From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: HOLOCAUST HISTORY MISAPPROPRIATED BY SERBIA (P.J.Cohen)
Date: 28 Dec 1992 21:41:54 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

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  Midstream - November, 1992

    Holocaust History Misappropriated

    Philip J. Cohen

    In conjunction with the war in former Yugoslavia,  Serbia has undertaken a
    campaign to persuade the  Jewish community of Serbian friendship for Jews.
    This same campaign portrays Croats 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 histo-
    ry 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 pro-
    paganda the Holocaust that  occurred in neighboring  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 communi-
    ties of Serbia enjoyed religious tolerance, internal autonomy, and equali-
    ty 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 again  expelled from the  interior,  in  conjunction  with
    laws  forbidding  Jews the right of domicile, and Jews were further prohi-
    bited 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 of 1878, which formally established  the  Serbian  state,
    accorded political and civil equality to the  Jews of Serbia, but the Ser-
    bian 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  restrict-
    ing Jewish participation in the economy  and  university  enrollment.  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 dom-
    ination. Newspapers such as Obnova  (Renewal) and Nasa Borba  (Our  Strug-
    gle)  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 authori-
    ties issued postage stamps  commemorating the opening of this popular  ex-
    hibit.  These stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian symbols (but did
    not contain Nazi 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 state visit to Adolf Hitler.  Serbs in Berlin
    advanced the idea that Serbs were the  Ubermenschen (master race)  of  the
    Slavs.

    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,  com-
    pared  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 Serbia Fascist party and the principal Fascist ideologist  of  Serbia.
    Ljotic  organized  the Serbian Volunteer Corps, whose primary function was
    rounding up Jews, Gypsies, and partisans for execution.  Serbian  citizens
    and police received  cash bounties for the capture and delivery of Jews.

    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 Na-
    tion,"   which called for loyalty to the occupying Nazis. The first  three
    signers were bishops of the Serbian Orthodox  Church. On  30January  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  enor-
    mously  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  Orthodox  antisemitism  combined  with
    historical  revisionism  is  the case of  Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic (188-
    1956), revered as one of the  most influential church leaders and  ideolo-
    gists after Saint  Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. To Serbs,
    Bishop Velimirovic was a martyr, who survived torture in the  Dachau pris-
    on  camp. In truth, he was brought to Dachau (as  were other prominent Eu-
    ropean clergy), because the Nazis  believed he could be  useful  for  pro-
    paganda.  There  he  spent   approximately  two months as an Ehrenhaftling
    (honor 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 Bishop endorsed the
    Holocaust:

    Europe is presently the main battlefield of the Jew and  his  father,  the
    devil,  against  the  heavenly Father and his only begotten Son .... Uews]
    first need to become legally equal with Christians  in  order  to  repress
    Christianity next, turn Christians into atheists, 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 reli-
    gions, pacifism, universal revolution, capitalism, and communism  ...  All
    this has been done with  the intention to humiliate 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 in Serbia. The long concealed Historical Archives of Belgrade re-
    veal that Bajnica, a concentration camps located in Belgrade, was primari-
    ly  staffed by Serbs. Funding for conversion of the former barracks of the
    Serbian 18th infantry division to a concentration camp, as well as operat-
    ing  expenses of the camp, came from the municipal budget of Belgrade. The
    camp was divided into German and Serbian sections. From Bajnica there sur-
    vive  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  con-
    tracted  with  the  Gestapo to purchase these same victim's clothes, which
    sometimes contained hidden money or jewelry  in  the  linings.  In  August
    1942,  following the virtual liquidation of Serbia's Jews, Nedic's govern-
    ment 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 Ortodox
    Church, the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian police, and the Serbian  pub-
    lic.

    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.  Accord-
    ing  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
    Chetniks actively collaborated with both  Nazis and Fascists, and for this
    reason Jewish fighters found  it necessary to  abandon  the  Chetniks,  in
    favor of Tito's  Partisans.  In reality, the Chetniks, dedicated primarily
    to the  restoration of the Serbian throne and the territorial expansion of
    the Serbian state, were the moral counterpart of  Croatia's Ustasha.  Both
    were quintessentially genocidal; the  Chetniks committed systematic  geno-
    cide  against  Muslims,  who, for nearly all of 500 years had lived peace-
    fully with the  Sephardic Jewish community.  Under  explicit  orders  from
    their  leader Draza Mihajlovic, the Chetniks attempted to  depopulate Ser-
    bia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia of all  non-Serbs and,  in  the  pro-
    cess, massacred most of the 86,000  to 103,000 Muslims who perished during
    the war.

    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   Li-
    byan,  Iraqi, and Yugoslav intelligence services. During  the 1991 Persian
    Gulf War, as Iraqi missiles landed in  Israel, Belgrade supported its ally
    Iraq.  Support of antiIsrael terrorism may be a consequence of support for
    nonaligned Arab states, rather than an expression of   anti-Jewish  senti-
    ment.

    Although the Jewish community of Serbia is not currently experiencing per-
    secution,  overt  expressions  of  Serbian antisemitism do surface in such
    mainstream institutions as the Serbian Orthodox Church  and  the  official
    news  media.  The  15January 1992 issue of the official publication of the
    Serbian Orthodox Church, Pravoslavlje  (Orthodoxy), carried an article en-
    titled,  "Jews  Crucify  Christ Again." In this polemic, "treacherous" and
    "surreptitious" Israeli politicians were said to be constrained from   ex-
    pressing  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  di-
    plomatic recognition to the former Yugoslav republics of  Croatia and Slo-
    venia, 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  massa-
    cred by Serbian forces after the last armed 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 Hil-
    lel  House  of George Washington  University in Washington, D.C., she pro-
    vided 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  re-
    lations  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 consti-
    tuency. 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 con-
    tact  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,  Serbi-
    an  collaboration  with  the  Nazis, and Serbian genocide  against Croats,
    Gypsies, and Muslims. It warns of an imminent Holocaust being initiated in
    Croatia.  A  contrasting   portrayal  of  Croatia, however, emerges from a
    spectrum of  Croatian Jews, AmericanJews 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 2,000Jews 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. The
    Croats must either  move or die." Croats 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 ex-
    pulsion  of   Muslims and Croats from captured regions is "ethnic  cleans-
    ing." The indigenous non-Serbian populations of the   invaded  territories
    are  being driven from their homes, exterminated, or imprisoned in concen-
    tration camps, to create  regions of Serbian ethnic purity. Jewish commun-
    ity  centers,  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 ideology 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.


    PHILIP J. COHEN is a dermatologist and  immunologist  engaged  in  medical
    research and clinical practice.
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