The Nazi genocidaire 'Maks the Butcher' is left without his fascist shield in Valencia

BarcelonaVjekoslav Luburić was a Croatian general who led Jasenovac, one of the bloodiest concentration camps of World War II, where thousands of people, mostly Serbs, Jews, and Roma, were brutally murdered. He was known as Maks the Butcher, and even the Nazis noted his cruelty. Lieutenant Artur Hefner, a Wehrmacht officer, visited Jasenovac in February 1942 and described it as a camp “of the worst kind, equal to Dante's inferno”. After the war, the Nazi criminal fled justice and settled in Spain, protected by the Franco regime and under a false identity. He settled in Carcaixent, in the Valencian Country, where he lived under the name Vicente Pérez García and ran a printing press. In 1969 he was murdered in his home under circumstances never fully clarified. Since then, he has been buried in a tomb with a shield of fascist Croatia.

Now, 57 years after his death, the Spanish government has ordered the immediate removal of fascist symbolism from the tomb and its replacement with informational panels explaining his crimes. "The funerary monument, erected in 1976 and located in a prominent place in the cemetery, incorporates symbolism and elements that exalt both the character and the regime to which he belonged. Among these, the presence of the Ustaša shield stands out, as well as honorary inscriptions that contribute to the exaltation of his figure," highlights the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory in a statement.

The frustrated attempts of the Carcaixent City Council

Some Croatian extremist groups, coming from Zagreb, had paid him homage in the past. For more than eight years, the Carcaixent City Council has been trying to exhume the general's body, but has not been able to due to the opposition of the nazi genocidaire's heirs. The council has also been fighting for years to remove fascist symbolism. "What we mainly want is to remove the tomb from this privileged place in the cemetery and, above all, that there be no symbol of hatred, like the Ustaša that presides over his tomb. What we ask is to remove the fascist images and treat Luburić like any neighbor of the town," explained to À Punt in 2021 Ramón Marí, then councilor for Historical Memory of Carcaixent. According to the media, at that time the removal was not studied because the case of Carcaixent was not foreseen either within Valencian or Spanish law, since the criminal acts committed by Luburić took place outside of Spain and during the Second World War.

The case of the nazi genocidaire's assassination was filed and his assassin was never arrested. There was a suspect: Ilija Stanic, a printer's employee. When the crime was committed, the police focused their investigations on this man, who had fled. Years later, it was discovered that he had returned to former Yugoslavia and it is suspected that he was a secret agent of General Tito.