there is a cultural, ideological war,” with a segment seeking to whitewash or modify the crimes of the Ustasha. The head of the Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, also stated that annulment in Croatia was part of a much wider phenomenon, which he has also observed in Ukraine, Lithuania and Hungary – “the tendency to honor people who fought communism, without checking what they did in WWII.” Following the annulment, the Yad Vashem Center reaffirmed that the reason for the Committee for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations did not grant Stepinac Righteous status “was due to the archbishop's close ties to the Ustasha regime.” Imprisonment In Stepinac's absence, the Archbishop of Belgrade Josip Ujčić became acting president of the Bishops' Conference of Yugoslavia, a position he held until Stepinac's death. In March 1947 the president of the government of the People's Republic of Croatia Vladimir Bakarić made an official visit to Lepoglava prison to see Stepinac. He offered that he sign a plea for amnesty to Yugoslavia's leader Josip Broz, who would, in turn, allow Stepinac to leave the country. Instead, Stepinac gave Bakarić a request to Broz that he be retried by a neutral court. He also offered to explain his actions to the Croatian people on the largest square in Zagreb. A positive response was not received from either request. During his imprisonment, Stepinac condemned the "clerical societies" being encouraged by the government as a way of developing more "nationally-aligned" churches. The 1947 pilgrimage to Marija Bistrica attracted 75,000 people. Dragutin Saili had been in charge of the pilgrimage on the part of the Yugoslav authorities. At a meeting of the Central Committee on 1 August 1947 Saili was chastised for allowing pictures of Stepinac to be carried during the pilgrimage, as long as the pictures were alongside those of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz. Marko Belinić responded to the report by saying, "Saili's path, his poor cooperation with the Local Committee, is a deadly thing". In February 1949, the United States House of Representatives approved a resolution condemning Stepinac's imprisonment, with the Senate following suit several months later. Aloysius Stepinac eventually served five years of his sixteen-year sentence for high treason in the Lepoglava prison, where he received preferred treatment in recognition of his clerical status. He was allocated two cells for personal use and an additional cell as his private chapel, while being exempt of