Ljubuški, 1914 – Carcagente, Spain, 1969, Commandant of the Third Bureau of Ustasha Surveillance Service
After graduating from high school Luburić was employed in the Employment Bureau’s Sick Pay Section. In 1931 he was accused of embezzlement and sentenced to five months in prison. After serving his sentence, he emigrated to Hungary, where he became bursar of the camp farm in the Ustasha military camp in Janka Puszti.
At the beginning of April 1941 he re-entered the Kingdom of Yugoslavia illegally, and in the middle of the month, aligned himself with the newly-established Independent State of Croatia government. He worked in the Bureau of Economy of the Military Command of the Ustasha Headquarters, and, after the death of Mijo Babić, was appointed Commandant of the Third Bureau of the Ustasha Defence, i.e. the commandant of all the Ustasha camps in the Independent State of Croatia.
The concept and creation of Jasenovac Concentration Camp were his, and he often visited, supervised operations and personally participated in prisoner executions.
On Pavelić’s orders, he went to Herzegovina at the beginning of 1942.
The Germans complained of his interference with the operations of German units in Herzegovina, and Pavelić was ordered to extradite him. For this reason, Luburić was transferred in the summer of 1943 to internment in Šumce, near Lepoglava, at his own request, where he lived under a false name, Matija Ban.
He appeared again in the public eye at the end of August 1944, when he participated in thwarting the Vokić-Lorković putsch and was active in organising the defence of Sarajevo.
During reorganisation of the Ustasha apparatus, which began in the autumn of 1944, he was promoted to the rank of General of the Croatian Armed Forces. Only a day before the entry of Partisan units into Zagreb on 7 May 1945, he was made Commandant of the Independent State of Croatia Armed Forces, and oversaw their retreat towards the Austrian border.
He did not surrender to the Allies, but returned to Croatia and was active in Bilogora and Slavonia, in Crusader units (Ustasha terrorist units) right up to November 1945, when he retreated to Hungary and took the name Maximilian Soldo. Later he emigrated to Spain. In 1955 he quarrelled with Pavelić and was expelled from the Ustasha movement.
He founded a print works with like-minded individuals and published promotional pamphlets and his own speeches.
In 1967 the print works employed Ivan Stanić, who, two years later, on the orders of the UDB (State Security Police) carried out the execution of Vjekoslav Maks Luburić.