Archive
NAZI SERBIA PARTICIPATED IN HOLOCAUST
Photo: Serbian fascist Milan Nedic, the prime minister of a Nazi-backed puppet government in Serbia during World War II, shakes hands with Adolf Hitler.
Annex I
ANTI-SEMITISM
Ouster of Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000 did not lead to a complete break with the legacy of his regime. Aside from a continuing formal-legal framework and mechanism of power, the persisting legacy is mirrored in non-relinquishment of the (defeated) Greater Serbia Project, nationalism, denial of recent crimes and atrocities, and reluctance to face up to recent wartime responsibility.
Absence of repression, as the last defence line of the former regime (it was practically the only important change on the domestic plane) encouraged far-right organisations (notably still unidentified “Orao”), groups and individuals to step up their public activities. Ideological profile of current authorities, self-styled “democratic nationalism” is just a cover for makeover of ethnic nationalism and slide of society into clericalism, traditionalism, anti-globalisation, xenophobia.
In the political and social arena, which failed to articulate options and forces bent on fundamental reformation of society and re-definition of general social goals in direction of modernisation and acceptance of existing European and international civilisational standards, criteria, old ideas are again gaining an upper hand. In such a general context, escalating anti-Semitism is more than an accompanying phenomenon, and merits special attention.
PHOTO: Adolf Hitler and Serbian Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (aka: Knez Pavle Karadjordjevic).
Pre-WW1 period
Period between the two wars and the WW2
In the territory of the newly-emerged Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes there were several hundred Jewish communities, while in 1919 the Alliance of Religious Communities was set up. Those Jewish communities are still operational.
Lazar Prokic writes that “among Serbs an autochthonous anti-Semitic movement emerged, which Jews, before 6 April 1941, sometimes by diplomatic and sometimes by forcible means repressed, as thanks to the their financial might they were able to influence governments as much as they wanted. That anti-Semitism was not related to the German occupation. Jews were guilty of that original Serb anti-Semitism. Serbs do not want to feel solidarity for Jews, for the latter declined to show solidarity for the former in 1804, 1862 and 1875.”
Anti-Semitism as the official policy of Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Anti-Semitism in the publishing activity
3 Founder of Nasa Borba is Dimitrije Ljotic. The paper was modelled on Mein Campf.
4 In line with principles of conspiracy theory.
5 Obnova and Nasa Borba
Zbor
Serb Orthodox Church
Patriarch (Petar Rosic) Varnava in 1937 showed “live interest in Hitler and his policy which serves the whole mankind.” In May 1937 the SOC in its official publication indicated that “Jews are a force hiding behind the Free Masonry, Capitalism and Communism, the three biggest evils of the world.”7
Jews, representatives of Free Masonry, Jews, representatives of capitalism, and Jews, representatives of proletariat revolution have all similar view on the world. They are just Jews and nothing else…Therefore enemy is as sly as a snake and appears in several shapes. That is why it is dangerous.”8
Anti-Masonic Exhibition
On 22 November 1941 a major anti-Masonic exhibition was opened. It was widely promoted by the media. Exhibition was funded by city authorities, at proposal of DJordje Peric, Head of Nesic’s state propaganda, while its directors, Lazar Prokic and Lazar Kljujic, also members of the state propaganda department, were firebrands of Zbor. Representatives of German authorities attended the opening ceremony.
According to first information exhibit was seen by 10,000 Serbs and General Nedic. The press hyped up the message of the exhibit: “Jews deserved their fate, for interests of the Jewish internationalists never coincided with those of Serbs.” 9 In early 1942 a series of stamps …
6 Milorad Mojic, Secretary of Zbor, 1941, page 40
7 Foreign Review; “Patriarch Varnava urges fight against Communism,” Gazette of the SOC Patriarchy, Belgrade, 1 and 2 February 1937.
8 Through the church press; Three spectres, Gazette of the SOC, 12 May 1937
9 Major anti-Masonic exhibit. Obnova, 27 November 1941
… promoted that exhibit.
World War 2
Serbia was the first area in Europe which according to proud German claims in summer 1942, was “Judenrein” (cleansed of Jews) Milan Nedic and his national salvation army10, Ljotic Movement members, gendermerie, and special police helped Germans and volksdeutchers effect that cleansing. 11 But some Jews were killed by the Chetnik Movement of Draza Mihajlovic.
First repressive measures against Jews were implemented in Serbia and Banat: arrests, looting, harassment, passing of anti-Semitic decrees, forcible contributions, desecration and demolition of cemeteries, sinagogues and other Jewish institutions. On 19 April 1941 all Jews were ordered to wear a yellow armband and to register. Several hostages had been shot down before October 1941 when mass liquidations of Jews began.12 Jews were taken to Toposka suma detention centre in Belgrade, and kept as hostages there. Imprisoned Jews (and Romany) were used to fill up quotas for the German policy of retaliation, that is, killing of 100 persons for one assassinated German soldier. By the end of 1941 most male Jews were shot down by Vermacht firing squads. In November 1941 German authorities ordered construction of a detention centre Sajmiste (Fair grounds) for remaining Jewish women and children. Over 5,000 Jews were transported to Sajmiste in December 1941 and in the following months most of them died of hunger and cold.
In the WW2 four fifths of Jews in Yugoslavia were killed. Among the survivors were those who had fled to the Italian-occupied territory, those who had joined the Partisan units, or had gone into hiding. Of 59 Jewish municipalities in the pre-war period, only 15 with small memberships resumed their activities after 1945.
11 According to historical sources even a military part of Zbor renowned as the Serbian Voluntary Guard acted as a reliable ally of Gestapo in elimination of Jews. They searched flats, kept in custody detained communists and Jews and fought against partisans.
12 On 27 July 1941 in retaliation for attempted torching of a German vehicle by a Jewish boy, 122 persons were shot down by firing squads.
The post-WW2 period
In the post-WW2 period new wave of assimilation of Jews began. 13 The number of Jews declaring themselves as members of that nation and participating in the work of Jewish communities dwindled.
Creation of the state of Israel created a new dilemma of the stay- or- emigrate kind for many Jews. Under a decree of the Yugoslav authorities Jews who opted for emigration were allowed to take with them only movable possessions, while they had to renounce their real estate to the benefit of the state. Property of big Jewish landowners and capitalists (owners of plants) was nationalised or impounded through agrarian reform. In 1948-1951 period about 9,000, almost half of survivors, emigrated.
In the pre-WW2 period Jews fostered their identity and traditions within the family fold. Membership of the Jewish community played a central role in their life too. Large communities had a sinagogue, and rabbi, other priests and a teacher were involved in religious education classes imparted in sinagogues and Jewish communities. In the post -WW2 period that role was taken on by municipalities, which also organised cultural activities. Jewish communities also kept in touch with Israel and international Jewish organisations.
Anti-Semitic incidents have gradually increased since 1967, after severance of diplomatic ties between the SFRY and Israel. But then they were only a marginal phenomenon 14, for the state decried them. “Anti-Israeli publications bore all the hallmarks of the Communist, political authoritarianism, but in a stark contrast to similar incidents Europe-wide, anti-Semitism was consciously avoided. Very small number of anti-Semitic texts and critical reactions to them, attests to the aforementioned. 15
In the Seventies anti-Semitic texts came out occasionally. Their linchpin was the book Protocols of Zion Elders. In 1971 a Titograd-based literary magazine Ovjde ran a text by Aleksandar Loncar which inter alia16 alleged a high documentary value of facts presented in the Protocols of Zion Elders. In a literary magazine Delo, Dragos Kalajic made a similar claim, that is, maintained that Protocols was an authentic, documentary source for making judgement about the character of the Jewish religion. 17 Milo Glavurtic paraphrased Protocols in his private edition Satan in 1978.
Alliance of Jewish Communities filed a lawsuit against Glavurtic, but did not win the case. Ilustrovana Politika ran a feature of Mihailo Popovski Secret World of Masonry which included excerpts from Protocol. After several political interventions the magazine stopped running the feature. The book with the same title was published in 1984 by Nova Knjiga.
13 In that period the party membership and not national descent counted most. Religion was not an important factor. A larger number of war veterans were not demobilised after the war. Mixed marriages were commonplace.
14 Laslo Sekelj, Vreme bescasca, Belgrade, 1995
15 Idem, page 76
16 The same author wrote in the same text about “power of Jews” as a cause of “a sad fate of two major authors, Celine and Ezra Pound.”
17 Dragos Kalajic, Delo, 1970, page 677
Despite the ban the Macedonian version came out in 1985, and in the late Eighties it again appeared in Belgrade bookstores.
Beginning of the SFRY disintegration
According to the data of the Jewish community of Belgrade, 177 Jews, mostly from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia emigrated since the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis. “The figures speak of a small-scale emigration,” said Jasa Almuli, the then President of the Belgrade Jewish Community. 18 But according to the official data, 1,800 Jews left Yugoslavia, from 1991-1998. Those data can be considered controversial, unless one takes into account the fact that many Jews declared themselves as members of other ethnic nations. Hence it is difficult to establish the exact number of emigrants.
Jewish organisations in Croatia and Slovenia followed in the footsteps of their ‘domicile’ countries. Vice President of the Jewish Community in Croatia, Srdjan Matic, thus commented their move: “We obviously regret our breakaway move, but it was imposed by clashing realities in Yugoslavia….We are disappointed by conduct of national (Jewish) Federation in Belgrade…It has not condemned the bombing of Dubrovnik during which the old sinagogue was also damaged. Furthermore it also declined to take part in the meeting of religious communities in Sarajevo several months ago, which compelled us to stay away from the meeting too”19 Matic also criticised the Jewish Federation in Belgrade for a mild response to a bomb-planting in downtown area and in the Jewish cemetery in Zagreb, on 19 August 1992.
David Albahari, writer and President of the Jewish Community in Belgrade, who tried to save the Jewish Federation, regrets the rift, but admits its inevitability: “Before the joint meeting in Sarajevo, Jewish communities in Slovenia and Croatia declared unilateral secession. We thought that it was done under the pressure of their governments.” Albahari rejected allegations that the Belgrade seat of the Jewish Federation did not condemn the bombing of Dubrovnik sinagogue. “Sinanogue was not shelled. One shell fell in its proximity, and several windows were broken. Under such circumstances one could easily condemn the Serb government, as our brothers in Croatia demanded.”20.
In a bid to explain different stands of Jewish communities on developments in the former Yugoslavia and underscore manipulation of Jews by political actions, David Albahari says: “Initially Jewish communities reacted as they were told, by accepting incoming information at face-value. Despite our demands that the Jewish communities should stay away from the conflict, some moves were made without considering objective picture of developments. It took us almost a year to persuade them that our best …
18 Almuli, Intervju, 7 February 1992
19 Vecernje Novosti, 19 April 1992
20 Idem
position as an organised grouping was to continue to sit on the fence, in political terms. 21
Jews in Serbia
3,000 strong Jewish community, composed mostly of Sephardic Jews lives in Serbia (first Sephardic Jews fled from the Spanish Inquisition and settled in the Ottoman Empire countries, including Serbia.)
The principal generator of anti-Semitism in Serbia is the new Serbian Right, made of so-called left-wing and right wing parties in the political scene of Serbia, parts of the Serbian Orthodox Church and intellectual elite, or all those who advocate the idea of the international conspiracy against Serbia and oppose the new world order. Misa Levi, President of the Jewish Community in Belgrade draws attention to escalating anti-Semitism and ties between Serbia and Russia, both on the state and church level. Added to that quite a number of public media and prominent public figures constantly espouses the thesis of existence of the unique Jewish opinion in the world, decisive influence of Jews on creation of the US policy, and anti-Serb stance of the international Jewish institutions and renowned Jewish intellectuals. Publicist and analyst of religion Mirko DJordjevic says that the current wave of anti-Semitism is not caused by Jews: “It is a very belated historical response of certain circles to all things foreign and different.”
Anti-Semitism Monitoring Commission of the FJCY, in qualifying anti-Semitism, often resorts to euphemisms: “it is a contained, low-level anti-Semitism. Hence we did not suggest special measures to the Executive Board of the FJCY, barring our complaints and protests in writing to certain religious and political factors.” 23 The Jewish community stressed that it was always sensitive to equalisation of religion and nation, and even more so to identification between the majority nation and the state. The FJCY communique stresses: “It is not disputable that Jews in Serbia are under the law equal to other nations. But is it so in practice? Does this state, in every public discussion observe the fact that all its nationals are equal, irrespective of nationality, religion and other features of identity?”
At the same time ambivalent position on Jews is expressed through another extreme-equalisation of tragic fates of the two peoples.
For example, writer Vuk Draskovic, in 1985 described Serbs as Jews of the late Twentieth Century: “Each inch of Kosovo is Jerusalem for Serbs: there is no difference between suffering of Serbs and Jews. Serbs are the thirteenth lost and most unfortunate tribe of Israel.” In the first years of war, Jews were not seen as opponents. On the contrary the authorities tried to win them over for the “Serb cause.” Frequent were comparisons between “identical, tragic fates of Jews and Serbs as heavenly and innocent peoples, victims of genocide.” In that period Serbian authorities were “inclined” to Jews-…
21 Borba, 8 December 1993
22 Radio B92, 20 February 2001
23 Jewish Review, Bulletin of Federation of the Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia (FJCY), January 2000
… the media ran information about their activities, texts and features on friendly relations between Serbs and Jews, and evenings of Jewish poetry were organised.24 Federation of Jewish Municipalities was promised that it would be given back one of the most beautiful sinagogues in Serbia, the one in Nis (but that promise has never been fulfilled). At the same time the media increasingly reported on desecration of Jewish cemeteries in Serbia, notably in Zemun and Pancevo, 25 and decried those incidents.
“Filosemitism”
Society of the Serb-Jewish Friendship was registered on 21 November 1988, while the founding assembly was held on 4 March 1989. According to the proclamation the society was tasked with bringing together the two peoples, “frequently accused of being different.”26 Soon the Society’s branch office was set up in Kosovo, and later another thirty branch offices emerged Serbia-wide. Abortive attempts to set up such a society were registered even in the former Yugoslavia, during the one-party system. 27
Founding of the said Society, obviously tasked with abusing Jews for political purposes, was criticised and disapproved of by many Jewish intellectuals. Writer Filip David stated that at the founding meeting he notice “many wise heads, members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, several prominent Serbian nationalists, and several elderly Jews, self-styled ‘Serbs of Moses faith.’ The idea of the founders was to help Serbia by enlisting our Jews to shore up support for the Serbian cause in the United States, through their, allegedly important connections. Early on I tried to say that the story about a conspiratorial world Jewish centre, dictating the entire world policy, was a sheer nonsense, and that the idea originated from the notorious Protocols of Zion Elders.” David went on to note: “This type of association was nonsensical, for there was not need for Jews, as Serbian citizens, to set up the Society of the Serb-Jewish Friendship.”28 Filip David realised that behind the project were indeed “nationalistic hot-heads” after his meeting with Ljubomir Tadic. Namely David, after the founding meeting, in his letter to Tadic, requested a meeting with him and expressed his negative opinion of the very Society.
At the first convention of the Society, in May 1990, the SJSF Secretary Klara Mandic stated that “the Society must persist in making public the names of all Serbs, victims of genocide, for their names are absent from the genocide-related books. Another …
24 Politika, 7 July 1991
25 Vecernje Novosti, 25 April 1991
26 Politika, 3 July 1990
27 Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia was against formation of the said Society on the following grounds: “There is no need to establish any association resting on close national or nationalities ties, in the SFRY territory.” Later Jews also opposed the existence of such a society, and maintained that it was legitimate to forge closer ties only between Serbia and Israel.”
28 Interview with Filip David.
… important task of the society was “sending of pertinent publications to 15,000 influential people and politicians in Europe, America and Canada.”29 FJCY repeatedly protested against some communiques of the Society and distanced itself from the latter’s actions.
But the leading Serbian politicians started emulating the society by propagating identical historical fate of Jews and Serbs, and preservation of friendly relations between the two peoples ( according to the Society, Serbs stood more to gain from the latter). Author Brana Crncevic said that “only friendship with Jews can save Serbhood,” 30 while Enriko Josif argued that “Serbs and Jews are very old friends, and shall remain friends, for they have not betrayed the most glorious pillars of their history-Kosovo and Jerusalem.” Dobrica Cosic stressed “the historical fate, which made Serbs and Jews very similar” and ” Jews are European people from whom Serbs can learn most.”
In 1991 Captain Dragan, later a leader of the Serb paramilitary units, wore the Star of David around his neck during a Studio B interview. At the same time members of the Serb-Jewish society, including the leading Serb nationalists, reiterated “Our fate is similar to the fate of Jews.”
In 1993 the Federation of Jewish Communities set up an Anti-Semitism Monitoring Committee, and its President Aca Singer warned: “Whenever and wherever there are turmoils in the world Jews are affected by them.” 31 An ever-increasing number of anti-Semitic incidents were condemned by a narrow circle of liberal public figures, and also by the regime’s satellites. The authorities tried to minimise the effects of anti-Semitic incidents by not responding to protests and complaints lodged by the Jewish Municipality of Belgrade and the Jewish Federation. But those incidents increased the fear or feeling of insecurity among the Jews and non-Serbs. On the other hand they were adroitly used by the authorities as a form of “soft ethnic-cleansing.”
The world was outraged by wars in the territories of former Yugoslavia, and condemned actions of Bosnian Serbs. Those condemnations became increasingly sharp and both “domestic” and foreign Jews joined in the chorus of international protests. This placed domestic Jews in a very delicate position. Hence the following statement of Jasa Almuli: “anyone may exercise his democratic right to criticise the regime in place, but such criticism should be voiced as a purely personal opinion. Jewish community would appreciate very much if some individuals stopped using its name in political showdowns, and stopped making up stories about emigration.” It was a response to objections of official Belgrade that Jews were siding with “the Serb enemies”, namely criticism of international Jews who condemned aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Anti-Semitic Incidents
There are no precise data on the kind and number of anti-Semitic incidents in Serbia. In the past decade many were glossed over by the authorities, and even the Jewish …
29 Politika, 3 April 1992
30 Politika, 25 May 1990
31 Politika, 12 August 1994, page 13
… community. State bodies have by and large failed to react to protests and complaints of the Jewish Federation. Even when the latter sporadically reacted, 32, there was no follow-up, that is, criminal investigations were not launched.
Media-bashing
The Jewish Federation filed a lawsuit against statements made by President of the Serbian Royalist Movement, Sinisa Vucic, in a radio B92 program Intervju dana. It considered that his words (“we shall seize property of rich Jews and Communists to help alleviate the suffering of our people,”) were tantamount to “instigation of religious and national hatred.” Although hard evidence was submitted, namely the tape of interview, the Republican Public Prosecutor’s office transferred the case to the District Public Prosecutor’s Office (after repeated interventions of the Jewish Community), which, however failed to act on the case. That interview marked the start of a series of similar statements of Vucinic made to the most influential print media 33, ran under the following headlines: Serbian Hawks Become Terrorists, We Threaten UNPROFOR, We Shall Seize Property of Rich Jews and Communists to Help our Long-Suffering People. Jewish Community again reacted to Vucinic’s hate speech on 27 May 1993 by inquiring about the course of investigation. After a new anti-Semitic statement of Vucinic on 13 June 1993, 34 the Federation on 24 August 1993 again inquired about the course of investigation by the District Public Prosecutor’s Office. The Federation filed new charges after an anti-Semitic interview with Sinisa Vucinic was ran by magazine Svet.
In June 1994, the Prijepolje Bulletin of the Serbian Popular Renewal (a party closely affiliated with the Belgrade regime) ran a text headlined The Jewish Ball of Vampires (by-line was -Luka Sarkotic). In the text Jews were accused of crimes against the Holy Church of Christ, that is, the SOC and practising Christians, murder of God, the French Bourgeoisie Revolution, uprisings in Russia, the 1917 October Revolution, assassination of the two Russian Tzars, poisoning of Stalin, creation and implementation of the “Perestroika” project, destruction of the Soviet and Russian “empires”, the Chernobil nuclear plant catastrophe, future war between Kiev and Moscow (over Krimea), collusion and alliances with Muslims and Protestants, arming of “Green Berets” in B&H, causing the plague epidemics in the world, poisoning of wells, ritual slaughter of children, creation of Jasenovac concentration camp through the Croatian state leadership, and production of AIDS virus. The Jewish Federation immediately informed of the said publication Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic, the SOC Patriarch Pavle, the Montenegrin Mitropolite Amfilohije, Backa Episcope Irinej Bulovic, Federal Human Rights Minister, Margit Savovic and Federal Information Minister Slobodan Ignjatovic. Their response would later serve as a model for all future reactions to anti-Semitic incidents: protests were acknowledged, incidents were verbally condemned, but not a single concrete action against perpetrators was taken. The Serbian Popular Renewal then …
32 In an indirect way, through statements of some influential, public figures
33 Borba, 13 May 1993
34 Svet, 13 June 1993
… issued a communique: “there is too much unnecessary buzz about the text. We are very surprised by reaction of the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia to a desperate cry of a Serbian patriot, abandoned by the whole world. We wonder how would the Jewish people react if all 48 Jewish Senators in the US Senate voted against the Serb people.” But after condemnatory reactions of the liberal public strata in Serbia and Montenegro, Slavko Fustic, editor of the Bulletin, wrote an apologetic letter because of “publishing a scandalous text, with a very low- quality contents.” He moreover stated: “I would like to give to you and the entire Jewish people my assurances that we don’t hate the Jewish people…”Independent media, who have followed the whole case, also reacted: journalist of weekly Vreme wondered about the prosecutor’s real intentions, as the latter first had told the weekly’s journalist that he was still undecided about his next investigating action, and then -went on holiday. Klara Mandic, secretary of the Society of Jewish-Serb Friendship, also protested against the text run by Bulletin in Politika. Vreme commented her protest in the following way: “the problem with the Jew-bashing pamphlet is that it was designed in the circles in which Mandic has an influential role.”
New edition of Ljotic’s paper Nova Iskra (October 1994), titled U ime istine carried a text penned by S. Hadzic Hilendarski in which prominent domestic and foreign public figures of Jewish descent were criticised for their stands on the Bosnian war, namely: Elie Wiesel, Madeleine Albright, Daniel Schieffer, Klara Mandic, Israel Kellman, Enriko Josif, David Albahari, George Soros, Simon Viesenthal, Cheslav Milos, Warren Zimmerman, Zbiegnev Brezhinski, Bernard Henri- Levy, Allen Finkelcraut, Henri Glucksman, Loraine Fabius, Slobodanka Gruden, Jasa Almuli, Predrag Finci, Ladoslav Kadelburg. David Kalef, etc.
In July 1994 Glas Srpski 35 carried an interview with Dr. Radmilo Marojevic, professor of Philological Faculty in Belgrade. In the interview headlined, Cultural Treason is National Treason, Marojevic pointed out that: “in the Serbian culture and science very active is the fifth column of the Judeo-Masonic Project.” In another interview carried by the Belgrade magazine Duga under the headline Dream about New Hazar Land, Marojevic repeated his thesis about the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy in -Russia.
Serb Orthodox Church
A publicist and analyst of religion Mirko DJordjevic in a host of studies indicates that anti-Semitism is not related to Orthodox religion, but rather to ethnicfiletism very influential among the SOC. Some SOC circles, notably those under the influence of Priest Nikolaj Velimirovic, joined in the anti-Semitic campaign. Velimirovic suddenly became a martyr. Mitropolite Montenegrin banned any kind of criticism or re-appraisal of work and ideas of Priest Nikolaj, although he has never been canonised.
“That legendary martyrdom is used for glossing over unpleasant pages of a repressed history-during the Nazi occupation some members of the SOC episcopate joined Nedic, and took strident anti-Semitic positions,” writes DJordjevic. He adds: ” Priest …
35 Glas srpski from Republika Srpska is distributed in Serbia too.
… Nikolaj was close to Nedic and Ljotic, he did not oppose totalitarian political systems, but in fact favoured them. Therefore it is not clear how his body of work can be a treasure trove of spiritual inspiration and a veritable golden mine of spirituality and Orthodox faith, as Radovan Bigovic qualified it in his doctoral thesis (his mentor was Amfilohije Radovic.)”
Book of Priest Artemije New Golden-Mouth, published in Belgrade in 1986, is one of many books which glorified Priest Nikolaj: “he is the only Serb who can be considered an intellectual and spiritual peer of St. John the Golden-Mouth, hence his nickname-the Serbian Golden-Mouth. Mirko DJordjevic writes that “the Serbian contemporary historians failed to notice a conspicuous similarity between St. John the Golden Mouth and the Zica orator, Priest Nikolaj: namely St. John’s body of work also contains 8 holimies “against Judea.”
Logos 36, a magazine of students of Theological Faculty in Belgrade in 1994 ran a text Jewish Games behind the International Stage, penned by Predrag Milosevic and Boban Milenkovic. That text abounds in accusations against Jews, for example, ” there is a planetary Jewish conspiracy against the Christian Orthodox faith, and notably against the Serb people and Russia,” corroborated by citations from old documents of Priest Nikolaj Velimirovic related to his defence of Protocols of Zion Elders.” “All modern phenomena in Europe were masterminded by Jews, who crucified Jesus, that is,: democracy, strikes, socialism, atheism, tolerance of all denominations, universal revolution, capitalism and communism. They were all inventions of Jews, that is, of their father, the Devil.” 37
In July 1994 magazine Kruna carried two texts headlined How to Read Protocols of Zion Elders, and Book of Notions. The first text praised the said book, while the second, vilified Jews, as people, through criticism of Mosa Pijade, the pre-war communist, Partisan, and member of the post-war establishment.
Publishing activities
Publishing activity played a major role in anti-Semitic campaign. Publishing companies, Velvet and Ihtus-Hriscanske knjige published several reprints of books of Dimitrije Ljotic, Milan Nedic, Priest Nikolaj Velimirovic, and some other books dealing with alleged Masonic-Jewish conspiracies. According to sociologist Laslo Sekelj, in 1990-95 12 different editions of Protocols of Zion Elders were published, and in 1995-2001 another-eight. 38 Vladimir Maksimovic, one of publishers of Protocols of Zion Elders, part of distribution of which was impounded in 1994, in defending himself from accusations of anti-Semitism, says that “the only problem with this book is the fact that the publishing activity was taken over by the Soros Foundation, whose founder is a Jew. The Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia on 22 March 1994 condemned publication of Protocols of Zion Elders, and filed charges against Publishing House
36 Logos, 1-4/1994
37 Priest Nikolaj Velimirovic in his documents written in defence of Protocols of Zion Elders.
38 NIN 2640, 2 August 2001, Zabrana i krivica, page 32
Velvet and responsible editor Vladimir Maksimovic. Three days later the FJCY got a letter from owner and director of the publishing house Sfairos in which he decried the appeal to ban publishing and distributing the book, and termed it “an undemocratic demand.” He suggested to the Federation joint publishing of the book with “an expert commentary,” and future collaboration involving publishing of works dedicated to study of literary, historical and linguistic heritage of the Jewish people and its identity.” In response to accusations by the Jewish Federation, newspaper issued by the Serbian Radical Party, Velika Srbija, in May 1994, ran a text, “Who burns down books, shall burn down people too,” along with a commentary ” let readers, Serbs, assess what is true and what is false in Protocols of Zion Elders.”
(Deputy District Prosecutor Milija Milovanovic in July 2001 dropped charges against publishers of Protocol due to “the lack of evidence for further legal proceedings.”)
In December 1994 Club of National Books Velvet in its catalogue listed its new anti-Semitic books: Protocols of Politart Seers or Counter-initiation (Isidora Bjelica and Nebojsa Pajkic write about ‘plagues’ of modern society, including Judaism and advise how to fight against them); Drama of Contemporary Mankind, Dimitrije Ljotic, -On the Semitic danger and breaking of the Serbian backbone in WW2; Jews in Serbia, Dr. Lazar Prokic; Why have Jews always been against Serbs? Who are they-an anti-Semitic guide, Dr. Lazar Prokic; Jewish Conspiracy, Marcus Elie Ravadge; Serb People in Claws of Jews, Milorad Mojic; The Jewish Issue, F.M. Dostoevsky; Under the Star of David-Judaism and Free Masonry in the Past and Present, Georgije Pavolovic; Religious and legal study of Talmud or an essay on Jewish honesty, Vasa Pelagic. The aforementioned catalogue listed also other titles: Jews in mirror of the Bible by theologian Zivojin Savic; Evil and Damned: Torturers of Contemporary Mankind, translation of Charles Weismann book.
Valjevo-based Glas crkve in 1996 published a book Selected Works of Priest Nikolaj in Ten Volumes. Book VII- Through a Prison Window includes a series of negative commentaries on life, customs and role of Jews.
On 16 December in one of premises of the Philosophical Faculty in Belgrade an anti-Semitic pamphlet titled A complete report-Jews and Jewry was found. An unidentified person distributed it to students. Teaching council of the faculty in its communique, issued in the paper Protest-Three Uprisings in 1996, qualified the pamphlet as anti-Semitic, and condemned its author and the like-minded intellectuals.
Publisher Ratibor DJurdjevic spearheaded the anti-Semitic campaign through reprints and new editions. Promotions of his books usually started with a blessing and prayer of retired priest and notorious anti-Semite Zarko Gavrilovic. Whenever he uttered the word “Jews,” the audience booed. In the study Syndrome of Fear of Judeans in America DJurdjevic says that behind-the-scenes masters of the US policy intentionally nominate week presidential candidates to control them easily.
According to him “such candidates are aplenty, as the US public and private morals are weak and lax. A man of integrity and strong sense of morals, namely Pat Buchanan, a Christian and renowned anti-Semite, could not succeed in unprincipled US “democracy.” 39 In the book Zionism, Communism and the “New” World Order, DJurdjevic stated: “it is very important that Christians understand that Communism-that major ill of Western societies-was spawned by Jewish institutions and circles…it was guided, channelled and evolved by official Israeli secret councils.” 40
After DJurdjevic’s book Lies and Shortcomings of US Democracy came out (publisher was Ihtus-Hriscanks knjiga, Beograd), the Jewish Federation on 16 October sent a protest letter, describing the nature and contents of the book, to Information Minister Ratomir Vico, Human Rights Minister, Margit Savovic, Mayor of Belgrade, Nebojsa Covic, Minister Zoran Bingulac, Minister of Religions Dragan Dragojlovic, the SOC Patriarchate, Irinej Bulovic, members of the Society of Serb-Jewish Friendship, and the media. It moreover informed the Serbian Justice Minister that charges were filed against Publishing House Ihtus and its editor Zarko Gavrilovic. The media responded differently to the Jewish Federation’s protest. Daily Politika on 18 October ran a text Who Fuels Anti-Semitism penned by Rade Rankovic, and later an interview with Aca Singer President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia (Anti-Semitic Incidents Should Not Be Glossed Over) about dire effects of anti-Semitism both on those who propagate it and those who close a blind eye to it. Nasa Borba on 18 October 1995 carried a text State Bodies Keep Silent, which focused on “non-reactions of the state bodies to anti-Semitic incidents.”
Contrary to Politika and Nasa Borba, Politika Ekspres on 7 October 1995 ran a text Conspiracy against Christianity in which the author Visnja Vukotic quoted excerpts from Lies and Shortcomings of US Democracy, and backed all allegations and ideas contained therein. The same paper on 8 October carried a text headlined A man who knew too much ends in a lunatic asylum, full of quotations from the aforementioned book. On 23 October 1995 Vecernje Novosti carried an article by Dejan Lucic, Who are instigators of hatred? in which Lucic tried to justify positions espoused by DJurdjevic in Lies and Shortcomings of US Democracy. Politika Ekspres on 23 October 1995 ran a reaction of President of the Society of Serb-Jewish Friendship, Ljubomir Tadic, to DJurdjevic’s book. Namely Tadic challenged and criticised some of positions disclosed in the book.
Holy Synod of SOC on 24 October 1995 informed the Jewish Federation that it “regrets publication of the anti-Semitic book” and “shall do its utmost to prevent publishing of similar books.” Saint Sava Youth and Students’ Movement followed suit by condemning activities of Ratibor DJurdjevic, one of its principal ‘donors’ and Zarko Gavrilovic, assessing them as “retirees who only acted as counsellors to the Movement” and stressing that “Anti-Semitism has always been contrary to the spirit of Saint Sava Movement.” Despite the SOC condemnation of DJurdjevic’s book and assurances that its circles did not disseminate anti-Semitism, in April 1997 the very book appeared in the …
39 Dr. Ratibor DJurdjevic, Five bloody revolutions of Jewish bankers and of their Judeo-Masonry, Ihtus, Belgrade
40 Idem, page 196
… SOC’s bookstore Zadruga pravoslavnog svestenstva. In its 11 April 1997 letter to the
SOC Patriarchy the Jewish Federation expressed its concern over appearance of DJurdjevic’s book in the said bookstore. In their replies the official SOC spokesman and the Patriarchy Cabinet regretted the event, and informed that the bookstore’s manage was instructed to immediately stop selling the book.
At the promotion of the book Kuril Manuscripts by author Hugo Karamata, held in the Association of Writers of Serbia on 25 January 1996, DJurdjevic stated: “Judeans are the worst world evil….they bankroll all national and international Masonic activities and pull the strings of the world conspiracy.” 41
In autumn 1996 DJurdjevic’s new book, On Absurdity of Anti-Semitism (publisher was again Ihtus-Hriscanska knjiga) came out. Federation of the Jewish Communities on 30 October 1996 inquired with the District Prosecutor’s Office about actions taken regarding its complaint of 16 December 1995, and simultaneously informed it that the same author published a new book. In its reply of 22 November 1996 the Public Prosecutor’s office quoted all criminal proceedings taken against Sinisa Vucinic, Publishing House Velvet from Belgrade, editor Vladimir Maksimovic, and publishing house Ihtus and Zarko Gavrilovic.
In its letter of 28 November 2000 to the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Jewish Federation indicated growing anti-Semitism: “Among those who spread hate of Jews excels Dr. Ratibor Rajko DJurdjevic, founder of Ihtus-Hriscanska knjiga and author of the bulk of 50 books published by that house. Since his return from emigration in 1992 DJurdjevic launched an anti-Semitic campaign. He remained undeterred in his intentions even in the face of an express condemnation of his activities by the Holy Synod of SOC, of 24 October 1995. The very name of his publishing house (Ichtus-Christian Books) suggests his links to the Orthodox Christian faith and church. Moreover all the books bear the symbol of cross on the covers.”
Reprint editions
In the Serbian Academy of Sciences bookstore in October 1995 the book New World Order and Free Masonry (reprint of the Belgrade edition from 1939) appeared. The book accused Jews of an anti-global conspiracy. On 27 November the Jewish Federation informed the District Public Prosecutor in Belgrade of the aforementioned.
Reprint of the 1943 anti-Semitic book Under the Star of David and Free Masonry in the Past and Present by Georgije Pavlovic came out in 1995. Author of introduction was Dimitrije Ljotic, and publishers were Koloseum Beograd, Velvet Beograd, Sloga Novo Sarajevo and Slobodna knjiga Beograd. In 1995 Planeta Beograd published a reprint of anti-Semitic book Jews and the Serbian Issue by Jasa Tomic. Some recent reprints with markedly anti-Semitic contents had been published first during the Nazi occupation: Serbian People in Claws of Jews by Milorad Mojic, Secretary General of pre-war “Zbor,” Legal and Religious Teachings about Talmud or an Essay on Jewish Honesty by Vasa Pelagic. Reprint of Pro-Ljotic paper Nova iskra was also published.
41 Documentation of the Jewish Federation
Patriotic Movement “Obraz”
The far-right organisation, Patriotic Movement “Obraz”, founded in 1993 to back and disseminate ideas espoused by the name-sake magazine, in late 2000 and early 2001 became very active and evolved into a political organisation. Graffiti with symbols of this organisation, cross, alpha and beta, with slogans “Only unity can save Serbs,” “Let’s fight with dignity for Serbhood,” “Let’s defend our dignity,” are drawn on many private and public buildings.
Public at large first learnt about existence of that organisation after the incident at the Assembly of Association of Writers of Serbia, in November 2000. Namely then a group of writers clashed with management, demanded its dismissal and establishment of new, democratic, relations within the association. 42 Security agents, members of “Obraz” reportedly removed the ‘disobedient’ from the conference hall.
“Obraz” is not registered as a political party for its followers “don’t believe in pluralism of interest of the Serbian people, but they believe in their ability to gather together and to accept a unique set of values and fate for all Serbs.” They also think that “no Serb victim was useless, as our existence proves…We are Serbs of these evil times.” They are convinced that efforts of “Obraz” and all other honourable Serb contemporaries shall be a lasting mainstay for future generations of Serbs who “shall fully complete the oath.” “Let us make concerted efforts to more successfully and easily, with God’s assistance, attain our patriotic goals and carry out our statehood-making tasks,” is the principal message of the movement. Web-site of “Obraz” is rife with texts denying democratic achievements, espousing a strident anti-Americanism, and glorifying Serbhood. After the NATO intervention, the following communique was placed on the web-site: “During the last war waged by NATO Satanists against the Serb people from 24 March to 10 June 1999, “Obraz” was the only organisation which indicated “black magic, and occult nature of that war.”
During the bombardment “Obraz” issued two communiques, “Why are Serbs Invincible?” and “NATO-Satanism in the Name of Democracy,” which the media refused to run. 43 Nebojsa Krstic, President of “Obraz” maintained that “the Serb people are most threatened now,”44 and urged a national state, a society of sound Serbs, an economically rich and strong Serbia, instead of a state of citizens and an open society.” Wording of texts indicates that at work is a Neo-Ljotic group, whose size cannot be easily estimated. “Obraz” stated that it had stepped up its activities in late 2000 for “then the time was ripe for advent of Serbian nationalism. Then the Serb people were most threatened.” The following statement coincided with the political changeover in Serbia: “We are nationalists, and not fascists. Our slogan is: Loyal to God and to Serb people.” When asked if he backed Ljotic’s policy, Krstic responded: “We appreciate and love all Serb nationalists, Priest Nikolaj Velimirovic, and Serb martyrs Draza Mihajlovic, Milan Nedic, and Dimitrije Ljotic. We fight against everything …
42 Republika, 16-31 December 2000
43 Knjizevne novine, “Obraz”, 28 November 2000
44 Glas javnosti, 12 February 2002 “Nationalists, and not Chauvinists”
… that separates us from the Serb tradition, that is, against globalisation, atheism, secularism and abuses of human rights and liberties.” He added that the organisation was several thousand strong, and that branch offices were set up in Vrsac, Odzaci. Novi Sad, Jagodina, Velika Plana, and in America, Canada, and Europe.” According to Krstic the organisation has about 30.000 members. According to some sources active, but secret followers of “Obraz” are Dragos Kalajic and Dragoslav Bokan,45 former contributors to magazine “Nasa ideja,” and magazine Duga.
March 2001 incident is linked to “Obraz.” Graffiti “Korac-Jewish Conspiracy-“Otpor” and “Kostunica-DJindjic Cheated Us,” were painted on the building of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. According to Korac, Vice Prime Minister of Serbia, and the faculty’s professor, those scandalous messages “are very similar to ones placed on the “Obraz” web-site.” Students of the faculty confirmed that “Obraz” was behind the incident. Police did not issue any communique, but the media reported that several policemen visited the building. 46 Ratibor Trivunac, member of the Students’ Union of Faculty of Philosophy, stated: “We are no longer a spawning ground of liberal ideas, but rather the one of conservative and fascist ideas.” He added: “Majority of our students believe that a group of History Department students and professors, who even at lectures propagate far-right, nationalistic ideas, are behind the graffiti incident.” Trivunac also said that majority of students saw the similarity between the graffiti messages and the web-site ones.”
Electronic media
TV Palma and its owner Miki Vujovic, aired a large number of political programs focusing on the international Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. This largely contributed to spreading of anti-Semitism in early months of 2001.
Jews were accused of being “murderers and criminals,” “the biggest evil of the world history,” and “instigators of all failures of modern history, starting from the October Revolution, WW1 and WW2, to bombardment of Yugoslavia. According to TV Palma Jews should apologise for actions taken by US Administration against Yugoslavia. Many guests and Vujovic himself frequently mentioned “Jewish conspiracy” against Serbs or entire mankind, negative character traits and mind-set of Jews, and their hate of Serbs. Such messages were intended for Jews living abroad, notably in the US. ‘Domestic’ Jews were criticised for not having persuaded their fellow-nationals to change their stance on Serbs, for not having done anything to eliminate negative image of Serbs. Unfortunately other TVs also disseminated similar, Jew-bashing propaganda. Similar messages were voiced on other channels, notably Radio Television Serbia, which occasionally re-broadcast the old, wartime, programs about the international, and Jewish world conspiracy against Serbs.
45 Interview with Helsinki Committee
46 “Borba”, “Obraz” Manipulated by Remote Control, 20 March 2001
47 “Politika,” “Obraz” Fights ‘Enemies of Serbhood”, 22 March 2001
In a program of Radio Yugoslav Airlines on 17 May 2000 Dejan Lucic accused Jews of having staged a military and state coup on 27 March 1941, when the Trilateral Pact was rejected, and later a military uprising in Montenegro. Lucic also held them accountable for attacks on Belgrade and attempts to revive civil war. According to Lucic “they are assisted in their endeavours by the British and US intelligence services.” He divided Jews into “two subversive groups, Jews and Khazars…they are quite similar, but still different: Jews shall do their utmost to help Israel, and Khazars to amass -money.”
Graffiti
Anti-Semitic slogan Death to Jews with Nazi swastikas was drawn twice on the central building of Belgrade University in September 1995. The same slogan was written on the wall of the hall of the Jewish Municipality building in Belgrade on 22 October 1995.
On 27 October 1995 the Jewish Community sent a memo on incident to the Stari Grad police and requested it to launch a pertinent investigation. Three days later, on 30 October a police patrol scouted the building, and later slogans were removed.
On 24 October 1995 the Assembly of Belgrade sharply condemned the graffiti on the building of the Philological Faculty. Only after repeated interventions of the Jewish Federation, the Republican Public Prosecutor on 19 December 1995 informed the Federation that the graffiti case would be handled by the District Public Prosecutor in Belgrade.
On the fence of the Jewish Cemetery on 21 and 22 January three graffiti appeared: Out with Masonic-Jewish Serb-Haters, We don’t want the Dayton Pax Judaica. Jews, You are a Minority in Serbia. The Jewish Federation on 25 January informed Slobodan Pavlovic, Vice President of the Belgrade Assembly and the police of the incident and asked them to intervene. It also filed charges against unknown perpetrators on 16 February 1996.
Graffiti Death to Filthy Jews, Skinheads, White Power, the Racist Movement of Belgrade, crosses and slogan Serbia to Serbs were drawn in the hall of the building housing the Jewish Federation, the Jewish Community of Belgrade and the Jewish Historical Museum on 11 February 1997.
On 26 September 1996 leaflets with the scull and slogan “Jewish lethal vaccine kills Muslim children” were distributed in Novi Pazar. In the text parents were told to boycott vaccine against children’s paralysis….”for it aims to impair health of Muslim children…”
On two occasions, in December 2000 and January 2001 Nazi swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans in English, notably “Jews Hate Your Freedom of Speech,” were drawn on all Jewish institutions in Belgrade, the sinagogue, Jewish cemetery, the Jewish Municipality building.
Desecration of monuments and religious institutions
Plaque with inscription was removed from the monument “Menorah in Flames” by Nandor Glid in the 15th -21st May week . Glid’s monument in Belgrade has been on repeated occasions the target of vandals (several days after wreaths had been laid on the monument in 1999 they were torn and thrown around). Police never found perpetrators of that vandal act, nor the ones who drew graffiti on Jewish institutions and cemetery and threw Molotov cocktails into the yard of sinagogues in Belgrade and Novi Sad.
In recent years singagogues have been frequently targeted by anti-Semites. The Zemun sinagogue, a protected municipal institution, was converted into a restaurant by the Radical Party-led municipal authorities in the face of the city authorities ban and protests of the Jewish Community. The then President of the Municipal Assembly and the Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj and director of the Business Space Tomislav Nikolic met with the Federation’s delegation on 7 March 1997 and promised not to lease that institution. Just a months later, on 30 March, the sinagogue was leased and converted into a restaurant.
“That sinagogue is very important for us, but we did not want to hype up the case and make a too vocal demand,” said Aca Singer. He added: “It is very important for Jews as in that sinagogue Rabbi Alkalai was the first to mention the return of Jews to their Holy Land. He had done it before Theodore Herzl, who is considered the founder of a modern Zionist Movement.” Singer then went on to explain the long history of the embattled Zemun sinagogue: “Until 1962 the Jewish Community was compelled to lease the sinagogue due to lack of upkeep funds and an ever-dwindling number of Jews. After that the sinagogue was forcibly sold to the then authorities for a negligible amount of money. The money we got from the lease was given to socially vulnerable categories of Jews. We had a deal with the previous Socialist authorities. Namely the sinagogue was to be used for cultural purposes only. But when the Radical Party took the municipal reins in 1997 the deal fell through. That sinagogue had been built in 1850 on foundations of the old, Eightieth Century sinagagoue, which was badly ruined after the WW2. It bears stressing that it has served many purposes, but was never used as restaurant. It is very important institution for us, because it was saved by miracle from destructive hands of Ustashi in the WW2.”
Subotica sinagogue met with a different fate. Story about Subotica Jews is a specific one, and it marked Subotica history from the mid 18th century. Before the opening of central sinagogue rites were officiated in the Sremska street sinagogue. But when the Subotica Jews became economically strong 48 they decided to erect “the temple of temples.” New sinagogue had a tent-like dome. It was possessed of a unique beauty in terms of design and construction. “It is owned by the city and under the World Heritage Fund document it is protected as one of the 100 key world sinagogues.” 49 In Mid-Eighties theatre director Ljubisa Ristic 50 came to work in Subotica in order to “shake up a sleepy milieu.” In late Eighties Ristic staged big spectacles with his numerous ensemble in the singagoue. In a play a horse and a horseman both peed in the sinagogue. Restored …
48 30 Jews counted among 184 richest residents of Subotica in early 20th century.
49 Jozef Kasa, Mayor of Subotica
50 In Milosevic era Ristic was one of the most influential leaders of the AYL, the SPS coalition partner.
… dome was also again badly impaired by fumes from stoves, while the lawn around the sinagogue was trampled upon by buses ferrying spectators to performances.
*
Although the Jewish Community in Serbia is very small, anti-Semitism tenaciously persists as a part of a specific social phenomenology. Under the current circumstances it relies on ideological roots of the Serbian conservative, right-wing factions (Priest Nikolaj Velimirovic, Dimitrije Ljotic) and feeds itself on social and economic frustration stemming from a defeated Greater Serbia idea. Anti-Semitism in Serbia also draws on belief that the influential, international Jewish community, notably (its prominent representatives Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Wesley Clark and Robert Gelbrand) has contributed to misfortune of Serbs, notably after the NATO air strikes. In parallel many intellectuals espoused the idea of identical fates of Serbs and Jews in the past decade. Within the context of the syndrome of victim, cherished in Serbia, Serbs are equalised with Jews (Vuk Draskovic: Kosovo is our Jerusalem). One should take into consideration that ambivalent position on the Jewish ethnic community in any future (and necessary) public debate on Anti-Semitism.
SOURCE: Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
DOWNLOAD: www.helsinki.org.yu/doc/annual2001_en.zip
FORGOTTEN 1943 GENOCIDE BY NAZI CHETNIK FASCISTS
FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE OF BOSNIAK MUSLIMS AROUND SREBRENICA REGION IN 1943; SERBIAN CHETNIK COLLABORATION WITH NAZI FASCISTS 1941-45 & SERBIAN GENOCIDE AGAINST JEWS AND ROMA
Editor’s note: This is our official response to the Wikipedia’s Draza Mihailovich article, which has been hijacked by WikiProject of Serbia’s Point of View with an attempt to ‘rehabilitate’ Nazi fascist who committed genocide.
+++ In just a few days of February 1943, the Serbian Chetniks under the leadership of Draza Mihailovich committed genocide of close to 20,000 Bosniak Muslims in the Podrinje area (around Srebrenica region) – mostly women, children and elderly. Serbian Chetniks themselves admitted killing over 9,000 people in this genocidal campaign alone.
+++ Serbs portray themselves as the major Balkan victims of the Second World War, but conceal the Chetnik collaboration with Nazi fascists, including systematic genocide that they had committed against several peoples, including the Bosniaks and Jews. Although Serbian historians contend that the persecution of the Jews of Serbia was entirely the responsibility of Germans and began only with the German occupation, this is self- serving fiction. Fully six months before the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment. 94 percent of Serbia’s 16,000 Jews were exterminated, with the considerable cooperation of the Serbian government, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian police and the Serbian public. The largest proportion of anti-fascist Bosnian partisans were Bosniaks Muslims, who were being slaughtered by all sides (Ustashas, Chetniks and Nazis). Attempts to form a pro-Axis Bosniak division failed when the Bosniak Muslim conscripts revolted against the Germans at a training base south of Le Puy, France in September 1943.
+++ While it is true that during the War, both the Partisans and pro-German Serbian-Nazi Chetniks aided Allied pilots in escaping, they did so because they were paid in gold for each one. However, only NAZI collaborator and fascist Draza Mihailovic received Medal, due to intensive Serbian lobbying and propaganda in the U.S.
The full article starts below:
PHOTO: Serbian Chetnik Commander Pavle Djurisic reporting to the Chetnik General Draza Mihailovich on the extermination of over 9,200 Bosniak Muslims (including women and children) on February 13, 1943. May their souls rest in peace.
The Chetnik apologists like to argue that Draza Mihailovic didn’t know anything about genocidal campaigns his forces were committing against the Bosniak Muslim population of Bosnia-Herzegovina. A closer look at the above document reveals that Draza Mihailovic was well aware of genocide his forces were committing in 1943.
In the above document, Serbian Chetnik Commander Pavle Djurisic reported directly to the Chetnik General Draza Mihailovic about the “successes” of Chetnik operations in the extermination campaigns against the Bosniak Muslim population in the area of Pljevlje, Cajnice, and Foca region. This is the region of Podrinje where Srebrenica is located.
In his briefing to the Serb General Draza Mihailovich, the Chetnik Commander Pavle Djurisic writes, (note: this is a translation of key points from Serbian cyrillic), quote:
All Moslem villages in three mentioned locations [municipalities of Pljevlje, Cajnice, and Foca] were burned down, and not even one home remained intact…. During military operations, we engaged in total destruction of Moslem population without regard to their sex or age. Our victims include 22 dead, of which 2 by accident, and 32 wounded. We killed about 1,200 Muslim soldiers and about 8,000 of their women, elderly and children.
Therefore, it is perfectly clear that Draza Mihajlovich knew what was going on, but he did nothing to stop the genocide of Bosniak Muslim civilians. He was complicit in Genocide against the Bosniak Muslim population of Podrinje in 1943. While the Serbian Chetniks admited killing 9,200 people in this genocide, the documented killings show close to 20,000 Bosniaks massacred, 98% of them being civilian men, women, children, and elderly. (See: “Srpski zlocini nad Bosnjacima Muslimanima 1941. – 1945.” by Semso Tucakovic).
Attempts to Deny 1943 Genocide
This genocide of Bosniak Muslim population in Podrinje occured in February of 1943. Since then, the leftist apologist genocide deniers have been actively denying any wrong-doings of Serbian Chetnik forces who collaborated with Nazi fascists in World War II. The most vocal Draza Mihajlovic’s apologist and opinionist (he doesn’t deserve to be called historian) – Lucien Karchmar – even came up with a list of philosophical reasons attacking the evidence against Chetnik crimes. In his book “Draza Mihailovic and the Rise of the Chetnik Movement, 1941–1942“, Lucien Karchmar devotes his study in apologizing for Draza Mihailovich’s crimes and dismissing each piece of historical evidence presented as a fraud or forgery. That’s exactly how Chetnik-apologists write history to justify, downplay or deny crimes of Chetniks against the Bosniak Muslim population of Bosnia-Herzegovina; not to mention Chetnik collaboration with Nazi fascists.
Instead of reading Lucien Karchmar’s make-belief stories about Chetnik innocence, one might read the book written by a respected Serbian historian Nikola P. Ilic who did a great job documenting collaboration of Chetniks with Fascists. The book is titled (in Serbian) “Kolaboracija Cetnika sa Okupatorima i Kvislinzima u Srbiji.“
Draza Mihailovic’s people with NAZI Fascists
PHOTO: Chetnik Draza Mihailovich’s commanders with the German nazi fascists: 1) Colonel Lucic, 2) Major Dongic, formerly of the Yugoslav Army, Chetnik commander, cooperator with the Germans and Nedic’s men, 3) Ilija Trifunovic-Bircanin, Draza Mihailovich’s commander for Dalmatia, 4) Milorad Ljanovski, 5) Daka Tesanovic, Chetnik commander, and 6) Lieutenant Ignjatovic. – A German officer is shown by a cross. Photo Credit: The United States holocaust Memorial Museum. (Public Domain)
According to Serbian scholars, Dr. Jovan Marjanovic & Mihail Stanisic, “The collaboration of Draza Mihailovic’s Chetniks with the enemy forces of occupation“, 1976, quote:
The Serbian chetniks of Draza Mihailovic were represented as fighters against the occupier, while in fact they were the allies of the Nazi fascists in Yugoslavia….The documents in this collection indicate clearly and unequivocally that the Chetniks collaborated with the occupiers, both in the military and political sphere, as well as in the domain of economic activity, intelligence and propaganda…
Serbia’s Union of Anti-Fascists has – on numerous occasions – protested growing falsification of history committed by Chetnik apologists who present Chetniks as “anti-fascists” who fought alongside allies.
Serbian Lobbying and Medal for a Fascist
Draza Mihailovic was the only NAZI fascist to be awarded the Legion of Merit for his “contribution” to the Allied victory. So, how did he receive this medal? According to the respected British historian and world renowned scholar of Balkan history, Dr. Marko Attila Hoare, quote:
Mihailovic continued his opportunistic game of seeking to collaborate with both Axis and Allies. In this context, he assisted the US airborne evacuation of about two-hundred and fifty airmen from Chetnik territory in August 1944. This simply meant that the Chetniks allowed the Americans to use their airstrip for the evacuation – scarcely a particularly heroic action – while at the same time, Mihailovic sent a delegation along with the departing US planes in a fruitless effort to win back Allied support. Yet it was for the rescue of US airmen that Mihailovic would posthumously receive the Legion of Merit. On other occasions, however, Mihailovic’s Chetniks rescued German airmen and handed them over safely to the German armed forces – were he so inclined, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could follow Washington’s example and decorate Mihailovic for saving the lives of his country’s servicemen. Yet none of Mihailovic’s intrigues saved him or his Chetnik movement from destruction at the hands of the victorious Partisans: the revolution in the western Balkans – Europe’s second and last successful Communist revolution – succeeded thanks to British and American military intervention, which enabled the reestablishment of Yugoslavia. This is a fact that Milosevic’s left-wing supporters usually prefer not to mention. The Left Revisionists, November 2003]
Draza Mihailovich’s apologists like to point out that: “an independent American commission concluded in 1946, these Allied airmen were instructed by their American and British superiors to look for any signs of collaboration, they were given freedom of movement by Mihailovic forces, and yet not one of these hundreds testified of Mihailović collaboration with the Axis.“
In fact, this was far from so called “independent American commission” and the medal for Nazi collaborator Draza Mihajlovic was result of intensive lobbying by Serbian-Americans who were part of Chetnik forces. These included Lieutenant Nick Nikola Lalich (an American of Serbian heritage), Captain George Musulin (also an American of Serbian heritage), Pro-Serbian US Army Colonel Robert H. McDowell (friend of Nikola Lalich) and Ruth Mitchell, the sister of the late Gen. William (Billy) Mitchell. They lobbied for Draza Mihajlovich’s medal, and he got it as a result of their lobbying, and as a result of testimonies of many other pro-Serb oriented members of Chetnik forces who emigrated as “refugees” to the USA and other countries to avoid prosecution for war crimes.
PHOTO: In the Ranger Mission, the U.S. Army Lt. Col. Robert H. McDowell “with the help of Lieutenant Nick Lalich” (Nikola Lalich, an American of Serbian heritage), gathered intelligence on Nazi troop movements and wrote a report on Draza’s Chetniks movement. McDowell wrote a report that he “never saw any type of collaboration between Mihailovich and the Germans”, however the photo of Draza Mihailovich and pro-Serbian US Army Lt. Col. McDowell with Ustasha’s and German Nazis was recorded in this photograph taken at Dvori near Bijeljina, September 28 1944. 1) Draza Mihailovich, 2) Pro-Serbian US Army Colonel Robert H. McDowell (friend of Nikola Lalich, an American of Serbian origin who fought in Draza Mihailovich’s Chetniks), and 3) Mustafa Mulalic and a group of Ustashas. Source: Web Archive – the Trial of Dragoljub Draza Mihailovich 1946.
Allies confirm Chetnik NAZI Collaboration
At first, the western Allies had viewed the Chetniks as the core of the resistance movements in Yugoslavia against the invaders. But reports from British parachutists who had joined the fighting forces in Yugoslavia began to reach the West, indicating that the Chetniks’ policy was to fight the anti-fascist Partisans under Josip Broz Tito, rather than the Germans and their allies. Consequently, the attitude of the western Allies underwent a change in the second half of 1942, and they switched their aid to the Partisans who were fighting the German enemy. By the end of 1943, the break beetween the west and the Chetniks was complete. The Chetniks had become collaborators and joined the forces fighting the Partisans.
The first experiments in mass executions of camp inmates by poison gas were carried out in Serbia. Serbia was the first country to proudly declare itself “Judenfrei” (“cleansed” of Jews) The long concealed Historical Archives in Belgrade reveal that Banjica, a concentration camp located in Belgrade, was primarily staffed by Serbs.
As Dr Hoare points in his article “Adding Insult to Injury: Washington Decorates a Nazi Collaborator,” quote:
According to Israel Gutman’s Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, “There were many instances of Chetniks murdering Jews or handing them over to the Germans”…. The sixtieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany is not, one might imagine, the time when one would expect the US government to decorate Nazi collaborators. But one would be wrong. Last month, a delegation of US war-veterans posthumously presented the Legion of Merit to Serbia’s General Dragoljub ‘Draza’ Mihailovic, leader of the ‘Chetnik’ movement during World War II; a convicted war-criminal and Nazi collaborator. The award was originally made to Mihailovic in 1948, two years after his execution by the Yugoslav authorities. Yet it is only now that the US has decided to hand over the award to Mihailovic’s daughter. It is as if the US had chosen the anniversary of VE day to present an award to Marshal Petain, or to the Dutch policemen who arrested Anne Frank. The US action has provoked sharp protests from Croatians, Bosnians and Kosovars. To understand this bizarre decision, the tangled threads leading up to it require some untangling.
After War Attempts to Rewrite History
In the late 1980s, with the blessing of Slobodan Milosevic, a group of Serbs organized the Serbian Jewish Friendship Society, which has propagandized endlessly about Serbia’s ‘Holocaust decency.’ The attempts to rewrite history in Nazi Chetnik favor had limited success.
In conjunction with the war in former Yugoslavia, Serbia has undertaken a campaign to persuade the Jewish community of Serbian friendship for Jews (the Serbian Jewish Friendship Society). This same campaign portrays Bosniaks (Muslims) and Croats (Catholics) as a common threat to both Jews and Serbs, in an attempt to gain Jewish sympathy and support at a time when most nations have isolated Serbia as a Balkan pariah. However, even as Serbia courts Jewish public opinion, their propagandists conceal a history of well-ingrained antisemitism, which continues unabated in 1992. To make their case, Serbs portray themselves as victims in the Second World War, but conceal the systematic genocide that Serbs had committed against several peoples including the Jews. Thus Serbs have usurped as propaganda the Holocaust that occurred in neighbouring Croatia and Bosnia, but do not give an honest accounting of the Holocaust as it occurred in Serbia.
During four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Jewish communities of Serbia enjoyed religious tolerance, internal autonomy, and equality before the law, that ended with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Serbian state. Soon after a Serbian insurrection against Turkish rule in 1804, Jews were expelled from the interior of Serbia and prohibited from residing outside of Belgrade. In 1856 and 1861, Jews were further prohibited from travel for the purpose of trade. In official correspondence from the late 19th century, British diplomats detailed the cruel treatment of the Jews of Serbia, which they attributed to religious fanaticism, commercial rivalries, and the belief that Jews were the secret agents of the Turks. Article 23 of the Serbian constitution granted equality to every citizen but Article 132 forbade Jews the right of domicile. The Treaty of Berlin 1878, which formally established the Serbian state, accorded political and civil equality to the Jews of Serbia, but the Serbian Parliament resisted abolishing restrictive decrees for another 11 years. Although the legal status of the Jewish community subsequently improved, the view of Jews as an alien presence persisted.
Although Serbian historians contend that the persecution of the Jews of Serbia was entirely the responsibility of Germans and began only with the German occupation, this is self- serving fiction. Fully six months before the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment. One year later on 22 October 1941, the rabidly antisemitic “Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibit” opened in occupied Belgrade, funded by the city of Belgrade. The central theme was an alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic plot for world domination. Newspapers such as Obnova (Renewal) and Nasa Borba (Our Struggle) praised this exhibit, proclaiming that Jews were the ancient enemies of the Serbian people and that Serbs should not wait for the Germans to begin the extermination of the Jews. A few months later, Serbian authorities issued postage stamps (see picture bellow) commemorating the opening of this popular exhibit. These stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian symbols, portrayed Judaism as the source of world evil and advocated the humiliation and violent subjugation of Jews.
Serbia as well as neighboring Croatia was under Axis occupation during the Second World War. Although the efficient destruction of Serbian Jewry in the first two years of German occupation has been well documented by respected sources, the extent to which Serbia actively collaborated in that destruction has been less recognized. The Serbian government under General Milan Nedic worked closely with local Nazi officials in making Belgrade the first “Judenfrei” city of Europe. As late as 19 September 1943, Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler, Serbs in Berlin advanced the idea that the Serbs were the “Ubermenchen” (master race) of the Slavs.
PHOTO: Serbian Nazi Chetnik Milan Nedic and Adolph Hitler meeting, September 19 1943.
Although the Serbian version of history portrays wartime Serbia as a helpless, occupied territory, Serbian newspapers of the period offer a portrait of intensive collaboration. In November 1941, Mihajlo Olcan, a minister in Nedic’s government boasted that “Serbia has been allowed what no other occupied country has been allowed and that is to establish law and order with its own armed forces”. Indeed, with Nazi blessings, Nedic established the Serbian State Guard, numbering about 20,000, compared to the 3,400 German police in Serbia. Recruiting advertisements for the Serb police force specified that “applicants must have no Jewish or Gypsy blood”. Nedic’s second in command was Dimitrije Ljotic, founder of the Serbian Fascist Party and the principal Fascist ideologist of Serbia. Ljotic organized the Serbian Volunteers Corps, whose primary function was rounding up Jews, Bosniaks, Gypsies, and partisans for execution. Serbian citizens and police received cash bounties for the capture and delivery of Jews.
Jews are, according to Serbian Chetnik Dimitrije Ljotic, a cursed people. In his views, there are 4 methods the Jews have of ruling over other nations and the whole world, which include: Capitalism, Democracy, Freemasonry, and Marxism. He openly called for action against Jews because they were, in his opinion, the most cynical and dangerous opponents of Christian values.
The Serbian Orthodox Church openly collaborated with the Nazis, and many priests publicly defended the persecution of the Jews. On 13 August 1941, approximately 500 distinguished Serbs signed “An Appeal to the Serbian Nation”, which called for loyalty to the occupying Nazis. The first three signers were bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. On 30 January 1942, Metropolitan Josif, the acting head of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, officially prohibited conversions of Jews to Serbian Orthodoxy, thereby blocking a means of saving Jewish lives. At a public rally, after the government Minister Olcan “thanked God that the enormously powerful fist of Germany had not come down upon the head of the Serbian nation” but instead “upon the heads of the Jews in our midst”, the speaker of these words was then blessed by a high-ranking Serbian Orthodox priest.
A most striking example of Serbian antisemitism combined with historical revisionism is the case of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic (1880-1956), revered as one of the most influential church leaders and ideologists after Saint Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. To Serbs, Bishop Velimirovic was a martyr who survived torture in the Dachau prison camp. In truth he was brought to Dachau (as were other prominent European clergy), because the Nazis believed he could be useful for propaganda. There he spent approximately two months as an “Ehrenhaftling” (honour prisoner) in a special section, dining on the same food as the German officers, living in private quarters, and making excursions into town under German escort. From Dachau, this venerated Serbian priest endorsed the Holocaust, quote:
Europe is presently the main battlefield of the Jew and his father, the devil, against the heavenly Father and his only begotten Son… (Jews) first need to become legally equal with Christians in order to repress Christianity next, turn Christians into atheist, and step on their necks. All the modern European slogans have been made up by Jews, the crucifiers of Christ: democracy, strikes, socialism atheism, tolerance of all religions, pacifism, universal revolution, capitalism and communism… All this has been done with the intention to eliminate Christ… You should think about this, my Serbian brethren, and correspondingly correct your thoughts, desires and acts. (Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic: Addresses to the Serbian People–Through the Prison Window. Himmelsthur, Germany: Serbian Orthodox Eparchy for Western Europe, 1985, pp. 161-162).
Despite Serbian claims to the contrary, Germans were not alone in killing the Jews of Serbia. The long concealed Historical Archives in Belgrade reveal that Banjica, a concentration camp located in Belgrade, was primarily staffed by Serbs. Funding for the conversion of the former barracks of the Serbian 18th infantry division to a concentration, came from the municipal budget of Belgrade. The camp was divided into German and Serbian sections. From Banjica there survive death lists written entirely in Serbian in the Cyrillic alphabet. At least 23,697 victims passed through the Serbian section of this camp. Many were Jews, including at least 798 children, of whom at least 120 were shot by Serbian guards. The use of mobile gassing vans by Nazis in Serbia for the extermination of Jewish women and children has been well documented. It is less appreciated, however, that a Serbian business firm had contracted with the Gestapo to purchase these same victims cloths, which sometimes contained hidden money or jewelry in the linings. In August 1942, following the virtual liquidation of Serbia’s Jews, Nedic’s government attempted to claim all Jewish property for the Serbian state. In the same month, Dr. Harald Turner; the chief of the Nazi civil administration of Serbia, boasted that Serbia was the only country in which the “Jewish question” was solved. Turner himself attributed this “success” to Serbian help. Thus, 94 percent of Serbia’s 16,000 Jews were exterminated, with the considerable cooperation of the Serbian government, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian police and the Serbian public.
Today, many Serbs proudly cite the Chetniks as a resistance force and even claim that the Chetniks were somehow allied with the United States during the Second World War, but this is simply historical revisionism. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Chetnik resistance against the Nazis came to a complete stop as early as the end of 1941. Thereafter, the Chetnik resistance actively collaborated with the both Nazis and Fascists, and for this reason Jewish fighters found it necessary to abandon the Chetniks, in favour of Tito’s Partisans. In reality, the Chetniks, dedicated primarily to the restoration of the Serbian throne and territorial expansion of the Serbian state, were the moral counterpart of Croatia’s Ustatsha. Both were quintessentially genocidal; the Chetniks committed systematic genocide against Bosniaks Muslims, who, for nearly all of 500 years had lived peacefully with the Sephardic Jewish community. Under explicit orders from their leader Draze Mihajlovic, the Chetniks attempted to depopulate Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia of all non-Serbs and in the process, massacred most of the 103,000 Bosniaks who perished during the war.
The main force of Serbian Chetniks rallied around Draza Mihailovic, a 48 year-old Army officer who had been court-martialed by Nedic and who had close ties to Britain. Early in the war, Mihailovic offered some resistance to the German forces while collaborating with the Italians. By July 22, 1941, the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile in Britain announced that continued resistance was impossible. Although Mihailovic and his exiled government would maintain a fierce propaganda campaign to convince the Allies that his Chetniks were inflicting great damage to the Axis, they did little for the war effort and often openly collaborated with the Germans and Italians while fighting the Partizans. At its peak, Mihailovic’s Chetniks claimed to have 300,000 troops. In fact they never numbered over 31,000.
Meanwhile, Josip Broz Tito, organized multi-ethnic resistance group, which took up the fight against the Nazis, as well as against the Ustasha’s and Chetniks. The overwhelming bulk of resistance activity against German nazis occurred in Bosnia and Croatia. According to Yugoslav statistics, at the height of the war in late 1943, there were 122,000 partisans active in Croatia, 108,000 in Bosnia, and only 22,000 in Serbia. The largest proportion of Bosnian partisans were Bosniaks Muslims, who were being slaughtered by all sides.
Attempts to form a pro-Axis Bosniak division failed when the Bosniak Muslim conscripts revolted against the Germans at a training base south of Le Puy, France in September 1943. It was the only large-scale mutiny within the German army during the War.
The Bosniak-Muslim clergy in 1941 issued resolutions condemning atrocities being carried out by Ustashe and Chetniks, and condemned persecution of Jews and Serbs. Bosniaks Muslims suffered the highest per capita losses of any nationality in Yugoslavia.
Serbian Chetnik forces initially fought against the Ustashe regime, as its goal of a “Greater Serbia” was in conflict with the Ustashe’s “Greater Croatia”. But the Chetniks’ main enemy was the partisans, so Chetniks eventually became full-scale collaborators of the Nazis.
By February 1943 the Western Allies condemned the Chetniks as collaborators, threw their support to the Partisans and began to airdrop supplies to the Partisans. Mihailovic was executed in 1946 for treason. Ironically, his son and daughter Branko and Gordana went over to the Partisans in 1943 and both publicly supported their father’s execution after the war.
While it is true that during the War, both the Partisans and pro-German Serbian-Nazi Chetniks aided Allied pilots in escaping, they did so because they were paid in gold for each one.
For years, the Serbian dominated Belgrade government has supported and trained PLO terrorists. Immediately after the murder of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro in 1985, the terrorist mastermind Abu Abbas was welcomed in Belgrade. Since the late 1980’s, Abu-Nidal has maintained a large terrorist infrastructure in Yugoslavia, in coordination with Libyan, Iraqi, and Yugoslav intelligence services. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as Iraqi missiles landed in Israel, Belgrade supported its ally Iraq.
Although the Jewish community of Serbia is not currently experiencing persecution, overt expressions of Serbian antisemitism do surface in such mainstream institutions as the Serbian Orthodox Church and the official news media. The 15 January 1992 issue of the official publication of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Pravoslavlje (Orthodoxy), carried an article entitled, “Jews Crucify Christ Again.” In this polemic, “treacherous” and “surreptitious” Israeli politicians were said to be constrained from expressing their “pathological” hatred of Christians openly because “they know that Christian countries gave them the state.” Allegedly, nuns are so frequently beaten in Israel, that one nun was actually “happy, because they only spit in her face.” Only weeks later, when Russia extended diplomatic recognition to the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia, the official Yugoslav (Serbian perspective) news agency Tanjug blamed “a Jewish conspiracy” against Serbia, hauntingly reminiscent of the theme of the 1941 anti-Masonic exhibit.
The essential strategy of Serbian propaganda is to portray the spiritual kinship between Jews and Serbs as victims of the Holocaust and endangered by Croats. This concept is disseminated through the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society, founded in Belgrade in 1988 and supported by the Serbian government. In January and February 1992, Dr. Klara Mandic, the secretary-general and principal voice of this organization, syndicated a chilling article in the North American Jewish press. This article alleged that Ankica Konjuh, an elderly Jewish woman, was tortured and murdered by “Croat extremists” in September 1991. However, even as she released this story to the press, Dr. Mandic knew that Ankica Konjuh was neither a Jew nor could have been killed by Croats. Bona-fide witnesses have testified that Ankica Konjuh, a 67 year-old Croat, was one of 240 civilians massacred by Serbian forces after the last Croat defenders were driven from the region. Moreover on 23 December 1991, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia met in Belgrade and demanded in writing that Dr. Mandic cease and desist misrepresenting Ankica Konjuh as the first Jewish victim of the war. Nevertheless, in late February 1992, when Dr. Mandic lectured at the Hillel House of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., she provided the rabbi with a copy of that misleading article, delivered without further comment. It is noteworthy that this speaking engagement was part of a tour arranged by Wise Communications, a Washington-based public relations firm representing the Serbian oil company Jugopetrol, a thinly veiled proxy for the Communist Belgrade government. Beginning with the proposition that antisemitism has never existed in Serbia, Dr. Mandic portrayed Croatia as preparing to repeat the Holocaust. She claimed to be a “Jewish leader,” although Jews are distinctly absent from her constituency. Less than half a dozen Jews are actual members of her society of several thousand. She introduced herself as an “eyewitness” speaking on behalf of Croatian Jews, although since the war began, she has had no contact with any of the nine Jewish communities of Croatia. When Dr. Mandic was asked to comment on Serbian (Yugoslav Army) shelling of the synagogue of Dubrovnik, the second oldest surviving synagogue in Europe, she denied that the synagogue had ever been damaged at all. Meanwhile, the attack has been well documented by the Jewish community of Dubrovnik and the World Monument Fund.
Jewish sensitivity to the Holocaust is similarly exploited by the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society of America (Granada Hills, California), an offshoot of Dr. Mandic’s organization. Its newsletter equates the Jewish and Serbian positions during World War II, both as victims of Croats, but fails to mention Serbian complicity in the Holocaust, Serbian collaboration with the Nazis, and Serbian genocide against Croats, Gypsies, and Bosniaks Muslims. It warns of an imminent Holocaust being initiated in Croatia. A contrasting portrayal of Croatia, however, emerges from a spectrum of Croatian Jews, American Jews who have visited Croatia, and international Jewish agencies monitoring events on site. All concur that there is no state-sponsored antisemitism in Croatia; the rights of the Jewish minority are respected; and antisemitic incidents are virtually unknown. Thus, only a few dozen of the 2,000 Jews of Croatia have chosen to emigrate to Israel since the war began.
Serbia of today and Germany in World War II offer striking parallels. In 1991, Vojislav Seselj, a member of the Serbian Parliament and leader of the Serbian irregulars who call themselves Chetniks, declared, “We want no one else on our territory and we will fight for our true borders.” Croats and Bosniaks in Serbian conquered regions are forced to wear red-and-white armbands, analogous to the yellow armbands worn by Jews in Serbia during the Holocaust. The stated purpose of the expulsion of Bosniaks and Croats from captured regions is “ethnic cleansing.” The indigenous non-Serbian populations of the invaded territories are being driven from their homes, exterminated, or imprisoned in concentration camps, to create regions of Serbian ethnic purity. Jewish community centres, synagogues, and cemeteries have been damaged and destroyed by characteristically indiscriminate Serbian artillery attacks. To all of this, the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society has remained conspicuously silent.
Belgrade has promoted the myth of Serbian kinship with the Jews as fellow victims of Nazi oppression, while concealing the true extent of Serbian collaboration with the Nazis. It is ironic that Serbia is now seeking Jewish support for a war in which both the idealogy and methodology so tragically echo nazism. The European Community, the Helsinki Commission, the United Nations, and the United States have all condemned Serbia as the aggressor. Western diplomats have characterized the current Serbian regime as “a lying, terrorist criminal organization.” Serbia, however, claims to be the victim and campaigns for Jewish sympathy and support, exploiting the powerful symbolism of the Holocaust. Serbia’s professed solicitude for the Jewish people must be reexamined.
TWO COWARDS ON TRIAL FOR CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN
Trial of Bosnian Serb Paramilitaries Transferred From UN Tribunal; Charged with crimes against women and children
Blog Editor’s comment: I have read in local Bosnian news sources that the main reason Milan Lukic and Sredoje Lukic haven’t been charged with numerous rapes against women and children was reluctance of raped women to come forward and testify. I have even voiced my protest with Mrs Bakira Hasecic, president of the rape-victim association “Woman – Victim of War”, for her Association not doing more to convince rape victims to testify against the two. Now that the trial of the two is referred to Bosnia, we can only hope that the rape victims will feel more comfortable coming forward with their testimonies, so rape charges can be added to a long list of crimes Lukic pair committed in the Eastern Bosnia.
The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia announced today that it is referring the case of a Bosnian Serb paramilitary leader and his cousin who are accused of burning to death scores of Bosniak women, children and elderly men in 1992.
The trial of Milan Lukic, leader of a paramilitary unit known as the White Eagles or Avengers, and Sredoje Lukic, a member of the same unit, will now take place within Bosnia and Herzegovina’s court system.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (
ICTY), which sits in The Hague, has so far transferred nine accused to Bosnia and Herzegovina for trial, along with two accused to Croatia and one to Serbia.Milan Lukic was taken into custody by the ICTY in February last year after having been transferred from Argentina, where he was arrested in 2005 after nearly seven years on the run.
Lukic and his cousin face multiple charges relating to the activities of their paramilitary unit, which prosecutors say worked with local police and military units to exact a reign of terror over Muslims in the area around Visegrad in south-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s.
The Lukic cousins are accused of murdering about 70 Muslim women, children and elderly men by barricading them in one room of a house in Visegrad, setting the house on fire and then firing automatic weapons at those who tried to escape through the windows.
In a separate incident, the two men are accused of murdering about 70 other Muslims in the nearby village of Bikavac by forcing the victims into a house, barricading all exits and then throwing in several explosive devices.
The cousins are also accused of beating Muslim men who had been detained in a concentration camp at a military barracks in Visegrad.
Milan Lukic is charged separately with several other counts of murder in which he is alleged to have led groups of Muslim men to the bank of the Drina River near Visegrad and then killed them.Source: The United Nations
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC – CHILD KILLER
“There was a baby shot with three bullets, screaming unbelievably loud… I heard this [Mr. Milosevic], the order not to leave anyone alive and also 10 soldiers from my company can confirm it and in no way can you deny that. I was there. I heard it and you [Mr. Milosevic] as Supreme Commander could have come down there and seen what it was like for us. You are issuing shameful orders to be carried out.” – former Serbian Army soldier during testimony exchange with late Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia).
Despite the lack of a verdict the Milosevic trial collected thousands of pages of documentation which will be used in other trials and will help establish a common truth as it operates to prevent revisionism. Through the subpoena power of the court as well as its prestige, the prosecution was able to obtain records that may never have come to light otherwise. They included intercepted telephone calls between Milosevic and Bosnian-Serb leaders,transcripts of secret assembly sessions and the Republika Srpska spell, where members declared, “We have done this so Muslims will cease to exist” and Milosevic’s admission that he diverted money from Federal customs funds to support the Serbian forces in Bosnia and Croatia.
My experience tells me that not all victims found the tribunals dismal failures. Even though Milosevic avoided a verdict in his trial, I believe some witnesses who gave testimony against him, felt satisfaction. One of them was _____, a frail elderly man with a presence in court that was anything but. His son came to him one morning and said, “Father, my life is over.” His wife and child had been killed. They were found among 20 bodies in the family compound. 19 of whom were women and children.
When Milosevic insisted that people had been killed by NATO bombs, Mr.___ thundered, “No.” And described how the children were taken from the basement and massacred, how the house was burnt. He said people told him not – told him not to go there because they feared he would have a heart attack. My son said, “It is a sin to see children like that.” With what kind of human feelings can someone commit a crime of this kind against children, young people, old people? Though he was crying, his voice remained strong and clear.
Judge May, the presiding Judge asked Milosevic, if, in light of the witness’s condition he had any further questions? I do – I do, he answered, then said, “War is a crime in itself, and it is the innocent who suffer. Is it clear who created the war? You are furious because of the death of your family. Everyone would feel that way. How it came to be war?”
Mr.____ interrupted, “You! You, as president, by sending criminals, the most evil criminals, to commit crimes against children in the eyes of their mothers.”
At the end of his testimony he asked the judges if he could say something. It wasn’t done. But the judges allowed it anyway. Mr. ____ turned to Milosevic, looked him squarely in the eye and said, “I just want to ask you, how could you kill women and children? Have you no human feelings?” There was utter silence in the court room. Milosevic made no response. Other witnesses also had the chance to confront Milosevic, the man they blame most for the loss of loved ones and the destruction of their way of life.
I truly don’t think they believed the tribunal was a dismal failure. As Eric Stover concluded after conducting a study of victim witnesses who had testified at the ICTY. For many study respondents merely being in the court room with the accused while he was under guard, helped to restore their confidence in the order of things. Power, one witness, said flowed back from the accused to me. If only for a brief while this witness finally held sway over his personal tormentor and his current community’s wrong doer. It was at moments like these that tribunal justice what is –was at its most intimate.
Tribunals serve another important purpose. They provide a way for the guilty to repent and gain somepeace with the grievous harm they have caused. In the Milosevic trail, a young Montenegrin conscript called theprosecutor and asked to testify. He described being ordered with a few other soldiers to kill a group of 12 civilians they had found hiding in a house. Women, children, old people, even an infant, he told the court what happened.
“The people shot at began falling down one over the other. What I remember most vividly is how – I remember this very vividly. There was a baby shot with three bullets, screaming unbelievably loud. I came forward to give my evidence because I wanted in this way to express everything that is troubling me. That has been troubling me for the past three years, since I completed my service. Never a night goes by without my dreaming of that child hit by the bullets and crying. I thought if I came forward and told the truth that I will feel easier in my soul. It is the only reason I am here.”
During cross examination Milosevic claimed not a single officer ordered him to kill civilians. He responded. “That is not correct. I heard this, the order not to leave anyone alive and also 10 soldiers from my companycan confirm it and in no way can you deny that. I was there. I heard it and you as Supreme Commander could havecome down there and seen what it was like for us. You are issuing shameful orders to be carried out.”
Milosevic ends by asking whether any promises were made in exchange for his testimony.
“Mr. Milosevic, I am here of my own free will. Mr. Milosevic, when I tell this truth to the person, who in my opinion, is the most responsible for all the crimes, it already makes me you better, I don’t need more.”
Watch or listen full documentary titled War Crimes and the International Criminal Court at: http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=785
SERBIAN SONG PRAISES SREBRENICA MASSACRE
NEW SERBIAN SONG PRAISES SREBRENICA GENOCIDE
SREBRENICA AND THE LONDON BOMBINGS
Srebrenica and the London Bombings: The ‘Anti-War’ Link
At Srebrenica on 11 July 1995, Christian Serb fascists – Chetniks – massacred about eight thousand Muslim men and boys. A few days before the tenth anniversary of the massacre, British Islamic fascists massacred over fifty people in London. Both groups of extremists – Chetniks and Islamofascists – were motivated by the same type of violent sectarian hatred for ‘infidels’ and for the values of the West; a West that they accuse of various bizarre conspiracies against the Serb nation and Islamic world respectively. In Bosnia-Hercegovina, although Islamic extremists from the Arab world and Christian extremists from Serbia, Greece and Russia fought nominally on opposite sides, yet they were united in their hatred for the interreligious coexistence that had characterised Bosnian society for centuries. Some observers, such as the former Bosnian Army Chief of Staff Sefer Halilovic, have even suggested that the Bosnian Muslim hardliners who imported the mujahedin into Bosnia were doing official Serbia’s bidding, by aiding and abetting the polarisation of the communities of Bosnia, hence the country’s partition. But the Chetniks and Islamofascists have something else in common: the same friends in the West.
The genocide in Bosnia-Hercegovina of the 1990s provoked horror among true Western democrats and anti-fascists, and with it a sense that it should be opposed. Among a fringe but vocal minority, however, the genocide provoked a very different reaction: solidarity with the perpetrators. This minority was not ‘anti-interventionist’, for it was very ready to support the UN arms embargo that hampered Bosnian resistance. Rather, its position could euphemistically be described as ‘anti-war’ – selectively so, for while it had no problem with Serbian military aggression, it did have a problem with military action by the Western alliance. ‘Anti-war’, therefore, refers to a belief that it is perfectly acceptable for Milosevic’s Serbia or Saddam’s Iraq to bomb and kill civilians in foreign countries, but wrong for the West to do anything about it.
At first, the West’s diplomacy was in keeping with the precepts of the ‘anti-war’ camp, for John Major’s Britain and Francois Mitterand’s France fought hard to appease Milosevic, while the Clinton Administration tried its best to avoid offending its European allies over the issue. Yet the constant stream of horror stories emanating from Bosnia stretched the ‘anti-war’ argument to breaking point. Consequently, the ‘anti-war’ camp resorted to what can best be described as the Balkan-war equivalent of Holocaust denial: they claimed that the Serbian atrocities reported by the Western media were ‘invented’ by reporters in order to ‘demonise the Serbs’, in turn to justify ‘Western military intervention’ against them. Why exactly the Western leaders – who were trying so hard to appease Serbia and avoid military action – should have wanted to ‘demonise the Serbs’, and how exactly they could have persuaded so many professional journalists and reporters to participate in the conspiracy, was never explained by the ‘anti-war’ people. Yet theirs was not a rational position, but a gut, emotional reaction to unwelcome reality; a way of justifying an otherwise discredited position. For it was the weakness of the ‘anti-war’ argument that led its proponents to resort to an ever more desperate denial of the reality of the Bosnian genocide.
The Srebrenica massacre was the point at which the ‘anti-war’ argument was lost in the US; Clinton’s hands-off policy was revealed as bankrupt; and in under two months, NATO air-strikes coupled with Croatian and Bosnian victories on the ground had brought an end to Bosnian Serb recalcitrance, leading rapidly to the Dayton Peace Accord. Hardly surprising, then, that Balkan genocide denial has centred its efforts on the Srebrenica massacre ever since. Recently, a ‘Srebrenica Research Group’ has been established by one of the most virulent of the deniers, Edward S. Herman – a left-wing radical dinosaur left over from the Cold War era. This organisation’s sole purpose is to propagate the idea that the Srebrenica massacre was a ‘hoax’ invented by Western propaganda. According to Herman: ‘The “Srebrenica massacre” is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars’; one of a series of Western ‘claims and outright lies’ that, in Herman’s view, include just about every Serbian war-crime. The ‘Srebrenica Research Group’ has received much support and publicity from contributors to ‘ZNet’- a website representing the unreconstructed neo-Stalinist left in the US.
On the other extreme of the political spectrum, the far-right website ‘Antiwar.com’, run by Justin Raimondo – a protege of the anti-immigrant Republican politician Pat Buchanan – was launched in opposition to NATO intervention in Bosnia. The website still provides a forum for Balkan genocide denial on the part of its regular Balkan columnist, the Bosnian Serb emigre Nebojsa Malic, who like other emigres of his kind has forgotten nothing and learnt nothing, but continues to fight the Great Serb nationalist corner behind the fig-leaf of an ‘anti-war’ position, writing of ‘the “genocide” that purportedly took place in Srebrenica’.
The arguments of the ‘anti-war’ people about the Balkans have been refuted time and time again; readers are referred to the excellent website ‘Balkan Witness’; and to my own article on the subject, ‘The Left Revisionists’. Rather than wade through the gutter of their lies again, my intention here is merely to make some observations about what unites this disparate group:
1) They all represent political traditions that, in the present age, are self-evidently bankrupt, defeated and irrelevant.
Herman clings to the last rags of Third Worldist anti-Western radicalism. During the 1970s, he and Noam Chomsky wrote an infamous article minimising the crimes of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (‘Distortions at Fourth Hand’, The Nation, June 25, 1977), which were allegedly being exaggerated by the Western media, much as the crimes of Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic are, in Herman’s view, being exaggerated by the Western media today. Herman’s defence of Serb war-criminals represents an ever more desperate attempt to scrape a worthy cause from the bottom of the increasingly empty barrel of ‘anti-imperialism’; to perceive some ‘progressive’ content in the succession of anti-Western Red monsters that his generation of left-wing radicals misspent their lives defending: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceausescu, Mugabe and now Milosevic.
Raimondo looks back nostalgically to an eighteenth-century republican ‘Golden Age’ in America, in which even the presidents owned black slaves, where women could not vote and where Americans were free to hunt buffalo and native Americans to their hearts’ content – and without paying much in the way of taxes. Although the American Republic achieved its independence through the military assistance of the French, Spanish and Dutch – who fortunately did not adopt an ‘anti-war’ position – this is somewhat selfishly forgotten by American right-wingers of Raimondo’s ilk, who have made a religion out of opposing US military assistance to foreign nations. The war to which these right-wingers most object, retrospectively, is Lincoln’s war to crush the Southern slave-owners’ separatist revolt in the 1860s – everything has really been going wrong since then, they feel; Roosevelt’s war against Hitler and Bush’s war to oust Saddam were simply further steps in the wrong direction. Their retrospective support for the ‘states’ rights’ of Southern slave-owners against Lincoln translates seamlessly into support for the ‘national sovereignty’ of Saddam, Milosevic and other anti-Western tyrants against Bush and Blair.
Malic repeats the same tired propaganda that Serb nationalists have been repeating ad infinitum since time began (or so it often feels like to some of us): Albanians are ‘medieval barbarians’ (his words); Croats are Ustashas; and the whole world is against the Serbs. Rather than condemn Serbian war-crimes – as one might expect from a genuinely anti-war columnist – Malic’s entire efforts consist of condemning anyone who actually opposes these crimes: Western journalists who report them; Serbian human-rights activists who campaign against them; the Hague Tribunal which prosecutes them. For Malic, the problem is not that 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred at Srebrenica, but that the perpetrators are being prosecuted. Since the cause of a Great Serbia has been utterly defeated and discredited, it is left to Malic to vent his rage at the West that is supposedly responsible for this, while exhibiting the usual Great Serb self-pity and adulation of martyrdom. He expresses this in endlessly recycled and largely unreadable rants against what he calls the ‘Hague Inquisition’ – as if the war-crimes suspects at the Hague were being punished for their beliefs rather than for their actions, and as if they were being tortured to confess.
2) The second observation to make about the ‘anti-war’ people is that they are not actually interested in the Balkans and their peoples, either in their past or in their future.
Not a single respectable work of scholarship has been produced by any member of this political category in the West, though they have produced an enormous quantity of what can most charitably be described as extended political tracts, based entirely on English-language sources; indeed, largely on other political tracts by other Balkan genocide deniers. Scholarly laziness, it should be said, is not a charge that can be levelled against actual Serb nationalist historians, many of whom have written excellent books based on serious research; though I disagree with their political views, I respect their scholarship. By contrast, the ‘anti-war’ people in the West write propaganda rather than history about the Balkans; necessarily so, since they believe Yugoslavia was destroyed by a Western or German imperialist conspiracy, and this is not a viewpoint that anyone who actually does research on the subject can sustain. The average MPhil student here at Cambridge would be embarrassed to produce the sort of rubbish churned out by Michael Parenti, Diane Johnstone, Kate Hudson and other ill-informed genocide deniers, whose sole purpose is to confirm other lefties in their anti-Western prejudices. Not one of these people has visited an archive, or consulted the Serbo-Croat-language press, or examined any former-Yugoslav historical documents, or carried out a series of extended interviews with participants in the conflict.
The best (or perhaps worst) example of this phenomenon is the ‘journalist’ Neil Clark, an obsequious admirer of Milosevic from a ‘socialist’ (read ‘neo-Stalinist’) perspective, who describes himself as a ‘British-based writer and broadcaster specialising in Middle Eastern and Balkan Affairs’. Clark has no qualifications in journalism or in Balkan or Middle Eastern studies, knows none of the Middle Eastern or Balkan languages, has never reported from either region, has little first-hand knowledge of either, and has never conducted original research or published a book or scholarly article on either. He apparently visited Belgrade in the 1990s and mistook the splendid former imperial metropolis for an example of the achievements of a socialist planned economy. Yet this amateur armchair enthusiast’s ‘anti-war’ views have earned him brownie points with ‘anti-war’ editors, enabling him to write about the Balkans for The Guardian, New Statesman and Antiwar.com – an indication of how much the editors in question care about the region.
Perhaps the most revealing fact of all, however, is that the Balkan genocide deniers, while ready endlessly to condemn, never actually say what they support. Those of us who campaigned against Milosevic’s genocide, did so on the basis of support for the self-determination and self-defence of Croatians, Bosnians, Kosovars and other threatened Yugoslav peoples; in support of the principle of multiethnic and multi-religious coexistence. By contrast, you will search in vain for the opinions of the ‘anti-war’ people on Kosovo’s status, or on the Bosnian question, or on the meaning of Serb self-determination, or on the Balkans’ relationship to the European Union. In other words, theirs is an entirely negative tendency with nothing constructive to offer.
At one level, this simply represents their embarrassment, despite themselves, at the Serb fascists that most of them cannot quite bring themselves formally to endorse. Yet at a deeper level, this represents their profound lack of interest in the future of the Balkan peoples. Just as the more reactionary Cold War warriors in the West were uninterested in the citizens of Third World states, but only in whether their dictators were pro-American or pro-Soviet, so the ‘anti-war’ people – left-wingers and right-wingers alike – are uninterested in the rights or aspirations of Serbs, Croats, Muslims [Bosniaks] or Albanians, but only in who is ‘pro-Western’ or ‘anti-Western’.
This is, of course, sheer moral opportunism. In an appeal to right-wingers to unite with the left against the neoconservatives, Clark disclaimed: ‘I have never understood why a belief in the mixed economy, where transport, the utilities, and the coal mines are publicly owned and run for the benefit of the whole community also entails assenting to same-sex marriages, an open door immigration policy, and free abortion on demand.’ It would appear that, for the ‘socialist’ Clark, left-wing principles are dispensable in the ‘higher cause’ of opposing the West. Raimondo praises the neo-Communist Russian butcher Vladimir Putin as a ‘patriot’ while condemning the neo-Communist Uzbekistani butcher Islam Karimov as a ‘mass murdering tyrant’ – simply because, he says, the neoconservatives oppose Putin and support Karimov.
The corollary of this opportunism is that the ‘anti-war’ people condemn or apologise for atrocities according to who perpetrated them. This brings us back to the London bombings. In their efforts at denigrating Milosevic’s Bosnian Muslim and Kosovar victims, the ‘anti-war’ people demonised them as ‘Islamists’ and ‘terrorists’; their efforts at self-defence a worse crime than Milosevic’s assault on them in the first place. This despite the fact that Bosnian President Izetbegovic maintained a secular state in which churches remained open and women were involved in all walks of public life, while members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) never blew themselves up on Belgrade buses or otherwise targeted the civilians of Serbian cities. Yet when the real Islamists slaughter British civilians, the ‘anti-war’ people suddenly discover they have much more sympathy for Islamist terrorism than their Islamophobic diatribes against the Bosnians and Kosovars might suggest.
One example is Tariq Ali, a former sixties radical for whom being ‘on the left’ boils down to visceral anti-Americanism plus a softness for Communist dictatorships. Ali managed to sit through the whole of the 1991-95 war in the Balkans without condemning Milosevic’s aggression, even though Serbia attacked Croatia and Bosnia without the authorisation of the UN Security Council. Demonstrations against the war in Bosnia were notable by Ali’s absence. Yet when NATO belatedly intervened against Milosevic in Kosovo in 1999, Ali suddenly discovered his opposition to war in the Balkans. He published an ‘anti-war’ collection of essays as a response to the Kosovo War: ‘Masters of the Universe’ (Verso, London, 2000). None of the contributors to this volume expressed any appreciation for the factors that might have driven Kosovars to join the KLA; nor did any point out that the whole Kosovo crisis could have been avoided if Serbia had simply respected the right of Kosovo’s people to self-determination. Indeed, none of the contributors even bothered to discuss what the Kosovars’ fate might have been if NATO had followed Ali’s advice and ended its bombing campaign unconditionally: the dispossession of an entire nation is, apparently, a price worth paying for a small victory over ‘Western imperialism’.
When Islamist terrorists blew up dozens of innocent Londoners, however, Ali showed remarkably more sympathy for their motives than he had for those of the Kosovar rebels: ‘it is safe to assume that the cause of these bombs is the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.’ Ali advises ‘immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine’. So in Ali’s eyes, Kosovo Albanians – despite their secular politics and refusal to engage in suicide bombings of Serb civilians – had no justification for fighting against the Serbian military and police oppression of their homeland, but fundamentalism and indiscriminate civilian bombings are an understandable response on the part of unoccupied, non-oppressed British Muslims to events on the other side of the world.
Robert Fisk, a champion of the Arab-nationalist cause and another selectively ‘anti-war’ writer, responded to the genocide of the Bosnian Muslims in 1992 by publishing lurid stories of Croatian Ustasha atrocities against Serbs in World War II, in a transparent effort to whitewash a contemporary genocide by highlighting one that was half a century old. While talking of Croat fascists in World War II, Fisk did not see fit to mention the anti-British activities of Arab fascists at the time – the Palestinian fascist Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was – like the Croat fascist Ante Pavelic – an enthusiastic ally of Hitler, a parallel that, mysteriously, is rarely drawn in Fisk’s articles.
Fisk subsequently campaigned against the Kosovo war in a series of articles in The Independent, which somehow managed to get published despite the ‘anti-Serb Western media bias’. Now, in response to the London bombings, Fisk argues: ‘It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s war on terror’. He quotes bin Laden as saying: ‘If you bomb our cities, we will bomb yours’. Fisk’s response is: ‘There you go, as they say’. Fisk could just as easily have written: ‘It was crystal clear Serbia would be a target ever since Slobodan Milosevic decided to expel the Albanian population of Kosovo’. He could have quoted Western leaders as saying to Milosevic: ‘If you attack the Kosovo Albanians, we will attack you.’ When NATO began bombing Serbia following its rejection of the Rambouillet accord, Fisk could have commented: ‘There you go, as they say.’ But for Fisk, apparently, double standards are only objectionable when held by Western leaders.
The ‘anti-war’ people’s sole political raison d’etre is hatred of the modern liberal-democratic order in the West. This hatred they share with the fascists and terrorists for whom they apologise – be they Serb or Islamic. Their apologies for the London bombers, like their apologies for the Srebrenica killers, represent a continuous howl of rage at a modern world that has left them and their politics behind. It is a hatred by which they justify their own hypocrisy, cynicism and double standards: denigrating the resistance of moderate Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo to genocide and dispossession, while apologising for the pampered fundamentalist brats who bombed the London underground for reasons of abstract ideology. For those of us in the West who oppose fascism and fundamentalism and support liberty and democracy, whether we campaign over the Balkans or the Middle East or both, the domestic opponents we face are the same.
SREBRENICA VIDEO KILLER: “IN FRONT OF GOD, I’M CERTAINLY GUILTY”
DEFENDANT IN SHOOTING OF SREBRENICA BOSNIAKS ACKNOWLEDGES VIDEO
Related stories:
– Croatian Court Jails Srebrenica Killer
– Serb Soldier Gets 15 years in Srebrenica Video Killings
– Serbia: Second Defendant Admits Killing Srebrenica Muslims
– Denial of Srebrenica Video Killings Collapses
CIA TRANSCRIPTS ON MLADIC
Author: Gordan Malic
The Zagreb weekly Globus has published what it claims are CIA transcripts from a dossier on war-crimes indictee Ratko Mladic, highly relevant for any future Hague trial
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica confirmed in a New Year statement for the Belgrade newspaper Blic that General Ratko Mladić would soon be arrested. For a while now the media in Belgrade have assumed that the Serbia-Montenegro government knows where Mladić is hiding in Serbia, and that beside local intelligence agents CIA agents too are involved in the preparations for his arrest. As we found out, the role of the US intelligence agency in processing one of the biggest war criminals is not over. Globus has obtained part of the CIA secret dossier on General Mladić, created during the Srebrenica genocide while American devices were intercepting his telephone conversations with UN representatives, VRS [Republika Srpska army] field commanders, high ranking VJ [FRY army] officers and foreign informers, who were periodically keeping him posted on NATO’s positions and plans. Materials assembled during this US intelligence operation will be used in the ICTY trials of General Mladić and other indictees in the Srebrenica case.
Secret base
The majority of Mladić’s conversations were recorded thanks to interception equipment installed by the CIA at the beginning of 1995 in a secret base in Croatia close to Sveta Gera. Since the mid 1990’s, the American secret service had at its disposal two such bases in the Republic of Croatia (the other one was at Š epurine near Zadar), through which it intercepted all communications of security interest on the territory of former Yugoslavia, also cooperating with Croatian intelligence services during Operation Oluja [Storm].
Serb lobbyist
Day after day during July 1995 the CIA intercepted General Mladić’s conversations, now exclusively published by Globus. From them it is clear that the Srebrenica genocide was carried out in a planned manner, without any scruples, in a strategic alliance with the VJ high command; and that throughout the operation Mladić had access to confidential information from diplomatic and NATO circles that encouraged him in committing the crime! Actually, this information spoke about the unwillingness of the international community to stop the Srebrenica massacre by military intervention, and about the political discussions that were frequently conducted on the Srebrenica situation in the US Congress and the Pentagon. As one of Mladić’s main diplomatic informants, the CIA mentioned Dr. Miloš Kostić, a controversial Serbian lobbyist in Washington, influential in congressional and republican circles, otherwise a retired colonel of the USA Army and former special operations expert at the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) military intelligence service. However, although he was caught diplomatically briefing General Mladić during the Srebrenica massacre, Kostić has to this day not suffered any consequences of his actions. He is still a respected Serb-American businessman, with offices in Vienna, Washington and Belgrade, and heads the Serbian lobbying organization ‘Srbija Net’.
During his frequent conversations with Dr. Kostić in June and July 1995, General Mladić mostly asked about the State Department and Pentagon positions regarding the Srebrenica events. He was also interested in Kostić’s assessment of German and other European governments’ moves and attitudes regarding a possible Croatian offensive.
‘Finished’
In a conversation on 16 July 1995, five days after the fall of Srebrenica, Kostić called Mladić and greeted him with the traditional “Pomoz bog!” Mladić responded with “Good evening, brother Kostić!’ Kostić gave him information coming from NATO circles. ‘Boss, listen, they want everything but to send troops.’ Mladić responded that he had known that, and Kostić told him that the French position would be the same as in the Goražde case, that the international troops should not involve themselves in the defence of Srebrenica. Kostić told him: ‘The situation is as follows: the French are shouting, making a noise, but they do not want to engage their troops. The Americans would like to send 200 Apache helicopters, but Congress does not allow it because they fly low and there is a risk of considerable US casualties.’ Then Kostić warned Mladić that the Clinton administration was not their friend, and that Clinton was supporting a more aggressive intervention against the Serbs. According to Kostić, the only turnabout that could happen was that if the international forces withdrew they could leave to the Muslims over 3,000 armour-piercing rockets of all kinds, including anti-tank rockets.
‘This worries me, because after the withdrawal they could punish the Serbs; they could begin a massive attack on our positions. That is why we need to finish this as soon as possible, and not postpone… We do not expect that they will cause big problems around Žepa, and I hope this will be finished today’, Kostić went on, and Mladić informed him that regarding Žepa it was ‘finished’. ‘Finished! Excellent!’, shouted Kostić. Mladić’s assessment that it was ‘finished’ incidentally referred to over one thousand killed Bosniaks, citizens of Žepa, and over 800 burned houses. Mladić’s capture of Goražde would follow, of course, accompanied by massacres of civilians and burning.
Kostić also explained to Mladić the stances of European countries regarding possible international intervention at Gorazde: ‘The British are against any sort of intervention at Goražde, on which the French are insisting. This could also be the way that the French are transferring responsibility to others in case Goražde falls, wriggling out of everything…I think the Americans will also lift the embargo on weapons for the Muslims, and will arm them with Soviet weapons because they believe the Muslims are trained to use these, so do not need instructors. That is why it is important that you connect up all the front lines, and that you empty the enclaves without hesitation!’ recommended Kostić, and asked Mladić if he had received ‘those brochures’. Mladić thanked him and told him not to ‘spend all his money at once’.
At such moments (the fall of Žepa, Srebrenica and Goražde), the Butcher of Srebrenica desperately needed information on the moves of the international community, and according to the CIA transcripts he received them – apart from Kostić – also from Aleksandar Đorđević, a Serbian lobbyist in Brussels. So on 11 July, during the massacre in Srebrenica, Đorđević informed General Tolimir that the Dutch minister of defence had urgently requested from Willy Claes, NATO secretary general, as well as from Boutros Ghali, that NATO should immediately begin attacking Serbian positions, because the lives of Dutch soldiers were in danger at Srebrenica. These were comically unsuccessful attacks by NATO air forces, in which the majority of victims were Bosniaks.
‘Panic in NATO’
Kostić’s advice on how to lead a special war also referred to media reports on Srebrenica, something that was under care of members of intelligence-propaganda department in Mladić’s HQ, as well as of individual editors of Belgrade newspapers and agencies. So on the very day when Srebrenica fell, the CIA recorded a conversation on the infamous NATO bombing between one of Mladić’s intelligence officers and Dragan Janjic, editor at a certain agency. At the beginning of the conversation Janjic informed his collocutor that he had received by fax an (international) report on unsuccessful intervention of NATO airplanes in Srebrenica, while the response of the VRS officer was that they already had most of those information and that they did not wish to comment. ‘It looks like they missed us, and we learned that we hit them through sources in Italy. There is panic in the NATO base. They dropped two bombs that hit the Muslim convoy. ‘The Muslims will probably say that it was us and NATO will try to find a way to apologize quietly’, some details of NATO unsuccessful intervention related by the VRS officer.
Editor Janjic then asked him ‘Did they hit anything of ours?’, and Mladić’s intelligence officer claimed that NATO ‘only threw four bombs on the whole area without knowing who was where and what they were hitting’. ‘Their intelligence information was not good and they screw… up in their assessment!’ concluded Mladić’s officer. Janjic asked: ‘Who should I then quote regarding those four bombs?’ the VRS intelligence officer recommended ‘the source in Italy’ and ‘in no way us’, and the journalist agreed.
Video recording
Mladić’s army also conducted a special media war abroad. In the CIA notes of 12 July 1995, traffic is described between Colonel Milutinović, head of the VRS high command’s information service and a certain Mudrovski from London, to whom the VRS officer offered an exclusive video recording of Mladić inspecting Srebrenica, on which there is no footage of any crimes. The CIA report claims that the 15-minute-long video recording contains ‘footage of General Mladić inspecting Srebrenica, footage of NATO strikes, and of Mladić’s conversations with representatives of Srebrenica Muslims and UNPROFOR’. The notes claim that Mudrovski was prepared to pay 25,000 German Marks for the ‘exclusive rights’ of that propaganda video. Milutinović promised him that he would not give the recording to anyone from Serbian TV until Sunday.
The fall of Srebrenica caused wild displays of boasting and brutality on the part of Mladić’s officers. So the CIA recorded a telephone conversation between two VRS colonels, Lakičević and Dedić. Dedić: ‘Did Srebrenica fall at the point where I told you it would?’ Lakičević: ‘Yes. That was the first position to fall, the rest haven’t yet.’ Dedić: ‘It all has to fall!’ Lakičević: ‘It will!’ Dedić: ‘After that we’ll go to Goražde to kick their asses there!’ Lakičević: ‘That’s right, Nidžo, we’ll stay in touch!’
The US agency’s listening devices discovered a celebratory conversation between two anonymous VRS officers on the day Srebrenica fell, in which they were toasting the raising of the Serbian flag in ‘Serbian Srebrenica!’, while drinking ‘homemade brandy from Trebava’.
The CIA recorded the fruitless attempts of General Bernard Janvier, commander of UN troops on the territory of former Yugoslavia, to stop the massacre of Srebrenica, mainly by issuing strong protests to General Mladić through his official interpreter. Some of the messages were almost ridiculously helpless, like one on 9 July 1995, two days before VRS units entered Srebrenica, which went as follows: ‘You have to order the retreat of your troops attacking Srebrenica, the attack needs to stop by 8 a.m. tomorrow!’ The CIA also recorded the cynical response of the VRS HQ to these messages, saying that General Mladić ‘is not currently at HQ’ or that he ‘has gone somewhere, they don’t know where’.
On the same day a desperate conversation was recorded between a certain Osman from B-H Army HQ in Srebrenica and Alija Izetbegović, president of the SDA and of the B-H Presidency. When Izetbegović asked: ‘How long can you go on without UNPROFOR help?’ Osman responded: ‘President, it’s better if I don’t say it, but these people here – it’s not likely we can do anything! People are starving, no equipment, no weapons or ammunition… The international observers’ building is here, they can see what’s going on, but still nobody is doing anything.’ Izetbegović answers: ‘ Very well, Osman, send it over a secure line to Delić’s HQ. He’ll advise you, and get those observers to inform the public.’ Osman: ‘I will. Salaam, Mr President.’ Izetbegović:’ Salaam to you too.’
The CIA recorded the attempts of Bosniaks to get their hands on weapons from UNPROFOR soldiers, some of them were killed, while some UNPROFOR soldiers were captured. When asked by the UN why the International Forces soldiers had been captured, members of Mladić’s HQ responded that they had merely taken them ‘under their protection’.
Appeals from The Hague
The chief prosecutor of ICTY has warned the UN and the Security Council more than once about the intolerable fact that Mladić is still at large. She has also accused the international forces in B-H of being inefficient, and the government of Serbia-Montenegro of not cooperating with The Hague. So far, despite all the promises made by the local authorities, her appeals regarding Karadžić and Mladić have been fruitless. However, American diplomats’ announcements that Mladić will soon be arrested, as well as the CIA presence in Serbia, announce a possible change of course. Mladić could soon find himself in The Hague confronted by his own orders and transcripts recorded by the ear of the Big Brother.
Dr. Miloš Kostić is the son of former artillery colonel Branko Kostić, a Serb radical and emigrant who has resided in Vienna since before the war. Miloš was a student of mechanical engineering in Belgrade, and a boxer for the Crvena Zvezda club. In 1956, he moved to America and was granted US citizenship. He attended military academy and studied finance at the University of Chicago. As an intelligence officer engaged in special operations, he participated in the Vietnam War. Having been promoted to the rank of major, he was appointed to the Pentagon’s Special War Department. In the 1970s, he was assigned to train regular units and special police deployed in the Southeast Asia war. In 1968 he returned to the United States and retired with the rank of colonel. In the meantime he married Chinese Ren Lin, converted her to Orthodox Christianity and changed her name to Svetlana Kostić. He earned his doctoral degree with a thesis on strategic international and economic relations, supervised by Nobel prizewinner Friedrich Van Hayek. Kostić has lectured in the United States, South Africa and Europe. He is a member of the Republican Party and in Ronald Reagan’s era he was an adviser to the Congress State Security Committee. In the 1980s, he worked as a Pentagon adviser and in 1986 he moved to Vienna and involved himself in the Serb lobbying organization ‘Srbija Net’.
In the course of the attack on Srebrenica, Mladić and Kostić were also analysing developments in Croatia. Mladić actually believed that ‘the Croats are not so crazy as to engage against the Serbs at this point in time!’ He was also convinced that they should let the Croats and the Muslims have a separate state of their own, leaving ‘what is Serb to the Serbs’ – which turned out to be an almost visionary prediction of the outcome of the Dayton Accords. Interestingly, at that time Kostić even had reports mentioning Croatian preparations for an offensive.
Kostić: That would be best, but reading here the reports about their preparations for an offensive I don’t know about the Croats. Granić said yesterday that the Croats and Muslims should respond unilaterally to the Serb offensive. If you translate this into the Croatian language, you will know that they are preparing a justification for their future ‘See what the Serbs are doing’ actions. I took a look at the map showing the concentration of Croatian forces around Drniš, Medak, Otočac, Karlovac and Sisak. There is a line going from Karlovac towards Vrginmost and another towards Sisak. And from Sisak, it goes to Dvor na Uni, from Otočac to Medak towards Knin, and from Drniš …
Mladić: Good …
Kostić: That’s it. That’s what the UN also predicted.
That was how Kostić predicted the action of the Croatian forces, the action which – in a slightly different form – took place later on and is know as Operation Storm.
Translated from Globus (Zagreb), 6 January 2006
BOSNIA’S RAPE BABIES: ABANDONED BY THEIR FAMILIES, FORGOTTEN BY THE STATE
By Kate Holt in Sarajevo and Sarah Hughes
Published: 13 December 2005
Suzanna is 12 years old. In the eyes of the law she does not exist. She has no family, no birth certificate. The place that she calls home is the state-run orphanage in Zenica in Bosnia, a run-down building with broken windows.
The orphanage is home to just over 150 children. Some of them have lost their families to war and sickness, others, like Suzanna, were abandoned as “rape babies” – children born during the war to women who had been raped – and left unacknowledged by families and state alike.
“She is a very loving child sometimes has problem socialising,” says Enisa Herzeg, a social worker at the orphanage. “We have had money donated for her care but we can’t open a bank account in her name because she has no birth certificate, because the Croatian authorities refused to register when she was born.” Suzanna’s mother abandoned her when she was born and has never visited. “We have no way of finding her,” Herzeg says. “There are many children here with equally sad stories .”
Ten years after the war in Bosnia ended we have come back with Channel 4 news to meet the forgotten victims of sexual violence. Despite the widespread publicity concerning the atrocities committed during that time little has been done to help the thousands of women who suffered extreme sexual violence and torture, or the children born as a consequence of this abuse.
Abandoned by the state, many of these women are not only traumatised by their horrific experiences but also impoverished. Cast out from their communities, often abandoned by their husbands, few of them can hold down jobs. Only a handful have received compensation for their suffering, which continues in the form of nightmares, physical injury and mental ill-health.
“I was raped for over a year by Serbian soldiers,” says Mirella, a softly spoken woman of 33.
“They kept me prisoner in my house and raped me day and night in front of my children. When I became pregnant I had an abortion – I never told my husband about it or about the other terrible things that happened, although I’m sure he knows.” Once the war had ended Mirella and her family, unable to return to their home town of Brcko, found their way to Sarejevo. Life is hard here. Mirella suffers from severe gynaecological problems as a result of her rape and has been diagnosed with depression.
“I have tried to take my life three times,” she admits. “I get 36km (£10) from the government every month and each child gets 26km. My husband gets 56km because he was in a war camp. I have to spend most of my money on medicines to stay calm and to help with the pain. I feel as though no one cares what has happened to our family. I only keep going because of my children.” Mirella’s experience is not unusual. In 1998 the International War Crimes Tribunal condemned rape as a crime against humanity, yet there is still no formal international or state response to sexual violence, the related trauma caused by rape or to what happens to the children born of it. In July this year, Unicef in Bosnia commissioned a report on the children born as a result of war rape. It is the first time any organisation has focused on these children. The report, however, remains unpublished.
Marijana Senjak, a psychologist working for the NGO Medica in Zenica, which assists women who have been abused, says ‘ A lot of politicians have taken advantage of the women’s plight and used the issues of war rape for their own ends. The state has done nothing to organise a unified response to women’s needs.
“It has used war rape as a political tool and a means to get money, nothing else.’
Amma was raped during the war when only 16 years old and became pregnant. Without the financial means to keep her child she was forced to place her in care. A frail woman now at 29 years old, tormented by her past and suffering from mental and physical health problems, Amma’s eyes fill with tears as she recalls the few precious years she had with her daughter.
“I remember celebrating her first birthday and the naming ceremony we had,” she says. “I kept her with me till she was five years old. I loved her. I had another child a few years later and that was hard – two young children, no job and the war going on which made everything very expensive. Nobody in the community wanted to help me because they knew where the first child had come from and hated me for it. I couldn’t work because no one wanted to look after the child. I went to the centre for support but they gave me nothing and took away my children.”
For women such as Amma the situation is made worse by the Bosnian government’s reluctance to recognise women as civilian victims of war. In October it agreed to pay compensation, but this has led to further problems as many within the government claim that women are falsifying claims of rape to receive money.
“In a traditional society with a huge stigma attached to rape it is unusual for women to report it, and at a later stage it is difficult to establish it medically,” says Slobodan Nagradic, Deputy Minister for Human Rights and Refugees. “So now women are coming forward and we have no way of knowing if they have really been raped or not. There are no living eyewitnesses and 10 to 12 years later it is difficult to establish the authenticity of these women’s claims. Many are very poor and may just be doing it for the money.”
Nagradic opposes publication of the Unicef report: “The children born of war rape are in a very vulnerable position compared to other children,” he says. “It is the obligation of our society to ensure that these children are not discriminated against and that is why we are being very careful about drawing attention to them. Women do not traditionally talk about rape here, he says, and those that do are using rape for political manipulation.”
It is not a line of argument with which Sanella would agree. Now 32, she was raped repeatedly by Serbian soldiers in her home town of Visegrad, became pregnant and then miscarried. She now works for a woman’s organisation in Bosnia, supporting fellow rape victims and says that she lives in fear that the soldiers who raped her will find her and refuses to testify in The Hague.
“I don’t believe that this war has stopped,” she says. “The war criminals are still around and we still have to see them. The police in charge know who they are and do nothing. We women, the victims of the war, have become its policemen. We have photographs of those who raped us and killed our men but there has been no care or help for women like me who have experience sexual violence on this level. “
Nadia made the difficult choice to keep her son, now aged 10. She became pregnant after being repeatedly raped by soldiers while interned in a concentration camp. She says that she wanted an abortion, but by the time she had escaped to Sarajevo it was too late. Her husband does not know that the child is not his.
“My husband and son were taken away during the war and I was put in a camp,” she says. “The soldiers would taunt me, calling me a Turkish whore. Then they began to rape me. I would cry every time and when I passed out I would wake up with a different soldier in the room and they would keep going until I didn’t come round any more. When they found out I was pregnant they put me on a truck and I arrived in Sarejevo. I had to take medicines to calm me down and I think this is why my son is so nervous and has to have therapy.”Nadia will not abandon her son as so many women have done with their children born of rape. “I love my son,” she says. “Sometimes I look at him and feel very angry though – I see him as a focus for what has gone wrong with my family and our lives.”
The full report: ‘Bosnian Rape Babies’ will be broadcast by Channel 4 news tonight from 7pm
keywords: Srebrenica Genocide, Srebrenica Massacre, Rapes, Mass Rapes of Women, Bosnia Rapes, Raped Women, Raped Girls, Bosniaks, Bosnian Muslims, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Srebrenica Massacre 