Pregledni rad
THE IRISH YEAR OF ANDRIJA ARTUKOVIĆ
Mirjana Cupek Hamil
; Dublin, Irska
Sažetak
At the end of March 1947, Andrija Artuković, under the name of Prof. Alois Anich, and the Franciscan friar Dr. Louis Ivandich, as his companion and relative, applied for visas in the Irish embassy in Berne, Switzerland. Attached to their applications were two letters of recommendation from the General of the Franciscan Order of Switzerland, Dr. Seraphim Berchten, in which he praised Dr. Anich as an important supporter of the Catholic Church, on the run from the Communist regime in Yugoslavia and somebody who could provide the Irish government with valuable information about Yugoslavia. After a brief hesitation and in spite of a recommendation from a high ranking official in the Department of Justice not to grant visas to those two individuals, final approval arrived from the Department of External Affairs in May 1947. Ivandich, Anich and his family arrived in Ireland on the 15th July and stayed there for a year. After the expiry of their visas, Ivandich left for Canada, and the Artukovichs for the USA. Soon after that the real identity of Anich was revealed and he started his struggle to stay in the USA as a displaced person. This article analyzes the short-lived dilemma of the Irish administration prior issuing the visas and tries to answer the question of what motives lay behind it, i.e. were the visas granted with the full knowledge of the Artukovich’s identity, in spite of it, because of it, or absent it. The author concludes that there was no knowledge of Anich’s real identity so the visas were not granted out of any alleged “pro-Nazi” inclinations of the then Irish administration but rather because of “Catholic solidarity” and the strong anti-Communist sentiment that marked contemporary Irish politics and political culture.
Ključne riječi
Alois Anich; Louis Ivandich; Andrija Artuković; Ireland; war criminals; Franciscans
Hrčak ID:
129063
URI
Datum izdavanja:
20.10.2014.
Posjeta: 1.953 *