Hidden away on the Medvednica mountain near Zagreb, Croatia, is the ruined 1932 hunting lodge, Villa Rebar, known as the residence of Croatian World War 2 politician Ante Pavelic.
In addition to the sparse ruins of the house, there are adjacent tunnels inside the mountain that provided an escape for the former dictator and which can be explored today.
Pavelic, was born in 1889 in what is today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina, but as an ethnic Croat, had long been an ultra-nationalist and fascist, even before he rose to power as the country’s dictator. He founded the ultra-nationalist Ustashe, the Croatian Revolutionary Movement, in 1929, when he was living in Italy. He was influenced by the rise of Benito Mussolini’s facism.
His own organisation executed several terrorist attacks within the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia, culminating in the assassination of Yugoslav King Alexander.
Pavelic was sentenced to death in his home country for this, but escaped execution by staying in exile in Italy.
However, when the Axis powers of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Hitler made Croatia the ruling power in the region through the creation of the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH), usually described as a “Nazi puppet state”.
But such a nickname plays down the level of brutality the Ustashe displayed. Pavelic orchestrated a policy of repression and extermination that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, in particular ethnic Serbs within Croatia but also – in accordance with the Nazis’ racist policies – members of the Jewish and Romani communities, alongside political opponents such as communists.
The largest Ustashe concentration camp in Croatia, Jasenovac, is often referred to as the “Auschwitz of the Balkans”.
Pavelic ruled the regime as de factor dictator for many years. Even after the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945, he ordered his troops to continue fighting.
The villa had been built in the early 1930s, before it became Pavelic’s home. However, once he moved in, he had underground tunnels constructed as shelters and a secret escape route in case his home came under siege. Several guard bunkers were also built to protect the property around the house.
Soon after the end of the war, Pavelic fled first to Austria, then Italy and the Vatican and eventually to Argentina in 1948.
He managed to live there for nearly a decade, given sanctuary by the Argentinian President Juan Peron, but he was then shot and severely wounded in April 1957 by a former Serbian partisan. Though he survived the initial assassination attempt, he later succumbed to his injuries in 1959.
After he had fled Croatia, the partisan communists took control and created the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia and the villa was seized by the state. In the 1950s it was transformed into a mountain resort and a restaurant, but it burnt down a few decades later.
As it was almost completely made from wood, only the stone foundations remain, now overgrown and marred with graffiti.
Forgotten by most, it has in the past couple of decades only been visited by local urban explorers, and a few intrepid dark tourists from abroad too. However, exploring the tunnels beneath the ruins of Pavelić’s former mansion is not recommended.
The ruins can be found just beyond the northern outskirts of Zagreb at the foot of the Medvednica mountain, about four miles from the city centre.
