From: josip@src.umd.edu (Josip Loncaric)
Subject: Re: Irony continues in our history
Organization: Systems Research Center, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 14:44:53 GMT

In article <1992Aug13.062856.8817@cco.caltech.edu> simic@pollux.ccsf.caltech.edu (Petar Simic) writes:
>
>	Josip Loncaric writes:
>
> >>...(4) Mr. Simic conveniently forgets that the Holocaust in former
>    Yugoslavia was perpetrated by ALL Nazi puppets, including Serbia,
>    which had the audacity to celebrate reaching "judenfrei" status
>    by printing anti-semitic stamps in 1942.  He would have you believe
>    that the Holocaust happened only in Croatia, but this was a crime
>    of continent-wide proportions, and Serbia has participated in it
>    with equal cruelty, by exterminating almost all of its Jewish
>    population.  This is ugly history but Mr. Simic likes to
>    skip the parts which are not useful to him.
>
><<
>
>	This comment is one example of how far even some educated Croats of
> our time would go in their self-hypnotic denial and revisionisam of the 
> Holocaust history.  
>

Huh?  What I said IS a part of the Holocaust history.

>       Serbia was occupied by the Nazies the way, for example, France was,
> and Nazies had to do most of the killings in Serbia.

France is only now beginning to come to terms with its own role in
the Holocaust.  The complicity of Serbia in this crime has been documented
even better than what happened in France, but some Serbians like Mr. Simic
still deny responsibility.

This line of argument is very ugly.  Mr. Simic's selective memory distorts
what happened in an effort to justify Serbian aggression.  What I'm saying
is that we know (and Mr. Simic has told us many times) what happened in
Croatia in WWII --- but that he is glossing over Serbian complicity
in the Holocaust.  About half of the Jews who perished in Yugoslavia
in WWII had lived in Serbia --- but Mr. Simic is fond of forgetting.

Croats know what Ustashe had done, and reject it.  Some Serbs like
Mr. Simic have yet to begin to come to terms with their own ugly
history.

Today, a terrible war against Croats and other non-Serbs is being
justified by a variety of excuses: each group Serbs do not like gets
labeled: so today we hear charges about "genocidal" nature of the
Croats, about "fundamentalism" of Bosnian Muslims, about various
worldwide conspiracies against Serbia.

All of these charges are constructed to justify Serbian aggression
in progress today.  Serbian propaganda against Croatia started
in March of 1991, couple of weeks after Slobodan Milosevic was
threatened by popular unrest in Belgrade.  He needed an enemy,
just like he rose to power by claiming that he'd save Serbians
from Kosovo Albanians, now he needed another enemy in order to stay
in power (this story on Mr. Milosevic comes from the New York Times
magazine, 1991).

In Mr. Milosevic's propaganda world, confirmed anti-fascists are being
labeled as Ustashe.  The present Croatian leaders had fought against
Ustashe and lost family members in this struggle, just like thousands
of other Croats who stood up to fascism.  And yet, Serbian propaganda
distorts the truth to obscure the fact that Serbia is waging a war of 
conquest against its neighbors.

Josip


Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish