Miroslav Filipović (5 June 1915 – 29 June 1946), also known as Tomislav Filipović and Tomislav Filipović-Majstorović, was a Croatian Franciscan friar and Ustaše military chaplain who participated in atrocities during World War II in Yugoslavia. Convicted as a war criminal in a Yugoslav civil court, he was executed by hanging in 1946.
For the duration of the war, the Vatican continued to recognize the Yugoslav Government-in-exile, following the principle of not recognizing new states in time of war. However, it also developed relations with the Independent State of Croatia and was briefed on the efforts of the Ustaše to convert ethnic Serbs to Catholicism. Some former priests, mostly Franciscans, particularly in, but not limited to, Herzegovina and Bosnia, took part in the atrocities themselves. Filipović-Majstorović joined the Ustaše on 7 February 1942, and participated in the Drakulić massacre. He was reportedly subsequently dismissed from his order. He became the Chief Guard of the Jasenovac concentration camp where he was nicknamed "Fra Sotona" ("Brother Satan") due to his sadism. When he was hanged for war crimes, he wore his clerical garb, although he had been reportedly defrocked in 1942.
Early life
Filipović's date of birth was 5 June 1915, but little else about his early years has been recorded. In 1938 he joined the Franciscan Order at Petrićevac monastery, Banja Luka, and took "Tomislav" as his religious name.
In 1941, following establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a puppet state installed by the Axis powers embracing Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as most of Croatia by the Ustaše, an organisation of extremist Croatian nationalists, Filipović was assigned to a chaplaincy in the Rama region in northern Herzegovina but did not take up the assignment. In January 1942, after completing his theological exams in Sarajevo, he became a military chaplain with the Ustaša. A report by the State Commission of Croatia for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Occupation Forces and their Collaborators (SCC), marks his acts clearly within the Ustaše members and high ranks.
Ustaša chaplain
Filipović (later known as Tomislav Filipović-Majstorović) was assigned to II Poglavnik Bodyguard Battalion. Statements by two eyewitnesses and a senior German general say that on 7 February 1942, Filipović accompanied elements of his battalion in an operation aimed at wiping out Serbs in the settlement of Drakulić, on the northern outskirts of Banja Luka, and in two neighbouring villages, Motike and Šargovac. A few Serbs survived, but overwhelmingly the operation achieved its objective; more than 2,300 Serb civilians, including men, women and children were killed, usually with axes or pick-axes.
Reports sent to Eugen Dido Kvaternik, head of the state internal security service, from his Banja Luka office and dated 9 and 11 February 1942, noted that the victims at Šargovac included 52 children killed at the village primary school. The first of these reports gives death tolls at the mine, the school and the three villages which together total 2,287. The second revises the death toll at the school from 37 to 52, bringing the toll to 2,302, 13 fewer than the immediately preceding estimate of 2,315.
Filipović was court-martialed by the Wehrmacht for his involvement, possibly at the request of the Italian Royal Army which was then occupying part of the ISC territory. On 4 April 1942, Filipović's priestly faculties were reportedly suspended by order of the Papal Nuncio in Zagreb and he was jailed in Croatia.
However, General Edmund Glaise-Horstenau, the senior Wehrmacht officer in the region, accused Filipović in a report of being present at a planning meeting prior to the massacres, along with certain other Catholic military chaplains and, "during the slaughtering". General Glaise-Horstenau further alleged that the Ustaša's former mayor of Banja Luka, Viktor Gutić, and the city's Chief justice, a Dr Stilinović, were also present at the meeting.
Responsibilities at the Jasenovac camps complex
Appointment
thumb|Ustaše execute prisoners near the [[Jasenovac concentration camp.]]
Through the direct intervention of Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, who then headed Section III of the ISC internal security service (Ustaška nadzorna služba, literally: Ustaše Surveillance Service), which was responsible for administering the puppet state's system of prison camps, Filipović was quickly released and posted to the Jasenovac complex of labour and death camps where he was at first an inmate with benefited status, who aided the Ustase, and later appointed Ustase, commanding a small transit camp near Jasenovac, in early 1942, he reportedly killed an inmate there for hiding a loaf of bread.
Shortly thereafter he became chief-guard, responsible for mass-executions and lieutenant of the commander Ljubo Miloš and administrator Ivica Matković, and later, on 10 June 1942, administrator of the main camp in their stead, until the return of Matković, in March 1942. Luburić gave Filipović a new surname, "Majstorović", derived from a local word meaning "master" or "craftsman". From then on documents referred to him sometimes by that name and sometimes as Filipović-Majstorović. He won an apparent bet placed by him, Marinko Polić and Jerko Maričić, both infamous NCOs in the camp. Witness Josip Riboli stated:
Another particularly vicious killing was described by the former Jewish prisoner, Egon Berger, in his book, "44 months in Jasenovac":
Commandant of Jasenovac
After the war Filipović admitted that he had personally killed about 100 prisoners and had attended mass executions of many more. He estimated that under his command some 20–30,000 prisoners were murdered at the main Jasenovac camp. He said prisoners would often be made to stand in prepared trenches where each was then killed with a sledgehammer blow. He went on to describe his tenure in command of Stara Gradiška, a prison camp primarily for women which was designated Camp V within the Jasenovac system: