From: stojanov@husc10.harvard.edu (Milan Stojanovic)
Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Pres. Tudjman about WWII
Date: 14 Aug 92 19:49:12 GMT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

We will go on here, by showing how general, historian and now president
of Croatia, interprets the German - Jewish relations.  When I read
it I could not stop thinking whether it would be better for Jews if
Hitler had won the WWII.  They would be living peacefully on Madagaskar,
without necessity to fight for their land any more. 

The translation was done by professional translator.  Due to scanner 
problems, certain parts were unclear.  I translated them, and they are
marked by [].  Reader would be able to recognise them immediately.

Regards,

Milan N. Stojanovic

From: "Wastelands of Historical Truth"
by Dr. Franjo Tudjman
Nakladni Zavod Matice Hrvatske
ISBN 86-401-0042-X

[ As the idea to settle the Jews ln Madagascar could not be done, due 
to opposition] to this by other powers,  the
Hitlerite leadership after dividing Poland end seizing the bulk of
European Jews, adopted a basis for territorial solutions by setting
up the [Lublin Jewish Autonomous Region. 1,400.000 Jews from Poland
and around 600.000 from Germany and other areas, were supposed to be 
gathered there.  Already in the middle of [ I do not know what svibanj
is in Croato-Serbian] 1940 they gave up this plan.  The reason were
impassable difficulties with bringing such a huge population] 
in an inappropriate area  without sufficient settlements although 
melioration works and labor camps were envisaged. [MNS: How nice from them]
Later on this territorial solution was abandoned in
this area that was to become a part of the German ethnic corridor
from the Baltic to the Carpathians. However, the very idea of a
Jewish autonomous area (``reservation'') in this region continued to
exist during wartime. The German Government would use it to justify
its demands for Jews from other countries to be sent to the East.
Among the Jews of Poland and others, the [opinion] was fairly widespread
that the Germans wanted to establish a Jewish area in eastern
Poland. An echo of this can be found also in the draft that Zygmunt
Kaczynski presented on behalf of the Polish emigre government in
1942 in the USA, referring to the post-war solution of the Jewish
question by settling them in eastern Poland or in Bessarabia.
[Supposedly this proposal was also supported by the Polish
resistance movement in Warsaw.]*285*

The sensational victory over France opened up visions of  final
victory and also the possibility for a ``final'',  ``territorial''
solution of the Jews in one of the African or American colonies,
most likely in Madagascar. It is interesting to note that this
solution was favored also by all of Hitler's associates including
Goering,  Ribbertrop,  Goebbels,  Himmler,  Rosenberg,  Frank  and
Heydrich. In  speaking about the division of the French colonies
(June l8, 1940), Hitler told Mussolini that ``in Madagascar a Jewish
state could be formed'' and this was also heard by Ciano from
Ribbertrop. Dr. F. Rademacher was given the task to elaborate this
plan from the view point of international law. According to his
memorandum  approved  by  Ribbertrop,  Petain's  France was  to
relinquish Madagascar to Germany and resettle 25,00 Frenchmen from
the island in order to create conditions for the solution of the
Jewish question. All the Jews would be settled in Madagascar and
would enjoy full autonomy which would ensure ``a good attitude'' of
the American Jews towards Germany. All preparations for this were
made in Germany under the supervision of Eichmann and Rademacher
for the transport by sea of 4 million Jews to Madagascar as well as
for settlement conditions on the island itself in cooperation with
the French ministry for Colonies. Of course, the transport could
not begin until the end of the war.

After Hitler's armies became stuck in the USSR vastness, and the
failure of the German myth of invincibility in the Blitzkrieg, the
German possibility for the territorial solution of the Jewish
question outside Europe also fell through. (p. 152--153)

[A whole passage of five sentences were skipped by translators.
Passage talks how with the changed situation, the Jewish situation
grew more difficult.  Heydrich and Frank are mentioned, as the ones
speaking about final solution or evacuation.  Tudjman admits that
evacuation means "gradual destruction."]

Thus in the War's third year (1942) the leadership of the Third
Reich adopted the plan to exclude the Jews from the life of German
and other European peoples by exterminating them gradually. But as
such a goal could not be announced publicly, but was secretly told
only to a narrow circle of Nazi intimates, it remained concealed
also  for  the  majority  of  the  Germans  who  understood  the
deportations of Jews to the East as being their re-settlement to
Polish and Russian areas and therefore accepted the concentration
camps as a labor camps and not death camps. (p. 153)
[ MNS: We have seen that, when appropriate, Tudjman still calls them 
labor camps]

Translated by Vida Jankovic

Next time, Tudjman's sources about Jasenovac and Tudjman about
number of Jewish victims in Holocaust.  Also comming, Tudjmans