Maks Luburic
Encyclopedia
Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić (April 21, 1911 - April 20, 1969) was a Croatian
Croats
Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...

 Ustaše
Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...

, a war criminal, and the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia and occupied Yugoslavia during World War II...

.

Biography

He was born in Humac
Humac (Ljubuški)
Humac is a village in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the 1991 census, the village is located in the municipality of Ljubuški....

 village (part of Ljubuški
Ljubuški
Ljubuški is a town and municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, located in thewestern part of Herzegovina.-1971:28.269 total* Croats - 26.198 * Muslims by nationality - 1.812 * Serbs - 118 * Yugoslavs - 49...

), Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

. In his youth, he was involved with petty crime. On one occasion he was charged with vagrancy
Vagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...

 and got sentenced to two days in prison on 7 September 1929. Two years later on 5 December 1931, the District Court in Mostar
Mostar
Mostar is a city and municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the largest and one of the most important cities in the Herzegovina region and the center of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of the Federation. Mostar is situated on the Neretva river and is the fifth-largest city in the country...

 sentenced him to five months in prison for embezzlement of funds belonging to the public stock exchange in Mostar. He was arrested for embezzlement once more after that.

Luburić went abroad after Pavelić and was trained in brutality in various Ustashe camps in Italy and Hungary. In the beginning of the Second World War, Luburić was the commanding general
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....

 for the area of the Independent State of Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...

 (NDH) around the Drina
Drina
The Drina is a 346 kilometer long river, which forms most of the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. It is the longest tributary of the Sava River and the longest karst river in the Dinaric Alps which belongs to the Danube river watershed...

 river, which is why he is sometimes referred to as General Drinjanin (General of the Drina).
He was the founder and first commander of the concentration camps in Croatia.

Vjekoslav Luburić, as the commander-in-chief of all the Croatian camps, announced the great "efficiency" of his Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia and occupied Yugoslavia during World War II...

  at a ceremony on October 9, 1942. Vjekoslav Luburić gave gold and silver medals to Ante Pavelić
Ante Pavelic
Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...

 and Andrija Artuković
Andrija Artukovic
Andrija Artuković was a Croatian politician and a member of the Ustaše movement. Artuković was convicted of war crimes committed against minorities in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II...

 because they were the most efficient soldiers.
He enjoyed unlimited Pavelić's trust and had had instructions for extermination of the Serbs from Pavelic himself.

Besides running the camp, Luburić would come to Jasenovac to participate in the executions in person. It is estimated that 70,000 people were killed at Jasenovac during World War II.

Those who were without papers were, without trial, interned into the camp, providing that they were able to work and with a profession that suited the Ustaša's needs. Those who had permits to remain three years were immediately taken to liquidation, and those who had special permits were dealt with according to what the permits were for.

Mladen Lorković
Mladen Lorković
Mladen Lorković was a Croatian politician, lawyer and Ustasha leader.-Early life:Lorković was born in Zagreb on 1 March 1909. As a high school student he was a supporter of Croatian Party of Rights, later joining the Croatian Youth Movement. He studied law at the University of Zagreb...

 and Ante Vokić
Ante Vokić
Ante Vokić was a Croatian politician, Ustaše krilnik and putschist.-Youth:Vokić was born in Mostar on 23 August 1909. He finished gimnasium in Sarajevo and attended Faculty of Law at University of Zagreb. He ended his study in 1929 and started working in train service in Sarajevo...

 who were planning a coup against Pavelić in 1944 when their machinations were discovered, were arrested and sent to the camp at Lepoglava
Lepoglava
Lepoglava is a town in Varaždin County, northern Croatia, located southwest of Varaždin, west of Ivanec and northeast of Krapina.A total of 8,271 people in the municipality lives in the following settlements:* Bednjica, population 214...

, where they were tried & sentenced to death on Maks Luburić's orders in May 1945.

In February 1945 Pavelić sent Luburić to Sarajevo with instructions to destroy the resistance movement. The postwar commission on war crimes identified
323 victims of Luburić's reign of terror in Sarajevo. The results of this brutality were witnessed by Landrum Bolling, an American journalist

...who arrived in the city on April 7 after its liberation by Partizan forces. He was shown a room containing bodies "stacked like cordwood on top of one another. We were told these Serbs whom the Ustashs had hanged by barbed wire from lampposts in Sarajevo, " he said, "Luburic's brief reign of terror constituted the Ustasha's final gruesome legacy in Sarajevo. As his last sadistic acts were being carried out, Sarajevo's destiny was being decided on the field of battle in the hills around the city.

Near the end of the war, after the NDH was defeated, Luburić led the Crusaders
Crusaders (Ustasha)
Crusaders were a Croatian anti-communist guerrilla army. Their activity's started after the capitulation of the Independent State of Croatia, which was at the time a Nazi puppet state, in May 1945, toward the end of World War II...

 (Križari) paramilitary until November 1945 but was unsuccessful, escaped to Hungary and later in Spain.

He helped form a terrorist organization called the "Croatian National Resistance
Croatian National Resistance
The Croatian National Resistance was a terrorist Croatian Ustaše emigrant organization which sought to destroy Yugoslavia and to establish an independent Croatia, according to the vision of Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić and ideology of Mile Budak...

" (Hrvatski narodni odpor, HNO). It became the most violent of the Ustashe organizations which were born after the WWII. Luburić commanded the organization for twenty five years from his refugee in Spain He frequently traveled to Croatia and it was said he had two wives, one in Croatia and another in Spain. His organization was heavily involved in racketeering, attempted murder, extortion, hijacking, terrorist bombing, and other violent crimes. After his death, his successors on the organization commanding post, sought out criminal organization ties with La Cosa Nostra, the Provisional IRA, and the Croatian Mafia in San Pedro.

Luburić was killed by Ilija Stanić
Ilija Stanic
Ilija Stanić was an agent of UDBA Yugoslav secret police, who is believed to have assassinated Vjekoslav Luburić, a Croatian Ustasha General responsible for war crimes in Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II.His father was a Croatian Ustasha who fought against Yugoslavia...

 on April 20, 1969, in Carcaixent
Carcaixent
Carcaixent is a town and municipality in the province of Valencia, eastern Spain, with c. 20,000 inhabitants. Its origins go back to prehistoric Iberian and Roman times, with some remainders in its area. It is located in the Ribera Alta comarca, 40 km south of the provincial capital...

, Spain, after Stanić infiltrated Luburić's organisation. Ilija Stanić was Luburić's godson, and the son of Luburić's comrade-in-arms Vinko Stanić. However, Stanić claims (in the Globus newspaper as per Jutarnji list, a Zagreb newspaper) that he killed Luburić because Luburić abandoned Pavelić. Stanić wasn't UDBA agent at the time of murder, but later.

See also

  • Miroslav Filipović
    Miroslav Filipovic
    Miroslav Filipović was a Croatian Ustaše and Roman Catholic friar who was convicted of war crimes by both a German military court and a Yugoslav civil court and hanged in Belgrade.-Early life:Filipović's date of birth was 5 June 1915, but little else about his early years has been...

  • Ivica Matković
  • Jure Francetić
    Jure Francetic
    Jure Francetić was an World War II Ustaše Commissioner of Bosnia and Herzegovina, responsible for the massacre of Bosnian Serbs and Jews.-Early life and activities prior to formation of NDH:...

  • Petar Brzica
    Petar Brzica
    Father Petar "Pero" Brzica was a Croatian fascist and World War II war criminal. Before the war he was a scholarship student at the Franciscan college of Široki Brijeg in Herzegovina and a member of The Great Brotherhood of Crusaders....

  • Ljubo Miloš
    Ljubo Miloš
    Ljubomir Miloš was an official of the Croatian World War II regime. As an Ustaše, he was the head of the Independent State of Croatia secret service ....

  • Mile Budak
    Mile Budak
    Mile Budak was a Croatian Ustaše and writer, best known as one of the chief ideologists of the Croatian clerofascist Ustaše movement, which ruled the Independent State of Croatia, or NDH, from 1941-45 and waged a genocidal campaign against its Serb, Roma and Jewish minorities, and against Croatian...

  • Srbosjek
  • Miro Barešić
    Miro Barešic
    Miro Barešić was a terrorist, Croatian nationalist militant convicted for the murder of the Yugoslavian ambassador to Sweden in 1971 and later released as a demand made in the hijacking of a Scandinavian Airlines domestic flight.-Early life:Miro Barešić was born on 10 September 1950 in Šibenik,...

  • Yugoslav Front of World War II

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