Nazi-hunter calls on RSL to stop honouring SS-led Nazi collaborators on ANZAC Day

The Goldman Report

Nazis are alive and well in Australia, so much so that they are welcome to march in Australia’s famous ANZAC Day parade.

Documents published by the Goldman Report, show that on October 2, 2017, the Victorian branch of the RSL bestowed Life Membership on two brothers, Toma and Marko Banjanin, who according to their own testimony, were members of a World War Two unit known as the Dinara Division, a Nazi collaborationist Serbian Chetnik militia that was armed and supplied by Mussolini’s Italian fascists from April 1942, and that was under direct German SS command for the last 18 months of the war.

While the entire Serbian Chetnik movement is classified as being a ‘Nazi collaborationist’ force by both the Australian War Memorial and Holocaust group Yad Vashem, the Dinara Division was inextricably linked to the Nazi war machine as it was under direct German and Italian command.

In 1947, their leader, Momćilo Đujić was tried and convicted of war crimes in absentia by Yugoslavia. He was found guilty of mass murder, torture, rape, robbery, and forcible confinement, as well as collaborating with the Germans and Italians.

Officially listed by Australian government as being part of the 18th Corp of Mussolini’s army under the Italian acronym, MVAC (Milizia Volontaria Anti Comunista), according to the Australian War Memorial’s military records, in May 1945 after Germany capitulated, Đujić personally oversaw the surrender of his entire ‘division’ to Allied forces in Italy.

However none of these facts seem to bother Victoria’s RSL, which in October 2017 decided that the two Banjanin brothers, despite both publicly bragging for years about their roles as members of this collaborationist Nazi-aligned unit, were worthy of being made Life Members of the RSL after they helped raise $1 million for the RSL’s charity drive.

What’s more, Dinara Division Chetniks march in each and every ANZAC Day parade, in spite of the fact that for at least 40 years, all RSL sub-Branches across Australia have been made aware of the Serbian Chetniks Nazi links.

Not that the RSL itself has been unaware of World War Two history for at least 75 years now. At the time of the Tehran Conference of 1943, the Allies, including Australia broke off ties with the entire Chetnik movement due to its collaboration and mass killings of non-Serbs.

According to the managing director of Australia’s premier Nazi-hunting and war crimes investigative site, Mr. David Goldman, “Despite thousands of Australians dying or being wounded fighting the Nazis during the Second World War, this act by the Victorian RSL shows that for at least part of its leadership, our Digger’s sacrifice amounts to virtually nothing and that it really only cares about money.”

“The granting of RSL Life Membership to those who participated in this unit echoes the promotions and sanctuary in remote country parishes given to known pedophile priests by the Church,” says Mr. Goldman.

“What Australia’s RSL sub-Branches fail to grasp is what many religious and community institutions have learned the hard way, that is, you can’t go on honouring evildoers forever – sooner or later, reality and the law catch up with you,” he says.

“Maybe Australia needs to set up another Royal Commission, this time examining the RSLs Nazi collaborator ‘protection racket’ for it to fully appreciate that reality,” he adds.

“It’s time that the Chetniks were banned from all ANZAC Day marches and stopped receiving honours and accolades from the RSL once and for all,” Mr. Goldman concludes.

Pictures:

Image from VIC RSL Facebook page shows Marko Banjanin being honoured as a former member of the Nazi-aligned Dinara (Dinarska) Division by Victorian RSL leadership.

/Public Release.