Krunoslav Draganović

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Krunoslav Draganović (died in 1982) was a Croatian Roman Catholic priest known as one of the main organisers of the ratlines which aided the escape of Nazi war criminals from Europe after World War II.

He is believed to have been instrumental in the escape to Argentina of the Croatian wartime dictator and war criminal (and mass murderer), Ante Pavelić.

Draganović was a controversial and mysterious figure, who is central to many allegations involving the Vatican Bank, the CIA, and the Nazi Party. Declassified CIA documents confirm that Draganović was a member of the Ustase, a far-right Nazi-affiliated Croatian fascist organisation that was given control of Croatia by the Axis powers in 1941, and which killed up to one million Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and dissidents. Draganović has been accused of laundering the Ustashe's treasure of jewelry and other items stolen from Holocaust victims in Croatia.

Father Draganović was from Travnik (now part of Bosnia and Herzegovina). He attended secondary school in Travnik and studied theology and philosophy in Sarajevo. From 1932-35 he studied at the Papal Oriental Institute and the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome.

In 1935 he returned to Bosnia, initially as secretary to Bishop Ivan Šarić (who was called the hangman of the Serbs for his WW2 activities). 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.

Intelligence sources interviewed by Mark Aarons and John Loftus for their book Unholy Trinity also allege that Draganović was unofficially head of the Croatian desk of the Vatican Secretariat of State's intelligence operation, and at the same time possibly working with or for US, British and French intelligence.

But perhaps the greatest mystery surrounds Draganović's later defection to Tito's Yugoslavia. 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 hypernationalist Croatian diaspora/Ustase 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 1982.

[edit] See also

Ratlines for more details and references on Draganović escape-route activities.

[edit] Sources

[1] Background Report on Krunoslav Draganovic, CIA, February 12, 1947
Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers, St Martins Press 1991 (revised 1998)