And now you investigate!

We have already read on Río Wang about the “exotic” places where, at the very end of WWII, the completely desperate and for its survival struggling Hungarian Arrow Cross puppet government was able to send the Hungarian soldiers. In the following – hopefully with the collaboration of our readers – we will unveil the last (?) protocol journey of the Arrow Cross government.

The Hrvatski Slikopisni Tjednik, the Croatian Picture Weekly was between 1941 and 1945 the newsreel of the Independent State of Croatia. The very first frames of the 166th edition present a meeting, where Ante Pavelić, the Poglavnik receives a delegation in Arrow Cross uniforms, and he also awards one of its members.

Right, Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Gábor Kemény, opposite him perhaps Ante Bilić, Croatian Embassy Secretary in Budapest

What is surprising in this simple protocol news, is that, according to the numbering of the newsreel, the event had to take place in late February, or rather early March 1945, in a period when the power of the Arrow Cross regime was practically limited to the northwesternmost corner of Hungary. Who was the person awarded? How did they organize the journey to Zagreb through the two countries suffering from continuous battles and air strikes? We are looking forward to the answers of our readers to such questions.

Unfortunately I have found only one copy of this newsreel number 166, from which the soundtrack of the first 10 minutes is missing (in my experience this is a quite common feature in the surviving Croatian newsreels). Once a full sound copy were found, it would solve this small historical mystery, but in the meantime – you investigate!