News: Speech by Minister Milovan Zanic
On April 16, 1941, Ante Pavelic named Milovan Zanic head of the legislative committee, a ministerial level position in the first government of the Independent State of Croatia. Six weeks later, on June 3, 1941, the newspaper Novi List published the following transcript of a speech Zanic delivered to an Ustase rally in Nova Gradiska, exhorting his audience to "cleanse" the NDH of Serbs, and assuring them that it was state policy to do so. Zanic's speech could be taken as empty boasting - were it not clear that deeds were following words, as in the order to prepare for the expulsion of 3,000 Serbs from Slavonia and Srem given the previous day.
On April 16, 1941, Ante Pavelic named Milovan Zanic head of the legislative committee, a ministerial level position in the first government of the Independent State of Croatia. Six weeks later, on June 3, 1941, the newspaper Novi List published the following transcript of a speech Zanic delivered to an Ustase rally in Nova Gradiska, exhorting his audience to "cleanse" the NDH of Serbs, and assuring them that it was state policy to do so. Zanic's speech could be taken as empty boasting - were it not clear that deeds were following words, as in the order to prepare for the expulsion of 3,000 Serbs from Slavonia and Srem given the previous day.
Ustase! You should know: I speak openly: This state, this homeland of ours must be Croatian and no one else's. And that is why those who came here have to go. Events over the centuries, and especially during the last twenty years, show that every compromise must be excluded. This must be the land of the Croats and no one else's and there is not a method that we, the Ustase, won't use to make this land entirely Croatian and completely cleanse it [ocistimo] of Serbs, who endangered us for hundreds of years and who would endanger us again on the first occasion they get. We don't keep that a secret, this is the policy of this state and when we finish that business, we will only finish what is written in the Ustase Principles. We must not forget that outside our borders, in America itself, we have about eight hundred thousand Croats, who left for America to look for a better life, because they didn't have it in their own homeland - we will not forget those poor people. Those people should return and settle on hearths that we will completely cleanse [ocistiti].
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| Title: News: Speech by Minister Milovan Zanic | |
| Source: Novi list, June 3, 1941. Quoted in Novak, Viktor. Magnum Crimen, p. 606 (First Edition, Zagreb). Translated by Sinisa Djuric. | |
| Date: June 3, 1941 | Added: February 6, 2004 |
