Please join Stanko Vuleta and the Ottawa Serbian Heritage Society in supporting this petition to
"Stop the Canadian government's funding of groups that glorify Nazi collaborators"
(Click above to sign the petition now.)

Here is the petition endorsement statement
from the Ottawa Serbian Heritage Society

(Note: The Canadian Serbian Alliance has also endorsed this petition by Press for Conversion! magazine.)

Fascist Croatia's Jasenovac concentration/extermination camp.

Croatia's Nazi puppet regime murdered hundreds of thousands
of Serbs as well as tens of thousands of
Jews and Roma.

By Stanko Vuleta

I am writing this endorsement in my capacity as the president of the Ottawa Serbian Heritage Society, and from a deeply personal perspective.

Three of my grandparents were killed in
WWII by Ustashi – Croatian Nazi forces. 

Jovanka and Stanko Males, my maternal grandparents, were killed in Jasenovac. (Although one of the largest concentration/extermination camps in Europe, most have never heard of it.) 

When Ustashi came to their house in 1941, they broke Stanko’s jaw with a gun butt and tore a full braid of hair from Jovanka’s head.  Jovanka and Stanko left behind four sons and two daughters, one of them a five year old named Andja – my mother.  Ustashi also killed Jovo Vuleta, my paternal grandfather. As my late aunt told me, Ustashi cut his neck to prolong his suffering and then threw him into a mass grave with 71 other Serbs from Cipuljic. This village in central Bosnia, is where I grew up.  Jovo's son, Gligorije, wanting to avenge his father's murder, joined the resistance when he was just thirteen years old.
 

My grandparents were civilians.  Their only crime -- being Serbs.
 

Ante Pavelic

Mile Budak

When donating to the national anticommunism monument in Ottawa, the General Committee of United Croats of Canada honoured Ante Pavelic and Mile Budak as "Victims of Communism." The Canadian government is paying 80% of the monument's $7.5 million price tag. The key individuals and groups behind this monument's creation and construction are rooted in the fascist WWII-era movements.  (They include the Black Ribbon Day Committee, the Central and Eastern European Council, the Czech and Slovak Association of Canada, the Estonian Central Council in Canada, the Latvian National Federation in Canada, the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC)  and LUC Women (see also), the Lithuanian Canadian Community, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and the Ukrainian Youth Association.

Mile Budak was minister of education in the Nazi satellite state of Croatia which perpetrated these crimes in WWII. He stated the goals of this state: to kill one third of the Serbs, drive out another third and forcibly convert the last third to Catholicism.

Ante Pavelic was the head of this state.  It indeed killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs and forcibly converted hundreds of thousands more.  They also massacred Jews and Roma.

Fifty years later, in 1991, a reincarnated Ustashi movement formed a government in Croatia. They immediately proclaimed its independence from Yugoslavia.  In the spring of that year, I was completing university studies in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. There, I walked past graffiti proclaiming “Passage forbidden for dogs and Serbs” and I heard people singing Ustashi songs in the main square.  Serbs trapped in Croatia feared the worst and they got it.  Tens of thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands were expelled.  Serbs, including me, were forced from Cipuljic and almost all our homes were looted and set to torch.

The plan of Mile Budak had come to full fruition.  The genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma in Croatia was completed and Croatia was “ethnically cleansed” – the term invented by Ustashi.

It is jarring to Serbian Canadians to learn that a Croatian group glorified the memories of Budak, Pavelic and other Ustashi leaders when donating to Canada's anticommunism monument.  This is not an isolated incident -- other groups are using it to honour Nazi-collaborators as if they were "freedom fighters."

It is even more jarring to know that the monument's prime source of funding is the Government of Canada which is donating 80% of its costs. In 2021, then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland approved an extra $4 million for this monument.  

Stanko Vuleta

Freeland herself began her career writing for an Edmonton-based, government-funded Ukrainian encyclopedia that her grandfather also worked on. It was founded by her grandfather's wartime boss after the war to rewrite history by covering up their community's fascist heritage and glorifying their Nazi-collaborating leaders as heroes.

I am appalled to learn that the Canadian government is collaborating with fascist-glorifying groups and is leading the funding of their national monument in Ottawa.
This must stop!

"We urge all Canadians to sign this petition."


Sincerely,
Stanko Vuleta, president
The Ottawa Serbian Heritage Society   
ottawaserbianheritagesociety@gmail.com