In Tito’s Death Marches

By Joseph Hecimovic and Edward Mark O'Connor

In Tito’s Death Marches is an eyewitness account of the Croatian war prisoners and civilians following World War II.

This volume by Captain Hecimovic assembles the major pieces of an evil conspiracy worked against the Croatian nation in the immediate aftermath of World War II. It introduces the discerning reader to the political realities of Yugoslavia before, during, and after World War II. Its major vehicles of insight are the tragedies which befell the Croatian people whose only “crime” was an insatiable desire for national identity and independence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Release date: Dec 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789127409

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Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.

© Muriwai Books 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

IN TITO’S DEATH MARCHES

by

JOSEPH HEĆIMOVIĆ

Translated and Edited

by

JOHN PRCELA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

FOREWORD 4

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR OF THIS BOOK 6

INTRODUCTION 7

1. PRELUDE OF THE GREAT TRAGEDY 7

II. SEVEN PHASES OF THE BLEIBURG TRAGEDY 10

The Sources of This Introduction: 13

SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR 15

IN TITO’S DEATH MARCHES 17

APPENDIX 59

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 65

FOREWORD

The ancient nation of Croatia, long a vital part of the politics and people issues of the Mediterranean basin, is but little known to the average American. Like many other nations its identity has been concealed in the shadows of super-states, multi-national states and the plaque of empires, all of which earned the Balkans the dubious label of powder keg of Europe. With the changing times the people of Croatia are no different, so far as human aspirations are concerned, than the once submerged peoples of South and Southeast Asia, the Middle-East and Africa who have emerged into national independence and freedom during the past decade. There is a vast difference, however, on the question of contemporary status. The people of Croatia are now no nearer their goal of national independence than they were some 40 years ago when the artificial, multi-nation state of Yugoslavia was established by conference table decree. In this era of the new colonialism, seeking as it does to eradicate the basic concepts of nation, Croatia is more isolated from the family of nations than the Russian satellites of Central Europe or the non-Russian nations of the U.S.S.R. At least these once free and independent nations are accorded the forms of national identity while being denied the all-important substance of national independence. Croatia has been denied both. But the Croatian nation continues to exist and its people are no less determined to cast off the chains of the new imperialism than they were to break the chains of the old imperialism.

This volume by Captain Hecimovic assembles the major pieces of an evil conspiracy worked against the Croatian nation in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In point of time, it began and was ended before the international trials of the Nazi leaders at Nürnberg, Germany, for crimes against humanity By a curious turn of justice a war that was fought to put an end to such crimes unleashed the same crimes of genocide upon the Croatian nation in the initial flush of military victory. An ominous silence has been cast upon the factual circumstances of these inhuman crimes against the Croatian people. That silence has been dictated through the intensely organized perversion of truth by the Russian Communists and their henchmen which has made patriotism an open crime and love of liberty a personal secret in much of the free world. Others share the responsibility for this imposed silence, not the least of whom are the British Military authorities who were party to the heartless extraditions of Croatian military and civilian personnel to the slaughterhouse of Titoland. At last the silence has been broken, these some sixteen years later, by an eyewitness to this conspiracy, spared by destiny in order that this generation of free men might know the evil that awaits all who falter in their defense of those human values which are the life blood of our common civilization.

The lessons of World War II yet to be learned by the people of the United States are many and on the whole unpleasant in their stark reality. It is human to avoid excursions into the realm of man’s inhumanity to man but it is an open invitation, to disaster to fail to identify accurately the enemy dedicated to the total destruction of western civilization. That enemy is particularly adept at the art of camouflage and concealment of its objectives, methods and agents. An outstanding case in point is Josip Broz Tito, top Moscow agent, and the system of fear which he has labored to fix upon the multi-nation state of Yugoslavia. For years Tito has been portrayed to the people of the free world as a Communist, but a different kind of Communist, and Titoland as a somewhat noble experiment with a new order called national communism. This international hoax, costing the American taxpayers in excess of two billion dollars and incalculable damage to the unity of the free world, was in some degree exposed through the so-called Conference of the Uncommitted held at Belgrade during 1961. But a full public exposure is yet to come and this work of truth by Captain Hecimovic is a noteworthy contribution in that direction.

In Tito’s Death Marches introduces the discerning reader to the political realities of Yugoslavia before, during, and after World War II. Its major vehicles of insight are the tragedies which befell the Croatian people whose only crime was an insatiable desire for national identity and independence. Along the Way the other nations of Yugoslavia enter upon the scene and the follies of the old imperialism are recognized as the avant-garde of the new imperialism. The irony of history and the retributive character of justice is portrayed in the tragic end of the Serbian Chetnik movement which, like the Croatian Ustasha movement, was opposed to the communist takeover of Yugoslavia, but denied to the Croats what they sought for themselves—freedom. Imperial Communism was the victor, as it has been during the past forty years when non-Communist nations fell to fighting among themselves as the common enemy stood without their gates.

The message that emerges from the pages of this book is that none of the nations now held captive by the new imperialsm of Moscow will be free until all are free. No nation now in Red chains has a moral right to aspire to national independence unless it is prepared to recognize and support the same aspirations when they are held by other captive nations. Until that spark of unity in common cause is kindled Moscow will continue to hold all in a state of common bondage.

October 2, 1961.

Dr. Edward Mark O’Connor,

Director of Special Programs

Canisius College

Buffalo, N Y.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR OF THIS BOOK

John Prcela, who is at present residing in Lakewood, Ohio, was born on March 9, 1922, in Dalmatia, the coastal province of Croatia In July, 1944. He obtained the Maturity Diploma from the eight-year Franciscan Classical Gymnasium in Sinj, Dalmatia After this he went to the Franciscan Theological Institute in Makarska, Dalmatia. In the Fall of 1944 there he experienced the liberation of the town by the Tito Communists On April 3, 1945, Prcela was taken for forceful conscription in Tito’s Army, but he escaped from it on June 10. 1945, through Trieste. Around this time, one of his colleagues Franciscan cleric Rudolf Vučić, was killed in Trieste by the Tito Communists for no apparent reason. As a result parents of both Vučić and Prcela received a report of their tragic death. So a Requiem Mass was offered for both.

After his escape Prcela studied at the International College of St. Anthony in Rome, Italy, from 1945-1947. In December of 1949 he arrived in the United States. He became a United States citizen in November 1956. In June 1954 he obtanned his B. A. from John Carroll University and in June 1957 received his Master of Arts degree at Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio. From 1954-1958 Prcela taught at the St. Edward High School in Lakewood, Ohio During the summers of 1958 and 1960 he studied at the Catholic Institute in Paris and at the American Academy in Rome; he also traveled extensively through Western Europe From September 1958 up to date he has been teaching French, Latin, and German at the Charles F. Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio In the last five years he has been very active in the United American Croatians’ organization both as a member of the UAC Central Committee in Chicago, Illinois, and as secretary or president of the organization’s Cleveland Branch. In 1960, after his visit to Bleiburg and to prominent Croatian leaders in Spain, Italy, Germany and England, he initiated and co-founded the Committee for Investigation of the Bleiburg Tragedy. He is working in the Committee diligently and conscientiously along with other Croatian patriots. Prcela is firmly convinced that out of the innocent blood of hundreds of thousands of Croats, massacred after World War II by Communist Yugoslavia, will spring up complete freedom and independence for his native land—Croatia.

INTRODUCTION

1. PRELUDE OF THE GREAT TRAGEDY

Capt. Hećimović’s book, "In Tito’s Death Marches", stands in most intimate relation to the Croatian struggle for freedom and national