In early 1998, the quiet calm of a seaside town in Argentina was shattered. A 77-year-old Croatian man named Dinko Šakić was taken into custody by local police, beginning a journey that would end in a courtroom nearly 6,000 miles away.
The crimes Šakić faced were committed more than half a century earlier, during World War II. At that time, Croatia was a Nazi ally, led by Ante Pavelić, a leader who modeled himself after Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. As the war escalated, Šakić rose to command one of the most notorious death camps of the conflict: Jasenovac.
Known as the "Auschwitz of the Balkans," Jasenovac was a place of torture and mass murder. For more than fifty years, Šakić evaded justice, but his case reopened deep and painful divisions in his homeland. The atrocities he was accused of stained not only the fledgling state of Croatia but also the Catholic Church.
The question remained: Was Šakić a noble freedom fighter or a sadistic war criminal?
The roots of the conflict stretch back to November 1918, at the end of World War I. Serbian troops returned victorious to their capital, Belgrade. King Alexander of Serbia became the head of a new, complex kingdom built on the ruins of war. It was a troubled state, ruling over Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Kosovar Albanians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins.
These peoples had different religions, histories, cultures, and languages, creating a volatile mix. King Alexander ruled with a firm hand, suppressing regional loyalties and imprisoning political opponents. In 1929, he renamed his kingdom Yugoslavia, the land of the South Slavs.
He then launched a harsh crackdown on opposition parties, including the rising Croatian nationalist Ante Pavelić. Forced to flee to Italy, Pavelić found a kindred spirit in Benito Mussolini. The Italian dictator had risen to power on the back of his fascist movement and was eager to expand his influence in the Balkans.
Mussolini saw Pavelić's Ustaše movement as a tool to dismantle Yugoslavia. He provided money and weapons. In October 1934, the Ustaše struck, assassinating King Alexander during a state visit to Marseille, France. The king's death left Yugoslavia without its strongman, as his heir was just a boy.
Pavelić was sentenced to death in absentia by a French court, but under Mussolini's protection, he continued to thrive. He also found another powerful ally in Adolf Hitler. By the late 1930s, Hitler and Mussolini had formed the Pact of Steel, giving hope to right-wing nationalists across Europe.
Pavelić dreamed of an independent Croatia, free of Serbs and Jews. This vision was attractive to many Croats, including a young man named Dinko Šakić. On April 8, 1941, war came to Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav army collapsed within 11 days, and the monarchy fled.
In some parts of the country, German troops were welcomed as liberators. Pavelić returned from exile and declared the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, backed by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The new state included all of Bosnia and a large Serbian minority.
Martial law was imposed on the second day, and racial laws followed within weeks. Mass killings of Serbs began in early May. But there was a key difference between Pavelić's fascism and that of the Nazis. While the Nazis largely despised religion, Pavelić's regime was staunchly Catholic.
Pavelić wanted to create a pure Catholic state. His strategy was to kill a third of the Serbs, expel a third, and forcibly convert the rest to Catholicism. In one of the darkest moments in the history of the Catholic Church in the 20th century, the country's archbishop, Aloysius Stepinac, blessed the new regime. The Church became an active partner in the forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs.
Pavelić launched a campaign of terror against the Serbian minority. Tens of thousands were expelled, killed, or imprisoned. Anti-fascist Croats were also jailed, and at the request of the Germans, the Ustaše targeted Roma and Jews. Jews were stripped of all their possessions, even their wedding rings.
By July 1941, the prisons were overflowing. That summer, the Ustaše began building some of the largest and most horrific concentration camps in Europe. Dinko Šakić, then 21, seized the opportunity to join the cause, volunteering as a guard.
His first posting was at Jasenovac, just an hour's drive from the capital Zagreb. The complex consisted of several separate camps on the banks of the Sava River. It held the largest number of prisoners in all of Croatia.
The mastermind behind the camp was Maks Luburić, the head of Pavelić's special police force. In 1943, Šakić married Nada, Luburić's half-sister, who worked as a guard at one of the women's camps. This marriage secured Šakić's place in Luburić's inner circle. At just 24, he was appointed commander of the camp.
Luburić had modeled Jasenovac on the German camps, but the guards preferred much simpler methods of killing. Among their favored tools was a special blade known as the "Srbosjek," or "Serb-cutter," designed to quickly slit throats. Prisoners were also thrown alive into the furnaces of a brick factory within the camp.
The violence at Jasenovac was so brutal that it disturbed even the Nazis. Heinrich Himmler, head of the German SS, received regular reports from German eyewitnesses in Croatia. One report from 1942 noted that the Ustaše committed their crimes in a bestial manner, not just against men of military age, but especially against the helpless elderly, women, and children. It was estimated that around 300,000 Orthodox Christians were slaughtered.
Eventually, the Ustaše became concerned about the stories of torture and mass killing. To quell the rumors, the regime commissioned a series of photographs showing prisoners doing useful work. But away from the camera, the brutality continued unabated.
By the end of 1942, resistance movements were emerging across Yugoslavia. Led by the Croatian communist Josip Broz Tito, the partisans posed an existential threat to Pavelić's regime. The war against the partisans was fought mercilessly, but the resistance held on, and time began to run out for Šakić and his fellow Ustaše killers.
In the fall of 1944, the Soviet army pushed into the Balkans, joining forces with Tito's partisans to liberate Belgrade. The Croatian client state was now in serious danger. Šakić was ordered to kill all remaining survivors at Jasenovac and destroy the evidence. Over twenty days, his men selected the sick and elderly, executed them, and threw their bodies into the Sava River.
In April 1945, Tito's partisans arrived at Jasenovac to find only ruins, decomposing corpses, and huge piles of stolen clothing. The exact number of victims remains unknown, as all documents were destroyed. Historians now believe that an estimated one million Yugoslav citizens died between 1941 and 1945, with more than 300,000 dying at Jasenovac.
Germany surrendered in May 1945, and the Independent State of Croatia collapsed. Thousands of Ustaše members fled with the German forces. Šakić was among those who escaped, and it is believed he received help from members of the Catholic Church, including a senior figure close to the Vatican. With money and forged documents, they sought new lives abroad, with South America a popular destination.
In 1946, the Catholic Church in Zagreb was put on trial for its support of the Ustaše regime. Archbishop Stepinac was tried for complicity and convicted of high treason and war crimes. He was sentenced to 16 years but released after just five. In 1998, in a controversial move, Pope John Paul II declared Stepinac a martyr.
Meanwhile, Šakić was enjoying the hospitality of Argentine President Juan Perón. Perón admired European right-wing dictators and welcomed men like Šakić as heroes in the fight against communism. Šakić settled quietly in the seaside resort of Santa Teresita, near Buenos Aires, under the name Ljubomir Šakić. He started a textile factory and remained active in émigré politics.
For nearly half a century, Šakić stayed out of the spotlight. But in 1990, the issue of Croatian independence resurfaced. With Yugoslavia on the brink of collapse, a new war began in the Balkans, lasting most of the 1990s. The term "ethnic cleansing" entered the political lexicon.
With renewed interest in Croatia's violent history, journalists began searching for Šakić. In 1998, he made a fatal error. He agreed to an interview with an Argentine television program. When the interview aired, it caused a sensation. Šakić had finally stepped out of the shadows.
Efraim Zuroff, a prominent Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, learned of the appearance and moved quickly to secure his extradition to Zagreb. The reaction to Šakić's public reappearance put President Franjo Tuđman in a difficult position. Tuđman saw himself as a proud Croatian patriot and had downplayed the number of deaths at Jasenovac.
But in the mid-1990s, Tuđman needed to prove to the world that Croatia was a modern, Western-friendly democracy. Within weeks of the interview, Šakić was arrested. This time, the Argentine authorities responded quickly to calls for his extradition.
On June 18, 1998, Šakić returned to Croatia for the first time since the end of World War II. His wife Nada, who had also served at Jasenovac, was questioned by authorities but never charged.
Šakić's trial began in November 1998. He was charged with killing thousands of prisoners. More than 30 witnesses, including camp survivors, testified against him. Throughout the trial, Šakić insisted on his innocence. He even laughed during testimony, prompting repeated warnings from the judge.
Šakić was ultimately convicted of killing or overseeing the killing of more than 2,000 Serbs, Jews, and Roma. He was sentenced to twenty years, the maximum penalty available. The judge noted his lack of remorse.
In July 2008, Dinko Šakić died in a prison hospital at the age of 86. He never apologized for his actions. To his last moment, he felt no need to ask for forgiveness.
Šakić and his comrades committed their crimes in the name of the Croatian people. Even today, many of his countrymen believe he was not a war criminal but a heroic fighter for their nation's freedom. They see his victims as the real criminals. At his funeral, a Catholic priest told mourners he was proud to see Šakić in his coffin wearing the uniform of the Ustaše regime, saying, "Every honest Croat is proud of the name Dinko Šakić."
But not every Croat agrees. For many, the Ustaše regime represents a brutal and bloody memory from the country's past, a memory that must never be forgotten.