Ston, Peljesac Peninsula, Dalmatian Coast: local ferry from Orebic; Ston; and Marco Polo

Mali Ston, Croatia. The wall

















An update several years later:

Mali Ston is south of Split on the Dalmatian Coast.  For us, driving north from Dubrovnik at the time, it is on the way to the island of Korcula.

Mali Ston is featured in the New York Times in 2019 for its burgeoning oyster business, see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/world/europe/croatia-oysters-balkans-bosnia.html

To get there, we chose a little local ferry from Orebic, at the end of the Peljesac Peninsula, instead of taking the big car ferry from Dubrovnik. Good choice because of traffic, delays at the main docks.

First town, Ston.

"Mali Ston" is the fortified point up there where the great wall ends.

The fortifications of Ston are among the longest in Croatia, providing increasing degrees of protection from invaders. As at Pag, there also are salt pans in the area.

Ston has been proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, see whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/160/.

Ston: Drive north from Dubrovnik. Watch for signs to Ston, Orebic, even Peljesac Peninsula. Get off, go across little bridge, and there is Ston - old town with double fortifications: one set of walls around the town, with a V shape at top.

Then, look closely and see another set of walls heading farther up - also a V. A place for falling back and regouping. These kinds of walls are called multiple fortified curtain walls, and they are often seen going up the mountainside, each with its own smaller fort at the apex. See www.adriatica.net/croatia/ogradu_en__.

Military matters. Remember that a retreat, even a total melting back into the hills, is not necessarily a defeat. The best strategy may be to save your lives at the time, and not stand and fight against overwhelming odds - but dissolve and regroup at some point, for a later return engagement.*

Have tea and orange soda, wander, back in car and through long open spaces, little towns, fishing villages, memorials to WWII, cliffs, many scenic-type places to stop and stretch and learn something. We focus so much on Normandy and where our armies were, that it even comes as a surprise to be reminded of the devastation, sacrifice and heroism elsewhere. Who is provincial?

Orebic - Last town out. A regular local ferry plies back and forth all day there - cheap. Fast on, fast off (except for packing in the cars, see picture - but that is its own entertainment. Everybody leans over the rail to watch and applaud.

Car ferry from Orebic to Korcula, Croatia

No advance ticketing needed here. Just get in line. The Orebic ferry leaves any time it is full. Even hourly, roughly. Plenty of rooms and hotels in the town. https://www.peljesac.info/orebic/.com

We got on line about 8AM and were on the first ferry from Orebic to Korcula.




Our car is this red one, bottom right.



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* More on military matters, after seeing the ingenious wall systems here. Read that biography, "The Life and Times of Genghis Khan," by Jim Whiting. I think that is the one I read, where the strategic retreat is described as historically used and highly effective - and expected. If our leaders read more history, perhaps they would expect that as a sensible tactic in some parts of the world and not jump to premature victory conclusions. Genghis Khan, with his military genius combined with follow-through in administration, brought his empire all the way to the Adriatic. See highly readable history lecture, a Dr. May at N.Ga.College and S.U. www.accd.edu/sac/history/keller/Mongols/empsub1.

Jasenovac Concentration Camp. Extermination Camp. Forgotten. Memorabilia sent out.

Jasenovac Concentration Camp is still called "a whitewash", see https://balkaninsight.com/2018/08/27/croatia-must-not-whitewash-the-horrors-of-jasenovac-08-27-2018/

Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Croatia. Dan Widing walks the path to the Memorial

Reparations. Where, when, why. US begins paying out reparations from France to Holocaust survivors and their heirs.  Jasenovac is one of some 20-22 concentration camps in Croatia WWII, See http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/jasenovac.html. Will the families of the dead here, or survivors, have their turn. The US is glad to pass out the reparations of others  but so far unwilling to see the need in its own past.

Jasenovac is largely abandoned, with the museum shuttered, the memorial here a dry fount. Much was sent to Washington DC for displays there, also as a way of getting them out of sight. The impression here is one of forgetting, not memorializing.

1.  Setting.  At Jasenovac, follow the path anyway. It is set on railway ties leading past a lovely still pond to a deserted tulip-shaped, or flame-shaped monument, but the fountain-pool area inside runs dry.  There is no illumination to the flame, and the fountain inside runs dry.

Neglected interior, dry fount, Memorial at Jasenovac, Croatia

There is little left of this World War II concentration camp at Jasenovac, Croatia.

•  Axis forces invaded what is now Croatia in 1941, and an independent pro-Nazi government state was formed within a short time.  Targeted for extermination here were Jews, Serbs (Orthodox who would not convert to Roman Catholicism, and even some who did but found they were given no reprieve, just assured of salvation), and Gypsies. See http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/jasenovac.html, and http://www.srna.rs/novosti/425705/stepinac-planned-to-convert-serbia-to-catholicism-.htm.  
• The versions of the involvement of church and other officials vary widely. * Do your own research. Example, http://www.jasenovac.org/exhibits.php, for a history of the Ustache activities.  and is one of 22 such camps in its district, Croatia. 
• That site is disturbing for its additional information, the role of Roman Catholic commanders, although the religion of any such participants in matters of the Holocaust was no deterrent to their activities.
• How many Orthodox were killed, so that the Roman Catholic factions could prevail.  See 2018  http://www.spc.rs/eng/jasenovac_right_remembrance

2.  Transport WWII prisoners. You can see a railroad spur, with a locomotive, caboose and boxcars that brought the people in, left as an exhibit. Its cargo long gone.

Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Croatia.  Railroad transport for prisoners.









The location suits obscurity and fast railroad transit for patrons. Drive west from Zagreb to the agricultural panhandle of Croatia, on the motorway, toward Osijek. The town of Jasenovac, eponymous,is near the Bosnian border with no highway sign. There was only a turnoff at the approximate spot, to find the site, now just this thumb-in-your-eye ignored park.

3.  Minimal information. You will find little information of what happened here except for a Croatian language small relief map on a metal pedestal. Its relics and photos were apparently moved to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. See http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/jasenovac/.

But is that move just an excuse to get the nastiness out of Croatian memory, a short-lived fake attempt to memorialize something not featured at all now, so the place of Jasenovac both here and there is lost?

•  A visit to the Holocaust Museum itself in the District of Columbia, Washington DC, however, showed nothing to us of Jasenovac.  Nada.  Ask and no-one had a clue. At home,  
• I found this site for the Museum, so they do have something:  Visit https://www.ushmm.org/search/results/?q=Jasenovac. 

4.  Extent of killing.  There were some 83,000 persons killed, including children. See Jasenovac Memorial site at  http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr/default.aspx?sid=6711

Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Croatia.   Mass graves and markers.












5.  Obligation to remember.  Is there such? I understand that the area was destroyed in the 1940's, as also happened at much of Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald, then abandoned during the 1990's wars. See www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/jasenovac/.  What issues arise in maintaining sites for remembrance purposes.  See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7827534.stm

Even where there was destruction after WWII, many sites of other concentration and extermination camps offer museums and exhibits. Of those, only at Mauthausen, from our travels, can a traveler see almost all the original buildings and the work-death sites.  Should a museum or interactive displays at least should have been left open at Jasenovac. The area is essentially a wildlife preserve now, with a flat, mowed area with humps in the ground, and the outlines of rectangles, a museum building with windows broken and even the WC locked.

There was a bouquet of flowers from someone somewhere there, my notes note, but no memorials or even lists of names that I saw. There is nothing of the people who died there - not even stacks of glasses and shoes and passports and wallet photos and dental work, as at Auschwitz or Dachau.

7.  It is probably too late to reconstruct anything meaningful at Jasenovac. The Memorial Museum is locked and windows broken.


Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Croatia. Abandoned memorial museum.












If you go, you will be alone, except for a possible tractor and a cyclist or two.

Jasenovac Extermination Camp. Now an agricultural pass-through, recreation area.agricultural, recreational












At least look up the pictures of the horrors on the internet, and the discussions of religion-motivated executions, not just Nazi. Documents reviewed.

• We don't do much better in preserving history that does not favor our own self-image. We hide our Jim Crow era, with entry to the Jim Crow Museum by appointment. See http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/FAQ.
• We fake the nobility of our leaders' responses to 9/11 at NYC, pretending they did all they reasonably could before and after. Nationalism amok fails all of us. Why were not even their words followed by themselves as they abandoned the trail because it was difficult and headed for another country to invade, thinking it would be easy.  No government is immune to self-serving.

8.  Bottom line.  Lack of consistency in what messages are conveyed.

In Croatia, even the German soldiers get better treatment than do those killed by them. See the Zagreb post on Miragoj Cemetery. Lists of German names, birth dates, dates of death, even though in a common grave.  No complete listing of those killed at Jasenovac is at the site, that we saw.

 There is a compendium of the dead, however, at this Jasenovac Memorial site, at  http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr/default.aspx?sid=6711.  Eighty-three thousand killed.
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Jasenovac history through people.  Burial memorial, Zagreb, Croatia. Cardinal Stepinac, 

What was the role of Cardinal Stepinac: We understand he offered the Orthodox the chance for conversion to Roman Catholicism before they were killed; but took no steps to stop the killing.  Is that so unusual?  No.












 * This is the burial place at St. Peter's, Zagreb, of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, who had a role in preventing/enabling deaths by Nazi, depending on what sources you believe, that some see as heroic, others as a betrayal. See, for example, http://www.grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2005/04/forgotten-genocide. for a blog on Jasenovac, including comments on Stepinac. See also http://www.emperors-clothes.com/croatia/stepinacfile.doc"  Is there pressure to keep Jasenovac under the radar for religious and political reasons?

There is an elaborate coffin on display near the altar in Zagreb at St. Peter's, that tour guides say is Stepinac's coffin, but other sources while we were there said he really is buried at the wall. See Jasenovac photos, discussion.

The era: Other exterminations. Jewish history in Croatia, including through WWII and after: See Jews in Croatia. The site points out that Dubrovnik has the second oldest synagogue in the world.
See http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/jasenovac.html.  That site is disturbing for its additional information, the role of Roman Catholic commanders, although the religion of any such participants in matters of the Holocaust was no deterrent to their activities.

One Cardinal in a Watering Trough. History in Art, Sculpture. Take Good Notes

Drowning priests. Why is the monster dragging him down?
Ask Daniel Widing, observer.
Can we find out?

Who knows RC hats?

From three coins in a fountain move to one cardinal in a watering trough.  Or does the hat on the religious one signify only priesthood? Either way, what is he doing there. Who is she? We know that is Dan Widing, of Car-Dan Tour Company, a happenstance passer-by, by the tree. He is somber. What is the tale?  Somber.

Daniel Widing in Croatia, at memorial for drowning cardinal, or bishop?

Or is this Llubjlana, or Kranj, Slovenia.  Our notes do not help. There is a serpent-monster pulling down the cleric. Dan and I speculated about this mystery scene at the time, then failed to fully identify it in our daily logs.  It haunts, particularly with current concerns with violations of the fiduciary duty of those in mainstream Western World's largest religious institution.

Slovenia emerged from notes location in Dan's log.

• See issue update at Slovenia Road Ways, We had spent a few days in Slovenia, same trip, crossing the border from Croatia, and heading to Llubljana, Lake Bled, and Kranj.  The Diocese of Ljubljana Cathedral is there.  This appears to be indeed a modern reflection of an issue plaguing the church, as well as other aspects of Western culture. Other cultures? Beyond us.  Meanings of old words, the gravitas of them, have been lost from a clearer anti-abuse position, to merely "don't offend little children." Vet. See Plain Meaning Nemesis, Papal Retirement.  Why has this issue been shunted aside.

The process of travel without agendas, and how we learn our history, is the point here.

Go first, take the photos and keep the guidebooks, then learn details at home.  We never know what might be interesting, and current.

• In researching this unfortunate fellow, we found someone named Cardinal Baggio who was drowned in Hollywood style, film Angels and Demons, in Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome, but that appears to be the stuff of fiction, not fact.  Film:  see http://www.ambigram.com/angels-and-demons-brands/.  See biography of a real Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio at http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bbaggio.html

We went to art sources:  look for our fountain at http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/art.html/  .  No luck with a surface scroll-down, but there are many links.  Then, with further searching, and finding Dan's log, arrived at Slovenia.  See site. Sometimes the name is Franci Frantar. Or Franc Frantar for the transgressor, in the water.

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Fjaka. Dubrovnik, Other Islands. New Travel Info. Dubrovnik - Lighthouses

Rent a Lighthouse
Fjaka and Flaneur
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Primosten, Croatia. Walled town.

Meet the flaneur.  The flaneur is one who ambles, no particular destination in mind, see discussion of the vanishing cyberflaneur at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-death-of-the-cyberflaneur.html?scp=1&sq=flaneur&st=cse.  Those who mess about in boats have the chance to be flaneurs of a coastline, in ways that the unplanned road traveler also enjoys. 

Fjaka, on the other hand, is immobile.  The lean-back, the siesta time, the lazy scratch behind the ear without opening the eyes.
Fjaka.

The article notes "fjaka" -- Croatian for "lazy mood." But that is in itself inadequate for the period of nap, of indeterminate length and posture, between productivity and productivity, if even one cares if it returns, or was ever there, huuuunnnhhhhh.

Find a meandering but seductively astute observation of fjaka at http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/9842/1/Fjaka---Between-Times.html. Blissful state, beyond control. A faint unconsciousness. Fjakuni. Those who withdraw, seemingly uselessly, from the world. A lengthening cat, heavy in sleep in the sun.
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If my brother is allowed to fjak, why am not I?
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1.  Flaneurs.  Dubrovnik area.  For those with sailing in mind, the Dalmatian Coast offers multiple destinations, easy cruising in between.  See http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/15/sailing.dalmation.coast/index.html.

Dubrovnik is not the only walled city to see.  Primosten, is south of Sibenik, others dot the coast.  Enjoy the areasouth of Dubrovnik, on the way to Montenegro, although the walls were there for defense and to consider it only beautiful or interesting does not do history justice.. Dubrovnik was once was the republic known as Ragusa, in the 15th century.  Its maritime power rivaled Venice. It came under its latest siege in 1991, in the "dismemberment" of Yugoslavia, see Financial Times, September 11-12, 2010, article "Grace Under Fire" by Alec Russell. Dubrovnik is a favored location, with its 4-meter thick walls. Best to see it in fall or spring, not the cruise-crowded summer.
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Newer possibilities in Croatia: lighthouses. See again the Financial Times from July 8, 2011, Send Out the Speedboat, We Need More Champagne.  Rent Grebeni, off Dubrovnik, some 3 miles off.  Rental lighthouses are now available and going fast. Find some with butlers, chefs, housekeepers.
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Some lighthouses originated in the 1800's with the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Habsburgs.  Grebeni was de-commissioned in the 1960's. Take the family:  One single and three double bedrooms.
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Rental lighthouses. For us, too time-warped, too static. 
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II.  Fjaka; and the more mobile flaneur.

Think of gentlemen of Dubrovnik, quill in hand, and in the soothing arms of the sacred nap.  What is that, the enduring image, half-seen, see Fjaka, Between Times, at http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/9842/1/Fjaka--Between-Times.html.   The fjaka. The fjakuna's yawn does not take a lighthouse to find, but perhaps ... it .... can ... dzzzzzzs.
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Croatia; Fjaka. Just lean back ...

2.  Island off Split, via Hvar, to Vis.
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This takes a map.  We did not get to Vis, but understand also from the Financial Times, this one from July 30-31, 2011, has a Hotel San Giorgio that also rents out a lighthouse nearby.   Vis is some two hours by ferry from Split, and housed a cave headquarters for Tito in WWII.  Other military installations were also on the island. There is a dreamy grotto to explore,  baroque palazzos (Venice was less influential here than on the mainland, however), Roman baths, Greek necropolis - city of the dead.
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We tend to keep moving, but in a later incarnation, would return to Vis for some fiaka.

Karlovac. Croatian History - And Ethnic, Religious Group Conflict. Deaths writ large and small.

Croatia.  History of a Crossroads.

1.  Deaths writ large - Karlovac
2.  Deaths writ small - Osijek

1.  Deaths writ large.

Slavko Goldstein, Croatian journalist, publisher, philosopher in his way, wrote a book not yet translated, but there is an extensive review worth absorbing. See "He Understood Evil" at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=22795/
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• In 1941, the Jewish author Slavko Goldstein was living with his parents in the city of Karlovac

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Karlovac, Croatia. Ozalj Castle,

Slavko Goldstein's father was among those killed by the Ustache, pro-fascist nationalists who bloomed under the Nazis 1941 ff. What followed: the deaths of "32,000 Jews, 40,000 Gypsies and 350,000 Serbs". See He Understood Evil, a review by Charles Simic, as to Goldstein's book (not yet translated), 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning, Zagreb, Novi Liber, 494 pp., HRK180.00. Find it at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jul/02/he-understood-evil/.  It has been criticized by others, see http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/17397/croatians-rip-holocaust-book-for-criticizing-archbishop/
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The elements are familiar: There is a family from this lovely setting, a medium-sized, working town, regular people. Then deaths on a massive scale. It takes close reading and concentration to absorb all this mass death and history, but do it. How does it happen? This review, from Dialogic, by a Thivai Abhor, http://dialogic.blogspot.com/2009/06/charles-simic-slavko-goldstein-he.html/; focuses on nationalism as triggering disregard for all other interests, rights, see Le Monde Diplomatique, English ed., at http://mondediplo.com/blogs/nationalism-is-the-culprit/. National identity, group identity, has any nation resolved issues of humana vs. immediate self-interest with an ethnic or cultural group.

Croatia has been at the center of Balkan conflict for centuries of invasions, wars, ethnic warring.  Find an overview at http://montenegroroadways.blogspot.com/2011/09/roots-of-old-yugoslavia.html.  With war criminals still being found and arrested and brought to trial at the Hague, the issue remains important.  How could all this happen.

Croatian history: Conflict, invasions, re-orderings. Complex.

2.  Crossroads and conflicts.  Ancient history to modern. 

2.1  Greeks.   It began with the Greeks, in a peaceful way, apparently, see Croatian History at http://www.geocities.com/i_canjar/history/crohistory.htm/ .  The Greeks established colonies in 600 BC. Here in Croatia, see Cavtat at http://www.croatiatraveller.com/southern_dalmatia/Cavtat.htm.
Then came the Romans.
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2.2  Avars. Migrating groups soon arrived, although elements of smaller groups may have shared space with the Romans, see http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/2004/06/avars-bulgars-and-croats.html
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2.3  Croats.  Now begins more forceful takeovers.

Croats came, we understand, from the Ukraine in the 6th Century AD. They defeated the Romans and others at the Adriatic Sea area, and its many ports, in about 614-635 AD. The Croats also beat back the Avars, another group, back to the Danube: then were awarded lands under the sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire, that became the Orthodox branch of Christianity.
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2.4.  King Tomislav. 
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Capilyn, Bosnia;  King Tomislav













Tomislav first ruled over a unified Croatia - until his mysterious death in 928 when the Roman branch of Christianity was competing with the Orthodox (see http://www.studiacroatica.org/jcs/01/0105.htm and http://bosniaroadways.blogspot.com/2006/06/capilyn-near-croatian-border-statue.html.  Then begin the back and forth wars and migrations among Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Istria, other regions.
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2.5  Turkish Ottomans. 
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Invasions of the Turks (Ottomans): see http://www.medievalists.net/2009/08/28/the-ottoman-influences-on-croatia-in-the-second-half-of-the-fifteenth-century/, leading to tensions that persisted and augmented both World Wars, and to today in some regions: Orthodox Christians, Roman Christians, Hungarians, Muslims, Magyars.
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The capital, Zagreb, became a seat of a Bishop in 1094 a Roman Catholic Bishop, in the conservative and authoritarian Roman mode. This was only after centuries of conflict with the earlier egalitarian heritage of Nin, see Bishop Grgur Ninski who opposed imposing a Latin service on the people, but lost and was deposed. 
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In neighboring Serbia, the Orthodox heritage prevailed, in competition with the Roman, see http://euroheritage.net/serbscroatsbosnians.shtml.  That competition continued well through WWII with charges by Orthodox that the Roman clergy stood by while Orthodox were slaughtered in Jasenovac Concentration Camp, offering only "conversion" - of these already Christian people.  See http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/bosnia.htm.  What proofs of opposing the slaughter has the Vatican provided? Is the issue still current? Apparently so, with the counterattacks on the work of
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Is group identity and justification always determinative over rights of an individual. When does tolerance end and threat start
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Ethnic group conflict. A part of any society under stress, or where one feels threat by the emergence of another. In Croatia, there is an added element: groups that lived in concert reasonably for centuries, were turned against one another with horrific results. How did that happen after all that time. What are the roots of genocide.

3.  Deaths writ smaller.  Individual Death.

Find compassion, details, of individual deaths, in cultures where portraits, stories, are told on the stones: where circumstance permitted individualization.
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Osijek, Croatia. Cemetery. Child Therezia, age 16

Here is the face and figure of the child, Therezia, who died at age 16 - a random stop to walk slowly through a graveyard near Osijek. Who was she. How did she die. Who were her people.

Zagreb - Officer Yellachitch, or Jelacic

   Officer Yellachitch.

The modern spelling for the name is "Jelacic"; but the more familiar spelling may come from the fine vintage book about the Balkans, "Black Lamb, Gray Falcon", by Rebecca West, from 1937-41. The officer stands, mounted, in the market square, Jelacic Square.

Yellatchitch-Jelacic according to "Black Lamb" is the 1848 hero who had been appointed Ban of Croatia. He was a Croat General who brilliantly repelled the Hungarians, crushing their rebellion, and thus preserved the Austrian Empire from the Hungarians.  They later joined forces as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but at this time there was conflict.

"Ban" means "Viceroy".  The story is important for its human betrayal side:  Jelacic was then promptly shoved aside, as other powerful interests and people took over. See knigite.abv.bg/en/rw/rw_epilogue1., the 1937-41 book, "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon," by Rebecca West at the paperback version pages 53-56, Penguin Books 1994.

Read about the old Zagreb there:  here is the Epilogue at knigite.abv.bg/en/rw/rw_epilogue1, Old Zagreb, "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon."

Travel reading.  I took the paperback, but cut it in half. It was too thick as a single paperback, too heavy as a hardback. Kept both halves,

Zagreb - Metropolitan: Cathedral, Mirogoj Cemetery, St. Mark's, St. George, underground mall

The lower new town of Zagreb, off the hillside-cliff defense area, is cosmopolitan with parks and grand statues and great Viennese-style avenues and buildings, for business. Days of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Railroad Station, Zagreb, Croatia

The huge old (cloak and dagger?) railroad station in Zagreb has been a main stop for passengers coming from Vienna and moving on to Belgrade or elsewhere, and back.

You can see the influence of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire in most all of the buildings and statuary. The tiled roof is on St. Mark's. We found more people who spoke German than English. See fine photo gallery at www.pbase.com/ralf/zagreb&page=all.

St. Mark's Church, Zagreb, Croatia

There are two main churches:  This, St. Mark's Church; it is first documented in the 12th Century, Romanesque.  The roof tiles form the coats of arms of Croatia, Dalmatia (the coastal region), Zagreb and Slavonia (the western agricultural region, see ://www.croatiatraveller.com/Slavonia/Slavonia.htm).

Then there is the Cathedral of St. Stephen, a more traditional Gothic-looking structure.

In the Cathedral of St. Stephen is the burial place for Cardinal Stepinac, whose activities during WWII are a discussion point for those concerned with the role of church officials in wars. Do you stand aside, and condone by passivity the genocides and other atrocities, or do you give up your life for your friends?

Cardinal Stepinac kept his life, and offered only to convert the Orthodox headed to their deaths at the hands of the Ustache.  He did not stop or try to stop the executions.

For a favorable review of what Cardinal Stepinac decided and when, see www.hic.hr/books/stepinac/english/second/.  For a less favorable account, see www.philologos.org/bpr/files/Vatican/vs001a. Fine minds differ.

Here is St. George, battling the perpetual dragon. Moisture drips from his toe, but this is not seen as miraculous as in some other religious statuary. See example at Bosnia Road Ways, Medjugorje site .

St. George and the Dragon, Zagreb park, Croatia

Dragons.  The earliest "known" dragon may be at Mesopotamia, from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar.

What traces of what led to the nearly global idea of hte dragon.  Is it just a kind of dinosaur.

Collateral and unrecoverable damage caused by wars over the centuries. Is there any archeological evidence of anything left there, after Operation Iraqi "Freedom." See information on collections at www.dia.org/collections/ancient/mesopotamia/31.25.

Dragon forms were also in Egypt, see www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/799168, and in various eastern and western cultures, see www.draconika.com/culture.php.

More on dragons: A TV show (history channel? sponsored by the army??) recently, in September 2006, said that dragons were also in Mexico, Alaska (!) . and we have seen the dragon boats in Viking cultures. Were they real once? Here is the story of a knight and the dragon, and saving the lady, from Libya: www.kellscraft.com/stgeorge.


Miragoj Cemetery, Covered Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia (Orthodox; some German, from WWII)

Miragoj Cemetery. This has been a heavily Orthodox area, and the big Mirogoj cemetery, just outside Zagreb, has many if not almost equal Cyrilic alphabet monuments, or other Orthodox symbols.






There is a large outdoor cemetery, of course, with walkways, and photographs of the deceased on the stones, embedded, or otherwise attached.

Miragoj Cemetery, Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia












There is a former Croatian president here, Mr. Tudjman, and artists, literary figures, professionals. Their locations are mapped; or just follow a tour group.

One travel site has little on Mirogoj, and asks for input, but their motto is something like, find what is true, and then travel to see it. See www.tripadvisor.com/. We do the opposite - who says what is true and why? Go and find it out yourself.

There also German soldiers from WWII, interred with a carefully alphabetized common marker, with names and full birth and death dates.
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Miragoj Cemetery, German section WWII, Zagreb, Croatia

Jasenovac - Death of Dinko Savic, Leader of Death Camp

The death camp at Jasenovac is now nothing but a leveled park area, with closed museum, locked bathrooms, vacant and dry fountain memorials. Just some maps on pedestals, explanations at ground level as to the mass graves beneath your feet, an old train on a track with bullet holes, used for transport. An occasional biker, a man on a mowing machine, a willow. All its memorabilia sent to Washington DC, the Holocaust Memorial.

That is a disservice to the people of Croatia. The memory is being erased.

A reminder this week of Jasenovac: the death of Dinko Savic at age 86, reportedin the New York Times 7/23/08. The article says that the camp was known as the "Auschwitz of the Balkans," yet is is abandoned. No tourists. Nobody. He used to ride in on a white horse, with black boots, black uniform, whip and machine gun. Say survivors. He fled to Argentina and lived there for 50 years, and not in hiding. He said in his last years he was "proud of what he had done and would gladly do it again." NYT.

He died in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, in Croatia serving a 20-year prison sentence. Crimes against humanity. He was found guilty, himself, of killing 2000 Serbs (Orthodox Christian, not Roman Catholic, and the Roman Church stood by, see post here on Cardinal Stepinac), Jews and Gypsies. Can we dare forget how they died? Withholding medical treatment, working ot death, hanging and leaving dangling in some cases until dead, if not immediately killed; personal shootings, including for smiling say some survivors; torture with blowtorch; starvation. When convicted, he laughed and clapped his hands.

The issue - proFascists - the numbers are exaggerated. Against - they are underestimated. But noone will exhume, in case the other side is proven right. Highest estimates of totals are in the hundreds of thousands. Lowest? Tens of thousands. So everybody go home and forget. There is not even a sign on the highway identifying it as a concentration camp.

Read more at ://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/466369, the same as appeared in the NYT; and ://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/08/08/03/0803reich_edit.html

Zagreb - King Tomislav, Crowned 925 - Disappeared 928 +/- AD

King Tomislav.
The Missing Has His Place

King Tomislav, Zagreb, Croatia

Tomislav stands on his mount here in the capital of Croatia, Zagreb.  This is at the entrance of the magnificent old train station, near the grandest hotel in Zagreb.

Tomislav was crowned in 925 AD, see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomislav,  by the Holy Catholic Church in Rome.  This period precedes the later division in about 1000 (?) between the Latin-Roman Catholic Church and what we call the Eastern Orthodox, or Orthodox Christian, Church.

The later ecclesiastical division occurred when the Roman branch pulled away. At this earlier time, there was still only one Holy Catholic Church, as I recall from reading. But there is a mystery:  Tomislav "disappeared" and then was "declared dead" in 928 AD.

 VM, who provided us with the correct identification, refers us to another site:  www.croatian-king-tomislav.com/ where a Mr. Mojmir Damjanovic of Australia is researching where King Tomislav is buried, and even where the actual Crown might be  - looking for "the father of independent Croatia."

The site notes that little is recorded in history texts about the kingdom 923-1102 AD.

There had been discord ongoing at the time about whether the Croatian Catholic or the Latin Catholic Church should control in the area. The Croatian Kingdom, says the site, was "mightier than England at the time, mightiest in that part of Europe."

So:  Was the death a "planned strategy" to "quash its strength and its power, to deny the Croatian nation self-determination and its name; its independence." To be continued. Connecting other things here as well.

Roots of a country's memories go deep - King Tomislav from the 10th Century is so remembered. Whenever important matters are said to be unknown, does that mean 

1) that history is shaped by the victor's spin, and the representation may be concealment, or fabrication, to suit the victor, and

2) religions do not expand by truth and voluntary conversion primarily, but by politics and strategic killings through the centuries; and

3) countries that bloomed early, and are not empires any more, like Croatia, or those that were on the verge of greatness and expansion at in the 10th Century, are no less worthy in history because their leaders were overcome by other forces, than those who scrabbled themselves on top.

See King Tomislav in Bosnia - Bosnia or great parts of it once was part of the larger Croatian sphere of influence at that time, 900-1100. We have to check the dates, but see Bosnia Road Ways, Capilyn, Statue. The inscription, based on what we have been told by one VM (see the Zagreb post) shows that King Tomislav was crowned at Capilyn.  Spellings vary depending on the language being used.

King Tomislav mysteriously disappeared some three years after his coronation, in the context of a dispute with the Roman Catholic or Latin Catholic branch of Christendom, where the Croatian branch had wanted more autonomy.

• Ask the Vatican what happened to Tomislav? All it takes is access to the Vatican's library to get at the truth, we bet - we bet they have all that is needed in there. Ask for a library card.  Any more bets?

Connections, connections. Conflict with Rome and Big Consequences.  Look up the Nin post here and Bishop Gregory of Nin, and the guides tell us that he had wanted to do the Mass in Croatian.  But Rome stopped him. Post dated January 26, 2007.