By Ben Schneiders and Simone Fox Koob

At least 500,000 Serbs, Jews and Romani people were murdered by Croatia’s Ustasha regime.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

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Major sporting and cultural clubs in Australia’s large Croatian community openly celebrate fascist anniversaries while displaying emblems, flags and maps of the murderous Ustasha regime of World War II.

An investigation by this masthead has uncovered how mainstream the celebration of the Nazi-backed regime that slaughtered Serbs, Jews and Romani people from 1941-45 is in key institutions of the Australian Croatian community.

The regime is conservatively estimated to have killed 500,000 people, including political opponents, and is widely regarded by historians as having committed genocide.

Croatia’s ambassador to Australia, Betty Pavelich, said in response to the investigation that there was no place in society for the “glorification of totalitarian regimes, extremism or intolerance”.

So open is the celebration of fascism that a Sydney-based website has been selling Ustasha-themed keyrings, T-shirts, beanies, stickers and prints of wartime Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic, a close ally of Adolf Hitler, while a separate Melbourne-based website sells Ustasha flags.

On April 10 this year, six men were filmed at the Melbourne Knights soccer club doing stiff armed salutes as they sang a song extolling the Ustasha, also spelt Ustase.

“The battle is being fought, Ustase flag is fluttering,” they sang as they performed a fascist salute. “For the freedom and for home, Croatian home!” according to a professional translation of the song. A second translation of the same video was substantially similar.

Celebration of the creation of the Nazi-backed state of Croatia in western Sydney at the Croatian Club Bosna this year. Club president Adam Glavas is holding a portrait of World War II dictator Ante Pavelic.

In a separate video, a group raised a Croatian flag at the Melbourne Knights in Sunshine to celebrate the April 10 anniversary – known as Deseti Travanj. That date is the anniversary of both the creation of the Nazi-backed Croatian state and the Knights.

The main speaker at the flag raising said, “this day (April 10) is unforgettable”, according to a professional translation. “Croats will continue to keep this day in memory.”

One of the men in attendance was dressed in black while flying a Croatian military flag with the slogan “Za dom, spremni” printed on it which means “For homeland, ready”. It was a slogan used by the Ustasha and its use can attract fines in modern-day democratic Croatia.

The president of the Knights, Pave Jusup, is pictured in front of an Ustasha flag on two of his social media accounts. The Melbourne Knights and Jusup did not respond to requests for comment.

The investigation has also found that an amateur soccer team in Melbourne, St Albans Vukovar, until several years ago played in a kit with the U symbol of the Ustasha on it.

St Albans Vukovar declined to comment on why it wore the Ustasha symbol but said it no longer does so. “Please don’t waste our club’s time with whatever you’re trying to achieve,” a representative said.

Amateur soccer team St Albans Vukovar wearing a kit inspired by the fascist Ustasha regime. 

The celebration of April 10, meanwhile, is openly advertised in local newspaper The Croatian Herald, with flag raisings and celebrations at clubs across Australia.

The Croatian Club Bosna in the west of Sydney flies the Ustasha flag above its building and celebrates fascist anniversaries, selling Ustasha merchandise at its events. Club president Adam Glavas, pictured holding a portrait of wartime dictator Pavelic on April 10 this year, was approached for comment.

The open celebration of its fascist past – Croatian clubs in Sydney and Melbourne often have portraits or in one case even a bust of Ustasha dictator Ante Pavelic – raises questions about how broad state and federal bans on the celebration of Nazism and fascism should be. Among those who celebrate April 10 or the Ustasha they often describe it as an expression of Croatian independence rather than fascism.

Representatives of the Jewish community in Australia want authorities to have more ability to crack down on Nazi-linked symbols, including Ustasha ones.

Image of the Croatian Club Bosna in Sydney. The club flies the Ustasha flag, representing the Nazi-backed regime that ran Croatia from 1941 to 1945. 

“Any banning legislation that is introduced needs to be flexible enough to accommodate the constant evolution of new hate symbols by neo-Nazi groups, as well as the symbols of political movements, such as the Ustasha movement, that were historically allied to the Nazi regime in Germany,” said Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim in a recent submission to a Senate inquiry examining a ban on Nazi symbols.

There are different laws across Australia. In New South Wales, the laws are the broadest allowing discretion to the courts to define what a Nazi symbol is. Laws in Victoria – and ones to be introduced to federal parliament this week – are narrower proscribing a limited number of Nazi hate symbols. Victoria also plans to ban the fascist salute and is currently seeking feedback on that proposal.

“I am alarmed to learn of the proliferation of Ustase and other fascist symbols, and the lionising of Ustase leaders by Victorians,” said Jewish Community Council of Victoria president Daniel Aghion, KC. “The Ustase were Nazi acolytes, responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, including Croatia’s Jewish population, during World War II.”

Aghion said soccer authorities needed to do more to prevent the display of fascist symbols at matches. “It is virtually impossible to ban every hateful symbol of terrorism and genocide, but that does not give individuals or groups in Victoria the licence to use or celebrate them.”

A spokesperson for Football Australia said they could not comment because the April 10 event at the Melbourne Knights “was not a football match or football function”. Football Victoria did not respond to requests for comment.

Celebrations at the Melbourne Knights soccer club in Sunshine, western Melbourne on April 10 this year, marking the anniversary of the creation of the Ustasha regime.

The Croatian symbols of fascism are far less well known to Australians than those of German Nazism, even though during the war they were closely allied.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Centre, described more than 500,000 Serbs being killed “in horribly sadistic ways” while a further 250,000 were expelled and another 200,000 Serbs forced to convert to Catholicism. It said more than 30,000 Jews – 80 per cent of Croatia’s Jewish population – perished during the war. Other estimates of the total death toll vary.

The Ustasha were infamous for their brutality, even running a concentration camp for children. Croatia’s Ambassador to Australia, Betty Pavelich, said Croatia had recently significantly increased fines for “misinformation that can incite hate or fear”.

“We firmly believe that it behoves us all to ensure that disinformation, glorification and the mainstreaming of criminal, totalitarian ideologies, their symbols and movements, do not take root in modern societies,” she said. “Furthermore, we must endeavour not to malign entire hardworking, law-abiding and respectful communities, based on the unacceptable views and behaviour of small groups of individuals.”

The celebration of fascism in the Australian Croatian community has flared recently. Fans of soccer team Sydney United performed the stiff-arm salute in 2022, with three men charged under the new NSW laws. They have pleaded not guilty.

Sydney United fans at CommBank Stadium.Credit: Getty

Supporters of Sydney United have previously been photographed in front of Nazi flags and doing fascist salutes.

Australia, along with Canada, Spain, Argentina and the United States, became a post-war haven for people fleeing communist Yugoslavia with Ustasha links, including war criminals.

Since the 1970s, journalist and author Mark Aarons has been researching Australia’s post-war acceptance of fascist war criminals from Europe.

Sydney United supporters in front of Ustasha and Nazi flags

Aarons said the Croatian community was unusual among migrant groups for keeping a powerful political identity across the generations, while among other members of the European diaspora who had historic links to fascism, those views all but died out.

“It’s this Ustasha immigration that has kept the flame alive, so to speak,” Aarons said. “I think it’s important to say it’s only a section of the Australian Croatian community, that most Croatians see the foundation of Croatia being 1991.”

Social media account of Melbourne Knights president Pave Jusup appearing in front of the Ustasha flag.

According to the 2021 census, there were 164,362 people in Australia who claimed Croatian ancestry. Aarons argues that a coherent organisation still exists that allows those with Ustasha views to dominate Croatian-backed soccer and cultural clubs in Australia.

“It relies upon ignorance and also politics, particularly on the conservative side, turning a blind eye to the Ustasha element in the Australian community.”

He said it was abhorrent that it still persisted.

“If you still had a major faction of the German community in Australia revering Adolf Hitler and excusing the slaughter of Jews, Gypsies and political opponents under the Nazi regime, there would be absolute outrage at every level of society,” he said.

Flags bearing the distinctive U of the Ustasha outside Croatian Club Bosna in western Sydney.

This masthead spoke to a number of Croatian Australians who were appalled by the views espoused by some in their community. None spoke on the record because they feared repercussions for themselves and their families.

“We are in a time warp here,” said one, who warned that younger generations were becoming more – not less – nationalistic, with this often expressed through soccer.

“That’s the most disheartening part. You’d hope a few generations later that the ultra-nationalism was dying.

“Because they are so separated from Croatia, they feel the need to express it in such a way [through ultra-nationalism]. They feel like imposters.”

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