Vjekoslav Luburià(6 March 1914 â 20 April 1969) was a Croatian Ustaà ¡e official who headed the system of concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during much of World War II. Luburiàalso personally oversaw and spearheaded the contemporaneous genocides of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH.
Luburiàjoined Ante PaveliÃÂ's Ustaà ¡e movement in 1931, left Yugoslavia the following year and relocated to Hungary. Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the NDH with Paveliàat its head, Luburiàreturned to the Balkans. In late June 1941, Luburiàwas dispatched to the Lika region, where he oversaw a series of massacres of Serbs, which served as the casus belli for the Srb uprising. Around this time, he was appointed head of Bureau III, a department of the Ustaà ¡e Surveillance Service tasked with overseeing the NDH's sprawling network of concentration camps. The largest of these was Jasenovac, where approximately 100,000 people were killed over the course of the war. In late 1942, Luburiàwas appointed commander of the Croatian Home Guard's 9th Infantry Regiment but was stripped of his command after shooting and killing one of his subordinates. Under German pressure, he was placed under house arrest, but retained de facto control of the Ustaà ¡e concentration camps. In August 1944, he played a leading role in the disruption of the LorkoviÃÂâÂÂVokiàplot, which sought to overthrow Paveliàand replace him with a pro-Allied government. In February 1945, Paveliàdispatched Luburiàto Sarajevo, where over the next two months, he oversaw the torture and killing of hundreds of known and suspected communists. Luburiàflew back to Zagreb in early April and was promoted to the rank of general.
The NDH collapsed in May 1945 and its territory was reintegrated into Yugoslavia. Luburiàstayed behind to conduct a guerrilla warfare campaign against the communists, during which he was seriously wounded. In 1949, he emigrated to Spain and became active in Ustaà ¡e émigré circles. In 1955, Luburiàbroke with Paveliàover the latter's professed support for a future division of Bosnia and Herzegovina between Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia, and formed a rival Croatian nationalist organization known as the Croatian National Resistance. The disagreement resulted in great acrimony between the two men and, when Paveliàdied in 1959, Luburiàwas forbidden from attending his funeral. In April 1969, Luburiàwas found murdered in his home, a victim of either the Yugoslav secret police or rivals in the Croatian émigré community.
Vjekoslav Luburiàwas born into a Herzegovinian Croat family in the village of Humac, near Ljubuà ¡ki, on 6 March 1914. He was the third child of Ljubomir LuburiÃÂ, a bank clerk, and Marija Soldo, a homemaker. The couple had another son, Dragutin, and two daughters, Mira and Olga. Luburiàwas a devout and practising Roman Catholic. In December 1918, his father was shot by a police officer while smuggling tobacco and died of blood loss. Following his father's death, Luburiàcame to "detest and resent Serbs and the Serbian monarchy", the historian Cathie Carmichael writes. Shortly thereafter, LuburiÃÂ's sister Olga committed suicide by jumping into the Trebià ¾at River after their mother forbade her from marrying a Muslim. Following the deaths of LuburiÃÂ's father and sister, his mother found work in a tobacco factory to provide for her remaining children. She soon married a man named Jozo TambiÃÂ, with whom she had three more children. LuburiÃÂ's half-siblings, born of his mother's second marriage, were named Zora, Nada and Tomislav.
Luburiàcompleted his primary education in Ljubuà ¡ki, before relocating to Mostar to attend secondary school. There, he began associating with Croatian nationalist youths. He became increasingly aggressive towards his teachers and peers, and often truanted. LuburiÃÂâÂÂs first encounter with law enforcement occurred on 7 September 1929, when he was arrested for vagrancy and sentenced to two daysâ imprisonment by a Mostar court. In his senior year, Luburiàdropped out of high school to work in the Mostar public stock exchange. In 1931, he joined the Ustaà ¡e, a Croatian fascist and ultra-nationalist movement committed to the destruction of Yugoslavia and the establishment of Greater Croatia. The same year, he was arrested for the embezzlement of funds belonging to the exchange. On 5 December, Luburiàwas sentenced to five months in prison for embezzlement. Shortly thereafter, he escaped captivity and made it as far as the AlbanianâÂÂYugoslav border before being recaptured. Upon release, Luburiàrelocated to northern Croatia, and then to Subotica, where he surreptitiously crossed the HungarianâÂÂYugoslav border. Luburiàfirst rendezvoused with the Croatian émigré community in Budapest before relocating to an Ustaà ¡e training camp called Janka-Puszta. Situated close to the Yugoslav frontier, Janka-Puszta was one of several Ustaà ¡e training camps established in Hungary and Italy, whose governments were sympathetic to the Ustaà ¡e cause and had territorial aspirations in Yugoslavia. It housed several hundred Croat émigrés, mostly manual labourers returning from Western Europe and North America. The recruits swore an oath of loyalty to the leader of the Ustaà ¡e, Ante PaveliÃÂ, took part in pseudo-<nowiki/>military exercises, and produced anti-Serb propaganda material. It was at Janka-Puszta that Luburiàearned the nickname Maks, which he was to use for the remainder of his life.
In October 1934, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated while on a diplomatic visit to Marseille, in a joint conspiracy between the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the Ustaà ¡e. Following the assassination, most of the Ustaà ¡e residing in Hungary were evicted by the country's government, with the exception of Luburiàand several others. For a short time, Luburiàresided in Nagykanizsa, where, after a brief love affair, a local woman bore him a son.
Following the 1938 Anschluss between Germany and Austria, Yugoslavia came to share its northwestern border with the Third Reich and fell under increasing pressure as its neighbours aligned themselves with the Axis powers. In April 1939, Italy opened a second frontier with Yugoslavia when it invaded and occupied neighbouring Albania. Following the outbreak of World War II, the Yugoslav government declared its neutrality. Between September and November 1940, Hungary and Romania joined the Tripartite Pact, aligning themselves with the Axis, and Italy invaded Greece. Yugoslavia was by then almost completely surrounded by the Axis powers and their satellites, and its neutral stance toward the war became strained. In late February 1941, Bulgaria joined the Pact. The following day, German troops entered Bulgaria from Romania, closing the ring around Yugoslavia. Intending to secure his southern flank for the impending attack on the Soviet Union, German dictator Adolf Hitler began placing heavy pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Axis. On 25 March 1941, after some delay, the Yugoslav government conditionally signed the Pact. Two days later, a group of pro-Western, Serbian nationalist Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers deposed the country's regent, Prince Paul, in a bloodless coup d'état. They placed his teenage nephew Peter on the throne and brought to power a "government of national unity" led by the head of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force, General Duà ¡an SimoviÃÂ. The coup enraged Hitler, who immediately ordered the country's invasion, which commenced on 6 April 1941.
On 10 April, the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (; NDH) was announced over the radio by Slavko Kvaternik, a former Austro-Hungarian Army officer who had been in contact with Croatian nationalists abroad. Paveliàarrived in Zagreb on 15 April and proclaimed himself leader () of the NDH, having assured the Germans that the NDH would be loyal to the Axis cause. Disenchanted with more than twenty years of Serb hegemony, the majority of Croats enthusiastically welcomed the NDH's creation. The Axis invasion of Yugoslavia had transformed the Ustaà ¡e from a small and relatively obscure Croatian nationalist organization into a popular movement almost overnight. The Germans initially wanted to install Croatian Peasant Party leader Vladko MaÃÂek as the head of the Croatian puppet state, but MaÃÂek refused, citing his democratic convictions and his firm belief that the Axis powers would not win the war. The NDH was divided into German and Italian areas of influence. The Italian area of influence was divided into three operational zones. Zone I, which consisted of the coastal and island area surrounding the cities of Zadar, à  ibenik, Trogir and Split, was directly annexed by Italy. Zone II was consigned to the NDH. It encompassed much of Dalmatia and the Dalmatian Hinterland. Zone III, also allotted to the NDH, extended as far as western and central Bosnia, a sliver of eastern Bosnia, and all of Herzegovina.
On 17 April, the Ustaà ¡e instituted the Legal Provision for the Defence of the People and State, a law legitimizing the establishment of concentration camps and the mass shooting of hostages across the NDH. The Jewish Question was only of secondary concern to the Ustaà ¡e. Their foremost goal was to rid the NDH of its 1.9 million Serbs, who made up about 30% of the fledgling puppet state's total population. Senior Ustaà ¡e officials openly stated that they sought to kill one-third of Serbs living in the NDH, expel one-third and convert one-third to Roman Catholicism. The Ustaà ¡e movement's grievances centred around the perceived injustices inflicted upon the Croats in Serb-dominated Yugoslavia during the interwar period. Senior Ustaà ¡e officials cited the shooting of five Croatian parliamentary deputies in June 1928, the murder of the Croatian nationalist anthropologist and historian Milan à  ufflay in 1931, the suppression of the Velebit uprising in 1932, the murder of the Croatian Peasant Party vice-president Josip Predavec in 1933, and the arrest and incarceration of dozens of other Croatian political figures.
In early April 1941, Luburiàhad illegally crossed the Yugoslav border near the town of Gola. By mid-April, he arrived in Zagreb and was appointed to the Economic Bureau of the Main Ustaà ¡a Headquarters (; GUS), the Ustaà ¡e ruling body, serving as an adjutant to Vjekoslav Servatzy. On 6 May, Luburiàwas dispatched to the village of Veljun, near Slunj, to lead the round-up of 400 Serb men from the village in retaliation for the murder of a Croat family in neighbouring Blagaj the night before. Although the identity of the perpetrators remained a mystery, the Ustaà ¡e announced that the Serbs of Veljun were responsible and decided that the village's male inhabitants were to be collectively punished. Luburiàhad a total of fifty men at his disposal, many of them longtime Ustaà ¡e who had lived in exile in Italy in the 1930s. On the evening of 9 May, the Serb men and boys of Veljun were brought to Blagaj, and killed with knives and blunt objects in the backyard of a local elementary school. The murders lasted all night. The following morning, Luburiàwas seen emerging from the school covered in blood, washing his hands and sleeves by a water well.
In late June, Ustaà ¡e officials driving through the villages of Gornja Suvaja and Donja Suvaja, in the Lika region, reported being shot at, prompting the regional authorities to order a "cleansing" action against the villages. On the morning of 1 July, Luburiàled a group of Ustaà ¡e into the two villages. The historian Max Bergholz writes that up to 300 Ustaà ¡e took part in the operation. According to the journalist and Holocaust survivor Slavko Goldstein, Luburiàhad about 150 members of the Ustaà ¡e Auxiliary Force at his disposal, in addition to 250 members of the Croatian Home Guard. Many of Gornja Suvaja and Donja Suvaja's male inhabitants had fled into the wilderness before the Ustaà ¡e arrived. Their female relatives stayed behind and were subjected to rape and sexual mutilation. The massacre lasted about two hours; the Ustaà ¡e relied primarily on knives and clubs to kill their victims. At least 173 villagers were killed, mostly women, children and the elderly.
On 2 July, 130âÂÂ150 Ustaà ¡e attacked the nearby village of Osredci. Most of the village's inhabitants had fled in anticipation of a massacre, having heard of what happened in Gornja Suvaja and Donja Suvaja the day before. Over the course of the following two days, the Ustaà ¡e massacred about thirty of the village's inhabitants, mostly the elderly and infirm, who had been unable to flee along with the others. Concurrently, Luburiàand his followers massacred the inhabitants of the nearby village of Bubanj. According to their own internal documents, the Ustaà ¡e killed 152 Serb civilians in Bubanj and burned down twenty homes. In some households, not a single person was left alive. Survivor accounts suggest that the number of fatalities was about 270. On 3 July, one of LuburiÃÂ's units detained 53 inhabitants of the village of Nebljusi, including ten children under the age of 12. They were transported by horse-drawn cart to the nearby village of BoriÃÂevac, which contained a barracks and a karst pit. The residents of Nebljusi were detained inside the barracks until nightfall, alongside twelve adult males who had been arrested earlier. That evening, they were marched to the karst pit in groups of eight and pushed inside to their deaths. Two of the victims managed to survive the ordeal. By the end of July, the Ustaà ¡e had killed at least 1,800 Serbs in and around Lika.
The Ustaà ¡e atrocities against the NDH's Serb population prompted thousands of Serbs to join Josip Broz Tito's Partisans and Draà ¾a MihailoviÃÂ's Chetniks. The Lika massacres in particular served as the casus belli for the Srb uprising, which commenced on 27 July. The revolt led to the Italian military occupations of Zone II and Zone III. "Luburiàand his superiors had wrongly calculated that the brutal killings of an innocent population would quash any embryonic resistance to their plan for the creation of an 'ethnically pure area'," Goldstein remarked. "Their actions ... provoked the completely opposite effect." In mid-July 1941, Luburiàwas tasked with recapturing dozens of inmates who had escaped from the Kerestinec camp. Almost all the fugitives were captured or killed, and several Ustaà ¡e also lost their lives.
The NDH's security sector was made up of two agencies, the Directorate for Security and Public Order (; RAVSIGUR) and the Ustaà ¡e Surveillance Service (; UNS). Both the RAVSIGUR and the UNS were led by Kvaternik's son, Dido. The RAVSIGUR was established on 4 May 1941. The UNS was established in August. The latter was divided into three bureaus: Bureau I, Bureau III and Bureau IV. Bureau III, also known as the Ustaà ¡e Defense, was tasked with administering the NDH's concentration camps. There were about 30 in total stretching across the NDH. From April to August 1941, the RAVSIGUR was responsible for the camps' administration. For much of the war, Bureau III was headed by LuburiÃÂ. According to Siegfried Kasche, the German ambassador to the NDH, Luburiàhad envisaged creating a network of concentration camps during his time in exile.
In May 1941, Kvaternik had ordered the construction of two detention centres in the villages of Krapje (Jasenovac I) and BroÃÂice (Jasenovac II), the first two sub-camps of what was to become the Jasenovac concentration camp. Krapje and BroÃÂice opened on 23 August. The same day, faced with the Italian military occupation of Zone II, Bureau III ordered the dissolution of all concentration camps situated in the NDH's coastal areas. In the first months of the Jasenovac concentration camp system's operation, Luburiàrarely ordered mass executions without the consent of his superiors. Ante Moà ¡kov, a leading Ustaà ¡e official, remarked: "He was more fond of the Poglavnik than he was even of his own mother and brothers, and loyalty and obedience to him was the meaning of his life." LuburiÃÂ's loyalty and dedication eventually paid off, and as the war progressed, he became a trusted member of PaveliÃÂ's inner circle. In late September 1941, the government of the NDH dispatched Luburiàto the Third Reich to study German methods of creating and maintaining concentration camps. LuburiÃÂ's tour of the camps lasted ten days. Subsequent Ustaà ¡e camps were modelled on Oranienburg and Sachsenhausen. The Jasenovac camp system was situated in a heavily Serb-populated area. On LuburiÃÂ's orders, between September and October 1941, all Serb villages in the vicinity of the two sub-camps were razed, their inhabitants rounded up and deported to Krapje and BroÃÂice. Between 14 and 16 November 1941, Krapje and BroÃÂice were dissolved. Able-bodied prisoners were forced to construct a third sub-camp, Jasenovac III, which came to be known as the Brickyard (). The sick and infirm were either killed or left to die in the abandoned campgrounds. Of the 3,000âÂÂ4,000 prisoners detained in Krapje and BroÃÂice at the time of their dissolution, only 1,500 lived to see the Brickyard.
Armed with the information he had gathered in Germany, Luburiàwas able to organize the Brickyard more efficiently than Krapje and BroÃÂice had been. In January 1942, Bureau III ordered the establishment of Jasenovac IV, a sub-camp dedicated to leather production, which became known as the Tannery (). A fifth and final sub-camp, Jasenovac V, was established around the same time. Known as Stara Gradià ¡ka, after the village in which it was located, it was overseen by both male and female guards. Among them were LuburiÃÂ's half-sisters, Nada and Zora. The former participated extensively in the tortures and executions that took place at Stara Gradià ¡ka. She went on to marry Dinko à  akiÃÂ. During the war, à  akiàserved as the deputy commander of Stara Gradià ¡ka, and later, as the commander of the Brickyard. Luburiàalso recruited his cousin Ljubo Miloà ¡. Miloà ¡ served as the labour service commandant at the Brickyard. Like LuburiÃÂ, who was in his late twenties when he was appointed head of Bureau III, most of the Ustaà ¡e tasked with administering the Jasenovac camp system were extremely young. à  akiàwas 20 in 1941 and Miloà ¡ was 22.
The Jasenovac camp system was guarded by more than 1,500 Ustaà ¡e. The Brickyard, the Tannery and Stara Gradià ¡ka were capable of holding 7,000 inmates, although the number of inmates never exceeded 4,000 at any given time. Luburiàvisited the Jasenovac camp system two or three times per month. He insisted on personally killing at least one inmate on each of his visits. Luburiàenjoyed taunting prisoners as to the date and method of their execution. He would "amuse himself by placing his revolver up against the heads of the prisoners," the Tito biographer Jasper Ridley writes. "Sometimes he pulled the trigger; sometimes he did not." LuburiÃÂ's cruelty also extended to the other Ustaà ¡e camps. In one instance, he deliberately dispatched hundreds of typhus-ridden inmates from Stara Gradià ¡ka to ÃÂakovo so as to expedite the spread of the disease among its prisoners. "Luburiàcreated such an atmosphere," Miloà ¡ recalled, "that every Ustaà ¡a actually felt himself called upon to kill a prisoner, believing that this would be an act of patriotism." After unsuccessfully experimenting with gas vans, Luburiàordered that a gas chamber be constructed at Stara Gradià ¡ka, which used a combination of sulfur dioxide and Zyklon B. The gas chamber was poorly constructed and this method of killing was abandoned after three months. Over the course of the war, unlike in the German camps, most inmates were killed with knives or blunt objects.
In early 1942, conditions at Jasenovac improved somewhat in anticipation of a visit by a Red Cross delegation. Healthier inmates, who were provided with new beds and bedclothes, were allowed to speak to the delegation, while sick and emaciated ones were killed. After the delegation left, camp conditions reverted to their prior state. Whenever he was pressed for information by the families of those detained at Jasenovac, LuburiÃÂ remained equivocal. When a Croatian Jewish civil servant named Dragutin Rosenberg attempted to persuade him to allow food and clothing to be delivered to Jasenovac on a name-by-name basis, LuburiÃÂ only agreed to bulk consignments, so as not to reveal which detainees were still alive. LuburiÃÂ also proved impervious to bribes, as exemplified by the case of Julius Schmidlin, a Red Cross representative, who attempted to bribe LuburiÃÂ into treating the inmates at Jasenovac more humanely but was angrily rebuffed. In addition, LuburiÃÂ did not tolerate the mishandling of goods seized from camp inmates, as exemplified by his response to the so-called Gold Affair, in which camp guards were caught attempting to smuggle confiscated jewellery out of Jasenovac. LuburiÃÂ ordered that the culprits be killed. Among those killed was the brother of LuburiÃÂ's deputy Ivica MatkoviÃÂ, who was beaten to death.
On 21 December 1941, Ustaà ¡e units under the command of LuburiÃÂ, Rukavina and Moà ¡kov marched into Prkosi, near Bosanski Petrovac. Luburiàdeclared: "We have to kill everyone, in Prkos [sic] and in all of their villages, to the last man, even children." The Ustaà ¡e proceeded to round up more than 400 Serb civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly. Shortly thereafter, they were led to a nearby forest and killed. On 14 January 1942, Luburiàled a group of Ustaà ¡e into the village of DrakseniÃÂ, in northern Bosnia, and ordered the killing of its inhabitants. More than 200 villagers were killed in the ensuing massacre, mostly women, children and the elderly. In mid-1942, the State Intelligence and Propaganda Bureau (; DIPU) issued a stern warning to all newspapers in the NDH, forbidding them from reporting on LuburiÃÂ, Bureau III and the NDH's so-called "collection centers". Despite the DIPU's warning, Luburiàwas featured in a 1942 propaganda short film titled Guard on the Drina (, ).
In June 1942, the Wehrmacht, Home Guard and Ustaà ¡e Militia launched the Kozara Offensive, aimed at dislodging Partisan formations around Mount Kozara, in northwestern Bosnia, which threatened Germany's access to the BelgradeâÂÂZagreb railway line. Although the Partisans did suffer a humiliating defeat, the area's civilian population bore the brunt of the offensive. Between 10 June and 30 July 1942, 60,000 civilians living in the vicinity of Mount Kozara, mostly Serbs, were rounded up and taken to concentration camps. "Kozara was cleared to the last man," Wehrmacht Plenipotentiary General Edmund Glaise-Horstenau wrote, "and likewise, the last woman and last child."
Following Kozara's depopulation, Luburiàenvisaged creating an annual "tax", whereby Serb boys would be taken from their families, conditioned to renounce their Serb national identity, and inducted into the Ustaà ¡e fold. In late 1942, he "adopted" 450 boys who had been displaced during the fighting around Mount Kozara. Dressed in black Ustaà ¡e robes, Luburiàdubbed the boys his "little janissaries", an allusion to the Ottoman Empire's devà Âirme system, which saw tens of thousands of boys taken from Christian families across the Balkans and inducted into the Ottoman military. Each morning, LuburiÃÂ's "janissaries" were forced to take part in military drills and say the Lord's Prayer. The experiment failed and the majority of the boys refused to become Ustaà ¡e. Most subsequently died of malnutrition, dysentery and other diseases. Hundreds of other children abducted by the Ustaà ¡e in the aftermath of the Kozara Offensive were saved by a group of Red Cross volunteers from Zagreb, led by Diana BudisavljeviÃÂ. In her diary, Budisavljeviàrecalled an encounter she had with Luburiàat Stara Gradià ¡ka, in which the latter chastised her and her colleagues for "caring only about Serb children", while there were Croat and Bosnian Muslim children across the NDH who were suffering as well. According to BudisavljeviÃÂ, Luburiàthreatened to have her and her colleagues detained, ominously warning that, "no one would know what had happened to them or their whereabouts."
In August 1942, LuburiÃÂ was promoted to the rank of Bojnik (Major). Glaise-Horstenau complained to PaveliÃÂ that LuburiÃÂ was interfering with German operations. The Germans distrusted LuburiÃÂ, with one of their internal memorandums describing him as "a neurotic, pathological personality". Seeking to appease the Germans, PaveliÃÂ reassigned LuburiÃÂ to Travnik. He appointed him commander of the Croatian Home Guard's 9th Infantry Regiment (), whose purpose would be to secure the NDH's border with Italian-occupied Montenegro in East Herzegovina, which had a heavy Chetnik presence.
As the 9th Infantry Regiment was preparing to leave for Herzegovina, Luburiàshot and killed one of the Home Guards under his command. The killing sparked an outcry among the Home Guards. Luburiàwas immediately stripped of his command, which went to Colonel Franjo à  imiÃÂ. In late November, at the urging of the Germans, Luburiàwas placed under house arrest, which he spent in a Zagreb apartment together with his mother and half-sisters. Stanko à  arc was appointed to oversee operations at Jasenovac in LuburiÃÂ's absence. LuburiÃÂ's deputy Ivica Matkoviàwas replaced by Ivica BrkljaÃÂiÃÂ. The terms of LuburiÃÂ's house arrest were very lenient and he was allowed to leave his apartment for strolls. Luburiàexercised de facto control over the operations at Jasenovac, despite his officially having been replaced. For example, in late 1942, he arranged for the release of Miroslav FilipoviÃÂ, who had been jailed for committing a series of atrocities against the Serb population of northern Bosnia. Filipoviàwas subsequently appointed commander of Stara Gradià ¡ka. For a period of two months, MaÃÂek and his wife lived alongside Luburiàand his family. According to MaÃÂek, LuburiÃÂ's mother tearfully told MaÃÂek's wife that she would regret having given birth to Luburiàif her son had been responsible for the atrocities that he was rumoured to have committed.
By late 1942, the growing unrest in the NDH was beginning to harm German interests in Southeast Europe. The Germans began placing pressure on Paveliàto bring stability to the NDH. To this end, they encouraged him to halt the Ustaà ¡e atrocities against the Serbs. In response, the Ustaà ¡e established the so-called Croatian Orthodox Church, whose purpose was to assimilate the NDH's Serb population, designating them as "Croats of the Orthodox faith". Paveliàsingled out Slavko and Dido Kvaternik as scapegoats for all the NDH's troubles. He blamed the former for the Home Guard and Ustaà ¡e Militia's inability to bring the Partisans and Chetniks to heel, and the latter for the massacres of Serbs, even though the atrocities had been committed with PaveliÃÂ's knowledge. In October 1942, the father-and-son duo were exiled to Slovakia. On 21 January 1943, the UNS was dissolved and amalgamated into the Main Directorate for Security and Public Order (; GRAVSIGUR), which had been established to replace the RAVSIGUR earlier that month. The GRAVSIGUR then assumed responsibility for the administration of the NDH's concentration camps.
Still officially under house arrest, Luburiàrelocated to the village of à  umec, near Lepoglava, in mid-1943. Around this time, he also began planning guerrilla operations against the Partisans with Gestapo officer Kurt Koppel in the event of Germany's defeat. The number of Partisans in the NDH continued to grow, from a mere 7,000 in 1941, to 25,000 in 1942, and 100,000 in late 1943. On 8 September 1943, the Italians capitulated to the Allies. Countless Italian units surrendered to the Partisans, who disarmed them and thus acquired a significant amount of modern weaponry. Luburiàremained sidelined for much of 1944, but his fortunes changed after the LorkoviÃÂâÂÂVokiàplot came to light in August 1944. On 30 August, Luburiàpersonally oversaw the arrests of government ministers Mladen Lorkoviàand Ante VokiÃÂ. LorkoviÃÂ, the Minister of Internal Affairs, and VokiÃÂ, the Minister of Defense, were accused of conspiring to overthrow Paveliàand install a pro-Allied government. Following their arrests, Luburiàwas tasked with interrogating Lorkoviàand VokiÃÂ, as well as other suspected conspirators. That October, Luburiàwas promoted to the rank of Pukovnik (Colonel). In December 1944, the Croatian Home Guard and the Ustaà ¡e Militia were unified to create the Croatian Armed Forces. On 7 December, Luburiàforced more than thirty members of the collaborationist Serbian Volunteer Corps off a train passing through Zagreb's main railway station and ordered that they be shot. Destined for Slovenia, they had received PaveliÃÂ's approval to pass through Zagreb unmolested, but Luburiàshowed no regard.
In early 1945, Paveliàdispatched Luburiàto Sarajevo to undermine the communist underground there. Luburiàarrived in the city on 15 February. Five days later, Hitler declared Sarajevo a Festung (or "fortress"), insisting that it be defended at all costs. Hitler appointed General Heinz Kathner to organize the city's defences in anticipation of a Partisan attack. On 24 February, Kathner organized a banquet in LuburiÃÂ's honour. At the banquet, Luburiàannounced his intention to destroy the communist resistance in Sarajevo. Luburiàsoon appointed nine Ustaà ¡e officers to a special task force for carrying out executions of known and suspected communists. His headquarters was located inside a villa in downtown Sarajevo, which came to be known as the "house of terror" among the city's residents.
On 1 March, the Partisans launched Operation Sarajevo, which aimed to wrest the city from the Germans and the Ustaà ¡e. By early March, Sarajevo had been encircled and cut off from the rest of the NDH. Luburiàestablished a kangaroo court that he dubbed the Criminal War Court of Commander LuburiÃÂ, which dealt with cases of alleged treason. The court also dealt with more gratuitous charges such as price fixing. The first batch of prisoners to be tried was a group of 17 Muslim refugees from Mostar. Over the course of the month, dozens of suspected communists were executed. The arrests and subsequent executions were of an alarmingly arbitrary nature, which only served to exacerbate the terror felt by Sarajevans. According to survivors, the torture method most commonly used by LuburiÃÂ's agents involved tying prisoners' hands behind their backs, pulling their hands between their legs, placing a rod between their knees, hanging them upside down and then beating them. These torture sessions, which the Ustaà ¡e euphemistically referred to as interrogations, were usually followed by the prisoner's execution or deportation to a concentration camp. Luburiàis said to have revelled in inviting the family members of his victims to the villa and then describing in great detail how their loved ones had been tortured and killed. As the killings progressed, some Sarajevans took to bomb shelters in fear for their lives, though the city had not been bombed in weeks.
On 16 March, Luburiàconvened a meeting of over 1,000 Ustaà ¡e political and military figures, and in the presence of senior German officials, issued a declaration denouncing Bolshevism, the Yalta Conference, and the new communist government in Belgrade. On 21 March, the Ustaà ¡e uncovered a plot to assassinate LuburiÃÂ. His would-be assassin was a communist youth named Halid NazeÃÂiÃÂ, who was betrayed by one of his accomplices. Four Ustaà ¡e were subsequently killed in Partisan attacks within the city. On the night of 27âÂÂ28 March, the Ustaà ¡e hanged fifty-five Sarajevans from trees and street lamps in Sarajevo's Marindvor neighbourhood. Signs bearing the phrase, "Long live the Poglavnik!" were placed around their necks. Their bodies were left to hang as an example to others. Those attempting to retrieve the bodies were fired upon. On 4 April, Luburiàand his entourage left Sarajevo. About 350 Ustaà ¡e policemen and 400 Ustaà ¡e soldiers stayed behind to defend the city. LuburiÃÂ's reign of terror in Sarajevo claimed 323 lives, according to a post-war war crimes commission. Several hundred others were deported to concentration camps. The Partisans entered Sarajevo on 6 April and proclaimed its liberation. The city's capture coincided with the fourth anniversary of the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. The exhumation of bodies from the backyard of LuburiÃÂ's villa, many of which belonged to children, was documented by a Soviet film crew. Another witness to the aftermath of LuburiÃÂ's crimes was the American journalist Landrum Bolling, who recalled seeing a roomful of bodies "stacked like cordwood on top of one another." Many of the cadavers showed signs of torture and mutilation. Among the corpses was that of Halid NazeÃÂiÃÂ, whose head had been mutilated, eyes gouged out and genitals burned with boiling water.
Upon leaving Sarajevo, Luburiàboarded a plane for Zagreb. While attempting to land at the Borongaj airfield, LuburiÃÂ's plane crashed on a bomb-damaged runway. Luburiàsustained a head injury and had to be hospitalized. Paveliàvisited Luburiàwhile he was convalescing and found his subordinate jaded and disillusioned, accusing the Germans of betraying Croatia. Shortly thereafter, Luburiàwas promoted to the rank of General. In early April, he ordered that Jasenovac's remaining prisoners be killed. He also ordered that documents pertaining to the camp's operation be destroyed, and the corpses from surrounding mass graves exhumed and cremated. Several individuals who possessed incriminating information pertaining to LuburiÃÂ's wartime activities, such as the Gestapo agent Koppel, were killed at his behest. In late April, Luburiàapproved the executions of Lorkoviàand VokiÃÂ, as well as others who had been implicated in the LorkoviÃÂâÂÂVokiàplot.
As the Partisans neared, Luburiàsuggested that the Ustaà ¡e make their last stand in Zagreb, but Paveliàrefused. The Ustaà ¡e were divided as to what to do. Some proposed retreating towards Austria as quickly as possible. Others, Luburiàforemost among them, advocated establishing irregular formations in the countryside that would carry out guerrilla attacks following the NDH's demise. On 24 April, forty-three Roma and Sinti were killed in Hrastina by LuburiÃÂ's followers. In early May, Luburiàmet with the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, who implored him not to put up armed resistance against the Partisans. On 5 May, the government of the NDH left Zagreb, followed by PaveliÃÂ. By 15 May, the NDH had completely collapsed. Tens of thousands of Ustaà ¡e surrendered to the British Army but were handed back to the Partisans. An untold number were killed in subsequent Partisan reprisal killings, together with several thousand Serbian and Slovenian collaborationists.
Some Ustaà ¡e, who came to be known as Crusaders (), remained in Yugoslavia and carried out guerrilla attacks against the communists. Among these was a small group of fighters led by LuburiÃÂ, which remained in the forests of southern Slovenia and northern Slavonia, skirmishing with the newly formed Yugoslav People's Army (; JNA). Luburiàevaded capture and probable execution by placing his identification papers next to the body of a dead soldier. Through Matkoviàand Moà ¡kov, Luburiàsent a letter to PaveliÃÂ, who had escaped to Austria, in which he signalled his intention to keep fighting. Three different accounts exist of LuburiÃÂ's activities in post-war Yugoslavia. According to one, Luburiàthen headed south towards the Bilogora mountain range, where he rendezvoused with a group of more than fifty Crusaders under the leadership of Branko BaÃÂiÃÂ. They headed west, establishing a base at Fruà ¡ka Gora. In November 1945, Luburiàand about a dozen Crusaders crossed the HungarianâÂÂYugoslav border and escaped Yugoslavia. The second version holds that Luburiàwas wounded in a gunfight with the JNA, and carried across the Drava River to Hungary by General Rafael Boban, who subsequently returned to Yugoslavia and was never heard from again. The third version, espoused by Luburiàhimself, is that Luburiàfought with the Crusaders until late 1947 when he was seriously wounded and forced to leave the country.
LuburiÃÂ's half-sister Nada and her husband Dinko à  akiàescaped to Argentina. Some of LuburiÃÂ's remaining kin were not as fortunate. Miloà ¡ was captured by the Yugoslav authorities in July 1947, together with several other Crusaders, after sneaking back into the country as part of the Crusaders' insurgency efforts. He was subsequently put on trial for the atrocities that he was alleged to have committed during the war. During his trial, he confessed in graphic detail to his role in the killings that took place at Jasenovac. He was convicted on all counts and executed in 1948.
In 1949, Luburiàrelocated to Spain. The country was viewed as a favourable destination by many Ustaà ¡e exiles, as it had been the only one outside the Axis to recognize the NDH. Luburiàentered Spain under the pseudonym Maximilian Soldo. Upon arrival, Luburiàwas imprisoned by the Spanish authorities, but released shortly thereafter. With support from AgustÃÂn Muñoz Grandes, the former commander of the Blue Division, he was able to settle in the country. He took up residence in Benigànim.
PaveliÃÂ, in the meantime, had settled in Buenos Aires with his family and started a construction business. He became the unofficial leader of the Croatian émigré community in South America. PaveliÃÂ's exile in distant and remote Argentina rendered him virtually irrelevant in the eyes of increasing numbers of Croatian émigrés elsewhere, particularly in Europe. Faced with open rebellion, in July 1950, Paveliàdispatched Luburiàto Rome as a warning to anyone wishing to challenge his authority in Western Europe's Croatian émigré communities. Given his wartime record, Luburiàarrived "with a fearsome reputation," the historian Guy Walters writes. In August, Paveliàissued a declaration in a Chicago-based Croatian diaspora newspaper, warning Croats against joining foreign militaries. While Luburiàis not thought to have killed any of PaveliÃÂ's political opponents in the post-war period, the mere invocation of his name drastically reduced the size of the anti-Paveliàfaction among the émigrés. When the grumblings of discontent against Paveliàsubsided, Luburiàreturned to Spain. In 1951, he appeared in Hamburg and set up a recruiting centre for the pro-Paveliàfaction. That same year, he established a newspaper called Drina. In November 1953, Luburiàmarried a Spanish woman named Isabela Hernaiz. The couple went on to have four children, two boys and two girls.
In 1955, Paveliàentered discussions with Chetnik émigrés over the future partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina between Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia in the event of Yugoslavia's collapse. Luburiàwas incensed. In his writings, Luburiàargued that Croatia, much like the NDH, should extend as far as the Drina River, but also include areas of Serbia, such as Sandà ¾ak, which had never been part of the wartime puppet state. Luburiàvehemently denounced Paveliàand his followers. Shortly thereafter, he founded the Friends of the Drina Society () and the Croatian National Resistance (; HNO). In June 1956, Paveliàfounded a rival organization, the Croatian Liberation Movement (; HOP).
In 1957, LuburiÃÂ's wife received an anonymous letter detailing her husband's wartime atrocities, with great emphasis placed on his role in the killing of children. She filed for divorce shortly thereafter. During the divorce proceedings, Luburiàwas granted joint custody of the couple's children, as well as possession of their home. The same year, he sold the home and moved to the town of Carcaixent, near Valencia, where he opened a poultry farm. The farm quickly went out of business and Luburiàsoon became a traveling salesman. Upon moving to Carcaixent, he founded Drina Press, an amateur publishing house, which was situated in his home. LuburiÃÂ's neighbours, who knew him by the name Vicente Pérez GarcÃÂa, were apparently unaware of his wartime past. He wrote articles under the pseudonyms General Drinjanin and Bojnik Dizdar (Colonel Dizdar). In his writings, Luburiàconceded that he had made certain mistakes during the war, but never admitted to or expressed remorse for the atrocities that had been attributed to him. He advocated "national reconciliation" between the pro-Ustaà ¡e and pro-communist Croats. Luburiàalso claimed to have made contact with the Soviet Union's intelligence services. He argued that Croatia should become a neutral state in the event of Yugoslavia's disintegration, which was received particularly poorly in some fiercely anti-communist Croatian émigré circles.
On 10 April 1957, while returning from a celebratory gathering marking the anniversary of the NDH's establishment in Buenos Aires, Paveliàwas seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by the State Security Administration (; UDBA), the Yugoslav secret service. He died in Madrid in December 1959 of complications related to his wounds. Owing to the mutual resentment between the two men, Luburiàwas barred from attending his funeral. Following PaveliÃÂ's death, Luburiàunsuccessfully attempted to take control of the HOP, citing his role as the last commander of the Croatian Armed Forces. After the HOP's senior leadership rebuffed him, Luburiàwent down an increasingly militarist path, establishing neo-Ustaà ¡e training camps in several European countries and publishing articles relating to military tactics and guerrilla techniques. In the early 1960s, the HNO pursued Arab support for the formal recognition of the exiled Croatian state and to secure Saudi material assistance in "the fight against communism and for the liberation of Croatia." This initiative was largely shaped by Mahmoud K. MuftiÃÂ, a Bosnian Muslim member of the HNO executive, who later fell out with LuburiÃÂ. Muftiàwrote that he considered Luburiàa strange person who confused desire with reality, an irritable and unsettled man, "mentally ill, sometimes more, sometimes less," and "an infantile revolutionary." In 1963, Luburiàestablished a paper called Obrana ("Defense").
On the morning of 21 April 1969, LuburiÃÂ's teenage son discovered his father's bloody corpse in one of the bedrooms in his home. Luburiàhad been killed the day before. Blood stains on the floor suggested he had been dragged by his feet from the kitchen and crudely stuffed under a bed. He had been bludgeoned over the head multiple times with a blunt instrument. An autopsy determined that Luburiàhad not died from the blows to his head, but rather that he had choked on his own blood. He was buried in Carcaixent in a funeral ceremony attended by hundreds of Croatian nationalists wearing Ustaà ¡e uniforms, who chanted Ustaà ¡e slogans and delivered fascist salutes. LuburiÃÂ's death spelt the end of Drina and Obrana.
LuburiÃÂ's murder came at a time when the UDBA was carrying out assassinations of leading Croatian nationalist figures across Europe and suspicion inevitably fell on them. In 1967, Luburiàhad employed his godson, Ilija StaniÃÂ, to work at his publishing firm. StaniÃÂ's father, Vinko, had served alongside Luburiàduring the war. He was captured by the Yugoslav authorities while fighting with the Crusaders and died in captivity. Declassified Yugoslav intelligence documents show that Staniàwas a UDBA agent, codenamed Mongoose. According to the minutes of his May 1969 debriefing, Staniàtold his handlers that he first poisoned LuburiÃÂ's coffee, which had been given to him by another UDBA agent. After the poison failed to kill him, Staniàbegan to panic and went to his room to retrieve a hammer. When he returned to the kitchen, Luburiàcomplained he was feeling unwell. As he went to vomit in the sink, Staniàstruck him over the head several times, causing him to fall to the floor. Staniàthen left the kitchen to make sure the front door was locked. When he returned, he saw Luburiàstanding over the sink and wincing in pain. Staniàstruck him over the head once more, fracturing his skull, and then wrapped his body in blankets and dragged it to a nearby bedroom. Staniàsaid he initially wanted to hide the body in the print shop, but that Luburiàwas too heavy, so he decided to hide it under the bed and calmly left the house. He then fled to France before making his way back to Yugoslavia. In a speech delivered on 20 May 1969, exactly one month after the murder, Tito hinted at the UDBA's responsibility for the string of recent assassinations of Croatian émigrés, and noted how the agency had achieved some remarkable successes, "especially recently."
In a July 2009 interview with the Croatian weekly Globus, StaniÃÂ changed his story, claiming that LuburiÃÂ had been killed by two HOP members. Aggrieved by a disparaging comment that LuburiÃÂ had allegedly made about StaniÃÂ's father and his post-war guerrilla activities, StaniÃÂ claims that he sought out the two men, who assured him that they merely wished to administer a beating. The day that LuburiÃÂ was murdered, StaniÃÂ alleged that he allowed the men inside LuburiÃÂ's home, and the two then killed LuburiÃÂ with a single blow to the head from a heavy metal bar. In 2012, StaniÃÂ changed his story once more, this time accusing two different men of killing LuburiÃÂ. As of 2020, StaniÃÂ lived freely in Sarajevo.
Following LuburiÃÂ's death, the leadership of the HNO went to several of his close associates, eventually splitting into rival leaderships in North America, Australia, Sweden and Argentina. Leadership of the HNO's Argentine faction was delegated to LuburiÃÂ's brother-in-law Dinko à  akiÃÂ. In April 1971, two HNO affiliates entered the Yugoslav embassy in Stockholm and killed Yugoslavia's ambassador to Sweden, Vladimir RoloviÃÂ. The two men were arrested but set free the following year after a group of Croatian nationalists hijacked a Swedish domestic flight demanding their release. One of RoloviÃÂ's killers, Miro Bareà ¡iÃÂ, underwent a baptism while in prison and adopted the Christian name Vjekoslav in LuburiÃÂ's honour. The HNO boasted several thousand members at its height. Notable members included Zvonko Buà ¡iÃÂ, Gojko à  uà ¡ak and Mladen NaletiliÃÂ, among others. Buà ¡iàmasterminded the hijacking of TWA Flight 355 in September 1976. à  uà ¡ak became Croatia's Minister of Defence in 1991. Naletiliàwas convicted of committing war crimes against Bosniak civilians during the Bosnian War by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
During the Croatian War of Independence, open admiration for Luburiàcould be found in the Croatian Army's officer corps. Ante Luburià(no relation), who served as a senior officer during the Battle of Vukovar, was nicknamed Maks by his confederates because of his battlefield ferocity. Luburià"seemed pleased with his sobriquet", the journalist Robert Fox remarked. In early 1992, General Mirko Norac expressed admiration for Luburiàafter being relieved of his duties on the orders of Croatian President Franjo TuÃÂman. "Fuck all the Croatian generals with TuÃÂman at the top," Norac remarked. "The only general for me is ... Maks LuburiÃÂ." Luburiàis referenced in the opening lines of the Croatian nationalist song "Jasenovac i Gradià ¡ka Stara", which read as follows:
Darko Hudelist, a journalist and TuÃÂman biographer, considers LuburiÃÂ one of the three most important Croatian political figures of the post-war period, alongside Tito and TuÃÂman. Hudelist argues that TuÃÂman was influenced by LuburiÃÂ's writings, which called for the unification of the ideologically disparate factions that made up the Croatian diaspora. This became a key policy priority of TuÃÂman's Croatian Democratic Union during his presidency. The historian Ivo Goldstein concurs with Hudelist's hypothesis and surmises that LuburiÃÂ in turn was influenced by Francisco Franco's calls for reconciliation between Republicans and Nationalists in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Hudelist's hypothesis has been challenged by the journalist Ivan Bekavac, who accuses Hudelist of attempting to cast TuÃÂman in a pro-fascist light.
In 2017, flyers containing excerpts from a speech delivered by Luburiàappeared in Sarajevo's Dobrinja neighbourhood. In July 2018, Spain's ruling Socialist Workers' Party proposed a law against the memorization of fascist figures. It was speculated that if the law was passed, the Spanish authorities would be able to usurp Paveliàand LuburiÃÂ's tombs, under the pretext that they had become places of pilgrimage for neo-fascists, and move them to less prominent locations or transfer them to Bosnia. On 29 September 2018, the historian Vlado Vladiàheld an event at a Roman Catholic priory in Split promoting his book Hrvatski vitez Vjekoslav Maks Luburià("The Croatian Knight Vjekoslav "Maks" LuburiÃÂ"). The event was condemned by the Croatian left, who accused Vladiàof glorifying Luburiàand the Catholic Church of facilitating historical revisionism. Among those in attendance was Dario KordiÃÂ, who served as the vice-president of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia during the Bosnian War. Kordiàwas later found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the ICTY for his role in the Laà ¡va Valley ethnic cleansing, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Contemporary German accounts place the number of Serbs killed by the Ustaà ¡e at about 350,000. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, between 320,000 and 340,000 Serbs were killed by the Ustaà ¡e throughout the war. Most modern historians agree that the Ustaà ¡e killed over 300,000 Serbs, or about 17 per cent of all Serbs living in the NDH. At the Nuremberg trials, these killings were judged to have constituted genocide. The Ustaà ¡e were also responsible for the deaths of 26,000 Jews and 20,000 Roma. The historian Emily Greble estimates that approximately 200,000 wartime deaths can be attributed to LuburiÃÂ. During the war, Luburiàboasted that the Ustaà ¡e had killed more Serbs in Jasenovac, "than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe." He also confided in Hermann Neubacher, the Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Plenipotentiary for Southeastern Europe, that he believed about 225,000 Serbs had been killed at Jasenovac. An incomplete list of victims compiled by the Jasenovac Memorial Site contains the names of 83,145 individuals, including 47,627 Serbs, 16,173 Roma and 13,116 Jews. Most historians agree that around 100,000 people were killed at Jasenovac.
In 1998, à  akiàwas arrested in Argentina. The following year, he was extradited to Croatia to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. à  akiàwas convicted on all counts and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. He died in July 2008. LuburiÃÂ's half-sister Nada was arrested around the same time as her husband but was released due to lack of evidence. She died in February 2011. In July 2011, the Government of Serbia issued a warrant for her arrest, apparently unaware that she had died earlier that year. When the Serbian authorities learned of her death, the warrant was revoked. à  akiàdescribed his brother-in-law as a "humanitarian" and "a protector of the Jews". Several of LuburiÃÂ's contemporaries, as well as numerous scholars, have offered a starkly different assessment. Arthur Häffner, an Abwehr officer, denounced Luburiàas one of PaveliÃÂ's "fiercest bloodhounds." In academic literature, Luburiàis frequently described as a sadist. The Holocaust scholar Uki Goñi characterizes him as "a bloodthirsty madman." "Of all the Poglavniks thugs," Walters writes, "Luburiàwas the worst." Jozo Tomasevich, a historian specializing in the Balkans, described Luburiàas one of the "most brutal and bloodthirsty" members of the Ustaà ¡e movement. Carmichael refers to Luburiàas "one of the most notorious war criminals of the Second World War." The historians Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat describe Luburiàas "one of the most feared and most hated" Ustaà ¡e leaders.