The inscription on the plaque reads that it was erected "in memory of Dr. Mile Budak -- a Croatian patriot -- man of letters and novel writer, born at Sveti Rok on 30 August 1889, and killed in Zagreb on 7 June 1945" and that the plaque was set up by "Croatian patriots from the emigration and the Homeland".
The news that the memorial plaque in tribute to Mile Budak would be erected at Sveti Rok has in the several past weeks triggered off heated debates.
Those who oppose the erection of the monument recall that Budak was a minister in the regime of Ante Pavelic during the Second World War and that he was known as the architect of racial laws in the Independent State of Croatia (known as the NDH), and that held inflammatory speeches inciting ethnic hatred.
The entry on Mile Budak in the Croatian lexicon (issued in Zagreb 1996) reads that Budak was a writer and a politician, the minister of education and religious affairs in the first government of the NDH, and that he was the NDZ envoy to Berlin from late 1941 to April 1943 when he took office of the NDH foreign minister for a short period. After the Second World War, the court marshal of the then Yugoslav army sentenced him to death, and he was executed on 7 June 1945.
Those who are in favour of Budak's memorial plaque defend their position with the claim that he was a great Croatian writer and that the value of his work should be assessed by critics.
According to the Budak entry in the lexicon with regard to his work as a writer, it is said that he used the idiom and topics of traditional story-tellers in the Lika region and that showed an inclination to promoting the patriarchal morals, with his attachment to his native soil and solidarity within such communities.