Welcome to the History of the Orthodox People (HOP) project website!

The HOP is currently at the very first phases of its development.  Please think of every page you will see here as being “under construction”.

At this point in time we have assembled a number of teams which will each work on the history of one of the following local Orthodox Churches: Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian, West European, African, Greek and Romanian.

We are still hoping to have more people join our project and look at the history of the many other Orthodox Churches not listed above.  If you are interested in joining, please email the Editor in Chief at

historyorthodox@gmail.com
Thank you.

Orthodox Churches

At this point in time we have assembled a number of teams which will each work on the history of one of the following local Orthodox Churches: Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian, West European, African, Greek and Romanian.

We are asking anybody who has interesting documents to share about the history of any of these to send them to the Editor at the email listed below.

We are still hoping to have more people join our project and look at the history of the many other Orthodox Churches not listed above. If you are interested in joining, please email the Editor in Chief.

  • Saint Catherine Monastery in Egypt
  • Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
  • Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos
  • Slătioara-Cathedral, Romania
  • Kizhi island, Onega lake, Karelia, Russia
  • Gračanica Monastery in Kosovo
  • Clonmacnoise Ireland

Restoring the Historical Truth

INTRODUCTION

Stepinac and fascistsThe events presented here constitute one of the darkest chapters of World War II. It is the mass slaughter of Serbs, Jews, and Roma in the Nazi satellite “Independent State of Croatia.” That “state” was based on an ideology of racial supremacy akin to that of Hitler’s Germany and in it there was no room for those who were not Croats or Roman Catholics. They were marked not for discrimination or repression, but for extinction.

The focal point of that slaughter was the concentration camp of “Jasenovac,” also known as the “Auschwitz of the Balkans.”

After the tragedy experienced by the Armenian people during World War I under Ottoman rule, in World War II Axis-occupied Yugoslavia Serbs, Jews, and Roma under the collaborationist rule of the Ustashi – Adolph Hitler’s eager Croatian acolytes – were subjected to the same kind of relentless and pitiless mass slaughter.

Referring to the Armenians, Adolph Hitler is said to have asked nonchalantly: “Does anyone even remember what happened to them anymore?” The Croatian Ustashi and their wartime leader Ante Pavelić must have taken great solace in that cynical question. They assumed that they would enjoy similar impunity for the genocidal crimes that they were contemplating – and committing with gusto – throughout the territory they governed under Axis sponsorship from 1941 to 1945.

The crimes against humanity that marked the brief yet bloody existence of the “Independent State of Croatia” need to be known and their innocent victims remembered.

Our task in the following pages is to redress the moral and historical balance. Those crimes will be made known urbi et orbi and their perpetrators and ideologues will be held morally accountable before the bar of world public opinion.