. However, we, even thirty-five years later, still do not know even approximately how many of ours and theirs were killed in the Second World War, nor how many of ours were killed by theirs after the war. Something had to be done, and quickly, because here we are, World War III is just around the corner, and we have not even counted the victims of the Second.

And what did the Croats do then, realizing that at this pace, the victims of war and the post-war period would be counted at the earliest? They launched, clearly, a project to list all Croatian victims of the twentieth century, everywhere, at all times and in general!

Most seriously, without a single facial muscle twitching, Andrej Plenković and his government, in collaboration with the Institute of History, pompously presented the scientific project "Victims of Wars and State/Political Violence in Croatian History of the Twentieth Century", with the aim of creating a comprehensive digital database with the names of all victims who fell in Croatia in the last century, a kind of Croatian encyclopedia of the dead.

"Most other projects usually deal with the victims of one or two regimes at the same time, one war or a shorter period, while in our case the focus is on the entire twentieth century and all the wars and regimes that have left their mark on Croatia," the Institute proudly explains that their victimology will be the first of its kind in Europe, explaining that "the focus will be on establishing the identities of the victims, the circumstances of their suffering, as well as analyzing the broader social and political context of violence and repression."

Analysis of the broader social and political context? Oh, yes. "Wars, revolutions, political changes and ideological struggles have left a deep mark on Croatian society, and research on the victims of these conflicts is often subject to political interpretations and ideological divisions," the Institute and the Government explained. "The project plans to contribute to a better understanding of complex political processes and to improving social coping with the legacy of the twentieth century."

The Croatian twentieth century, in fact, is quite complicated. I'm not saying that everyone's is complicated, but there are few like the Croatian one, subject to various, as they call it, "political interpretations and ideological divisions." What does that look like in practice? Or - more precisely - what will it look like in practice?

The political Croatian twentieth century began, for example, with a national movement in the spring of 1903. "It was the year nine hundred and three," Croats would later sing, "when misfortunes came to our Croatia." You know what else: "Hedervari raised the Hungarian flags, he wants to make Croatia Hungarian for us by force," so on April 11, a group of Zaprešić residents, having learned that the railway supervisor had raised the Hungarian flag on the station building on the occasion of a national holiday, immediately went there, where one of them took down the hated flag, another doused it with kerosene, and a third set it on fire, after which a Hungarian patrol opened fire and killed Ivan Pasarić from Šibić - the first victim of the Croatian National Movement of 1903 and the first identified, as they say, "victim of wars and state/political violence in Croatian history of the twentieth century."

Excellent, they said in the Croatian Government and the Institute of History, we have the first, established identity, the circumstances of the death, and the broader socio-political context. Let's move on.

The next two victims of the national movement fell four months later, in August 1903, when Hungarian flags were again hoisted in Croatian cities for the birthday of Emperor Franz Joseph, and in the bloody riots of the conflict in Konjšćina, two Croatian rebels were killed. "The circumstances of their deaths"? Okay, let's see: the unfortunate patriots fell when Hungarian gunmen opened fire on an enraged crowd that had set out to demolish and burn the shop of a Jewish merchant.

Ups.

"Analysis of the broader social and political context of violence"? That's possible, but it's complicated: the anti-Hungarian Croatian National Movement of 1903 in Ban Croatia was also marked by numerous attacks on Jews and their property. I told you, "Croatian history of the twentieth century" is quite complicated: we haven't even reached the second "victim of wars and state/political violence", let alone a bunch of idiots.

And so, to make a long story short, the entire century, until the end.

When one day in the distant future, from World War I, the December Victims and the Karađorđević dictatorship through World War II, Sutjeska, Jasenovac, Bleiburg and the Udbina liquidations to Flash and Storm - all racking their brains over how to register the Croatian policeman, Serb Goran Alavanja, four months before Josip Jović as the officially first victim of the Homeland War - Plenković's diligent coroners finally reach the end of "Croatian history of the twentieth century", they will find in the archives how in the summer of 1999, three men in a black BMW with German license plates killed the last "victim of wars and state/political violence in Croatian history of the twentieth century" - banker Ibrahim Dedić - with a burst of automatic weapons in Zagreb's Donje Svetice.

A mafia showdown as state/political violence?! I'm telling you, it's complicated. Neither Dedić's killers nor their motive have ever been discovered, and both versions that have remained in circulation are very, um, state/political: according to one, he was killed due to unresolved scores after a large state-mafia operation to transport worthless Yugoslav dinars to Bosnia and Herzegovina and exchange them for German marks, and according to the other, he was liquidated by members of Tuta's Convicts' Battalion as a - Muslim.

After which, the Institute of History will have a saving memory of how the Croatian twentieth century, like no other and no one's, does not actually end in 1999, but in 2000, the mathematically last year of the century.

Excellent, they will say in the Croatian Government and the Institute of History, let's move on then.

Are you sure?, complicated Croatian history will ask them, because if the century ends in 2000, then the last "victim of wars and state/political violence in Croatian history of the twentieth century", I checked seven times, was a Croatian defender and officer of the Croatian Army - Milan Levar.

"The circumstances of his death, analysis of the broader social and political context"? It could be, how could it not be: Milan Levar, the defender of Gospić who in the fall of 1991 refused the order to pull Serbs out of shelters and summarily shoot them, and later exposed the crimes of his own comrades in the Homeland War before Hague investigators, was killed by an explosive device planted in his car on August 28, 2000.

His murderer, of course, was never found either: we will probably find out when the Croatian Government, in collaboration with the Institute of History, launches a scientific project aimed at creating a digital database with a list of all state/political murderers in Croatian history of the twentieth century.

So much for "social dealing with the legacy of the twentieth century": I tell you, everyone is complicated, but few are like the Croatian twentieth century, pliable and subject to all sorts of, as they are called, "political interpretations and ideological divisions".

A comprehensive list of all "victims of wars and state/political violence", with "the circumstances of their suffering and an analysis of the broader social and political context"?

Good luck with that.