According to Jonathan Levy And Tom Easton
Ante Pavelić was the original ‘Butcher of the Balkans.” He was the leader of the Nazi puppet government of the “Independent Sate of Croatia” who died peacefully in Madrid in 1959. The mass murderer of 80,000 Jews, 30,000 [Roma], and over 500,000 Serbs survived the Second World War and never faced a war crimes tribunal.
Instead Pavelić was offered sanctuary by the Vatican and became a security advisor to Juan and Eva Perón before retiring to fascist Spain. Key to Pavelić’s survival was the so-called Croatian Treasury, really nothing more than Pavelić personal wealth, the plunder of concentration camps and massacres throughout the Balkans and beyond. Wherever the loyal Ustashe (Croatian Nazis) served Pavelić and Hitler, Orthodox Christian churches and Jewish synagogues were plundered and the property of Serbs, Jews, [Roma], Ukrainians and others were confiscated. The crimes of Pavelić and the Ustashe were so barbaric that even hardened Nazis were disgusted by it.
In the final days of World War II, Pavelić and his inner circle bought and bribed their way to Rome where help was waiting at the Vatican. Pavelić committed genocide on a level far greater than any known before or since in the Balkans but he had been personally received by Pius XII during his reign of terror. The Franciscan Order and Vatican bank eagerly helped launder Pavelić’s loot the proceeds of which were used to establish the so called ratline which helped thousands of Nazis and Ustashe escape to South America.
According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center today strongly denounced a memorial mass held yesterday in the center of Zagreb to commemorate the demise of Croatian mass murderer Ante Pavelić, who headed the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. In a statement issued here today by its chief Nazi hunter, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center emphasized the central role played by Pavelić in launching genocidal programs against Serbs, Jews, and Roma in Croatia during World War II, as well as the systematic persecution and murder of Croatian anti-fascists.
According to Zuroff:
“It is hard to believe that in the center of the capital of a member of the European Union, very close to Zagreb’s Jewish community, hundreds of people gathered yesterday to commemorate the memory of one of Europe’s biggest mass murderers. Such a ceremony is an insult to the memory of Pavelić’s hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. It is also a badge of shame for the Catholic Church, which allowed such a ceremony to take place in the Basilica of the Heart of Christ who, had he been alive during World War II, would have been targeted for annihilation as well.