Name Krunoslav Draganovic | Role Priest | |
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Full Name Krunoslav Stjepan Draganovic Born 30 October 1903 ( 1903-10-30 ) Brcko, Austro-Hungary Occupation Roman Catholic priest and historianHeaded the Confraternity of San Girolamo ratline Parents Marija Draganovic, Petar Draganovic | ||
Tito i krunoslav draganovi
Krunoslav Stjepan Draganović (30 October 1903 – 3 June 1983) was a Croatian Roman Catholic priest associated with the ratlines which aided the escape of Ustaše war criminals from Europe after World War II while he was living and working at the College of St. Jerome in Rome.
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Krunoslav Draganović
Biography
Draganović was born in Matići, Austro-Hungary (now part of Bosnia and Herzegovina). He attended secondary school in Travnik and studied theology and philosophy in Sarajevo. Draganović was ordained a priest on 1 July 1928.
From 1932–35 he studied at the Papal Oriental Institute and the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome. In 1935 he submitted his German language doctoral dissertation, Massenübertritte von Katholiken zur Orthodoxie im kroatischen Sprachgebiet zur Zeit der Türkenherrschaft (Mass conversions of Catholics to Orthodoxy in the Croatian-speaking area during the Turkish rule).
In 1935 he returned to Bosnia, initially as secretary to Bishop Ivan Šarić. In August 1943 Draganović returned to Rome, where he became secretary of the Croatian 'Confraternity of San Girolamo', based at the monastery of San Girolamo degli Illirici in Via Tomacelli. This monastery became the centre of operations for the Croat ratline, as documented by CIA surveillance files. He is believed to have been instrumental in the escape to Argentina of the Croatian wartime dictator Ante Pavelić.
Asked by Klaus Barbie why he was going out of his way to help him escape to Juan Peron's Argentina, he responded: "We have to maintain a sort of moral reserve on which we can draw in the future."
Draganović was central to many allegations involving the Vatican Bank, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Nazi Party. Declassified CIA documents confirm that Draganović was a member of the Ustaše, the Nazi-affiliated ultranationalist Catholic organisation given control of Croatia by the Axis powers in 1941 which was responsible for the deaths of between 330,000 and 390,000 orthodox Serbs and about 32,000 Jews.
Draganović was accused of laundering the Ustaše's treasure of jewellery and other items stolen from war victims in Croatia. In 2002, declassified CIA documents revealed that Draganović worked as a spy for the CIA from 1959–62 for the purposes of gathering intelligence on the Communist but non-aligned regime of Yugoslavia, at the time headed by Tito. His employment with the CIA was eventually terminated as he was considered to be unreliable.
In 1945, Draganović printed his Mali hrvatski kalendar za godinu 1945 (Small Croatian Calendar for the year 1945) in Rome for Croatian emigrants.
Some mystery surrounds Draganović's later defection to Yugoslavia. After World War II he lived in Italy and Austria gathering evidence of communist crimes committed in Yugoslavia. He was wanted by Yugoslavia's Department of State Security (UDBA). The UDBA held Draganović for 42 days in Belgrade and after 42 days of investigation he turned up in Sarajevo and gave a press conference on 15 November 1967 at which he praised the "democratisation and humanising of life" under Tito. He denied the claims made by the Croatian diaspora press that he had been kidnapped or entrapped by the UDBA Yugoslav secret police. Draganović spent his last years in Sarajevo updating the general register of the Roman Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, and died in June 1983 in Sarajevo.