From: josip@src.umd.edu (Josip Loncaric)
Subject: Re: Irony continues in our history
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Organization: Systems Research Center, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 18:50:35 GMT

This is more about the Serb-Croat conflict than about Jewish culture.
Followup to soc.culture.yugoslavia.

In article <1992Aug14.160353.24463@cco.caltech.edu> simic@pollux.ccsf.caltech.edu (Petar Simic) writes:
>	Josip Loncaric writes:
>>>>
>...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.
>
><<<
>
>  	My grandmother and her five kids had to flee Kosovo (southern Serbia)
> when the war started, because the local Albanians who took ower the province
> when Hitler came started killing the local Serbs (men), and my grandfather
> had to flee. She had some gold and house which she sold and they left for
> Kragujevac (average size town in Serbia proper). The family spent rest of
> the war there, accepting in their small house two Jewish families who where
> hiding from Nazies, and were eventually transfered to a safer place by
> the Serbian royalists. The story about these times passed to me by my
> grandmother and my mother is my personal insight into Serbia under Nazi
> occupation, and the predominantly friendly attitude of Serbs toward Jews.
> This is about personal responsibility part of your comment.

And the same story of salvation is repeated in Croatia, too.  Jews who
managed to escape from German to Italian zone of Croatia were sheltered
by ordinary Croatians, too.  Similar stories are also repeated in  France
and in other European countries, where ordinary people risked their
lives to save Jews.  This, however, did not prevent the Holocaust.

Serbs and Croats both have a great tradition of hospitality, and 
making everything they have available to their guests.

>	As far as "selective memories" and "justifications", let me remaind you
> that we are discussing the historical facts, and it is not my intention to
> justify anything. Serbia proper was occupied by the Germans. Regular
> Serbian army was in the woods traying to organize anti-fascistic
> resistance. Irregulars (partisans) were in the hills doing the same.
> The overall feeling of the population was violently anti-fascist. The
> overal feeling toward Jews was traditionally friendly. The only organized
> killing machine were German divisions who executed several thousands of
> Jews, and deported to Croatia and Germany the rest. There, they were
> eventually executed by fascists. In Serbia, Germans also have executed
> many thousands of Serbian civilians in retributions for frequent guerilla
> attacks on them. Hundred civilians for one Germans solder was the Hitlers
> rule *for Serbia*. If there were cases of Serbs from local administration
> doing wrong to Jews, such cases were as rare as the circumstances would
> allow, and can not be  * by any strech of imagination *  (or available 
> historic documentation) compared to the share Germans have for attrocities
> against Jews in Serbia, or with what Croatian fascists did to Jews and Serbs
> in their Croatian independent state.

One correction: Belgrade gas chambers were operated by local Serbs.

Serbs did resist occupation, but after reprisals you describe their
resistance was tamed (read Churchil!!!).  But at the same time, Serbia
was being administered by a Nazi puppet government formed by a
Serbian, Nedic, and this government assisted the Nazis in every way, 
including the Holocaust.  This is recorded, please learn it.

>	On the other hand, Croats runed their own independent Croatian state 
> (NDH), they had their own and rather numerous fascistic army (ustashas)
> members of which fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Germans in as remote
> places as Russia, they had their publicly proclaimed policy of exterminating
> Serbs and Jews, and they had highly efficient state runed death-camps in 
> which systematic extermination of civilians (just because they are Serbs or 
> Jews) took place. Not by Germans, but, by Croatian fascists. Any credible
> historic document about the Holocaust in this region will testify to this. 

Yes, Croatian fascists had concentration camps.  Their victims were, in
order of importance to Ustashe: (1) Serbs, (2) Croatian Communists, 
(3) Jews and (4) others.  Ustashe were dependant on Axis powers for
their support and supplies, and in return Ustashe had to provide 
soldiers, manufactured goods, and raw materials; and they had to
follow Nazi policies.  Ustashe would have made a deal with the Devil himself
to get rid of Serbian influence, but their anti-Semitism was secondary, 
encouraged by their masters.  So, Ustashe collected the "undesirable"
Serbs, Croatian opposition, Jews and Gypsies; and exploited them to 
death.

I should point out that Vladko Macek, leader of the main political force in
Croatia, Croatian Peasant Party, has also been sent to Jasenovac (by
Ustase) initially, and then spent the rest of the war under house
arrest.

And here I have my own story to tell, just like you had yours.  Many members
of my own family were active in anti-fascist resistance, and one of them
(a Croat) had been sent to Jasenovac.  At the end of the war, he and
other prisoners learned that they were to be killed, so they charged
the camp gates.  Many were machine-gunned, but my relative was one of
the 500 or so who survived.  He weighed less than 100 lbs at that point.  

As a Croat, he could have done nothing and Ustashe would have left him
alone.  But he could NOT accept what Ustashe were doing, so he did the
right thing: he resisted, and suffered for it.

>
>>>...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.
><<
>
>	First, you do not seem to know, and reject you do, to accept. For
> example, last time you claimed that the "best available estimate" of the
> Serbian loss in the WWII was about 500,000, while the well known and
> numerous German, Italian and British documents, testimonies written by
> direct witnesses of the crimes, and schoolary studies by the main-stream
> domestic (YU) and foreign historians (partial list would be compiled and
> posted if requested), estimates the number to be over one million [*]. The
> lawish number of these were systematically murdered in the Croatian
> concentration camps. Not by Germans.

You are selecting your sources.  For example, Robert D. Kaplan in his
article "Croatianism" (highly critical of Croatia) (New Republic, Nov. 25, 
1991) says essentially what I said.  Most independent observers agree,
while Vojislav Seselj (a Serbian neo-fascist) uses data similar to
yours to spur his forces to war.

>	Second, Croats have been mostly speared (by the Tito's communist as
> their way of keeping country together) from coming to terms with their
> crimes against the humanity (unlike Germans). The fact that some still invest
> enormous energy in trying to racionalize this self-denial makes me deeply
> sad.

This is nonsense.  EVERY school child for the past 50 years has had to
learn all about Ustashe and their crimes.  Schoolchildren were bussed
to Jasenovac as a part of their curriculum.  So where do you get the
idea that Croats have been "spared" by Tito from comming to terms
with this ugly period of their history?

Second, Croatia has paid dearly for Ustashe crimes.  Ordinary Croatian
recruits and their families were killed in Serbian reprisals after the war,
even though they may have had nothing to do with Ustashe: they were just
drafted into the army.  Serbs made them march for hundreds of miles
without food or water until they died by the side of the road, and
nobody was allowed to help them.  Many thousands more were executed
and thrown into caves: these were revenge killings and killings by
the Communists who wanted to solidify their hold on power.  The real
culprits, Ustashe, have also been executed:  not one known Ustasha
was left alive in Croatia.  Their leaders fled the country, however,
and died in exile (except Andrija Artukovic, who was extradited
from the USA several years ago, tried and sentenced).

No doubt, some of the executed were guilty of war crimes.  But the
vast majority were executed either because they were a threat to
the Communists or in revenge simply because they happened to be
drafted into the wrong army.

>	On the other hand, Serbs are generally proud of their history,
> and their massive anti-fascist rebelion and positive conduct in the WWII
> makes them even more so. Your phrase, "their own ugly history", I do not
> understand, and could accept only as an insult which comes from deep 
> ignorance (at best), or from pure hate. 

You confirm what I said: you refuse to accept that Serbs did anything
wrong in WWII, but they did.  You remember only the "good parts" and
forget that which hurts your self-image.  Here is a partial list of
Serbian misdeeds in WWII:

(1) Nedic and his government implemented Nazi policies, including the 
    Holocaust, throughout Serbia.  Serbs carried out those policies.

(2) Mihajlovic and his Serbian royalist forces stopped fighting the
    Nazis and turned to terrorizing non-Serbian population, and
    even collaborating with the Nazis against Tito's resistance forces.

(3) Serbian Communists (a faction within the victorious Tito's forces)
    carried out massive reprisals against all Croatians, guilty or not,
    who had been drafted into the NDH army.  Also, they executed
    thousands of potential non-Communist, non-fascist oponents in Croatia,
    and even leading Croatian Communists, like Andrija Hebrang.
>
>	[If the case you would insist, it would not be hard to compile and
> post here number of references on the Holocaust in Balkans during the WWII
> and let the documents speak for themselves]
>
>	------------------------
>
>	Petar.

I have one thing to say: Serbian Jews experienced the same fate as 
Croatian Jews.  In Serbia, there was the Belgrade gas chamber,
in Croatia, Jasenovac.  Both were operated by the local authorities,
and both are a part of the Holocaust history.  In both countries
(they were different countries in WWII) Jews had lived in similar
numbers, were collected by local forces, and delivered to slaughter.
THIS is UGLY history of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia.  Croats know what
Ustashe had done -- do you know what Serbian quislings under Nedic
had done?

Josip


Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish