Corpus Delicti

Bosnian Muslim Kasim Blekic was allegedly murdered by Bosnian Serbs but was, in fact, alive outside of Sarajevo.

One of the fundamental legal principles or concepts of jurisprudence is that before a person can be charged with a crime, evidence must be shown that a crime has occurred. This is known by the legal principle of “corpus delicti”, the body of a crime, meaning that there must be evidence that a crime has occurred before a defendant can be charged or prosecuted for the crime. The 6^th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary (1990) gives the meaning of corpus delicti as “the fact of a crime having been actually committed”. In a murder or homicide case, evidence must be presented that meets the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. In  murder cases, evidence must show that the specific injury has occurred, a human being has died, and that the injury can be ascribed to criminal agency on the part of an individual as the cause of the injury, that the victim died due to a criminal act.

Bosnian Serb Borislav Herak was born in Sarajevo and lived and worked in the capital city of Bosnia-Hercegovina but was referred to as a “Serb” by the U.S. and Western media, and by his Bosnian Muslim captors, stripping him of his Bosnian and Sarajevo identity, implying he was from Serbia.

The concept of corpus delicti is essential and elemental in all murder or homicide cases. It is the bedrock upon which the crime of murder is prosecuted in Anglo-American jurisprudence. During the Bosnian civil rar of 1992-1995, this fundamental legal precept was blatantly and flagrantly violated. The most egregious case is that of the prosecution of Bosnian Serbs Borislav Herak and Sretko Damjanovic. In March, 1993 they were tried, and subsequently convicted of committing war crimes by the Bosnian Muslim faction and sentenced to death. Herak, who had been born on January 18, 1971 in Sarajevo and who had worked as a store clerk, was charged with raping 16 Bosnian Muslim women and murdering 32 Bosnian Muslim POWs and civilians, although the figures were repeatedly altered. After their conviction, two of their alleged victims, Kasim and Asim Blekic, were found alive.

Bosnian Serb Borislav Herak was put in a 6-by-12 foot cell, after he was beaten and his head was shaved by his Bosnian Muslim guards.

In the January 31, 1996 New York Times story “Symbol of Inhumanity in Bosnia Now Says ‘Not Me’”, Kit R. Roane admitted that there was no corpus delicti, no evidence of any crimes, murders or rapes: “The Bosnian Government has no witnesses to the killings and has recovered no bodies.” The Houston Chronicle reported similarly that there was no evidence of any crimes: “There are no witnesses to the killings Herak is said to have committed and no bodies of those thought dead have been recovered.”

Bosnian Serbs Borislav Herak and Sretko Damjanovic were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by execution by firing squad based on the absence of a corpus delicti, based on the lack of any evidence. How is this justice? Why was the Bosnian Muslin faction allowed to stage this travesty of justice?

This egregious perversion of justice was sponsored and endorsed by the U.S. government and the U.S. media. John F. Burns even received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his “interviews” of Borislav Herak. Herak and Damjanovic later recanted their “confessions” which were obtained through torture. Damjanovic displayed four knife wounds and a broken rib. The Bosnian Muslim interrogators and guards had beaten, tortured, and abused him to obtain a false confession.

John F. Burns won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that was based on lies and deceptions in 1993.

On March 1, 1997, John F. Burns’ newspaper, The New York Times, in a story by Chris Hedges revealed that the two Bosnian Muslim murder victims were actually alive. In the story, “Jailed Serbs’ ‘Victims’ Found Alive, Embarrassing Bosnia”, the New York Times disclosed that the alleged murder victims had been members of the Bosnian Muslim Army during the civil war who still lived in Sarajevo. Kasim Blekic was photographed raising sheep outside of Sarajevo.

This horrendous miscarriage and travesty of justice has not, however, received the attention and analysis it deserves. Moreover, Burns was never stripped of his Pulitzer Prize for fraudulent and fake reporting. Ironically, the prize was named for Joseph Pulitzer, who was, along with William Randolph Hearst, one of the founders of yellow journalism, a deceptive, sensationalist, and distorted form of journalism that is more akin to propaganda or public relations than to news reporting.

No Comments »

The American World War II Film: Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas (1943)

In The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film (Lexington, KY, The University Press of Kentucky, 1985, republished in 1996 with Afterword), film historian Bernard F. Dick analyzed the role and impact of the 20^th Century Fox wartime movie Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas (1943) on pages 163-165. He noted that “Hollywood managed to cover most of the European resistance movements, directly or indirectly. “ The Soviet Union, as an ally of the U.S., was also portrayed positively in such films as MGM’s Song of Russia (1944), Warner Brothers’ Mission to Moscow (1943) starring Robert Taylor, and RKO’s The North Star (1943) written by Lillian Hellman and Days of Glory (1944) starring Gregory Peck. These movies became controversial after the war when the U.S.S.R. became a global rival of the U.S.

One of the most successful and critically acclaimed wartime movie was on the Balkans, the former Yugoslavia, on the resistance movement headed by Draza Mihailovich. Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas was both a box office and critical success. Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly made a public appearance for the movie in April, 1943 and The Ink Spots and Lucky Millinder performed on stage before it was shown in theaters. The movie was reviewed favorably in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.
 
Hollywood had made To Be or Not To Be (1942) and In Our Time (1944) starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid on the Polish resistance. The Conspirators (1944) was on the Dutch resistance. Casablanca (1942) by Warner Brothers featured fictional Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo, played by Paul Henreid, and made reference to the Free French resistance movement led by Charles de Gaulle with its symbol of the cross of Lorraine. Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas was one of the rare Hollywood movies on the Balkans.

As the Yugoslav conflict became more complex, entangled, and controversial, Hollywood tended to stay away from making any films on the Balkans. As Dick noted, Greece was another country ignored by Hollywood during the war, largely because of its complexity:
 
“Greece was a notable omission; Chetniks (1943) vaguely alludes to Greek guerrillas, but it was not until The Angry Hills (1959) and The Guns of Navarone (1961) that Americans saw them in action.

 “The Greek resistance was uncommonly complex. The two leading guerrilla organizations were politically bipolar: the Communist-dominated ELAS and the republican EDES. Their coalescence, achieved through British efforts, was purely temporary; when it ended, civil war erupted (although it was nowhere as bloody as the internecine massacres in Yugoslavia). If screenwriters had difficulty with the Spanish civil war, they would have been equally uncomfortable with the Greek resistance and its Communist and anti-Communist factions.”

Dick compared the Greece scenario to the Yugoslav conflict, where similar rival resistance movements vied for Allied support:
 
“There was a similar problem with the Yugoslav resistance with its two politically distinct guerrilla bands: the Chetniks led by the royalist Drazha Mihailovich and the Partisans under the Communist Tito. In 1942, Mihailovich was a likely prospect for a film; the British still supported him (though not for long), and he had appeared on the cover of Time. Thus Fox went ahead with Chetniks, subtitled The Fighting Guerrillas, which may well be the greatest embarrassment of the 1940s: it is never revived or shown on television, nor can it be rented. While Britain was able to salvage its film about the Yugoslav resistance, changing the title from Chetniks to Undercover (1943) and the focus from the Chetniks to the Partisans, Fox was stuck with its paean to Mihailovich; the dedication only attests to the unalterably admiring tone of the film: ‘This picture is respectfully dedicated to Draja Mikhailovitch and his fighting Chetniks—those fearless guerrillas who have dedicated their lives with a grim determination that no rest shall prevail until the final allied victory and the liberation of their beloved fatherland, Yugoslavia, has been achieved.’”

Dick emphasized the reluctance of Hollywood to do a movie on the Communist Partisans under Tito was due in part because they were Communists:
 
“On the other hand, a movie about Tito’s Partisans would have ended up on the House Committee on Unamerican Activities’ list of subversive films and might have been a different sort of embarrassment: a Yugoslav Song of Russia. Favoring the right can be as precarious as favoring the left. But in 1942 Fox could not have known that the British would back Tito, or that in 1946 Mihailovich would be sentenced to death on a collaboration charge and executed as a fascist. While Chetniks shows Mihailovich (Philip Dorn) killing Nazis, it also shows him ransoming Italians, who were still members of the Axis. It was precisely because of such activity that the British stopped supporting Mihailovich.”

Dick noted, however, that the movie was well-written and deserved to be rescued from the obscurity it had been consigned to because of the changing circumstances of the war:
 
“Admirers of epigrammatic dialogue should not dismiss Chetniks. When a Nazi colonel discovers that Mihailovich has feigned a retreat, he tells one of his generals, “The exodus of the children of Israel has started, and you will have the opportunity of playing the Red Sea.” Surely a movie with such a line warrants at least one airing on the Late Late Show.”

Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas became politically incorrect and an anachronism after the Allies abandoned Mihailovich and threw their support to Tito, a known Communist and Stalinist. After the 1948 Tito-Stalin split, Tito manipulated and exploited the Cold War antagonisms and rivalries to play the two superpowers off against each other. The U.S. became a supporter of the totalitarian Communist regime  and dictatorship established by Tito under the concept that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. As a result, U.S. policy and public opinion tended to favor the Tito regime. Under this regimen, Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas was further relegated to insignificance and obscurity, in fact, totally suppressed and virtually deleted from film history.

It was only after the collapse of Communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1991 that a more critical attitude was taken towards World War II. In 1967, it had been revealed that Draza Mihailovich had been awarded the Legion of Merit Award in 1948 by U.S. President Harry S. Truman on the recommendation of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mihailovich had rescued 513 U.S. airmen, one of the largest Allied rescue operations behind enemy lines during World War II. As the role of Mihailovich in World War II was thus re-examined and re-evaluated, the movie became much more relevant and important in assessing the role Mihailovich played in the war. As a result, the movie gained wider exposure and availability on the internet. The movie allows new generations to revisit and to reassess and to re-evaluate the role that Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas played in World War II.

No Comments »

Within Closed Frontiers: An Eyewitness Account of the Guerrilla War in Yugoslavia During World War II

In Within Closed Frontiers: A Woman in Wartime Yugoslavia (London and Edinburgh: W. and R. Chambers, 1956), Lena A. Yovitchitch gave her eyewitness account of the guerrilla war in Yugoslavia during World War II.

Lena A. Yovitchitch, born in 1885 as Lenka A. Jovichic, had dual nationality, Yugoslav and British. She was the daughter of the Serbian charge d’ affaires in London, Alexander Yovitchich. She lived in Serbia during the German occupation and was an eyewitness to the guerrilla conflict. Her other books included The Biography of a Serbian Diplomat (London: Epworth, 1939), on her father Alexander Zdravko Yovitchitch (1856-1933), Pages From Here and There in Serbia, with a preface by Bogdan Popovitch (Belgrade: S. B. Cvijanovich, 1926), and Peeps at Many Lands: Yugoslavia (London: A. and C. Black, Ltd., 1928).

The publisher described the book as follows on the dustjacket cover: “It describes the patriotic Chetniks … harassing the occupation troops in a way that sent a tremor back to Berlin and the Wehrmacht Oberkommando.” 

She described how Draza Mihailovich formed the first guerrilla resistance movement in Yugoslavia after Yugoslavia was occupied by Axis troops:

“When Yugoslavia was invaded in the spring of 1941 Colonel Drazha Mihailovitch was Chief of Staff of a Division operating in Bosnia. He refused to accept the order to capitulate, and with a small number of officers and men who rallied to his side he withdrew to the wooded heights of Ravna Gora in North-Western Serbia, and there the first Resistance Movement was organised. At that time Mihailovitch was unknown to the outside world, but he was destined to fill a place in history. His Guerrilla Forces went under the name of Chetniks derived from the word Cheta, meaning a company or group of commandos. Mihailovitch’s Resistance Movement grew rapidly and soon his Chetniks were fighting in mountains and forests throughout Serbia, and also in many parts of Bosnia, Hertzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia and Srem. They waged pitched-battles against the enemy until heavy reprisals made this form of warfare impracticable. The Chetniks then resorted to surprise attacks, combined with acts of sabotage.”

She noted that two rival resistance groups emerged, the Chetniks under Draza Mihailovich and the Communist Partisans under Josip Broz Tito. She emphasized that Draza Mihailovich sought to establish democracy while Tito sought to create a Communist totalitarian dictatorship modeled on the Soviet dictatorship of Joseph Stalin:

“Some of the Guerrillas followed the leadership of Drazha Mihailovitch in his struggle for Democracy, others were in favour of Tito, whose aim was to establish a totalitarian regime…”

She empashized the fact that the Chetnik guerrillas under Draza Mihailovich became the recognized resistance movement by the Allied governments: The Chetniks, “concealed in the topmost branches of trees, hidden behind boulders or lurking in the ruins of bombed houses, they were ever ready to strike at the enemy. The Yugoslav Government in exile appreciated the importance of Mihailovitch’s Guerrilla warfare with regard to Yugoslavia’s ultimate liberation and the Allies’ cause. By January, 1942, the Chetniks were organized into territorial brigades and corps; these military formations were then recognised by the Yugoslav Government in exile and termed The Royal Yugoslav Army in the Homeland. In June, 1942, Drazha Mihailovitch was promoted to the rank of General, and appointed Minister of War and Deputy Commander-in-Chief.”

She discussed the German policy of executing 100 Serbian civilians for every German soldier that was killed by the guerrilla resistance and how this forced the Chetniks to avoid unnecessary battles and skirmishes with Axis forces: 

“One day in the middle of summer in 1943 …. A skirmish had suddenly sprung up between a small company of Germans and a band of Chetniks. … They knew that if so much as one German lost his life a hundred Serbs would be arrested and shot.”
 
Yovitchitch noted that the Chetnik guerrillas intensified their attacks against Axis troops in 1943 in anticipation of an expected Allied landing in Yugoslavia. She noted that attacks against German troops would result in reprisals against Serbian civilians. She noted how the cost in human life was not worth the price for reckless and futile attacks that had no or very little military value. The German occupation troops targeted Serbian civilians for execution because they were, on the whole, the only segment of the Yugoslav population that resisted the Nazis. Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians all were allies and collaborators of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and thus were generally not targeted for execution. When the guerrillas attacked German troops, the German High Command ineluctably retaliated by executing Serbian civilians, in the ratio of one hundred Serbs for every German soldier killed: “In 1943 the Chetniks once more adopted tactics of sabotage in order to impede German activities: obstructing railway lines, cutting down telegraph poles, thwarting and hampering the enemy as much as possible. This was commendable; however, in the opinion of many Serbs living in the country it was questionable whether hindrances inflicted upon the German war-machine were sufficiently important to compensate for the price paid in reprisals and the enormous sacrifice in human lives. At this time a certain Mr Harrison, sponsored by the B.B.C., gave regular broadcasts from London in the Serbian language, inciting the people of Yugoslavia to intensify acts of sabotage by every means in their power. This advice was ill-received by listeners in X., in whom it roused bitter resentment  and was considered proof that Britain understood little about the internal situation in the country, and cared less about the persecution of the people.”

She analyzed the reasons for the split between the Chetnik and Partisan resistance movements, which initially co-operated with each other and engaged in joint guerrilla operations against German troops. The two groups were irreconcilable because the Chetniks wanted to retain Yugoslavia as a Western-style democracy while the Communist Partisans wanted to establish a Communist and Soviet-style totalitarian dictatorship: “Many attempts were made to achieve co-operation between the Chetniks and the Partisans, but by the end of 1941 it was clear there could be no compromise between the two Movements. After fierce battles had taken place, amounting to Civil War, the Partisans were driven out of Serbia and continued their activities in North-Western regions of Yugoslavia. Finally on account of severe reprisals by the Germans, Mihailovitch was anxious to avoid unnecessary loss of life over acts of sabotage which could have little effect upon the military situation, and because of this he was accused of inactivity. Tito was credited with ‘killing Germans’, while Mihailovitch ‘did nothing’. In November, 1943, Allied aid to Mihailovitch came to a stop and full support was given to Tito. British and American Missions appointed to Mihailovitch’s Headquarters were withdrawn, and the Chetniks were abandoned to their fate. Mihailovitch continued to fight …”

She emphasized the fact that the Ustashi, Croatian ultra-nationalist allies of Nazi Germany, committed a genocide against the Serbian populations in Croatia and in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which Adolf Hitler made into a Greater Croatia, the NDH: “The Croatian Ustashi were bent on exterminating the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, and in this they had the full support of the Germans. It has been said that the horrors committed by the Ustashi during the occupation have never been surpassed in the Balkans, a part of the world long accustomed to cruelty and bloodshed. The enemy looked on with satisfaction as the Serbian death-roll steadily increased. When the Resistance Movement developed into Civil War the Germans asked for nothing better. It was a quicker way to quell rebellion and to annihilate the Serbs than the Germans could have devised, ensuring no loss to themselves.”

She noted that Draza Mihailovich continued to combat German occupation forces until the end of the war: “Early in 1943 the Commander of German Forces in Yugoslavia issued a proclamation against Drazha Mihailovitch, accusing him and his followers of prolonging the war. … The Leader of the Chetniks ignored the accusation and showed that he had no intention of curtailing his activities. Warfare continued. Some months later a reward of 100,000 gold marks was offered for his capture, dead or alive. Large posters bearing his likeness, many times enlarged, appeared everywhere. When the placard and the sensational reward was first seen in X. people gathered to read the announcement. … The reward of 100,000 marks was never claimed, for to the end of the German occupation Mihailovitch successfully eluded capture.”

Yovitchitch emphasized how throughout the war Serbia was the base for the Chetnik guerrillas who harassed and attacked German troops whenever they could. The Communist Partisans had been defeated and driven out of Serbia in late 1941. The Partisans only returned to Serbia in late 1944 as occupiers when Soviet Red Army troops began a massive assault on Belgrade. On October 20, 1944, the Soviet Red Army entered Belgrade, forcing German troops to retreat to the northwest. Yovitchitch described seeing Russian troops, tanks, artillery, and trucks, moving into Serbia. She described how Russian officers and soldiers were billeted in Serbian homes. After the war, a Communist totalitarian dictatorship was set up in Yugoslavia on the Soviet and Stalinist model.

Yovitchitch provides an invaluable personal and eyewitness account of the guerrilla conflict in Yugoslavia that dispels many of the falsehoods and fabrications that the Communist dictatorship regime fostered. After their defeat and expulsion from Serbia in late 1941, the Partisans retreated to the mountains of Bosnia and did not appear in Serbia again until late 1944 when Soviet troops assaulted Belgrade. So in Serbia, for almost the entire war, the Partisans were a non-factor.

She explained that Draza Mihailovich avoided unnecessary direct attacks against German troops because he saw them as of little, negligible, or of no military value and because the cost in civilian life made them counterproductive. German occupation forces executed 100 Serbian civilians for a single German soldier killed. They executed 50 Serbian civilians for every German soldier who was wounded. Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians did not face this danger, or at least not to the same extent or degree as the Serbian populations, because they were perceived by German and Axis occupation forces as allies and collaborators.

She noted that the essential difference between the Chetnik and Partisan guerrillas was that the former sought to retain democracy, while the latter sought to establish a totalitarian dictatorship. Most importantly, she showed that the Communist Partisans were only able to establish a presence in Serbia due to the invasion of Serbia by Soviet Red Army troops. Without Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Red Army, the Partisans would have no presence in Serbia at all. Without the betrayal and abandonment of Draza Mihailovich and his forces by the Allies, it is highly questionable whether the Partisans would have gained the upper hand.

The abandonment of Draza Mihailovich by the Allies thus allowed for the emergence of a Communist totalitarian dictatorship based on the Soviet and Stalinist model.

No Comments »

Alija Izetbegovic: Islamist Nationalist or Secular Kemalist?

Alija Izetbegovic was invited in 1993 by the U.S. government through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum along with Milan Kucan and Franjo Tudjman to attend the opening ceremony. Amid controversy and outrage, Tudjman attended, as did Kucan. Yet Izetbegocvic did not attend, although invited. The U.S. Holocaust Museum and the U.S. State Department were the strongest and most vocal backers of his allegedly secular, pluralist, Kemalist, multi-ethnic regime. Why did Izetbegovic not attend? Why did he snub the Holocaust Museum? Was Izetbegovic a Holocaust denier, a Balkans genocide denier?

Was Alija Izetbegovic a secular, Kemalist Muslim or was he a radical Islamist ultra-nationalist?

The list of those who attended the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Museum on April 21, 1993:

Tudjman and Kucan attended from the former Yugoslavia. The leaders of Serbia and Montenegro were not invited. Even the Prime Minister of Moldova attended. But Izetbegovic did not. Why?

We have to recall that, contray to U.S. inforwar techniques and a massive media propaganda campaign in the West, Izetbegovic was a militant, radical, ultra-nationalistic Islamic leader who was anti-secular, anti-Ataturk in his world outlook or worldview. Izetbegovic was first and foremost an Islamist, an Islamist ultra-nationalist. A Bosnian Muslim government delegation to Iran in 1993 when Izetbegovic visited Tehran even placed a wreath on the grave of Ayatollah Khomeini. 

Izetbegovic calculated the risks and benefits of attending the opening of the Holocaust Museum. He might gain some PR in the U.S. with Jewish groups but he would alienate his hardcore backers and supporters, which included Ossama bin Laden, the Arab-Afghan mujahedin who were fighting in his secular army, and his Al Qaeda and Iranian backers. Iran was his chief backer during the 1992-1995 civil war. He did a cost analysis and decided not to show up. No reporter ever asked the obvious: Why didn’t Izetbegovic show up for the opening of the Holocaust Museum? This was such an obvious and simple question. Yet no one asked it because to do so would undermine the propaganda construct that the U.S. and other Western governments and the media created of Izetbegovic.

Separation of Religion and the State?: Bosnian Muslim military ceremony conducted with Islamic prayer services.

It is a no brainer. We have supposedly a new Holocaust in Bosnia with all the attendant images from World War II of concentration camps, refugees, executions, and genocide. And yet the leader of the Bosnian Muslim “victims” snubs the opening of the Holocaust Museum, the source for his genocide paradigm. Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the term “genocide” in 1944 in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress to describe the mass murder of European Jews during World War II. In developing the legal concept of genocide, Lemkin had researched the massacres and mass murders committed by Muslim Ottoman Turkish troops against Armenian Christians in 1915, known subsequently as the Armenian Genocide.

Members of the Mladi Muslimani (Young Muslims) circa 1943 wearing the Ottoman Turkish fez which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had outlawed in the 1925 Hat Law for secular Muslim Turks.

Why did Izetbegovic not attend the opening of the Holocaust Museum? Was it because he was not able to? Izetbegovic did visit the U.S. on Septemner 8, 1993 and met with U.S. President Bill Clinton to discuss U.S. support for his faction in the Bosnian civil war. But he did not make a visit on April 21, when the Holocaust Museum opened, although invited.

People forget now that in the Muslim and Arab world, Izetbegovic was portrayed as this anti-Western radical, a militant Muslim leader fighting for Islam and for an Islamic state. In the U.S. and the West, he was seen in an opposite light, as a secular, moderate, multi-ethnic, pluralist and “democratic” leader fighting for a secular state on the model of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey. So we had two contradictory pictures of Izetbegovic. Which picture or image of Izetbegovic was the correct one? The answer to that question depends on who you ask and what sources you rely on, it depends on which “narrative” you select. It becomes an epistemological issue.

The U.S. State Department told the Museum who to invite. No Serb leaders were invited because Serbs were seen as the “enemy” while the Bosnian Muslims, Croatia, and Slovenia were clients, proxies, and allies, the “good guys”. U.S. foreign policy relies on overly simplistic, black and white, Manichean scenarios. Whoever is perceived to advance U.S. geopolitical and economic and military interests is a “good guy” while those who in some way hinder U.S. interests are perceived as “bad guys”. Anyone who opposed the Serbs was a “good guy”. Indeed, the U.S. was sponsoring Croatia, Slovenia, and Izetbegovic’s Muslim-dominated Bosnia-Hercegovina as ”fledgling democracies”.

The criteria the State Deptment used are bogus. Holocaust Museum officials admitted that they asked for advice on which leaders had been “democratically elected” in Eastern Europe making its invitations. Of course, the State Department listed all those leaders who were proxies, clients, and allies of the U.S. Only U.S. proxies were “democratically elected”. Adolf Hitler was “democratically elected” too. That doesn’t mean that he should be invited to the Holocaust Museum. Slobodan Milosevic was also democratically elected. All the leaders in the former Yugoslavia were. It is a bit of obfuscation. All the State Deptment had to say was that Tudjman was invited because he was a proxy and a client of the U.S., that he was an “ally”. The whole “democratically elected” jargon is just nonsense. 

 It is ironic that Milan Kucan was saved by the Nazis during the Holocaust by the Serbs and by Serbia. During the Holocaust, Kucan and his family along with 58,000 other Slovenes fled from Slovenia and escaped to Milan Nedich’s Serbia where they found refuge from the Nazis. This is a remarkable fact. Slovenes were fleeing to Serbia to escape Nazi persecution.

What is censored by the mainstream U.S. media: Alija Izetbegovic with Arab-Afghan mujahedeen troops including Al-Qaeda volunteers.

What is censored by the mainstream U.S. media: Alija Izetbegovic with Arab-Afghan mujahedeen troops including Al-Qaeda volunteers.

Could Izetbegovic’s background as a radical Islamist, an Muslim ultra-nationalist, have a bearing on his decision not to attend the opening ceremony for the Holocaust Museum? What did Izetnegovic do during the Holocaust, during World War II? His role during the Holocaust is meticulously and scupulously censored and covered-up in the U.S. and in the West. No one seems to know or care about this missing chapter in his biography. It is a blank. What do we know about this period?

Izetbegovic was a member during the Holocaust of the radical, ultra-nationalist Mladi Muslimani (Young Muslims) movement, an Islamist organization that he joined circa 1940. He is usually regarded as the co-founder of the Mladi Muslimani. But who were the Mladi Muslimani? What were the policies and ideology of the Young Muslims?

What does this photograph tell us about Bosnian Muslim history during the Holocaust? Nothing according to Marko Attila Hoare and Oliver Kamm. As Sgt. Schultz used to say on Hogan's Heroes: "I see nothing. I hear nothing. Nothing!"

What does this photograph tell us about Bosnian Muslim history during the Holocaust? Nothing according to Marko Attila Hoare and Oliver Kamm. As Sgt. Schultz used to say on Hogan’s Heroes: “I see nothing. I hear nothing. Nothing!”

Do not read what Serbs have written. Read what Bosnian Muslims have written about the Mladi Muslimani. In the Sarajevo newspaper Dani from June 18, 1999, in the article “Bosniaks Under the Control of Panislamists”, by Xavier Bougarel in a translation to Bosnian by Zijad Imamovic, the Mladi Muslimani organization was explained:

“The roots of the Bosnian Panislamic faction go all the way back to the 1930s and the founding of the organization named ‘Mladi Muslimani’ [Muslim Youth]. During WWII, these ‘Mladi Muslimani’ advocated the idea of autonomous Bosnia-Hercegovina under German patronage, and some of them joined ‘Handzar’ SS division established at the initiative of the Jerusalem mufti Amin el-Huseyni. Banned by the new Communist authorities, ‘Mladi Muslimani’ continued to work in secret with the goal of establishing a common state for all Muslims in the Balkans, similar to Pakistan on the Indian sub-continent.”

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, a Palestinian Muslim and self-proclaimed religious and political leader of the Arab and Muslim world, reviewing the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar with Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig, the SS commander of the division, in Germany in 1943.

The article in Dani concedes that the Mladi Muslimani sought “autonomy” for Bosnia under the “patronage” of Nazi Germany, under the patronage of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, who was a major backer of Bosnian Muslim autonomy and separatism. Second, the article admits that “some of them joined” the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division “Handzar”. The Mladi Muslimani organization thus was “collaborationist” and “collaborated” with the Nazis. This is an important admission.

Bosnian Muslim religious leaders and protesters at an anti-Jewish and anti-Israel rally in Zagreb. The sign reads in Bosnian Genocid u Gazi: "Genocide in Gaza."

So far, Marko Attila Hoare and Oliver Kamm have claimed that there is no evidence whatsoever linking Alija Izetbegovic and his organzation to Nazism or fascism or even the Holocaust, even though the Bosnian Muslims formed two Nazi SS Divisions during the Holocaust. Clearly then, the Mladi Muslimani were leaning towards Nazi Germany, rejecting the Ustasha regime because it did not support Bosnian Muslim “autonomy” and Bosnian Muslim nationalism sufficiently enough. Ustasha Poglavnik Ante Pavelic supported Bosnian Muslim autonomy but so long as Bosnian Muslims acknowledged that they were ethnically Croats and subordinated their identity to Croatian nationalism.

The cover of the untranslated and suppressed history of the Bosnian Muslim 13th Nazi SS Division by Bosnian Muslim historian Enver Redzic. The politically incorrect history of World War II and Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Is this the only evidence that exists for uncovering the role of the Mladi Muslimani during the Holocaust? If so, Marko Attila Hoare can easily pooh-pooh and dismiss this evidence. There is other evidence. In the landmark book Muslimansko autonomastvo i 13. SS divizija – Autonomija BiH i Hitlerov Treci Rajh published in 1987 by Svjetlost in Sarajevo, Bosnian Muslim historian Enver Redzic explained the role of the Mladi Muslimani on page 215:

Censored and suppressed Bosnian Muslim anti-Semitism: Bosnian Muslim graffiti in Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina in Bosnian reads Ubij Zidova: "Kill a Jew." There is also a Nazi swastika and a Star of David. Is it an instance of Bosnian Muslim "extremism" or does it demonstrate a "worldview"?

Is this the only evidence that exists for uncovering the role of the Mladi Muslimani during the Holocaust? If so, Marko Attila Hoare can easily pooh-pooh and dismiss this evidence. There is other evidence. In the landmark book Muslimansko autonomastvo i 13. SS divizija – Autonomija BiH i Hitlerov Treci Rajh published in 1987 by Svjetlost in Sarajevo, Bosnian Muslim historian Enver Redzic explained the role of the Mladi Muslimani on page 215:

“The Germans were satisfied that they had one miltant group for support in the organization ‘Mladi Muslimani’. On the other hand, the Mladi Muslimani found in the German occupiers not only the proper ideological-politicxal outlook but also as a source for weapons. From one Ustasha source, Mladi Musilimani in Sarajevi had 400 guns. All of the weapons they had were of German origin. 
 
 ”What united the Mladi Muslimani and the Germans was the idea of the autonomy of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Ustasha saw autonomy as the greatest danger to the existence of the NDH. The Germans, however, offered autonomy. This idea of autonmy thus united the Mladi Muslimani and the German occupiers as best serving their own interests. Islamic and Nazi German fanaticism were united in this objective.”

Bosnian Muslim historian Enver Redzic. He wrote the politically incorrect history of Bosnia during World War II.

Redzic corroborates the Dani article in acknowledging that the Mladi Muslimani organization, which Izetbegovic co-founded, was in many respects allied and oriented with Nazi Germany and thus with Adolf Hitler and with Nazism.

Censored Bosnian Muslim anti-Semitism: Graffiti on a wall in Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina reads in Bosnian Ubij Zidova, "Kill a Jew". There is also a Star of David equals a "U" depiction, equating Israel with the genocidal Ustasha regime of World War II, which was led not only by Croats, but also included Bosnian Muslims in the leadership.

 The Vice-President of the Ustasha NDH was a Bosnian Muslim, Dzafer Kulenovic.

The Islamic Declaration Trial, 1983: Alija Izetbegovic, second from left, was tried and convicted in Sarajevo of seeking to create a pure Muslim state in Bosnia and for inciting racial, ethnic, and religious hatred. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, serving five years of his sentence.

Not surprisingly, Redzic’s history of the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division “Handzar” has remained untranslated into English. It remains an obscure and ignored history book. Why is that? Does it make sense? With a media obsession with all things relating to the Holocaust and genocide, why censor and suppress an account of the real Holocaust in Bosnia itself written by a Bosnian Muslim historian? Why can’t the Marko Attila Hoares and Oliver Kamms spin doctor this history away? Why are Hoare and Kamm engaged in self-denial and self-repression? Why can’t they examine the evidence? Not even Marko Attila Hoare or Oliver Kamm can explain away a Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division. That type of legerdemain is best left to the Jamie Sheas and James Rubins of the world. Franjo Tudjman’s historical opus, his masterpiece, also remains ignored and neglected in the so-called West. No one is interested. No one wants to translate it into English, although an expurgated and Bowdlerized version did appear. Alija Izetbegovic’s magnus opus, The Islamic Declaration (1970, republished in Sarajeo in 1990), remains neglected and ignored. Why is this? Although English translations do exist, they are marginal and difficult to obtain. The mainstream media and the so-called historians shun it like a plague. It is censored and covered-up by the mainstream. As if self-denial and self-repression and self-delusion aided in our understanding of history. Hoare and Kamm would have us better understand history by burying our heads in the sand. Or by watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus reruns. Turn off the TV and open up a book, preferably The Islamic Declaration (1970, rep. 1990) by Alija Izetbegovic, Muslim Autonomy and the 13th SS Division (1987) by Enver Redzic, and Wasteland: Historical Truth (1988) by Franjo Tudjman. It is remarkable that these important books remain untranslated and unknown in the U.S. and the West. These writings will reveal and explain who the real Holocaust and genocide deniers are. And that is why they remain censored and covered-up.

Comments Off

The Real Balkans Deniers

In “Balkans deniers”, in the December 7, 2009 Timesonline, Oliver Kamm castigated the so-called Balkans deniers. Kamm is engaging in hypocrisy and self-denial. Who are the real Balkans deniers?

Franjo Tudjman denied the Holocaust and the genocide commited against Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies at the Jasenovac concentration camp, set up and run, not by German occupation forces, but by Croats themselves.  In the New York Times article “Anger Greets Croatian’s Invitation to Holocaust Museum dedication” by Diane Jean Schemo from April 22, 1993, it was reported that Tudjman argued in his historical account published Wastelands: Historical Truth (1988) as that 900,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust, not 6 million, which was an exaggeration. This is Holocaust denial. Franjo Tudjman is a Balkans denier. Where is Oliver Kamm’s outrage and condemnation? Why is there no discussion of this blatant Holocaust denial by Marko Attila Hoare? To add insult to injury, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum invited Franjo Tudjman, a known Holocaust and genocide denier and neo-Ustasha ultra-nationalist, to the opening ceremony of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Why was this done? Tudjman was a U.S. client and proxy in the Balkans. He could be used as an ally in the war against Yugoslavia and Serbia.

The American Jewish Congress translated Tudjman’s book and noted that he wrote that the estimate “of six million dead is based to the greatest extent on emotionally biased testimonies as well as on one-sided and exaggerated data on postwar calculations of war crimes and on the settling of accounts with the defeated perpetrators of war crimes.” Elie Wiesel condemned Tudjman as a denier and blasted the Museum for inviting him: “Were it not for the solemnity of the occasion and homage to the dead and their memory, I would speak out in outrage at the dedication ceremony tomorrow … His presence in the midst of survivors is a disgrace.” The U.S. ivited him anyway, even though his racist, anti-Semitic writings were known.

The names of 2,650 Krajina Serbs murdered by U.S. trained and backed Croatian troops in 1995.

Naomi Paiss, the director of communications of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, admitted that the U.S. State Department had told them to invite Tudjman, even though his anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial were well known: “We were advised by the State Department to invite the Bosnians, the Slovenians and the Croatians … They told us those are the three that should be invited, who were democratically elected. We’re well aware of Mr. Tudjman’s book and statements, but we’re not opening the museum to preach to the choir.”

Tudjman was not only a Holocaust denier, but a genocide and Jasenovac genocide denier. He claimed in his research book that “Jews were among those running a Croatian concentration camp”, Jasenovac, the largest concentration camp in the Balkans during World War II. He accused Jews of committing genocide against themselves. Moreover, he made a blatantly racist statement that he thanked God that he and his wife were neither Jewish or Serbian. All this was known by the U.S> government which incited him and by U.S. Holocaust historians. Yet Tudjman was invited to the Holocaust Museum merely because of political expediency,  because he could be used as a proxy to defeat Serbia and Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Serbs. In order to defeat the Serbs, the U.S. government was willing to invite a Holocaust and Jasenovac genocide denier. Moreover, the U.S. was willing to engage in ethnic cleansing and to commit a genocide against the Krajina Serbs in order to advance U.S. geopolitical interests. Is Kamm denying that a genocide occurred in 1995 when 250,000 Krajina Serbs were expelled during the largest act of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans since World War II? Is Kamm denying that thousands of Krajina Serb civilians were murdered by Croatian troops backed and trained by the U.S.? Who is the Balkans denier? And who are the real Balkans deniers?

Tudjman did not stop at Holocaust denial. He accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian Muslims. Tudjman wrote: “After everything they suffered in history, particularly the hardships in World War II, the Jewish people soon afterwards became so brutal and conducted genocidal policy towards the Palestinians that they can rightly be defined as Judeo-Nazis.”

A plaque with the photographs of missing Krajina Serbs.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, of the Wiesenthal Center, was outraged by the invitation of Tudjman: “Tell me who asked Tudjman to come to Washington for the opening of the museum,” Mr. Wiesenthal said. “I think a man who makes such remarks in his book should not be invited to be at the opening of such a museum.”

Krajina Serbs ethnically cleansed from the Krajina region in 1995 when Croat troops expelled 250,000 Krajina Serbs, the largest act of ethnic cleansing during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia.

This known Holocaust and Jasenovac genocide denier was never repudiated by the U.S. government. Indeed, the U.S. used Tudjman as a proxy in 1995 to ethnically cleanse 250,000 Krajina Serbs, the largest act of ethnic cleansing during the break-up of Yugoslavia. Several thousand Serbian civilians were murdered by Croatian troops armed, trained, and supported by the U.S. This genocide of the Krajian Serbs, the largest act of ethnic cleansing since the Holocaust, is not even acknowledged by Oliver Kamm or Marko Attila Hoare.

The charred body of a Krajina Serb killed by Croatian troops in 1995 during the expulsion of 250,000 Krajina Serbs.

Who are the real Holocaust and Jesenovac genocide deniers? Who are the real Balkans denieres?

Comments Off

The Chetniks: 1942 New York Times Book Review

The wartime novel Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades by Istvan Tamas was reviewed by Fred T. Marsh in the Sunday, December 13, 1942 New York Times Book Review, Section 6, pages 26-27, in “The New Works of Fiction: The Chetniks”. The novel is about the Chetnik guerrilla movement led by Draza Mihailovich. The story revolves around the three Vasiljevich brothers, Nikola, Joco, and Stoyan, and their widowed mother who live in Belgrade. Their mother owns a Belgrade news stand which was given to her after her husband was killed. Nikola is a paper boy who sells and delivers newspapers. Nikola, the oldest, went to the same school as Yugoslav King Peter II, along with 11 other poor students. Joco shines shoes. Stoyan is a waiter. The novel consists of letters that Nikola has written to his mother, who he does not know is dead, “a victim of the Nazi terror.” The novel starts on February, 1941, before the German invasion of Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941 and ends on September, 1942, when the narrator leaves Belgrade. Marsh described the unique characteristics of the novel: “Charm and humor and the touch of legend and fairy tale are not ordinarily associated with Nazi invasions.” Marsh reviewed “this story of the Serbian irregulars under General Draja Mikhailovitch of the Chetniks.”

Marsh opens his review: “’Once upon a time in the city of Belgrade there lived a poor widow with her three sons. . . .’ That, says the author of this story of the Serbian irregulars under General Draja Mikhailovitch of the Chetniks, is the way he would like to begin his tale. ‘Because this book is not a horror story, not a smuggled diary, nor a collection of reports dealing with sadists; “Sergeant Nikola” is the story of a struggling romantic people midst romantic surroundings.’”

“But here, in these letters Sergeant Nikola of the guerrillas writes home to his mother, not knowing that she is dead, a victim of the Nazi terror, the details of everyday life, the amusing as well as the heroic exploits, the horseplay and practical jokes of the front, the character descriptions—all of these are given in a fashion intended to hearten and amuse. And they are all the more heartening for the truth one reads between the lines—the unconquerable spirit through all hardships.”

The narrator is an American writer, although he never explicitly reveals his nationality, who is in Belgrade on a stopover on his travels on the Orient Express to Istanbul and then to the Middle East and Asia. After seeing King Michael of Roumania and Peter II at the station he is prevented by security from returning to the train, which leaves without with his luggage on board. While in Belgrade, he decides to stay in the city during the crucial period when the past with Germany is being discussed and debated. Nikola becomes “Sergeant Nikola of General Mikhailovitch’s heroic Chetniks.”

John Selby, in his review in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of December 5, 1942, compared Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades to All Night Long, A Novel of Guerrilla Warfare in Russia by Erskine Caldwell: “’Sergeant Nikola’ is a book to be read alongside Erskine Caldwell’s ‘All Night Long.’ … Istvan Tamas is an experienced novelist, and he has provided something that Mr. Caldwell, also experienced, has overlooked. This is humor. …” 

All Night Long, A Novel of Guerrilla Warfare in Russia (1942), published by the Book League of America, was “a story of the Russian guerrillas”, written after Erskine Caldwell returned from the Soviet Union in 1941, where he had been an American correspondent. The novel is set in German-occupied Byelorussia. The main character Sergei, a tractor-driver, joins the guerrillas under the leader Pavlenko. He eludes an encirclement which separates him from his wife Natasha. He is able to derail and destroy locomotives, kill sentries, and to ambush truck convoys. Successful guerrilla actions result in retaliation by the Nazis, however, who burn down villages and massacre its inhabitants, and abduct women and girls who are taken to brothels set up for Nazi soldiers.

Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades was reviewed in the book review section in the February, 1943 issue of College English, Vol. 4, No. 5, page 331: “When the Nazis blitzed Belgrade, three brothers, all under twenty, escaped to the Black Mountains to join guerrilla bands. A heroic and inspiring story of small groups risking all to fight the Nazis, this Robin Hood tale is distinguished by a fine sense of humor. The author has spent his life in the Balkans.”

The novel was translated into Spanish by Santiago A. Ferrari and published under the title El Sargento Nicolas: La Novela de los Guerrilleros Yugoslavos by Poseidon in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Istvan Tamas came to the U.S. on Monday, July 18, 1938 to sell his new tobacco cellulose wrapper invention for cigarettes to American manufacturers. Istvan Tamas was a chemist, writer, newspaper editor, and inventor. He was born in Pecsvarad, Hungary, although other accounts state his city of birth as Subotica, which became part of Yugoslavia after World War I. His father was a Lutheran minister.

He became one of the best-selling Hungarian novelists and playwrights in the 1930s. His stories and plays were made into movies and became popular in Europe and the U.S. His wife Ily described his reluctance to grant permission for a production of one of his plays in Nazi Germany: “One of the plays, about a rich peasant who falls in love, was wanted badly by a German company. Istvan said no, he didn’t want it produced in Hitler’s Germany. His agent said, ‘Are you willing, then, to pay my commission for selling it?’”

In an interview in the St. Petersburg Evening Independent newspaper for October 14, 1980, “Alas, St. Petersburg What Do You Do With The Ilys Who Find Themselves All Alone?” by Bethia Caffery, her reaction was described: “Ily suggested that Istvan sign the contract for the play’s production with a clause in it that no line be changed into anything anti–Semitic. So the two were sent a special invitation by the German government to attend the opening. Istvan bought Ily a beautiful new coat for the occasion. While they were in Germany, they strolled through a park where Ily saw, ‘a little girl 4 years old who was crying and crying. There is a guy beside her in a big uniform threatening her. I go right to her and she says, “I am not allowed to sit down here in the park. I am not allowed to play with the other children because I am Jewish.”‘

“‘I don’t like to hate people but I hated that guy in the big uniform and I could shoot him dead. I start yelling at him with such language! My mother saw that my education was to speak German fluently but these were not nice things to say that I called him. He called a higher person who asked for our passports and my husband says, “See, I am on the invitation of your government.”‘

“‘So we leave and go home but my husband spends only for my coat of the money they paid for the play. The rest he gives to the underground and no one could understand the flood (of propaganda) which came from those underground presses against Hitler’s government!’

“‘Once we have many guests for dinner and we wait and wait and I get a telegram from my husband apologizing for not being able to come to our guests … so knew he was in Yugoslavia (working in the underground).’”

As a known political activist, Tamas fled Hungary: “‘More and more the war approaches and my husband as a political writer had to escape. … They knew my husband was very much in the underground ….’”

After his marriage to Ily, Ilona Farkas, who was a Hungarian heiress, he settled in the United States in 1940 at the invitation of the DuPont Corporation which was considering buying the rights to his invention for a cigarette wrapper made from cellulose which burned cooler. The war prevented the commercial development of his cigarette wrapper invention which was subsequently not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

His 1942 novel Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades, on the Balkan guerrilla war and the resistance movement led by Draza Mihailovich, was a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection in 1943 and became a best-seller, going through a second printing. The title alludes to the 1941 Warner Brothers film Sergeant York directed by Howard Hawks and starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Sergeant York was based on the World War I exploits of U.S. Sergeant Alvin C. York. The movie was the top-grossing film of 1941. 

In 1943 Tamas was induced to settle in Cleveland, Ohio by Zoltan Gombos, a publisher of the Hungarian-language daily, Szabadsag. He would become an associate editor of the paper.

He wrote a second novel on guerrilla warfare in Yugoslavia, The Students of Spalato (1944), which was published by The Blakiston Company, in Philadelphia, and distributed by E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc., New York, translated from the Hungarian by Katherine Kova?ch Dohanos. This was the last novel that he wrote.

In 1960, Tamas developed the Gillette coating for the Super Blue Blades.

They never returned to Communist Hungary: “The political climate of Hungary was such that they could never go back.”

During the Cold War, four of his books were banned by the Communist government of Hungary. Tamas lived in Lyndhurst, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio until 1967 when he and his wife purchased property in St. Petersburg, Florida and moved there in 1968. He died in 1974, survived by his wife and son, Paul Farkas.

The plot of the novel is described on the book jacket: ”Three brothers—Nikola, Stoyan and Joco—all under twenty, take to Serbia’s Black Mountains to join the guerrilla bands of General Draja Mikhailovitch when the Nazis blitzed Belgrade and the Quisling government of Jugoslavia surrendered.

“The War has ended, the fight begins”—was the slogan of the guerrillas, so famous now as the Chetniks who stopped the Nazi parade through the Balkans, immobilizing, it is reported, ten or more divisions of Nazis who have to remain to ‘hold down’ the country.

“SERGEANT NIKOLA tells the superb story of the Chetnik war against Hitler’s legions—a war quite different from that of the mechanized battle fronts. The highly individual, heroic encounters in which small groups, armed with ancient weapons, fight and defeat larger units of the enemy, harass the Nazi garrisons, ambush their food and ammunition trains, generally upset the German strategy, are portrayed in SERGEANT NIKOLA with vigor and greatness.

“The author of SERGEANT NIKOLA, Istvan Tamas, lived until recently in the Balkans, for many years in Belgrade. He is the author of many books and plays published on the other side, and his SERGEANT NIKOLA, the first full picture of life and war on the gallantly dramatic Chetnik front, reveals his great stature as a literary artist, for SERGEANT NIKOLA will stand up with the bet sagas of modern war.

“SERGEANT NIKOLA is distinguished also by Tamas’s ability to catch the humor of the Chetniks—a sense of humor very like that of the old American frontier, a love of horse-play, tall stories and amazing adventures; a humor born of the knowledge that life is short and the refusal to take even death too seriously. Few Americans realize, from the meager newspaper stories, how much like Robin Hood, John Paul Jones and Ethan Allen are Draja Mikhailovitch and his valiant Chetniks.

“It is odd in these days to say of a ‘war book’ that it is a masterpiece of humor, but nevertheless one must say that of SERGEANT NIKOLA: each Chetnik seems to be a mixture of Tom Sawyer and D’Artagnan.”

Tamas dedicated the novel to his wife: “To Ily”.

In his acknowledgements, he noted his sources: “Acknowledgment: I wish to thank the following for their excellent advice, information, data, and translation:

Helen, Olga, Elizabeth and Julius Trattner. Dr. Nicholas Mirkovich (Author of: “Yugoslavia’s Choice”).

Stoyan Pribichevich (Author of “World Without End,” Reynal & Hitchcock).

Dr. Ivo Brankovich, who escaped from Ochrid.

Jean Jeudi, who still lives in the occupied part of Yugoslavia.

The brave speaker of the secret transmitter “Radio Kossuth,” somewhere in Hungary.”

Marsh describes the novel as “this running account of the way of it in modern irregular and guerrilla warfare.” His conclusion was that the novel was convincing and authoritative because of Istvan Tamas’ knowledge of and background in the Balkans: “Certainly his story of the Chetniks brings with it convincingness, the stamp of a certain authority.”

Comments Off

The Chetniks of Yugoslavia

In the January 22, 1943 issue of the illustrated British weekly The War Illustrated, war correspondent and newspaper editor Hamilton Fyfe (1869-1951) reviewed The Chetniks by George Sava, a fictionalized account of the guerrilla resistance movement led by Draza Mihailovich in German-occupied Yugoslavia. The review was entitled “The Chetniks of Yugoslavia”, based on the alternate title of the book, and appeared in the Views and Reviews section, Volume 6, No. 146, page 499. Fyfe had been the editor of The Morning Advertiser, The Daily Mirror, and The Daily Herald. During World War I, he had been a war correspondent for The Daily Mail. A playwright and a novelist, he contributed to The War Illustrated during World War I and World War II. In the March 2, 1918 issue of The War Illustrated, he contributed the arrticle “A Serbian Supper-Party” in which he described Serbian ‘komitadji” or guerrillas.

The cover of the January 22, 1943 issue of The War Illustrated, Volume 6, No. 146.

The War Illustrated was a British pictorial magazine founded by William Berry and first published on August 22, 1914 to cover World War I. Discontinued on February 8, 1919, it was revived on September 16, 1939 to provide coverage of World War II and continued for 255 issues until April 11, 1947.

The Chetniks was stamped with the logo noting that it was published in conformity with the Book Production War Economy Standard which sought to conserve paper and print by mandating smaller type and lower grade paper.

The Chetniks by George Sava was published in November, 1942 by Faber and Faber in London. Sava had been born in Russia in 1903 but had settled in Great Britain after World Wa I. He had been a lieutenant in the Russian Navy when he was seventeen as part of the White faction during the civil war between the White and the Bolshevik Red factions. He was forced to perform emergency surgery without any medical training which saved the life of an injured sailor which persuaded him to pursue a career in medicine and to become a surgeon.

The Chetniks was based on his three-month travels to Yugoslavia in 1939 and the letters and reports he received from his acquaintance Kristo who he had met there. From these he wrote a reminiscence of his travels and a fictionalized account of the guerrilla conflict in Yugoslavia centered on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas which he commanded.

Fyfe opened his review of the book by acknowledging that the book gave him a greater understanding of who Draza Mihailovich was and the nature of his resistance movement:

“When you read now and then about the guerrilla war that is being carried on against the Nazis in the mountains of Serbia, and about the leader of the brave men who are fighting for their country’s independence and freedom, how do you picture this General Mihailovich to yourself?

“With some knowledge of Balkan comitadjis, as the bands of turbulent mountaineers who have disturbed the region called Macedonia for so many years are called, I supposed him to be a man of tough, even ruffianly appearance – not young by any means, full of courage, but not very brainy. I was surprised to discover from the photograph of him in George Sava’s new book, The Chetniks of Yugoslavia (Faber, 10s.), that he as a face in which intellect as well as character are plainly discernible.”

On left, a photograph of “Our Chetniks”, “Nashi Chetnici”, from the Belgrade magazine The Balkan War in Pictures and Words, Balkanski Rat u Slici i Rechi, No. 6, February, 1913.

He referred to the guerrillas as “komitadji”, a generic term for Balkan “guerrillas” which had its origins in the Bulgarian and Macedonian komitadji guerrillas who fought against Muslim Turkish Ottoman forces in the 1890s. They were rebels or guerrillas who were members of the “committees” which were set up to gain autonomy and independence from Ottoman Turkey. The term Chetniks gained prominence in the decades prior to the Balkan Wars of 1912-1912 as a term for Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonia, Greek, and Albanian irregulars and guerrillas. The term is derived from the Serbian word “ceta”, a “military company”, from the Turkish “cete”, a band or group of brigands. The term has a longer history in Serbian history to describe Serbian guerrillas or irregulars. In his 1877-78 accounts of the Bosnian Serb uprising in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot During the Insurrection, August and September 1875 With an Historical Review of Bosnia (1877) and Illyrian Letters (1878), for example, British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans used the term Cheta, “insurgent Cheta”, “insurgent camp”, and Chetas, “Chotas”, to describe Serbian guerrilla bands consisting of 20-30 members. The term Chetnik was adopted by Serbian organizations after World War I. The term was generic and was applied to a wide spectrum of groups, organizations, and formations, with differing and varying  policies, ideologies, and tenets. During World War II, there were various factions who used the term “Chetnik” or who were labelled by that term, many of which were hostile to each other and separate and distinct entities. Draza Mihailovich’s guerrilla or irregular forces were officially known as “the Army of the Homeland” and included various ethnic and national groups. Nevertheless, Mihailovich’s forces were labelled or dubbed “Chetniks”, a loose and broad designation that meant that they were irregulars and guerrillas.

Fyfe notes this ambiguity of the term in his review:

“Now, who are the Chetniks? They do not seem to be a race or a tribe. The term is used apparently to describe people who live in a certain part of the wild country on the Yugoslav border. Anyway, they are showing the Germans what the spirit of Yugoslavia is.”

German wanted poster for Draza Mihailovich: “Reward of 100,000 Reichmarks in gold! Whoever brings in dead or alive the bandit leader Draza Mihailovich will receive 100,000 Reichsmarks in gold.” Signed, the commander-in-chief of German troops in Serbia.

Fyfe noted the “Balkanization” and mutual ethnic strife that was endemic in the region: “After the War some federation of the Balkans must be formed for mutual protection. So far the system there has been ‘all against all’.”

He recalled his experiences in the Balkans during World War and concluded that if Draza Mihailovich could succeed in the guerrilla war, he would be able to establish a stable Yugoslavia: “Perhaps if Gen. Draza Mihailovich comes through and leads his countrymen in peace as boldly and cleverly as he is leading them in war, we may see such society.”

No Comments »

The Draza Mihailovich Trial in LIFE Magazine, 1946

In the July 15, 1946 issue, LIFE magazine reported on the Draza Mihailovich trial in an article entitled “Mihailovich Awaits the Verdict”. LIFE photographer John Phillips took pictures of Draza Mihailovich before the Communist military court, smoking a pipe, drinking a bottle of beer, and lying in his bed in his cell reading a book. In a photo essay entitled “Mihailovich: Chetnik leader fights for his life before open Yugoslav court-martial”, Phillips also photographed a military guard, wearing a cap with the Communist and Soviet red star with a hammer and sickle, bringing lunch to Mihailovich, consisting of ham, mashed potatoes, and cucumbers with bread. LIFE reported that Mihailovich was wearing “GI trousers” and had read 50 books, including Sinclair Lewis’ 1925 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Arrowsmith. The photographs showed Mihailovich stoic, calm, and resolute.

LIFE photographer John Phillips was a Tito confidante who had photographed Tito since 1944 when he joined him and his Communist Partisan forces. Phillips had photographed Tito and the Communist leadership in Belgrade in February, 1945 for LIFE magazine, with a photo in a Belgrade “Government” office showing a massive photograph of Joseph Stalin on the wall, higher and larger than the photos of Winston Churchill, FDR, and even Tito himself. It was, in fact, the Russian Red Army that had put Tito and the Communist Partisans in power when Russian troops took the city on October 20, 1944 after German troops withdrew. Tito had awarded a Medal of Merit to Phillips.  Phillips assembled a book in 1983, Yugoslav Story, published by the Yugoslav government, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Communist regime.

The so-called trial was a Communist show trial based on the model of the Stalinist show trials of the late 1930s. The proceedings were a travesty of justice and represented “victor’s justice”, or a vindictive revenge against a foe. The trial violated fundamental principles of justice, fairness, and due process. Mihailovich was not allowed to present witnesses in his behalf because the military court refused to allow U.S. and British airmen and witnesses to testify in his behalf. He was not allowed to confront and to cross-examine his accusers. The prosecutor read statements against him which Mihailovich could not rebut or disprove because the witnesses were not produced by the military prosecutors. The Yugoslav Communist regime, allied and supported by the Soviet Union, rejected the diplomatic interventions by the governments of the U.S. and Britain on Mihailovich’s behalf. It was not possible for him to receive a fair trial because Communist leader Jospi Broz Tito had already pronounced, even before the trial began, that Mihailovich was guilty: “His crimes are far too big and horrible to permit discussion of whether he is guilty or not.” Mihailovich was “guilty until proven innocent”. The trial was merely a sham and pretense, a judicial or legalized lynching and murder. This was an instance of “victor’s justice”. The only “crime” that Mihailovich was guilty of was that he opposed the Communist and Stalinist dictatorship which Tito imposed on Yugoslavia. At that time, Tito and the Yugoslav Communist regime were allied to and supported by Jospeh Stalin and the Soviet Union.

It was in fact the Russian Red Army that had put the Communist regime in power in Belgrade in October, 1944 when Soviet troops advanced on the city. German forces withdrew, allowing the Soviet Army to install Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito. Yugoslav Communist propaganda falsified history by claiming that it was the Yugoslav Communist Partisans who had driven the German troops out. The Russian troops only provided assistance. This outrageous falsification and phony picture was stage-managed and meticulously manufactured by Communist historians who followed the Communist Party line. It was a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. In fact, the Soviet “liberation” of Belgrade was not much different from the similar Red Army liberations of Warsaw, Bucharest, Budapest, Sofia, Prague, Vienna, and Berlin. In the case with Belgrade, much work was done behind the scenes to make it look like it was the Communist Partisans who were freeing the city from the German troops. This sham was produced to give added legitimacy to the Communist Partisans and to bolster the Communist dictatorship of Jospi Broz Tito, a hardcore Stalinist and Communist. The falsification was needed to create the false impression that it was Tito and the Partisans who had “liberated” Belgrade, and not the Russian Red Army, not by Soviet troops under General Fyodor Tolbukhin, not by Soviet military forces commanded by Joseph Stalin. It was a classic case of how the Communist dictatorship falsified history and made up events in order to rationalize and to justify a Communist dictatorship, a dictatorship installed and put in power by Soviet troops, by Joseph Stalin.

The Soviet Red Army enters Belgrade, forcing German troops to retreat. Yugoslav Communist propaganda falsely claimed that it was Communist Partisan troops that had taken the city.

Draza Mihailovich first appeared in LIFE magazine on November 24, 1941 in the article “LIFE ’s Reports: ‘Invisible War’ in Yugoslavia” by Harry Zinder and George Maranz in which it was revealed that he was the leader of the Yugoslav resistance in Yugoslavia: “The leader of the invisible Serbian army is Colonel Draja Mihailovich.” In the April 2, 1941 issue “LIFE on the Newsfronts of the World: Hitler Launches his Balkan Offensive against Yugoslavia, Greece and the British Army”, LIFE had reported on the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and featured a photograph of Ruth Mitchell, who was a supporter of the Chetnik guerrillas. In the article “For the Record: Hangings in Yugoslavia”, LIFE described the guerrillas as “”Chetniks,” a far-flung organization of patriotic Serbs who are sworn to die rather than surrender to their conquerors.” In the November 3, 1941 issue of LIFE, it was reported that the Chetnik guerrillas were engaged in a resistance movement against the Axis forces in German-occupied Yugoslavia: “In Yugoslavia a bloody little war was raging between Chetnik guerrillas and their conquerors.” In the June 10, 1946 issue of LIFE, the magazine reported on the efforts made by U.S. veterans, airmen and OSS members, to gather U.S. support for Mihailovich and to testify at his trial in the story “LIFE’s Reports: Fight for Mihailovich: U.S. Airmen Try to Help Accused Chetnik Leader” by Jeanne Perkins. Excerpts from letters from U.S. airmen rescued by Mihailovich from Axis troops were featured: “Our lives were safeguarded by the Chetniks; we were constantly on the move…. The Chetniks rescued me and my crew from the Germans.” In the August 2, 1948 Letters to the Editor section of LIFE, Robert H. Anderson of Buffalo, New York wrote to correct the historical record on Draza Mihailovich: ”The Chetniks, led by General Mihailovich, did most of the actual fighting in Serbia against the Axis.” Anderson cited the book Ally Betrayed by David Martin.

Russian troops on a Soviet T-34/85 tank enter Belgrade, October 20, 1944, forcing the German troops to withdraw to the northwest. The Red Army was greeted as “liberators”.

In Undercover: The Men and Women of the Special Operations Executive by Patrick Howarth. published in 1980 by Routledge in London, Howarth emphazied on pages 78-79 that Tito was a Stalinist and Communist under the direct control of Joseph Stalin:

“Tito was a Moscow-trained revolutionay, who had been imprisoned for subversive activities in pre-war Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Communist party had been declared illegal, and at the beginning of the Second World War it had only about 8,000 members. Of these Tito, as Secretary-General, was by far the most influential. Among his tasks had been to find recruits for the Spanish Civil War, and as a result he was provided with a trained elite of guerrilla fighters for his later campaigns.

“Tito regarded himself as being wholly under Stalin’s orders, and when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 he waited for instructions. ‘For once, ‘ as Djilas was to write later, ‘Moscow did not delay,’ and Tito began to build up, with exemplary speed and efficiency, a guerrilla force. This force was at all times under communist control, but it was wisely described at first, largely for recruiting purposes, as the National Liberation Partisan Detachments, to be foreshortened after a time to the single word “Partisans’. …

“As a revolutionary Tito had no interest in preserving property or the existing social order. … In so far as they served to arouse the anger of the population against the occupation forces Tito rather welcomed enemy reprisals.”

The judicial murder of Mihailovich allowed the Communist dictatorship of Tito to consolidate its power and to take control of Yugoslavia and impose a Communist and Stalinist totalitarian regime.

The original 1946 LIFE magazine caption: “ON THE WITNESS STAND Mihailovich sits facing the three Army judges on the dais who will sentence him. Two majors, serving as alternate judges, are at far left and the court secretary is ar far right. Two Serbs testified in Mihailovich’s behalf, were booed by spectators, many of whom bore wounds which Chetnik fighters had inflicted.”

“IN HIS CELL he relaxes in his GI trousers, smokes and reads one of 50 books, including Arrowsmith, that he has finished since his capture in March. Below: A 14-year-old boy, displaying Tito medals, cries on the steps of the courthouse after the judges had made him leave because he was too young to listen to the evidence about atrocities.”

“LUNCH of bread, ham, mashed potatoes and cucumbers is brought to Mihailovich. He may order what he wants.”

No Comments »

Balkan Supermen: Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks in American Popular Culture: World War II Comic Books

Draza Mihailovich was one of the most popular and acclaimed European resistance leaders in the United States and Britain during World War II. At least five major novels were written about him and his movement. Two major movies were made based on his resistance movement and he appeared on the covers of magazines and comic books in the United States.

Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas appeared in at least six major comic books in the United States during the Golden Age of Comics, the late 1930s to the late 1940s:

 1) Real Life Comics, #8, November, 1942, Nedor Comics. Contents:  4. “Draja Mihailovitch, the Yugoslav MacArthur”, cover by Alex Schomburg; 

2) Military Comics, Stories of the Army and Navy, #14, December, 1942, Quality Comics.  Contents: 3. “Mission to Yugoslavia”, by Fred Guardineer, script, pencils, inks.  8.  “The Chumps and the Chetniks”, Shot and Shell, by Klaus Nordling, script, pencils, inks. Military Comics ran for 43 issues, from August, 1941 to October, 1945, with an October, 2000 issue, Millennium Edition: Military Comics No.1, published by DC;

3) Master Comics, Captain Marvel Jr., #36, February, 1943, Fawcett Comics. Contents:  1. “Liberty for the Chetniks”, artwork by Emmanuel Mac Raboy, pencils, inks. Master Comics ran for 133 issues, from March, 1940 to April, 1953;

4) Thrilling Comics, American Crusader, #35, May, 1943, Standard Comics, Nedor Group. Contents: 2. “The American Crusader Joins the Chetniks”. Thrilling Comics ran from February, 1940 to April, 1951 for 80 issues;

5) Kid Komics, Red Hawk, #3, Fall Issue, September, 1943, Timely Comics. Contents: 10. “The Origin of Red Hawk”, featuring Jan Valor; artwork by George Klein, pencils. Cover by Alex Schomburg, pencils, inks. Kid Komics ran for 10 issues, from February, 1943 to Spring, 1946; and,

6) Black Cat Comics, #1, June-July, 1946, Harvey Comics. Contents: 3. “The Story of the Fighting Chetniks”, attributed to Arthur Cazeneuve. Black Cat Comics ran for 65 issues until April, 1963 with various title changes: Black Cat: #1-15, #20-29, #63-65, Black Cat Western: #16-19, Black Cat Mystery: #30-53, 57, Black Cat Western Mystery: #54, Black Cat Western: #55, 56, and Black Cat Mystic: #58-62.

The first major appearance of Draza Mihailovich in an American comic book was in the November, 1942 issue of Real Life Comics. The publisher and editor of Real Life Comics, Ned L. Pines, was a major publisher of comic books during the Golden Age of Comics. The comic book Real Life Comics was published by Nedor Publishing at 10 East 40th Street in New York City. It was a comic book series that ran from September, 1941 to September, 1952 for 59 issues. The covers were created by Alex Schomburg, one of the major comic book artists of the 1930s and 1940s. Pines also published Thrilling Comics, Startling Comics, Standard Comics, Better Comics, and Exciting Comics. Pines also purchased Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories science fiction magazine in 1936 and published it as Thrilling Wonder Stories and established the Popular Library paperback series in 1942. The comic book series Real Life Comics was published every other month and cost ten cents. The comic book featured real persons such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Igor Sikorsky, Claire Chennault, and Draza Mihailovich. 

Draza Mihailovich was featured in one issue of the comic book, No.8 from November, 1942, Volume 3, No. 2., consisting of 7 pages. Mihailovich was also on the cover drawn by artist Alex Schomburg. Mihailovich was in section 4 entitled “Draja Mihailovitch: The Jugoslav Hero.” The title of the story was “Draja Mihailovitch, the Yugoslav MacArthur”, comparing him to U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. The story is introduced as follows: “Drawing upon a background of military education and diplomatic skill, the commanding officer of the Chetniks has held the hordes of Hitler and Mussolini at bay.” The issue also contained comics featuring Miguel Cervantes, Leonardo Da Vinci, Johnny Appleseed, Claire Chennault, and Benito Juarez.

The comic recounted Draza Mihailovich’s service in World War I, his diplomatic assignment in Czechoslovakia in 1936 as the military attache, his imprisonment by Milan Nedich, and his emergence as a resistance leader in 1941. The comic focuses on his guerrilla activities against the German occupation forces, derailing trains, engaging in sabotage, and organizing a massive popular resistance movement.
 
Draza Mihailovich was also featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1942, in the story “The Eagle of Yugoslavia”, the cover of Liberty magazine, which at one time had a circulation second only to the Saturday Evening Post and which ran from 1924 to 1950, in an article entitled “Hitler’s No.1 Headache”, and a major motion picture was made in the United States by 20th Century Fox entitled Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas (1943). In Britain, the movie Undercover (1943), originally titled Chetnik, was made that loosely recounted the guerrilla movement of Draza Mihailovich. Undercover was released by Columbia Pictures in 1944 in the United States as Underground Guerrillas.

At least five major novels were also published detailing the exploits of Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks during World War II. British author George Sava (1903-1996) wrote the novel The Chetniks in 1942, which was published by Faber and Faber in London. Thw Rugged Guard, A Tale of 1941 was a novel on Draza Mihailovich written by Hungarian-born British author Paul Tabori (1908-1974) published in London in 1942 by Hodder and Stoughton. In the US, L.B. Fischer published Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades by Istvan Tamas (1907-1974), which was reviewed in the Sunday, December 13, 1942 issue of the New York Times by Fred T. Marsh, in Harper’s magazine by Katherine Gauss Jackson in the January, 1943 issue, and by John Selby in the December 5, 1942 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the section “This World of aBooks”. Sergeant Nikola was described as: “Contemporary World War Two novel of the Black Mountain guerrillas, who, under General Draja Mikhailovitch, immobilized ten German divisions in the Balkans during the war.” In 1943, E.P. Dutton in New York published The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks by Frederich Heydenau (1886-1960), which was reviewed in the New York Times by Robert St. John in the Sunday, June 27, 1943 issue under the title “Balkan Supermen”. In May, 1943, a spy thriller was published by John Long Ltd. in the UK by crime fiction author John Creasey (1908-1973) entitled The Valley of Fear that featured British secret service agent Dr. Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey of Z.5 who is sent to Yugoslavia to join the Chetnik guerrillas. Palfrey travels to the mountain headquarters of Draza Mihailovich, who is referred to as General Mihail in the novel, where he must uncover a traitor who is leaking information to the Nazis. The novel was reprinted in 1949 by Long, in 1966 by Arrow as a paperback, 1967 by Long, and in 1973 by Walker and Company in the U.S., under the title The Perilous Country.

In the December, 1942 issue of Military Comics, #14, Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks were featured in a story entitled “Mission to Yugoslavia”. The comic book superheroes that join Mihailovich and the Chetniks are Captain Bill Dunn and Boomerang Jones, who pilot the rocketship called The Blue Tracer. The writer and the artist of the story was Fred Gaurdineer. In the story, Dunn and Jones are sent by a character that looks like President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Yugoslavia to help Mihailovich and the Chetniks engage German troops who are attacking them. Dunn and Jones fly The Blue Tracer to Serbia and land on a pre-determined white circle and join Mihailovich and the Chetniks. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Chetniks do not have a chance. Dunn and Jones, however, use The Blue Tracer to make a tunnel in the mountain which enables the Chetniks to attack the German troops by surprise. 

In Kid Komics, #3, Fall Issue, September, 1943, Jan Valor joins Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas. Jan Valor was an American fighter pilot, who with his girlfriend Tanka, helped General Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks of Yugoslavia to fight against German troops. Jan is the pilot of the Red Hawk, a fighter plane, and allows the guerrillas to fly the plane. Timely Comics would evolve into Marvel Comics.

Mihailovich and the Chetniks would also appear as allies of Captain Marvel Jr. and the American Crusader.

Captain Marvel Jr. joins the Chetnik guerrillas of Draza Mihailovich in “Liberty for the Chetniks” by Mac Raboy, Master Comics, #14, February 24, 1943.

No Comments »

Rescue In Serbia

Serbia rescued more Jews than any other part of the former Yugoslavia during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem , The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’Remembrance Authority, has awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations, those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, to 127 individuals from Serbia, which is the highest number for the former Yugoslavia.

On December 2, 2008, Arthur Koll, the Israeli Ambassador to Serbia,  presented to the children and grandchildren of Borivoje Bondzic, Grozdana Bondzic, Ljubica Mandusic-Gazikalovic, and Jelica Rankovic the Righteous Among the Nations award. They are the descendants of Serbs who during the Holocaust risked their own lives and the lives of their family members to save Jews in the Kosovo town of Prizren and in Aleksandrovac in Serbia. Ambassador Koll remembered their rescue: “Their courage and selflessness will forever remain in our memory.”

Israeli Ambassador to Serbia Arthur Koll, left, with Sinisa Rankovic, the son of Jelica Rankovic, and, on right, Aleksandar Levi, the son of Josef Levi, who was saved in Prizren from the Nazis by a Kosovo Serb family.

Yad Vashem recognized the Kosovo Serb widow Ljubica Mandusic-Gazikalovic, who risked her life and the lives of her children to save the lives of Jews in Kosovo during the Holocaust. From November, 1941 to March, 1943, she hid the Josef Levi family in her home in Prizren. Josef Levi and his family had fled from Nazi-occupied Belgrade. Ljubica lived in Prizren with her two children. Ljubica and her eighteen-year old daughter constructed a secret hiding place for the Levi family in the garden of their Prizren home.

Albanian “Kosovar” Muslim Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg in Prizren in 1944.

Prizren would subsequently be a base for the Albanian “Kosovar” Muslim Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg and would be the location for the Nazi-sponsored Second League of Prizren, the Nazi-endorsed plan to make Kosovo a part of a Greater Albania. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had detached Kosovo from Serbia and had annexed it to Albania in 1941.  In 1944, the Albanian “Kosovar” Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg had rounded up Kosovo Jews for transport to the Nazi concentration camps. Over 200 of the Kosovo Jews would die at Bergen-Belsen. Albania sent ten to twelve Jews to Bergen-Belsen. The Albanian role in the Holocaust, however, was censored, suppressed, and covered up. The perpetrators of genocide were changed into victims.

From 1942 to 1943, Borivoje and Grozdana Bondzic hid Julija Dajc in their house in Aleksandrovac in southern Serbia. Julija was pregnant at the time, subsequently giving birth to her son Ilan Doron. Both survived due to the rescue efforts of the Bondzic family.

Albanian “Kosovar” Muslim Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg, 1944.

An Albanian member of the Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg, 1944.

Serbia and Serbs played a role in attempting to save the Jewish refugees of the Kladovo Transport, who were stranded for sixteen months in limbo after their departure in 1939. The Kladovo Transport was an illegal transport, aliya bet, of 1,300 Jewish refugees from Vienna, Berlin, Danzig, and Czechoslovakia who sought to emigrate to Palestine. Palestine was occupied by Britain which had restricted immigration to Palestine in the White Paper of May, 1939. The refugee transport had been organized by the Hehalutz Zionist youth movement in Vienna in the fall of 1939. The refugees were to be trasported down the Danube River, passing through Bratislava, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania, to the Romanian port city of Sulina where they were to board ships for Palestine. In Yugoslavia, the refugees were transferred to three Yugoslav riverboats, the Kraljica Marija, the Czar Dusan, and the Czar Nichola II. The British government intervened, however, to attempt to stop the transport. The Yugoslav government allowed the refugees to stay at Kladovo until the Danube thawed. The Jewish refugees were given food, shelter, and lodging in Kladovo where they moved in with Serbian families. In August, 1940, a refugee camp was set up in the Serbian town of Sabac on the Sava River.

Miodrag Petrovic, the mayor of the Serbian town of Sabac, provided Jewish refugees safe harbor in Serbia.

The mayor of Sabac, Miodrag Petrovic, allowed the refugees to disembark in the town and provided housing for them. The refugees were housed in private homes, a flour mill, the Hotel Paris, and a warehouse. Jakov Vukosavljevic, the owner of the mill, ensured that housing and lodging were provided.

The warehouse on Pop Luka Street in Sabac where Jewish refugees were housed.

In March, 1941, an estimated 200 to 280 of the Kladovo refugees were able to obtain immigration certificates and to emigrate to Palestine.

In Novi Sad in Vojvodina, Dr. Dusan Jovanovic, a Serbian physician, saved twenty Jews by concealing them in the municipal hospital.

Serbia and Serbs played a major role in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem has awarded the most Righteous Among the Nation medals to individuals from Serbia, 127, than from any other part of the former Yugoslavia.

The flour mill on Janko Veselinovic Street in Sabac where Jewish refugees were housed.

No Comments »