The Real Odessa by Goni Uki

Author:Goni, Uki
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783782451
Publisher: Granta Publications
Published: 2015-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

One example of how suspect Croatians prospered in Argentina is Ivo Rojnica, the wartime commander of Dubrovnik and a man whose long and chequered career is practically a lesson in the evasion of justice. Following the German occupation of Croatia, Rojnica had signed the first racist legislation in Dubrovnik, and was a close collaborator of the Gestapo under the alias ‘Ante’. According to certain accounts, some of the valuables plundered from the victims of the Ustashi were stored by Rojnica in ‘an enormous warehouse’ and formed the basis of his wealth later on. He escaped to Trieste after the war, where he hid under the name Ivan Rajcinovic. This did not prevent his arrest by the British authorities when he was recognized by the widow of a Jewish victim he had allegedly evacuated to Jasenovac concentration camp. The new Communist authorities in Yugoslavia sent a detailed file of Rojnica’s crimes to London. It was too late, however, for by the time it arrived he had escaped. With the help of the Holy See and the Argentine government he arrived in Argentina on 2 April 1947, as a stowaway on the Maria C.363

During Perón’s government, Rojnica took out Argentine citizenship under his Rajcinovic alias, and became a textile industry magnate. In the 1970s he was suspected of financing plane hijackings by Croatian terrorists in the US and Europe. A visit he made to New Zealand in the company of Vrancic almost ended in disaster for them both in 1977. Their capture was requested by Yugoslavia and it was only by invoking Argentine citizenship and getting the help of the Argentine embassy that they were able to return to Buenos Aires.364

Incredibly, in 1991, following the collapse of the Communist regime in Yugoslavia, Argentine President Carlos Menem accepted Rojnica’s appointment as ambassador of the newly independent Croatia. The post had been offered to Rojnica by Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, author of a book that dismissed the estimate of 700,000 deaths in the Croatian Holocaust as ‘mythical’ and put the ‘real’ figure at 60,000. A scandal ensued the following year when the Wiesenthal Centre pleaded with Argentina for the arrest of both Rojnica and Vrancic, revealing their wartime records to the public. The plea went unheeded even when the story reverberated in the international press, including a New York Times editorial in November 1993. In Zagreb, meanwhile, the press published a 1941 order signed by Rojnica forbidding all Jews and Serbs to appear on the streets from 7pm to 7am – the first step towards death camps. Reached in Argentina, Rojnica was quoted as stating: ‘Everything I did in 1941 I would do again.’

Hounded from all sides, Rojnica remained in charge of the Croatian diplomatic representation from the shadows, personally handing over the post to his successor in January 1994. A renewed plea by the Wiesenthal Centre for his arrest was ignored by both Argentina and Croatia in 1998. In Argentina, press reports suggested that contributions by the wealthy former Ustashi to Menem’s electoral campaign explained his ‘diplomatic immunity’.

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