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

June 25, 2009 – 7:15 am

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. “Fighting Chetnicks”, 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. The editor and publisher, Ned L. 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. Draza Mihailovich was one of the most popular and acclaimed European resistance leaders in America in 1942 and during World War II.

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 Chetniks. 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 use it. 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

June 9, 2009 – 11:32 am

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

May 8, 2009 – 8:45 am

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

April 19, 2009 – 12:58 pm

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

March 17, 2009 – 8:10 am

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

February 14, 2009 – 7:20 am

 

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

February 5, 2009 – 12:15 pm

 

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

September 29, 2008 – 1:55 pm

 

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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Sarajevo Synagogue Destroyed by Bosnian Muslims

September 18, 2008 – 10:29 am

Before Before and after: The Sephardic Il Kal Grande synagogue in Sarajevo was destroyed, looted, and vandalised by Bosnian Muslims in 1941 when German forces occupied Sarajevo.

Bosnian Muslims played a role in the destruction and desecration of the Il Kal Grande synagogue and in the Holocaust. This is a fact that is censored in the U.S. media accounts of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The historiography, however, is consistent and unanimous in showing that the Bosnian Muslim played a role in the destruction of the Sarajevo synagogue.

On April 17, 1941, Sarajevo was occupied by the German Wehrmacht. The Il Kal Grande Sephardic synagogue in Sarajevo was constructed from 1927-1931 and was the largest synagogue in the Balkans. The synagogue was opened in 1932 and was regarded as the “most ornate” synagogue in the Balkans. The synagogue was constructed by the Sephardic Jewish community of Sarajevo, which originally settled in Bosnia in 1565 after the expulsions from Spain, who spoke Ladino, a dialect of Spanish-Portuguese.

The synagogue was immediately destroyed by German, Croat, and Bosnian Muslim forces, after the occupation of the city, according to Leni Yahil in The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945:

“Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed to newly independent Croatia. Sarajevo, the ancient Sephardic Jewish center, was captured by the Germans on April 17, 1941, and the Croats and the Germans immediately burned down the ancient and renowned synagogue.The Moslems collaborated in this (one of their units later joined the German forces fighting in Russia). The first concentration camp was already established in May 1941.”

British Holocaust and World War II historian Martin Gilbert, in The Holocaust: A History of the Jews in Europe during the Second World War, described the destruction of the Sephardic synagogue of Sarajevo as follows:

“On April 16, German forces entered Sarajevo, and, with local Muslims, plundered and destroyed the main synagogue.”

 

The interior of the Sarajevo Il Kal Grande Sephardic synagogue, constructed in 1932, which was destroyed by Bosnian Muslims in 1941.

In Atlas of the Holocaust, Gilbert described the destruction of the synagogue:

“Between the wars, during the ‘Yugoslav era’, the Jews of Bosnia enjoyed full civil liberties. But disaster struck from the first days of the German occupation, with the burning down of the synagogue by German troops and local Muslims.”

 

The European Jewish Congress described the destruction of the Sarajevo synagogue in these terms:

“On the eve of the Shoah, the Jewish population numbered some 14,000. In 1941 Bosnia was incorporated into the Croat state. When the Germans entered Sarajevo, together with a local Bosnian Muslim mob, they destroyed the Sephardi synagogue. Bosnian Jewry was decimated by a combination of German, Ustashe (Croat Fascist), and Bosnian Muslim forces. The Mufti of Jerusalem (Haj Amin-al Husseini) was active in enlisting recruits to a Bosnian Muslim S.S. unit and in encouraging local authorities to organize the deportation and extermination of Bosnian Jewry.”

The Il Kal Grande synagogue in Sarajevo was heavily damaged in the 1941 attack. The building, however, remained standing after the war. The Jewish Community of Bosnia-Hercegovina donated the building located on 24 Branilaca Sarajeva street to the city of Sarajevo after 1945. The structure was preserved and was converted into the Bosnian Cultural Center in Sarajevo. There is a menorah that remains on the entrance to the Center to commemorate the Bosnian Jews who died in the Holocaust.

The Travnik synagogue in central Bosnia was also damaged, looted, and vandalized in 1941 by Bosnian Muslims and Croatians. The Travnik synagogue was built in 1860 to replace the 18th century Kalkados synagogue. During World War II, the Travnik Jews were killed and the synagogue was damaged, burned, and plundered and religious objects were taken by Bosnian Muslim and Croatian fascist and Nazi/Ustasha forces. In 1941, the synagogue was partially burned and looted and ritual objects, Torah scrolls, manuscripts, silver, tefillim, and tallitot were seized. After the objects were returned after the war, the Jewish community in Sarajevo donated part of the collection to the Jewish Museum in Belgrade

Eighty-five percent of the Jews of Sarajevo died during the Holocaust. Of the approximately 10,500 Jews of Sarajevo before the war, only about 800 survived the Holocaust. Of the approximately 14,000 Jews of Bosnia-Hercegovina, about 12,000 would die in the Holocaust.

 

Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS troops in Handzar reading the booklet Islam und Judentum which was written by the Grand Mufti in support of the Holocaust, 1943. The booklet contains the following quote: “The Day of Judgment will come, when the Muslims will crush the Jews completely; And when every tree behind which a Jew hides will say: ‘There is a Jew behind me, Kill him!’” The booklet also contained photos of the Grand Mufti with Joseph Goebbels.

 

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, second from right, on the balcony of the Bosnian Presidency Building in Sarajevo with Bosnian Muslim leaders, 1943. The Grand Mufti, Palestinian Arab Haj Amin el Husseini, came to Sarajevo to form the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar and to garner Bosnian Muslim support for the Holocaust.

 

Bosnian Muslim Hussein Biscevic-Beg was a high ranking officer in the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar, an Obersturmbannfuehrer of the Flak Detachment of the SS Division Handzar. Biscevic-Beg was a veteran of the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I. He is shown wearing the skull and cross-bones insignia of the SS under the silver eagle badge of Nazi Germany which depicts an eagle holding a Nazi swastika. The Ottoman fez was outlawed in 1925 by Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk in Turkey, but the Bosnian Muslims continued to wear the outlawed and banned Ottoman fez, a symbol of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

A member of the Bosnian Muslim Nazi 13th Waffen SS Division Handzar, or Handschar in German.

There were at least nine Bosnian Muslim officers in the Handzar Division:

1. Pukovnik, or colonel, Hussein Biscevic-Beg, first CO of the Flak Detachment
2. Major Dervis-beg Cengic
3. Captain Ahmed-beg Ceric
4. Porucnik, or lieutenant, Sead Kurtovic
5. Porucnik Hasanbegovic
6. Porucnik Skaka-imam I bataljona 28. puka
7. Captain Halim Malkoc, pukovski imam 28. puka
8. Natporucnik, or first lieutenant, Terzic imam u divizija
9. Podoficir, or noncommissioned officer, Lelija Suvalic.

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Book Review: NATO War Crimes: Media Lies and the Conquest of Kosovo

September 2, 2008 – 2:59 pm

Media Lies and the Conquest of Kosovo: NATO’s Prototype for the Next Wars of Globalization. Publisher: Unwritten History, Inc., New York, 2007. By Michel Collon, 276 pages, with photographs and maps.

“Each war begins with media lies.” This is how Belgian journalist Michel Collon begins his analysis of the Kosovo conflict which resulted in the U.S. and NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the subsequent occupation of the Serbian Kosovo province by U.S. and NATO troops. The U.S. and NATO had launched a war of aggression without United Nations approval and in violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia. The war was illegal and criminal under international law and under the Charter of the UN.

How was an illegal and criminal war “sold” as a “humanitarian intervention” to prevent “genocide” and a second Holocaust? This is the question that Collon analyzes and attempts to answer in the book.

Collon stated that the “primary objective” of the book is to allow “the reader to recognize media lies”. The Kosovo conflict is used to demonstrate how the U.S. media and government used “disinformation” and “war propaganda” to cover up the fact that no “genocide” or atrocities had taken place in Kosovo. He is able to deconstruct the deceptions and lies perpetrated by the U.S. and Western media. The analysis is essential reading in promoting critical media literacy skills and in the deconstruction of the modus operandi of the U.S. and Western media.

But if there was a massive and unprecedented U.S. infowar and propaganda and disinformation campaign, what was the reason for it? Collon analyzed the hidden agendas and objectives that the U.S. and the NATO countries had in launching such a blatantly illegal and criminal war of aggression. He showed how NATO expansion eastwards and into “Southeastern Europe” were important strategic and military objectives. The neutralization of Serbia was vital for the U.S. and the EU because Serbia was not a compliant U.S. proxy, client, and satellite state. Serbia was a large roadblock in the way of U.S. and NATO expansion. Serbia had to be wiped out. And that is what the U.S. and NATO did. The Kosovo conflict was the result.

Economic interests were also of primary concern for the U.S. and NATO. Serbia was resisting “privatization” and the “open society”, that is, the corporate takeover of its economy by U.S. and Western corporate raiders, NGOs, and corporate conglomerates.

Collon examined the ramifications of the Kosovo conflict for future conflicts, the “next wars of globalization.” In particular, he saw the connection of Kosovo to the Caucasus, the interconnection of Kosovo to the South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflicts. Collon saw the Kosovo conflict as only the first war in NATO’s expansion eastwards and NATO’s plan to encircle the Russian Federation.

The war launched on August 7, 2008 by U.S. client state Georgia to take over the de facto independent regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia can be seen as the second war concocted by the U.S. and NATO. The goal is the same in Kosovo and in South Ossetia. The U.S. and NATO seek expansion. Collon was able to foresee the South Ossetia conflict, His analytical framework is accurate and critical, providing an objective and unbiased analysis of NATO and U.S. motives and policies.

Collon begins his analysis by deconstructing the media deceptions and lies that the U.S. and Western media used to “sell” the illegal war in Kosovo. The U.S. propaganda model was to use the Bosnia Holocaust propaganda analogy. Accuse the Serbs of committing genocide, of recreating the Holocaust. Make up outrageous and preposterous atrocity stories and fabrications and concoct unbelievable casualty numbers. Revive the “ethnic cleansing” meme that worked so well in Bosnia. And then develop the genocide propaganda argument.

There was a claim by the U.S. and Western media that there were “100,000 Missing” Albanian Muslims, presumed to have been killed by the Serbs. U.S. President Bill Clinton stated at a White House press conference on June 25, 1999 that “tens of thousands of people”, that is, Albanian Muslims, had been murdered in Kosovo on the personal orders of Slobodan Milosevic. This was nonsense and a malicious deception. Geoff Hoon of the British Foreign Office similarly claimed that “it appeared that around 10,000 people had been killed in more than 100 massacres.” These were outlandish, cynical, and immoral lies disseminated by government leaders. But Bill Clinton and Tony Blair understood that there were no repercussions and consequences for the most outrageous of lies and deceptions. By playing the genocide game or genocide card, moreover, invoking genocide in what was an internal, separatist and secessionist conflict, Clinton and Blain knew that they could silence any dissent and debate. Who wouldn’t want to prevent genocide and atrocities? Framed in those deceptive terms, it was a win-win situation that was based totally on disinformation, infowar and psyop techniques, and fabrications.

In fact, claims of genocide by the U.S., Britain, and other NATO countries were later shown to be lies and fabrications concocted and planned by the governments of those same NATO countries that bombed and occupied Yugoslavian territory. U.S. infowar techniques went into high gear. The U.S. media and government propaganda machine went into overdrive. U.S. Army Psyops specialists even were hired by CNN to work for the news network. This was the appetizer. This was to get everyone ready for the main show, which was the bombing and occupation of Serbia.

Collon examined and discussed the language and terms of the Rambouillet Accord which no sovereign and independent country could accept. It harkened back to the 1914 Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Serbia that led to World War I. Under the terms of the Rambouillet Accord, Serbia had to allow NATO the right to potentially occupy all of Serbia and Yugoslavia, had to give Kosovo de facto independence immediately, and allow Kosovo Albanians to vote on independence after three years. What sovereign state would accept these terms? Would Georgia under Mikhail Saakashvili accept these terms for the resolution of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflicts? Clearly, the U.S. planned a war to allow the Kosovo Albanian Muslim separatists to secede from Serbia, like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had done in 1941, and for essentially the same reasons, to use Albanians as a proxy against Yugoslavia, a hostile and non-proxy state.

Collon cited convincing and compelling evidence that the U.S. and NATO planned an “intervention” in Kosovo long before the 78 day bombing started in 1999. In June, 1997, a French government official visited a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Adriatic. A U.S. admiral showed him a map of Yugoslavia with blinking lights on it. When asked what the lights represented, the admiral replied, “These are the future targets of our air attacks.” This was almost two years before the alleged “crackdown” and “atrocities” in Kosovo by the Slobodan Milosevic regime. This was before anything had happened in Kosovo. The U.S. and NATO were planning the next war. And Kosovo was the place. Some rationale was needed, any rationale, and the U.S. propaganda and infowar machine came up with one.

Finally, Collon analyzed the war crimes the U.S. and NATO committed in Kosovo by targeting Serbian hospitals, nursing homes, passenger trains, automobile factories, power grids, marketplaces, refugee columns, and television stations. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch confirmed that based on the evidence they gathered, the U.S. and NATO were guilty of committing horrendous war crimes. But who was going to prosecute them? Who was going to arrest Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright and bring them before a war crimes tribunal and court? Who was going to prosecute the U.S. and NATO war crimes in Serbia and Yugoslavia? Might makes right. 

What did the U.S. and NATO achieve with the alleged “humanitarian intervention”? Following the war, an estimated 250,000 Kosovo Serbs, Roma, Turks, Gorani, and Jews were forced to flee Kosovo, creating an ethnically pure Albanian or Shqip “Kosova”, a Greater Albania. What the U.S. had achieved was to allow its proxy Albanian forces to secede and to create a second Albanian state in Europe. The U.S. had achieved the goals of Albanian separatism, creating two Albanian Muslim states in Europe.

Collon analyzed the Racak “massacre” and showed how this incident was staged and manipulated and distorted by the U.S. government and media. Those killed were armed Albanian Muslims who had been engaged in a shootout with Yugoslav police and security forces. The evidence showed that they had gun residue on their hands indicating that they had fired weapons. Racak was the pretext the U.S. needed to launch the illegal bombardment of Yugoslavia. Anything, any pretext, would have done.

Collon showed how economic factors were also paramount in the Kosovo conflict. U.S. President Bill Clinton had explained that “that’s what this Kosovo thing is all about … our ability to sell around the world.” He cited a Thomas Friedman statement in the New York Times : “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15.” Finally, the New York Times on July 18, 1996, attacked Slobodan Milosevic, “a former Communist”, because he retained “state controls” over the Yugoslav economy and because of “his refusal to allow privatization.” The Washington Post explained succinctly why Yugoslavia was targeted by the U.S., NATO, and the EU: “Milosevic failed to understand the political message of the fall of the Berlin Wall while other Communist politicians accepted the Western model, and moved in the direction of the rest of Europe, Milosevic went the other way.” Milosevic did not grasp that the U.S. was the sole Superpower, the “global hegemon” who required all states to adopt and to follow the “Western model”. Ultimately, this was what the Kosovo thing was all about.

Collon was able to analyze and deconstruct the many issues involved in the Kosovo crisis and to see their future implications in the Caucasus. Originally published in 2000 in French as Monopoly: The NATO Conquest of the World, Collon analyzed how the Kosovo conflict was aimed ultimately at Russia and was a precursor to NATO expansion into the Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Georgia. Kosovo was not the end, but only the start. Kosovo was the beginning. South Ossetia and Abkhazia were the next wars. Kosovo set the stage for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and was the intended “prototype” for future wars of “globalization” and for spreading “democracy” and “freedom” around the globe.

Three-year-old Milica Rakic was killed on April 17, 1999 by the NATO bombardment of the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica.

The parents of Milica Rakic mourn at her funeral.

NATO targeted hospitals, power grids, nursing homes, passenger trains, bridges, refugee columns, busses, television stations, factories, and residential areas. These are war crimes under international law and the customs and conventions of warfare. Cluster bombs were dropped by NATO in civilian areas. NATO bombed the residence of Slobodan Milosevic in a “decapitation” attack meant to assassinate him. NATO also killed hundreds of Albanian Muslim refugees.

The Chinese Embassy building in Belgrade after NATO bombardment. Out of 900 targets bombed by NATO, only the Chinese Embassy was targeted and chosen by the CIA and consisted of an independent U.S. bombing run.

A Serbian civilian lies dead on the street after NATO bombing.

Serbian hospitals destroyed by NATO bombardment, above and below.

U.S. bombers wrote graffiti on this unexploded bomb in Kraljevo: “Do you still wanna be a Serb now!!”

Serbian graffiti on a damaged building reads “Hitler Klinton”. Worldwide protests and outrage against the NATO bombing were largely dismissed and marginalized by the U.S. and NATO governments and media.

U.S. President Bill Clinton is depicted as a “new Hitler” during mass anti-U.S. and anti-NATO demonstrations in Sydney in 1999.

U.S. Marines pass an anti-NATO banner in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1999 which reads: “Killers Go Home”.

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