The Pavelic Papers is a non-profit effort working toward three distinct goals:
- to make available to the public, free of charge, declassified documents about the Ustase or their various successor organizations, many of which have surfaced due to the tireless efforts of a new generation of Nazi-hunters, along with English translations of the most infamous documents of the wartime regime of the Ustase-led Independent State of Croatia, many of which have never appeared in translation before;
- to produce original scholarship, research, introductory essays and other works to educate the public as to the history of the Ustase; and
- to stand in remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, both those who survived and those who can no longer speak.
This website, pavelicpapers.com, was launched in October 2002. More than a dozen people have contributed their work to The Pavelic Papers to date, either in translating documents to English or providing source materials for publication. The Pavelic Papers is not affiliated with any organization or entity, nor do we solicit donations from such.
The creation of this site will be measured in years rather than months, as new materials, essays and features are added. If you're able to help in any of the above areas, please contact us.
The editors of The Pavelic Papers are Cali Ruchala and Sinisa Djuric. General feedback can be sent to editors@pavelicpapers.com.
A final note: Everyone associated with The Pavelic Papers would be remiss not to point out that the words "Croat" and "Ustase" are not synonymous, though neo-Ustase groups and their apologists today are among the first to insist that they are. To say otherwise is bigotry, pure and simple. Neither can there such a thing as collective guilt under any true and legitimate system of justice. It hardly needs to be said that not all Croats supported the Ustase, either in 1941 or today. Among the most astute scholars of the Ustase Terror was an ethnic Croat historian named Viktor Novak, whose monumental work on the history of clero-fascism in Croatia, Magnum Crimen, was banned in Communist Yugoslavia shortly after its publication in 1948 for stepping on forbidden ground. This site's contributors are not motivated by an imaginary desire to "punish" the Croatian people, anymore than a Holocaust scholar feels an irrational need to punish his German subjects. Our sole intention is to cast light on what has in the past been a subject sorely in need of exposure, exploration, research and remembrance.
