From: pshane@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Ana M. Shane)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Subject: Re: YASC(yet another sincere question)
Date: 8 Oct 92 05:39:46 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

U52148@uicvm.uic.edu writes:

>The reasons we mention the name Ante Pavelic with honor is beceuse:

>   1) He unified the Croatian provinces split up through history.

...exactly what the Serbian leadership is trying to do today: to unite
all Serbian provinces split up through history... Should Serbs support
it in the same way you admire Pavelic? Why would THAT alone make them
any DIFFERENT from you?

>   2) He showed the Serbs that they should not fuck with us.

>Point number two. The Serbs immediatly began attacking Croatia. Croats,

...."immediately" when?

>catholic and muslim, were able to show the Serbs that we are no longer
>"tamburasi" or tamburitza players. I have heard stories in which the
>muslims would simply approach a given village and the Serbs would flee
>without a shot being fired. The Serb response after Tito defeated the
>Ustasi were harsh. 100,000 soldiers were said to have died in the death
>marches from Bleiburg to Belgrade. The Serb "genocide" is a joke. What they
>did do was inflate the numbers of Serbs killed so they could get war
>reparations. The number of 70- 100,000 is a bit more accurate of
>SERBS KILLED ON CROATIAN SOIL. THE SERBS SHOULD REMEMBER THAT THEY TOO
>WERE AT WAR WITH: GERMANY, ALBANIA, BULGARIA, HUNGARY, AS WELL AS
>CROATIA. I highly doubt that the Serbs are that great of fighters
>that they could withstand attacks by Albania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Germany
>without taking a single casualty.

Nobody - NOBODY - in the former Yugoslavia ever got war reparations!
Not form Germany, not from Croatia, or form anybody! The whole issue 
of the war reparations was officially (on the level of the whole
country) stopped. Much later, in the seventies, Tito made an agreement
with Brandt to write off the reparations claims in order to get a high
interest long term loan from Germany. The loan was obtained eventually, and
Germany has solved that part of the war reparations for Yugoslav citizens
in a most satisfactory way: instead of paying them, they were even charging
interest!!! to the money they "lent". (You can verify all of the above
if you read the biography of Willi Brandt: this was one of the big
successes he had been bosating about).
So much for the reparations from Germany...

As for the reparations from Croatia the WWII open member of the
Axis with all the institutions for persecuting targeted ethnic and
political groups... they were not paid to anyone: not even to the
smallest NUMBER of admitted victims of several death camps.!!!
And when we are about NUMBERS, do you think that 70-100.000 victims
is a SMALL number? Does it somehow make the atrocity smaller?


>   3) Given the repressive regime prior to WWII, Ustasa was reactionary.

...Let me remind you that ALL wars are reactionary...

>My last point. The kingdom at the time prior to WWII was a dictatorship.
>The Serbs, in 1929 had kille Stjepan Radic, a Croat politician who
>advocated Croatian independence. King Alexander paid for that. The regime
>was such, that landowners were FORCED to give up their land. This was
>mainly pointed at the muslim Begs in BiH as well as in Sandzak. The
>Serbs also wanted to convert catholics to the otrhodox faith and therefore
>Serbianize them. The Serb regime was no picnic, maybe you ought to read
>up on this AND then go into the WWII history.

The problem with your thinking is that you confuse two levels: the level
of the government and the level of People. On the level of the government
there were indeed all the battles you describe and many more (it is much
more complex and many different colors of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians
etc existed and exist with their narrow interests). On the level of the people,
nobody was better of because some rather than the other officials scored.
The Serbian people were as pauperized and as disenfranchised as the
Croatian people and any other people in the pre WWII Yugoslavia. (Although
I have never before heard that Serbs wanted to convert catholics to the
orthodox! please give references for that point!)


See, I think that you fell and are falling for the same (although differently
directed) propaganda as some people in Serbia have: You think that the
cause of all bad that was happening and happens is THEM, in this case
the Serbs. They think exactly the same only in their eyes it is YOU. You
believe YOUR leaders, and they believe their leaders. But all of you
are in fact in the same pot: the only ones who could possibly have any
profit or gain are these leaders! They are playing with the lives of
their own peoples just like chess figures: with no regard for the
humanity and human lives.

Don't believe what you have been told, just as you recommend the Serbs
not to belive: go find out for yourself! And always think when you read
what was really good for the people and what was not... And you will find 
very little, almost nothing that was done by leaders pre WWII or after
that was genuinely done for the good of their own people! And above all,
if you want to really know and really do something good, do not hate any
people in general: hate just those individuals for which you KNOW positively
that they are to blame (this is, after all, the principle of democracy here:
nobody is guilty until proven so!) as individuals. It is a common sense 
knowledge that no nation consist of entirely bad or entirely good people:
all of us are different!


>            --ZA DOM SPREMNI--

>            --READY FOR THE HOMELAND--

>-Chicago Cro


  With hopes for peace

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Ana M. Shane                              voice: (215)-843-2909
334 Winona St.
Philadelphia, PA 19144      e)mail: pshane@andromeda.rutgers.edu