Andrija Artuković

Andrija Artuković
Andrija Artuković (3rd from right) taking oath
Minister of Interior of Croatia
In office 16 April 1941 – 10 October 1942
Leader	Ante Pavelić
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Ante Nikšić
In office 29 April 1943 – 1 November 1943
Preceded by	Ante Nikšić
Succeeded by	Mladen Lorković
Minister of Justice of Croatia
In office 10 October 1942 – 29 April 1943
Secretary of State
In office 11 November 1943 – 8 May 1945
Preceded by	Mirko Puk
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Personal details
Born	29 November 1899 Ljubuški, Austria-Hungary
Died	16 January 1988(1988-01-16) (aged 88) Zagreb, SFR Yugoslavia
Political party	Ustaše
Spouse(s)	Ana Maria Heidler
Alma mater	University of Zagreb
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Roman Catholic

Andrija Artuković (29 November 1899 – 16 January 1988) was a Croatian politician and a member of the Ustaše movement. Artuković was convicted of war crimes committed against minorities in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. His active participation in these crimes earned him the nickname "the Himmler of the Balkans".^[1]

Biography

Andrija Artuković was born in Klobuk, near Ljubuški (in Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary) and studied at a Franciscan monastery at Široki Brijeg in Herzegovina. He obtained a law PhD degree at University of Zagreb. From 1924 he worked as an court apprentice in Zagreb and in 1926 he opened an independent office in Gospić. In 1929, he became part of the revolutionary group the Ustaše, and led a small uprising in Lika, after which he returned to Italy. In 1934 he was arrested as a participant in the death of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia but was released.^{[citation needed]}

During World War II, in 1941 Artuković became Minister of the Interior in the newly-formed NDH. He was closely involved in the mass murder ^[2] of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and other minorities, and the opening of concentration camps such as Jasenovac. His close associate was propagandist Savić Marković Štedimlija, a publicist of Montenegrin ethnicity.^{[citation needed]}

In 1941 Artuković had personally ordered the incarceration of the former national deputy Jesa Vidic in the Danica concentration camp. Olga Vidic proposed to exchange title to a piece of property for her husband's release to which Artuković replied "... I will kill him and take ... the land", which he did.^[3]

Ante Pavelić (left) and Andrija Artuković (in the middle) meet patriarch Germogen

After the war he was held at a British prisoner-of-war camp at Spittal an der Drau, Austria. He avoided extradition to Yugoslavia, and travelled without a passport, moving to Switzerland and later to Ireland. Using the false name of Alois Anich, he used an Irish Certificate of Identity to obtain a non-immigrant visitor's visa from the American consul in Dublin. On 16 July 1948 he thus illegally entered the United States as a "temporary visitor for pleasure".^[3] He moved to Seal Beach, California in 1948. When his visa and two extensions expired in April 1949 and his application for permanent residence under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 was denied, he nonetheless remained in the United States, along with his wife and his children, until the mid-1980s. His extradition was requested by the Yugoslav authorities to be put on the trial for war crimes (e.g. causing the death of several thousand persons). It was first stayed by an immigration judge and shelved for two decades due to pressure from Croatian Americans and the Roman Catholic Church^{[citation needed]}, but then reactivated and after a long court battle he was eventually expelled from the USA to Yugoslavia.^[4] The court in Zagreb issued a death sentence on 14 May 1986, but a year later the authorities ruled that he was too ill (with senile dementia) to be executed.

He died from natural causes in a prison hospital in Zagreb in 1988, aged 88.

Remains

His remains have never been returned to his family. ^[5] In 2010, the president of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for human rights, Ivan Zvonimir Čičak, called for authorities to investigate what happened to the remains.^[6]

References

1. ^ Haaretz report on Artuković
2. ^ Croat, at Trial, Defends Concentration Camps, The New York Times, 18 April 1986; accessed 18 June 2008.
3. ^ ^{a b} The Extradition of Nazi Criminals: Ryan, Artukovic, and Demjanjuk, by Henry Friedlander and Earlean M. McCarrick [1]
4. ^ See: Artukovic v. Rison, 784 F.2d 1354 (1986).
5. ^ http://www.lepoglava.net/vijesti/zanimljivosti/1293-aa.html
6. ^ Radoslav Artuković, sin ministra u NDH: Želim pokopati oca!

External links

• The Irish Independent's review of The Shamrock and the Swastika
• Andrija Artuković's biodata at Find-A-Grave

Persondata
Name	Artukovic, Andrija
Alternative names
Short description	Convicted WWII war criminal
Date of birth	29 November 1899
Place of birth	Ljubuški, Austria-Hungary
Date of death	16 January 1988
Place of death	Zagreb, Yugoslavia