Nazi collaborator monuments in Australia
There are hundreds of statues and monuments in the United States and around the world to people who abetted or took part in the murder of Jews and other minorities during the Holocaust. The Forward has, for the first time, documented them in this collection of articles. For a guide to each country’s memorials click here.
Monuments to Croatian collaborators
Melbourne — bust of Hitler ally Ante Pavelić (1889–1959) in Melbourne’s Croatian House.
Pavelić was the leader of the fascist Ustasha regime, which systematically murdered tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, and Roma, the most infamous killings taking place at the Jasenovac concentration camp.
Above left, Pavelić meets with Hitler June 9, 1941.
For a fascinating article on how Croatian fascist supporters came to be in Australia, see Balkan Insight.
Monuments to Serbian collaborators
Canberra and Blacktown — a statue of Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović (1893–1946) in front of a Canberra center named in his honor.
Mihailović’s Chetniks, a Serbian nationalist and Yugoslavian royalist militia, had collaborated with the Nazis and the Nazi puppet government in Serbia. At another point during the war, Mihailović cooperated with the Allies, using his troops to help rescue over 400 American airmen shot down in enemy territory. (Many thanks to Milijana Pavlović for aid in locating Chetnik statues outside Serbia.)
Below is another statue to Mihailović in Blacktown.
Monuments to Ukranian collaborators
Wayville, South Australia — This memorial for soldiers who died for Ukraine features the lion and crowns insignia of the 14th Division of the Waffen-SS, also known as SS Galichina. This was a unit in the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the Nazi party, led by Heinrich Himmler, one of the principal architects of the Holocaust. Among the war crimes committed by this unit is the Huta Pieniacka massacre of Polish civilians.
Above left, an SS Galichina recruitment poster with the lion and crowns insignia. It features a quote from Mein Kampf: “Whoever wants to live must fight, and whoever doesn’t want to fight in this world of permanent struggle — he doesn’t deserve the right to live. Adolf Hitler.” Underneath is “SS Galichina is going to battle!”
Today, the use of SS Galichina insignia has become widespread enough to be included as a hate sign identifier for European soccer.
Below left, what is most likely an SS Galichina recruitment march, thought to be in the western Ukrainian city of Stanislaviv (now Ivanko-Frankivsk), 1943. Below right, torchlight march in honor of the 73rd anniversary of SS Galichina’s founding, L’viv April 28, 2016. The commemoration two years later involved hundreds giving coordinated Nazi salutes. JTA report.
by
Lev Golinkin
Lev Golinkin is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, Amazon’s Debut of the Month, a Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program selection, and winner of the Premio Salerno Libro d’Europa. Mr. Golinkin, a graduate of Boston College, came to the US as a child refugee from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov (now called Kharkiv) in 1990. His writing on the Ukraine crisis, Russia, the far right, and immigrant and refugee identity has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Boston Globe, Politico Europe, and Time.com, among others; he has been interviewed by MSNBC, NPR, ABC Radio, WSJ Live and HuffPost Live.
