From: simic@pollux.ccsf.caltech.edu (Petar Simic)
Subject: Re: Irony continues in our history
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 06:31:18 GMT

 	Mr. Josip Loncaric writes:

>>  There is no doubt that WWII was a tragedy for all peoples of the
    former Yugoslavia.  For example, the best available estimates say
    that Serbs lost about 500,000 people from all causes in WWII...
<<

	This may be the best estimate *you* (as well as todays official
 Croatia) are willing to accept. But, I reject to play this bargain game
 (because I feel sick whenever I have to). Instead, I will let French
 historian, Edmund Paris speak (from his book, "Genocide In Satellite
 Croatia"), not about the total Serbian loss in the WWII, but only about
 part of it - massacres of Serbs in part of the former Yugoslavia (Croatia,
 which with Hitlers help included also most of the Bosnia and Hercegovina).

	Here is the relevant paragraph:
	-------------------------------

	" ...There (in Croatia), in years 1941-1945, some 750,000 Serbs,
 60,000 Jews, and 26,000 Gypsies - men, women and children - perished in
 a gigantic holocaust. These are the figures used by most foreign authors,
 especially the Germans, who were in the best position to know. Herman
 Neubacher, perhaps the most important of Hitler's troubleshooters in the
 Balkans, reports that althought some of the perpetrators of the crime 
 estimated number of Serbs killed at one million, the more accurate figure
 is 750,000 [*]. One of Hitler's generals, Lothar Rendulic, who was in the
 area where the crimes were committed, estimates that in the first year
 of the existence of the puppet state of Croatia at last a half million
 Orthodox Serbs were massacred, and that many others were killed in 
 subsequent years [**]...."

 	[*]  "Sonder-Auftrag Suedost 1940-1945: Bericht eines fliegenden
	      Diplomaten" (Goettingen-Berlin-Frankfurt, 1956), pp. 31-32;

      [**] "Gekaempft Gesigt Geschagen", (Heidelberg, 1952), pp. 161-162.  

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>>... Mr. Simic's claim that Tito's partisans were "overwhelmingly Serbian" 
  until the end of the war is NONSENSE.
<<

	The fact that Serbs joined in huge numbers both of the anti-fascists
 movements in Yugoslavia - partisans and royalists - is well known and well
 documented. Partisan units in Croatia were overwhelmingly made of Serbs,
 because Serbs had to flee the terror of Croatian fascists in these areas.
 Some Croats did also join the partisan movement, but the number was really
 negligible. Even the Croats who privatelly disapproved the mass-extermination
 of Jews and Serbs, mostly stayed home untill the war was practically ower.
 Here is one excert form the book current president of Croatia, Mr. Tudjmans
 book:

	"Because the position of the Croatian people after the declaration of
 NDH was essentially different from the one of the Serbian people, there were
 no existential reasons for rebellion." ( p.442, "Wastelands of Historical
 Reality",Nakladni Zavod Matice Hrvatske, 1989 )..."

 	"Spreading of the partisan movement in Croatia came depending upon
 the realisation of the broad masses of people that the Independent State
 of Croatia does not mean the solution of the Croatian national question,
 because this state would share the fate of fascism and Hitler's Europian
 order...(pp.443)..."

	------------------------------

	Sincerely,
	Petar.