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.”

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Draza Mihailovich 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 LIGE 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.

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.”

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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 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 Books”. 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.

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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.

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Mission Over Ploesti: The Rescue of U.S. Airmen in Serbia

A Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber over Astra Romana during a U.S. attack on the Ploesti oil refineries in Romania in 1943 during Operation Tidal Wave.

On July 8, 1944,  a U.S.  air armada based in Foggia, Italy, consisting of 250 bombers, the Consolidated B-24 Liberator and the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, attacked the oil refining installations at Ploesti, Romania, flying over German-occupied Serbia. The formation was attacked by the 325 German gun emplacements ringed around Ploesti. A squadron of German Messerschmitt ME-109 fighter planes was immediately assembled to intercept the American bombers.

The Romanian city of Ploesti, located at the foothills of the Transylvania Alps, thirty-five miles north of the capital Bucharest, was surrounded by a complex of eight refineries and oil fields occupying eighteen square miles. Winston Churchill called this vital source of fuel for the German military “the taproot of German might”. Ploesti supplied one third of the crude oil needed for the German military. The 90-octane fuel needed for aircraft was produced there. The yearly production of oil was ten million tons. Ploesti was a vital strategic target and was called the “most decisive objective”. Ploesti was the source of fuel for the German military forces in the invasion of the Soviet Union and for the Afrika Korps.

The crew of the B-24 Liberator dubbed “Never A Dull Moment” consisted of eleven crew members, which included 2nd Lieutenant Richard L. Felman and Staff Sergeant Thomas P. Lovett, the ball turret gunner. The aircraft dropped its bomb load and began leaving the target area, heading for Serbia. Felman noticed a single B-17 outside the formation which he thought was one that the Germans had captured and which were transmitting their position to German anti-aircraft batteries on the ground. Staff Sergeant Carl Walpusk mistakenly thought the planes were  North American P-51 Mustangs. In fact, they were German Messerschmitt ME-109s that began firing at the bombers with 30 mm shells. The bomber was severely damaged: The gas tanks were pierced, the aileron control was knocked out, there was no rudder, the fuselage, the left wing and the tail assembly were hit and damaged. The crew abandoned the aircraft, parachuting out at an altitude of 18,000 feet with a temperature of 30 below zero. Felman landed in the middle of a field greeted by 20 Serbian civilians, men, women, and children. Felman had been hit on his left leg.

The downed U.S. airmen were rescued by Serbian guerrillas under Draza Mihailovich, who controlled that stretch of territory of German-occupied Serbia. The airmen were taken to Serbian villages where they were hidden and protected from capture by German troops.

The crew of “Never a Dull Moment”, 1944: Kneeling from left, Leonard E. Pritchet, Carl E. Astrifan, Israel Meyer, Roland Hodgson, Thomas P. Lovett, and Preston D. Angleberger. Standing from left, Kenneth Munn, Richard L. Felman, James L. Kidd Jr., and Paul F. Mato.

All of the  crew members were able to reach the Serbian village where they celebrated. They then discovered that one crew member was absent. Thomas P. Lovett, the ball turret gunner from Roxbury, Massachusetts, was missing. Ordered to abandon ship,  Lovett had stayed at his gun during the attack while the other crew members were parachuting out of the aircraft. He remained firing his machine guns until shot by German cannon and went down with the plane.

German troops had located the downed bomber and had found the body of Thomas P. Lovett who had died when the bomber was attacked by German fighters. The Serbian forces noted that 10 parachutes had emerged from the bomber. After the Germans had stripped it of possessions, the Serbian troops were able to retrieve the body.

Serbian villagers recovered Lovett’s body and held a  funeral service which was attended by 300 local Serb civilians and guerrillas, officiated by Serbian Orthodox priests,  which included delegates from Draza Mihailovich, and Richard Felman and the other surviving crew. The local Serbs then constructed two wooden cross grave markers with Lovett’s name, military rank, and hometown written on them, in Cyrillic and Latin letters. They gave Felman photographs of the funeral service which he was to take to Lovett’s family in the U.S.

U.S. Army Air Corps Staff Sergeant Thomas P. Lovett was the ball turret gunner, killed during the attack of July 8, 1944 on Ploesti.

A Serbian Orthodox priest pours wine during services for U.S. Staff Sergeant Thomas P. Lovett.

A delegate representing Draza Mihailovich and his resistance forces at the funeral service for U.S. airman Thomas P. Lovett.

Serbian Orthodox priests and a member of Mihailovich’s guerrilla forces at the funeral service for U.S. turret gunner Thomas P. Lovett.

In 1945, in a letter of February 8, the U.S. War Department posthumously awarded Lovett the Silver Star “by direction of the President” for  ”gallantry in action”  demonstrated by his “conspicuous courage, professional skill and intense devotion to duty” as a ball turret gunner in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Lovett was also awarded the Air Medal and one Oak-leaf Cluster for meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight.

General Draza Mihailovich would be awarded the Legion of Merit by U.S. President Harry Truman on the recommendation of Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1948. Suppressed, censored, and “forgotten” for over half a century, the posthumous award to Mihailovich and the Halyard mission itself would only receive grudging recognition in the 21st century. Approved by the U.S. State Department, the award would be presented to Mihailovich’s daughter, Gordana, in 2005, by a delegation of rescued U.S. airmen.

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Fact versus Delusional Fantasy: The Bosnian Muslim Government Reformed the Nazi SS Division Handzar

Marko Attila Hoare rejects and suppresses this factual image of Bosnian history in favor of a fantasy or delusional image from a television comedy. The real Heinrich Himmler (Heimlich Bimmler) reviewing the real or “historical” Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar, 1943.

Did the Bosnian Muslim Army and Government reform or recreate the infamous Nazi SS Division Handzar or not? Based on Martko Attila Hoare’s response to my article, Hoare now concedes that, indeed, there was a formation in the Bosnian Muslim Army termed the “Handzar Division”.

Let me reiterate that. Hoare admitted that the Bosnian Muslim Government did indeed reform the Handzar Nazi SS Division of World War II. When you cut through and deconstruct all the indeologically-driven claptrap, innuendo, ad hominen, personal attacks, this is the conclusion that he reaches.

Hoare is so caught up in his own arrogance and conceit that he does not even notice that he admitted this fact.

The issue or question is and always was: Did the Bosnian Muslim Government have a unit in its ranks known as the Handzar Division? Hoare’s reply is: Yes.

Marko Attila Hoare used this fantasy image to illustrate his article on the reformed Bosnian Muslim Handzar Nazi SS Division. Michael Palin is shown as Heimlich Bimmler (Heinrich Himmler), John Cleese as Mr. Hilter (Adolf Hitler), and Graham Chapman as Ron Vibbentrop (Joachim von Ribbentrop), from a 1970 episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Reality is rejected over delusional fantasy constructs.

Hoare, nevertheless, convinces himself that he was “vindicated” in denying the existence of the reformed Handzar Division. How does he do this? His rebuttal consists of challenging the strength of the reformed Handzar Division. Now that he admits that it existed, he now challenges the size of the formation. His argument is:  The reformed Handzar Division did exist, as you claimed, but it was very small. It was a little bitty Nazi SS Division, not a big bad full-sized Nazi SS Division!

The Holocaust as joke? Michael Palin as Heimlich Bimmler (Heinrich Himmler) in a 1970 comedy sketch. Isn’t Hoare a Holocaust denier? Fact: Bosnian Muslims, Albanian Muslims, and Croats played a role in the real Holocaust.

But is this a valid argument? Is someone pregnant or not? Can you be pregnant by degree? Is someone dead or not? Can you be only dead to a small degree? Did the Bosnian Muslim Army recreate the Handzar Division or not? This requires a simple yes or no answer. What Hoare initially challenged and questioned was the existence of the division. To be sure, he hedged his bets and cheated by conceding that the division might exist “conceivably” but that its number was small in size.

Hoare hedged his bets this way: “[I]t is conceivable that there really was a handful of Muslim zealots who, during the recent war, fought on the Bosnian side and grandiloquently named themselves the ‘Handžar Division’ after this historic unit.”

Hoare, in essence, denied that the division existed at all. This was the gist of his article. Now he admits and concedes that it, in fact, existed. Now he argues that the unit or formation was a small one. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what he claimed because he constantly changes his arguments and contentions.

Fact versus delusional fantasy? This is a factual image of the real Henrich Himmler (Heimlich Bimmler) with the real Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar which Hoare has suppressed and repressed. Delusional fantasy is more reassuring than factual reality.

A fair characterization of his initial argument was that there was no evidence for the reformation of the Handzar Division. The eyewitness account of military analyst and journalist Robert Fox was deemed not credible. Hoare disingenuously hedged his argument by claiming that “conceivably” it could have existed. The way to translate this argument is:  No, the Handzar Division was not reformed. But, nevertheless, it is possible it may have been reformed. Of course, this is nonsensical and absurd.
 
Hoare then concluded: “Monty Python is a much better source for accurate historical information than Neil Clark and his comrades.”

So was the Handzar Division reformed or not? In his rebuttal to my article, Hoare now admits that the Handzar Division was reformed. He again hedges his bets by claiming this time that it was a small unit formed by “zealots”. But, again, the size of the unit or formation was never the question or issue. If there was a small unit or formation in the U.S. Army or British Army termed the “Adolf Hitler Regiment” or “Das Reich Division”, would it be relevant or material that the unit in question was only made up of “a handful” of “zealots”? Now that the existence of the unit is accepted and acknowledged, the issue shifts to the size of the unit, which is unknown.

Hoare concluded:  “It would seem that the ‘Handžar Division’,  confidently described as numbering ‘about 6,000 troops’ by our friend, does indeed turn out to be a bit smaller when the available evidence is examined closely.”

Hoare here mischaracterized Fox’s original statement by quoting my  estimate of the strength of the unit. Fox stated that UN peacekeeping “officers” had told him that the reformed “Handzar Division” was “up to 6,000-strong.” Fox emphazied that the strength of the unit was an approximation or estimate made by UN observers. Fox refers to the formation as a “unit” and as an element of the Bosnian army. Hoare ignores this explicit language and now argues that Fox claimed that the reformed unit consisted of “about 6,000 troops”.  But nowhere does Fox state that the unit was made up of 6,000 troops. The phrase “up to 6,000-strong” could encompass any number from one member to 6,000 members. Moreover, Hoare ignored that fact that Fox referred to the formation as a “unit” in his report leaving the actual size open to debate. Fox referred to the members of the unit as “Handzars” and as “[h]ardline elements of the Bosnian army, like Handzar.” Fox wrote that the formation was a “unit” of the Bosnian army similar to other units: “The Handzars are working closely with other units around Fojnica. ” But even at 6,000 men, it would only have ranked as a regiment or brigade, which usually consist of up to 5,000 men, not a division, which is generally accepted as a formation of 10,000 men or more.  In short, the focus or emphasis of the Fox report was the existence of the unit, not the size, on which issue Fox only proffered a potential maximum figure that was based on a UN estimate.

Finally, Hoare rejected Fox’s 1993 news report from the London Daily Telegraph out of hand, but this was not done by the Republican Policy Committee of the United States Senate, which cited Fox’s report as credible and accurate. In a January 16, 1997 report, the Committee, chaired at the time by U.S. Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican from Idaho, noted that  “there exists another group known as the Handzar (’dagger’ or ’scimitar’) Division” and quoted from Fox’s report. Thus, members of the U.S. Senate, tasked with safeguarding the lives of U.S. troops, found Fox’s report to be factual, credible, and accurate. Only Marko Attila Hoare questioned the veracity and accuracy of the Fox report. Absurdly, the Bosnian Muslim Government or Army never denied the existence of the reformed “Handzar Division”. Only Hoare has done this. At the war crimes trials of Bosnian Muslim military commanders at the ICTY, the existence of the “Handzar Division” as part of the Bosnian Muslim Army is openly acknowledged and detailed.

The translation is: The Bosnian Muslim Government of Alija Izetbegovic reformed the Nazi SS Division Handzar during the 1992-1995 civil war. This is the only logical conclusion when one cuts through all of Hoare’s labels and propagandistic nomenclature.

Hoare uses a bevy of labels to do the thinking for him: “Serb-nationalists” (yes, with a hyphen!), “Milosevic supporters” (at least Hoare gets the correct pronunciation of his name with the correct Serbo-Croat form of his name), “Islamofascist” (no hyphen, a neologism popular after 9-11), “members of a US-based circle of Milosevic supporters and Srebrenica deniers” (an analogy with Holocaust deniers), “Great Serbia” (a propaganda term coined by Austria-Hungary before World War I), “ex-Maoist” (is that a good or a bad thing?), “Milosevic-supporting, Srebrenica-denying website” (hyphenated now, denoting an activity), “all good Chomskyites” (are there such people as “Chomskyites” out there?), “Serb nationalists and their supporters” (no hyphen;  do “Serb nationalists” have supporters?), “Serb nationalists and their fellow travellers”  (didn’t this term go out with the Joseph McCarthy Communist Witch Hunts during the 1950s Red Scare?), and “the Great Serbia supporters”.

How can one explain this plethora of labels? Why does Hoare use such preposterous and risible labels? We use labels to preclude thought or thinking. Labels are a shortcut to thinking and intellectual debate or discusiion. In fact, labels are meant to preclude or prevent any thought at all. This is why Hoare uses labels. They are mindless and senseless. Why use them then? In essence, Hoare does not want to debate or discuss these issues rationally or logically. He thus engages in the use of labels, what is termed “name calling” in propaganda analysis.  In propaganda, we use “pulpit words” or “glittering words” to describe ourselves and our own actions and the opposite words to describe our opponents. In short, Hoare wants to preclude any thought or debate. This is why he resorts to such propagandistic words. There is no thought or thinking going on, no discussion or debate or dialectic. There is only a stream of pre-selected labels or prejudiced or loaded words. It is like when Polonius asked Hamlet what he was reading:  “Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words.”

The case is closed. As Detective Steve McGarrett would say to Detective Danny Williams, “Book ‘em, Danno!”

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Exposing a Hoax

Ljubica Stefan, the Croatian ghostwriter for front man Philip J. Cohen.

One of the most disturbing and disgusting propaganda hoaxes that occurred during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia was that perpetrated by dermatologist Philip J. Cohen. He is completely forgotten now and his propaganda tract, Serbia’s Secret War, is in the trash bin today. Cohen is a dermatologist. He was never even a historian. Yet he purported to author a major book on history.

But his revisionist propaganda tract that masqueraded as scholarship was at one time advertised in Foreign Affairs and cited and lauded by Richard Holbrooke and Margaret Thatcher. How did they pull it off? How did this hoax succeed?

In exposing this outrageous hoax, we have to analyze and examine the evidence. Philip J. Cohen is a medical doctor, a dermatologist with no background or training in history, let alone the World War II history of Serbia. Moreover, he has no knowledge of the Serbian, Croatian, or Bosnian languages. How could he have written Serbia’s Secret War, which required a detailed and exhaustive analysis and research of Serbian language documents? Such a massive undertaking would require a thorough knowledge of the historical debates and nuances involed in the issues examined. Cohen couldn’t have written it. And he didn’t write it. Cohen was the front, the front man in a Croatian propaganda hoax. Because Croatia was a satellite, proxy, and client state of the U.S., Cohen received U.S. support and backing. The screed buttressed the anti-Serbian U.S. infowar and propagnada war. But if Cohen did not write the screed, who did?

American dermatologist Philip J. Cohen fronted a racist propaganda tract that originated from the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Could Stjepan G. Mestrovic have written it? Mestrovic is a  sociologist at Texas A & M University. He has no training or experience in history. He may have played a role in the hoax, but he was not the writer, the ghostwriter for the book. Serbia’s Secret War was published by Texas A & M University, which also published racist, virulently anti-Serbian books by Mestrovic and Norman Cigar, who had been a professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and also taught at the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting and at the National Defense Intelligence College. Like Cohen, Mestrovic, and David Riesman, Cigar had no historical training or background on the Balkans, or Serbia in particular. Absurdly, Cigar had “a strong academic background in Arabic”, not Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, or Serbo-Croatian.

On the Texas A & M website promoting Cohen’s book, he is described as follows:  “Philip J. Cohen, a medical doctor, has done extensive research on history and politics in the Balkans. He is widely published in scholarly journals and books.” This is patently untrie and constitutes a lie. A bibliography search for Cohen shows that he is not published in any relevant historical “scholarly journals”. He has been published by Ceres in Zagreb, Croatia. Outside of Texas A & M and the Mestrovic and Cigar clique and a pro-Croatia policy paper he wrote for Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992, he is not published anywhere in scholarly historical journals. Cohen could potentially be censured for ethics violations. This is potentially fraud in the manner of Clifford Irving. Irving spent 17 months in prison for his fraud and hoax.

Who then could have written it? There is only one candidate. She died in 2002. She had lived in Belgrade, Serbia for 30 years before she left in 1992 to go to Zagreb to orchestrate and mastermind the anti-Serbian propaganda war for the Croatian government under Franjo Tudjman. Her name was Ljubica Stefan.

All the pieces fit. She had the motive, the opportunity, the means, and the background. Although she lived most of her life in Serbia, she was an ethnic Croatian. She lived and worked in Belgrade. She knew the Serbian language. She had access to Serbian documents and archives. Also, as a hack historian, a pseudo-historian,  someone below the radar, she did not have to concern herself about academic or scholarly accountability. Moreover, everything that appears in the Cohen text also appears in propaganda screeds published by or attributed to Stefan when she worked for the Croatian Government Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Stefan worked closely with Croatian ultra-nationalist Franjo Tudjman in rehabilitating the Ustasha regime and engaged in historical revisionism by attempting to equate Serbia’s role during the Holocaust with that of Croatia’s Ustasha NDH government.

A Croatian Ustasha NDH government pamphlet issued during the Holocaust that listed Jewish-owned businesses in Croatia and Bosnia.

Serbia’s Secret War is essentially an expanded version of  Stefan’s 1993 book From Fairy Tale to Holocaust: Serbia: Quisling Collaboration with the Occupier During the Period of the Third Reich with Reference to Genocide against the Jewish People, by Ljubica Stefan, published by the Croatian Government. The full publishing credit is listed as:  “Zagreb: Culture and Promotion Dept., Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Croatia, 1993.” The text that Cohen fronted was actually a compendium of Stefan’s earlier publications. Moreover, the covers of both books were almost identical, using images of German-occupation postage stamps. They needed some shocking, anti-Jewish  image. German-occupation “anti-Masonic” postage stamps were the best they could do.

Serbia’s Secret War was ghostwritten by the Croatian Ljubica Stefan who was funded, recruited, and endorsed by the Croatian government. Justly and deservedly the racist propaganda tract has been thoroughly discredited and debunked. The ghostwritten hoax is largely forgotten today.

A 1942 Croatian government poster for an anti-Jewish exhibition in Zagreb with the Croatian word for Jews, “Zidovi”.

Why did the Croatian government and the Croatian lobby hire Philip J. Cohen as the front? Isn’t this outrageous audacity and contempt? Why hire a dermatologist with no background or training or experience in history to front a propaganda tract? Isn’t this a mindless and inane exercise in propaganda worthy of derision and contempt? It all depends. It depends on what audience you target, the target group. The Croatian government was not targeting scholars and academics. This was not meant for them. The primary appeal was emotional and intended for an uncritical mass audience. It was an exercise in public relations, a PR stunt. Of course, the screed was nonsensical and illogical. The screed was propaganda to justify and rationalize the genocide and ethnic cleansing committed by the Croatian government, supported and assisted by the U.S., committed against the Krajina Serbs. In 1995, with U.S. support and backing, the Croatian government ethnically cleansed over 200,000 Krajina Serbs in the alrgest act of ethnic cleansing since World War II and the Holocaust. It was genocide under the Genocide Convention.

The book had a two-fold purpose. To justify the genocide committed against the Krajina Serbs and to rehabilitate Croatian ultra-nationalism, to exonerate and to minimize and to trivialize the Ustasha genocide. The ghostwritten book acted as a smokescreen to obfuscate the real genocide committed by the Croatian NDH Ustasha regime against Serbs, Jews, and Roma.

The premise of the book relies on a Tu quoque argument,  from the Latin, meaning “You, too” or “You also”. The argument runs as follows: Serbs have accused Croatia of genocide during the Holocaust against Jews. Serbs have accused Croatia of being an ally of Nazi Germany and of engaging in the systematic murder of Jews during the NDH Ustasha government. But Serbia too “collaborated” with Nazi Germany and played a role in the Holocaust against Jews. You, too. Legally, the tu quoque argument is rejected because it relies on a logical fallacy. It is a variation of the “two wrongs make a right” fallacy. The Croatian propaganda argument runs as follows: Serbs accuse Croatia of genocide against Jews. Serbs committed genocide against Jews. Therefore, Croatia did not commit genocide against Jews. This is an illogical and illegitimate conclusion because whether or not Serbs committed a genocide against Jews is not connected to the issue of Croatian genocide against Jews. The glaring fallacy in this instance is that Serbs are not the only ones who accuse Croatia of genocide. This is a well-documented fact in the historiography of the Holocaust. The issue is not whether there was a genocide, but only a controversy over the extent or magnitude. The argument seeks to smear and to discredit the accuser by ad hominem attacks or attacks aimed at an entire country, people, nationality, or religion. The use of the tu quoque argument by Stefan, and front man Cohen, is thus illogical, illegitimate, and fallacious. The appeal is not to logic and reason, but to racism and ethnic and religious enmity and raw emotion.

Whom did the Croatian government target? What specific audience was targeted? The target audience consisted largely of Jewish Americans. American Jews and Israeli Jews were the principal targets. If Ljubica Stefan or the Croatian government put their names on the text the book would not be as convincing and persuasive and credible. The illusion had to be manufactured that the book was unbiased, neutral, and written by a non-Croatian. The way the Croatian government and lobby got around this problem was fairly easy. All you had to do was to hire a front. Someone was needed to sell the Croatian propaganda. Cohen, although a dermatologist, a skin doctor, nevertheless, had a Jewish name and was an American citizen. It was the name of an American Jewish author. This lent the book a certain modicum of credibility and legitimacy. Moreover, the preface was written by another prominent American Jewish author, sociologist David Riesman.

The Croatian government and the Croatian lobby reckoned that no one would challenge the book or Cohen’s credentials. Who would even dare? If anyone tried, they would be branded as anti-Semitic. Moreover, the name value of Cohen and Riesman itself would sell the book. This is why the name of the actual author, Ljubica Stefan, did not appear on the book. Instead, the name of Philip J. Cohen was placed on the cover as the author.

The Nazi-allied Croatian Ustasha government stamps commemorating Croatian volunteer troops that fought alongside Axis troops at Stalingrad, the Sea of Azov, Sevastopol, and the Don.

Propaganda is always destroyed and discarded after it has served its purpose. Cohen’s outrageous hoax is not any different. He is back to being a dermatologist. The Cohen hoax does, however, demonstrate how easily people are manipulated and hoodwinked, regarded hardly any better than cattle. This outlandish hoax did not occur in a totalitarian state, but in the U.S.

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Zagreb Synagogue Demolished

The ruins of the Zagreb synagogue destoyed in 1942 by the Croatian NDH Ustasha government.

In 1942, the Croatian government under Bosnian Croat President Ante Pavelic and Bosnian Muslim Vice President Dzafer Kulenovic destroyed the only syngagogue in Zagreb. The synagogue located on 7 Prashka Street and Chanukkiyah had been built in 1867 in the center of Zagreb. The architect of the synagogue had been Franjo Klein. The Jewish presence in Croatia went back to 1806. Zagreb had a Jewish population of 12,000 before the Holocaust.

Approximately 25,000 Jews lived in Croatia before World War II. The Croatian NDH government, the “Independent State of Croatia”, Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, which consisted of Croatian Roman Catholics and Bosnian Muslims, was allied with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy and instituted the Final Solution in the NDH, consisting of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Croatian-Bosnian Muslim government killed over three-fourths of all the Jews living in Zagreb, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Croatia and Bosnia were unique during the Holocaust in that most of the Jews were killed by Croats and Bosnian Muslims themselves. Many of the Jews were killed at the concentration camp at Jasenovac. Approximately 5,000 Croatian Jews survived the Holocaust, but this was due to the fact that they were either in the Italian zone of occupation or because they were members in Yugoslav anti-fascist guerrilla forces. The only reason the Croat and Bosnian Muslim regime was unable to murder them was because it had no control over them.

The Zagreb syngagoue on 7 Prashka Street before it was destroyed in 1942 by the NDH Croat government.

The Zagreb synagogue was demolished in 1942 by Croatia’s Nazi-allied Ustasha government headed by Croats and Bosnian Muslims. The mayor of Zagreb, Ivan Werner, ordered that the synagogue be demolished. The destruction of the synagogue began on October 12, 1941 and was completed in the next four months. A news account in a contemporary Zagreb newspaper  stated that the reason for the demolition was because “the synagogue does not harmonize with the general city plan of Zagreb.” Out of a total of 41 synagogues in Croatia before World War II, only three survived. No syngagogue survived in the NDH capital Zagreb.

Synagogues were destroyed throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Germans destroyed the Il Kal Grande synagogue in Sarajevo, one of the largest in the Balkans,  in 1941.

In The Second World War: A Complete History (NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1989), Sir Martin Gilbert described the destruction of the Zagreb synagogue:

“It was a New Order typically marked, on 1 January 1942, by the final disappearance of the Zagreb synagogue, the pride of the Croat capital’s 12,000 Jews, which had been demolished stone by stone over a period of four months.” 

The main synagogue in Osijek in eastern Croatia, constructed in 1869, was initially damaged by German forces during the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941. Following the German military occupation of Yugoslavia, local Croatians and ethnic Germans, Volksdeutsche, joined German troops in destroying the synagogue three days later. On April 14, 1941, the Osijek synagogue was burned. The synagogue in Vukovar was burned in 1941.

The area where the synagogue stood in Zagreb is a parking lot now. There are plans to rebuild the synagogue. The Jewish population of Zagreb was 1,500 after the Holocaust.

The genocide in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina was unique in that the Croats and Bosnian Muslims themselves murdered the Jewish, Serbian, and Roma populations. Jews, Serbs, and Roma were excluded from the NDH, made up of Croatia, Krajina, and Bosnia-Hercegovina and were subjected to elimination and extermination. Dozens of death and concentration camps were set up in Croatia and Bosnia for Jews, Serbs, and Roma. The largest concentration camp in the Balkans was the Jasenovac camp. These concentration camps were set up and run, not by German occupation forces, but by Croatians and Bosnian Muslims themselves. In the NDH, Croatia and Bosnia, the Croatians and Bosnian Muslims engaged in a genocide against Jews, Serbs, and Roma that was separate and distinct from the genocide carried out by German forces.

In the Emergency Legal Provision and Order, published in the June 27, 1941 Zagreb newspaper Narodne Novine, NDH President Ante Pavelic decreed that “… the Jews are spreading false information  … and hindering the distribution of supplies to the population … collectively considered responsible and therefore measures will be taken against them and they will be put away, because of their criminal responsibility, into prison camps under the open sky.” The elimination and extermination of the Jewish population of the NDH was carried out with the phrase: “In the NDH there is no room for Jews.”

The genocide committed by Croats and Bosnian Muslims during the Holocaust was censored and covered-up in the U.S. and so-called West following World War II. This genocide committed by Croats and Bosnian Muslims remains as one of the few untold and suppressed stories of World War II and the Holocaust.

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Leo Freundlich and The Roots of Anti-Serbian Propaganda

The racist and hysterical anti-Serbian propaganda during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia did not originate with the U.S. government and the so-called Western media. The roots and origins of the anti-Serbian propaganda paradigm go back to Austria-Hungary before World War I. It was Austria-Hungary that developed the propaganda construct of a “Greater Serbia” and that Serbia was committing “extermination” or a genocide against Albanians. In particular, an inflammatory propaganda tract published by Austrian Leo Freundlich (1875-1954) in 1913 epitomized the Austrian anti-Serbian propaganda campaign. The propaganda tract was entitled “Albania’s Golgotha: Indictment of the Exterminators of the Albanian People”, published in Vienna in 1913 in German as Albaniens Golgotha: Anklageakten gegen die Vernichter des Albanervolkes. Gesammelt und herausgegeben von Leo Freundlich .

Who was Leo Freundlich? He attended the 1913 Congress of Trieste, then part of Austria-Hungary, with Austro-Hungarian Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felso-Szilvas. The Congress was promoted by Austria to “ensure the selection of a prince of its choice.”  In other words, Austria organized the Congress to be able to put an Austrian as the king of Albania. Albania was an Austrian proxy, client state, surrogate, and satellite statelet at that time. Indeed, Nopcsa sought to be installed as king of Albania himself. He described Freundlich: “I brought with me Dr. Leo Freundlich, a former Socialist Member of Parliament from Vienna who, at the very moment Albania became ‘in’, had skilfully founded the periodical ‘Albanische Korrespondenz’ and was now on about ‘imperialist power politics’.” His racist anti-Serbian propaganda track was written after the Trieste Congress, on “Easter Sunday, 1913″.

In 1914, the Great Powers would install German army officer Prince William of Wied as the first internationally recognized political leader of Albania, who was supported by Austria-Hungary. The New York Times reported in 1913 that even former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was being considered for the position of the first King of Albania.

Robert Elsie, an Albanian propagandist and advocate, described Freundlich as follows: “Leo Freundlich (1875-1954), was a Jewish publicist living in Vienna. … Freundlich was born of a wealthy Jewish family in Bielitz-Biala in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire.” He was a politically active socialist who became a member of the Reichsrat in 1907, the Austrian Parliament. He edited the left-wing newspaper the “Volkswacht”.  He attacked the Catholic Church and was imprisoned for three weeks. In 1910, he resigned from the Reichsrat with the defeat of the socialists in Bohemia and financial problems with his newspaper.

In 1900, Freundlich had married Emmy Koegler (1878-1948), who was a member of the Social Democratic Worker’s Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei Österreichs , SDAP).

He was a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and was part of the Austrian occupation force in Albania. Austria-Hungary invaded and occuped northern and central Albania during World War I. Austria-Hungary created an Albanian Legion, an Albanian military formation, that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Army. After World War I, he worked for Ahmet Zogu, born Ahmet Bey Zogolli, who became King Zog of Albania in 1928. He became an “honorary consul” from Albania to Austria, representing Albanian economic and political interests. He was described as the “Royal Albanian press chief” to Albanian King Zog.

Austro-Hungarian and Albanian members at the 1913 Congress of Trieste where the selection of a  foreign, proxy ruler for Albania was discussed.

During the 1930s, Freundlich promoted trade relations between Albania and Nazi Germany. He worked with Nazi officials during this time. Elsie reported that in response to the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler!”, he would respond with “Heil Zogu!”. Because he was Jewish, he moved from Vienna to Geneva, Switzerland, to flee the Nazis. After the Communists took over Albania in 1944, he wrote a letter to Albanian Communist deputy prime minister Koci Hoxe asking that he be made an honorary Albanian consul to Austria again.

Leo Freundlich was an opportunistic, amoral businessman who sought to exploit Albania  to enrich himself in the process. He was a ruthless profiteer and sycophant. What credentials does he have to write a pamphlet on the alleged atrocities committed by Serbian forces, “the crazed barbarians”, in Albania? Freundlich has none. He has a self-interested motive in promoting the interests of Austrian satellite and proxy Albania. He will stand to gain and benefit financially from his propaganda screed. The primary source for news reports of alleged Serbian atrocities against Albanians was the “Albanische Korrespondenz”, a bogus newspaper that Freundlich had set up himself. In other words, he was the source for his allegations. He admitted in the preface that the objective of the tract was to persuade: “The aim of this work is to rouse the conscience of European public opinion.”

Moreover, he was willing to do business with Nazi Germany in the 1930s so long as he benefited financially from the deals. While others boycotted the Adolf Hitler Nazi regime in Germany and refused to do business with it, Freundlich had no qualms about economic relations with Hitler so long as he was personally enriched. He was an amoral opportunist and profiteer. His racist propaganda screed “Albania’s Golgotha” is an example of racist incitement to hatred and ethnic and religious enmity. Ironically and absurdly, he applied the Christian “Golgotha”, referring to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, to Albanians, the majority of whom are Muslim. “Albania’s Golgotha” stands next to “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” in its racist incitement to ethnic and religious enmity and hatred.

An Albanian infantryman of the Albanian Legion, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, 1916. The Albanian Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg, formed in 1944, would be modeled by Heinrich Himmler on the Austro-Hungarian Albanian Legion from World War I.

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Bosnia’s Suppressed Nazi Legacy: The Bosnian Muslim Government Reformed the Nazi SS Division Handzar

The Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar, above in 1943, was made up of 18,000 Bosnian Muslims and 300 Albanian Muslims. Bosnian Muslims were not Nazi and fascist “collaborators”, but Nazis themselves.

The Bosnian Muslim Government and Army of Alija Izetbegovic reformed and reconstituted the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar from World War II. Contrary to the nonsensical screed of Croat Marko Attila Hoare, whose mother is Croatian Marxist and Ustasha apologist Branka Magas, and other Bosnian Muslim apologists and propagandists, there is overwhelming and abundant proof of the existence of a “Handzar Divizija” in the Bosnian Muslim Army. The existence of the Handzar Division in the Bosnian Muslim Army was proven by testimony and exhibits presented at the Hague ICTY war crimes trial of Bosnian Muslim commander Sefer Halilovic.

The collar patch of the original Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar, showing a Nazi swastika and Ottoman dagger, 1943.

The red “walking out” fez of the original Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division.

Moreover, further proof was tendered at the war crimes trial of Bosnian Muslim Zijad Kurtovic, a platoon commander of the Military Police Battalion Dreznica of the 4th Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who was tried for war crimes in Bosnia by the State Court of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Kutovic was tried for war crimes allegedly committed at the All Saint’s Roman Catholic Church in Donja Dreznica in Hercegovina in October, 1993, against Bosnian Croat civilians and POWs. Kurtovic and Hasan Delic allegedly forced two Croatian Defence Council (HVO) POWs to perform oral sex on each other. Bosnian Muslim troops also were alleged to have tortured and beaten civilians and POWs detained at the Church with crosses, bats, and with statues of Christian saints. Prisoners were also forced to eat pages from The Bible and from other Christian books.

The Bosnian Muslim faction fostered and revived the legacy of the Handzar Division. The cover of the October, 1991 Sarajevo magazine Novi Vox showed a Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS officer stepping on the decapitated and bleeding head of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, wearing a shubara cap. The other three decapitated Serb heads were those of Nikola Koljevic, a Bosnian Serb leader and a Bosnian refugee during World War II when he and his family fled to Belgrade following the Croat and Bosnian Muslim Ustasha takeover of Bosnia,  Slobodan Milosevic, and Vojslav Seselj. The threat against Serbs, made half a year before the civil war started in 1992, was an incitement to genocide and ethnic and religious hatred and enmity. The headline reads: “The Handzar Division is ready.”

A Bosnian Muslim soldier, Sedin Mahmic, testified that on the night of October 3, 1993, he and other Bosnian Muslim soldiers had gone to the All Saint’s Roman Catholic Church “to see what the Ustasha were doing”. Mahmic testified that a Bosnian Muslim soldier, Zijo, was “a member of the Handzar Division” (”jedan od handzaraca”) who, along with Hasan Delic from Dreznica, were present in the church.

The combat or field form of the fez of the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar from World War II was a grayish-greenish color with a black tassel, 1943.

Sedin Mahmic further testified that:

“I was in Dreznica when they brought the prisoners. I saw members of the Handzar Division ["handzaraca"] of the Army of BiH kicking them a bit. Nihad Bojadzic, commander of the Special Purpose Squad ordered them to take them to the church and said that the Civil Protection Unit, which was composed of the elderly, was to guard them.”

Mahmic also denied that Zijo, a named member of the Handzar Division of the BiH Army, was invloved in the mistreatment of POWs: “Zijo was not a man who would be interested in going to church to maltreat somebody.”

Waffen SS badge of the Handzar Division, 1943.

In the article “Kurtovic: Handzarci [Handzars] in Dreznica”, April 24, 2008, the witness Mahmic gave his personal account of the events:

“I know that they told one man to lie down and to roll like an animal, like a crocodile. At the entrance Delic forced two detainees to have oral sex with each other, while he was cursing their Ustasha mother. He told one prisoner to take his trousers off. I told them to leave him alone and, as I could not watch any longer, I left the place.”

The War Crimes Chamber of the State Court of Bosnia-Hercegovina found Kurtovic guilty of war crimes and sentenced him to 11 years in prison on April 30, 2008.

Left and right Waffen SS collar tabs for the Handzar Division, 1943.

Based on the orders issued by Bosnian Muslim commander Rasim Delic during Operation Neretva 93, a Bosnian Muslim military offensive against Bosnian Croat areas in the Mostar region, the “Handzar divizija” was one of the units that participated in the offensive, along with other special purpose units of the Bosnian Muslim Army such as “Igmanski vukovi” and “Adnanova grupa”. These units were sent to Jablanica and Grabovica.

On September 8, 1993, Bosnian Muslim Army troops tortured and massacred 32 Croat civilians in Grabovica.  Bosnian Croat Jozo Brekalo was crucified, beheaded, and his head was impaled by Bosnian Muslim troops. Luca Brekalo was tortured then burned alive by Bosnian Muslim Army forces. Ivan Saric was murdered in front of his wife, Ljubica, who was subsequently raped by Bosnian Muslim soldiers. Bosnian Muslim commander General Vehbija Karic issued an order to Zulfikar Ali Spago to seal off the town of Grabovica to prevent the discovery of the massacres. Bosnian Muslim officers were alleged to have taken measures to cover-up the war crimes and acts of genocide in Grabovica commiotted by the Bosnian Muslim Army. The corpses of Croats murdered by Bosnian Muslim troops were thrown into the Neretva river and orders were reportedly issued to execute any witnesses to the crimes.

Marko Attila Hoare argued that there was no evidence for the resurrection or recreation of the Handzar Division by the Alija Izetbegovic regime. Hoare maintained that only British journalist and military analyst Robert Fox had even noticed the existence of this formation, and that his account was based on hearsay. Fox had only related what UN personnel and peacekeepers had reported to him surmised Hoare. Hoare wrote that “no other journalist or anyone else seems to have noticed the existence of a unit of ‘up to 6,000 strong’ that named itself after the SS and that was, according to Fox, officered by Albanians and trained by mujahedin veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Hoare disdainfully dismissed any evidence for the existence of a reformed Nazi SS Handzar division as follows: “So what we’re left with  is a single newspaper article  from the ‘imperialist’ media, which describes at second hand a recreated SS ‘Handžar Division’ that nobody else ever noticed.”

The United Nations report from December 28, 1994, in “Annex III. A Special forces”, confirmed the presence of Albanian Muslim troops from Albania and from Kosovo and reported that they were fighting as part of the Bosnian Muslim Army: 

“Ties with the Government and regular military of BiH

Several reports indicate that the Mujahedin were placed under the command of the BiH Army. … The Mujahedin forces were closely associated with the 5th Corps, the 6th and 7th Zenica Brigades, the 7th Travnik Brigade, and the 45th Muslim Brigade which belongs to the 6th Corps in Konjic of the Army of BiH. … They also allegedly fought alongside the Muslim Police, the Krajiska Brigade from Travnik, units of Kosovo Muslims, Albanian soldiers, and paramilitary groups such as the “Green Legion” and the “Black Swans”. …     Reports also indicate that the Mujahedin had the support of President Izetbegovic and his government. …

The Mujahedin were also alleged to be part of the forces that invaded the village of Trusina near Foca on 15 April 1993. According to the report, attackers wore white ribbons on their arms and fought beside Albanian Muslim troops. Twenty-two civilians reportedly died in the attack.”

The UN reports conclusively proved the existence of Albanian Muslim “volunteers” from Kosovo and from Albania in the Bosnian Muslim Army. Moreover, Robert Fox personally observed Albanian Muslim mercenary soldiers who fought in the Bosnian Muslim Army in 1993.

Lt. Salko Gusic, the Bosnian Muslim commander of the 6th Corps of the Bosnian Muslim Army, stated under oath in a court of law, at the ICTY war crimes trial of Sefer Halilovic,  that there indeed was a unit in the Bosnian Muslim Army known as the “Handzar Divizija”, i.e., the Handzar Division. The prosecution showed him an army order to the Handzar Division which he read at the trial. At the trial, Gusic testified as follows:

“This is an order whereby the following units, the Handzar Divizija, the Silver Fox Unit, become part of the special purposes detachment Zulfikar. This order was written in connection with the decision of the Main Staff of the 21st of August in Zenica with a view to making larger units out of smaller ones.”

The ICTY Prosecutor questioned Bosnian Muslim military police commander Emin Zebic about the Bosnian Muslim Army formation, the Handzar Division,  and about its Albanian Muslim commander, Islam Peci-Dzeki, transcript # 050317ED, page 22:
 

“Q. Very well. You knew that a unit called the Handzar Division, a small unit called the Handzar Division, came to be located in the village of Grabovica; is that correct?
A. I don’t know that.
Q. Okay. Did you ever meet a man — an Albanian man, the commander of a unit called Handzar, who went by the name of Dzeki, D-z-e-k-i?
A. I heard about him. For a while, they were in the town of Jablanica.”

There was a formation or unit in the Bosnian Muslim Army known as the “Handzar Division”. The ICTY Prosecutor pointed to trial Exhibit 123, which was an official order by Bosnian Muslim  military commander Sefer Halilovic to the formation “Handzar Division”, which was part of the Bosnian Muslim Army under Alija Izetbegovic. The existence of this formation was widely known in Bosnia during the conflict and was not much of a secret but was suppressed and censored by the U.S. and Western media.

The Bosnian Muslim Government and Army of Alija Izetbegovic not only reformed and revived the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar, but the reformed Handzar Division was implicated in war crimes and genocide committed by the Bosnian Muslim soldiers under the command of Alija Izetbegovic.

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