Genocide of Jews and Bosnian Muslims by Serbian

Nazi Collaborators in World War II

+++ In just a few days of February 1943, the Serbian Chetniks under the leadership of Draza
Mihailovich committed genocide of close to 20,000 Bosniak Muslims in the Podrinje area (around
Srebrenica region) - mostly women, children and elderly. Serbian Chetniks themselves admitted killing
over 9,000 people in this genocidal campaign alone.

+++ Serbs portray themselves as the major Balkan victims of the Second World War, but conceal the
Chetnik collaboration with Nazi fascists, including systematic genocide that they had committed
against several peoples, including the Bosniaks and Jews. Although Serbian historians contend that the
persecution of the Jews of Serbia was entirely the responsibility of Germans and began only with the
German occupation, this is self- serving fiction. Fully six months before the Nazi invasion of
Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university
enrolment. 94 percent of Serbia's 16,000 Jews were exterminated, with the considerable cooperation of
the Serbian government, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian police and
the Serbian public. The largest proportion of anti-fascist Bosnian partisans were Bosniaks Muslims,
who were being slaughtered by all sides (Ustashas, Chetniks and Nazis). Attempts to form a pro-Axis
Bosniak division failed when the Bosniak Muslim conscripts revolted against the Germans at a training
base south of Le Puy, France in September 1943.

+++ While it is true that during the War, both the Partisans and pro-German Serbian-Nazi Chetniks
aided Allied pilots in escaping, they did so because they were paid in gold for each one. However, only
NAZI collaborator and fascist Draza Mihailovic received Medal, due to intensive Serbian lobbying and
propaganda in the U.S.

The full article starts below:

PHOTO: Serbian Chetnik Commander Pavle Djurisic reporting to the Chetnik General
Draza Mihailovich on the extermination of over 9,200 Bosniak Muslims (including women
 and children) on February 13, 1943. May their souls rest in peace.

The Chetnik apologists like to argue that Draza Mihailovic didn't know anything about genocidal
campaigns his forces were committing against the Bosniak Muslim population of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
A closer look at the above document reveals that Draza Mihailovic was well aware of genocide his
forces were committing in 1943.

In the above document, Serbian Chetnik Commander Pavle Djurisic reported directly to the Chetnik
General Draza Mihailovic about the "successes" of Chetnik operations in the extermination campaigns
against the Bosniak Muslim population in the area of Pljevlje, Cajnice, and Foca region. This is the
region of Podrinje where Srebrenica is located.

In his briefing to the Serb General Draza Mihailovich, the Chetnik Commander Pavle Djurisic writes,
(note: this is a translation of key points from Serbian cyrillic), quote:
All Moslem villages in three mentioned locations [municipalities of Pljevlje, Cajnice,
and Foca] were burned down, and not even one home remained intact.... During
military operations, we engaged in total destruction of Moslem population without
regard to their sex or age. Our victims include 22 dead, of which 2 by accident, and 32
wounded. We killed about 1,200 Muslim soldiers and about 8,000 of their women,
elderly and children.

Therefore, it is perfectly clear that Draza Mihajlovich knew what was going on, but he did nothing to
stop the genocide of Bosniak Muslim civilians. He was complicit in Genocide against the Bosniak
Muslim population of Podrinje in 1943. While the Serbian Chetniks admited killing 9,200 people in
this genocide, the documented killings show close to 20,000 Bosniaks massacred, 98% of them
being civilian men, women, children, and elderly. (See: "Srpski zlocini nad Bosnjacima
Muslimanima 1941. - 1945." by Semso Tucakovic).

Attempts to Deny 1943 Genocide

This genocide of Bosniak Muslim population in Podrinje occured in February of 1943. Since then, the
leftist apologist genocide deniers have been actively denying any wrong-doings of Serbian Chetnik
forces who collaborated with Nazi fascists in World War II. The most vocal Draza Mihajlovic's
apologist and opinionist (he doesn't deserve to be called historian) - Lucien Karchmar - even came up
with a list of philosophical reasons attacking the evidence against Chetnik crimes. In his book "Draza
Mihailovic and the Rise of the Chetnik Movement, 1941–1942", Lucien Karchmar devotes his study in
apologizing for Draza Mihailovich's crimes and dismissing each piece of historical evidence presented
as a fraud or forgery. That's exactly how Chetnik-apologists write history to justify, downplay or deny
crimes of Chetniks against the Bosniak Muslim population of Bosnia-Herzegovina; not to mention
Chetnik collaboration with Nazi fascists.

Instead of reading Lucien Karchmar's make-belief stories about Chetnik innocence, one might read the
book written by a respected Serbian historian Nikola P. Ilic who did a great job documenting
collaboration of Chetniks with Fascists. The book is titled (in Serbian) "Kolaboracija Cetnika sa
Okupatorima i Kvislinzima u Srbiji."

Draza Mihailovic's people with NAZI Fascists

 PHOTO: Chetnik Draza Mihailovich's commanders with the German nazi fascists: 1)
Colonel Lucic, 2) Major Dongic, formerly of the Yugoslav Army, Chetnik commander,
cooperator with the Germans and Nedic's men, 3) Ilija Trifunovic-Bircanin, Draza
Mihailovich's commander for Dalmatia, 4) Milorad Ljanovski, 5) Daka Tesanovic, Chetnik
commander, and 6) Lieutenant Ignjatovic. - A German officer is shown by a cross. Photo
Credit: The United States holocaust Memorial Museum. (Public Domain)

According to Serbian scholars, Dr. Jovan Marjanovic & Mihail Stanisic, "The collaboration of
Draza Mihailovic's Chetniks with the enemy forces of occupation", 1976, quote:
The Serbian chetniks of Draza Mihailovic were represented as fighters against the occupier,
while in fact they were the allies of the Nazi fascists in Yugoslavia....The documents in this
collection indicate clearly and unequivocally that the Chetniks collaborated with the
occupiers, both in the military and political sphere, as well as in the domain of economic
activity, intelligence and propaganda...

Serbia's Union of Anti-Fascists has - on numerous occasions - protested growing falsification of history
committed by Chetnik apologists who present Chetniks as "anti-fascists" who fought alongside allies.

Serbian Lobbying and Medal for a Fascist

Draza Mihailovic was the only NAZI fascist to be awarded the Legion of Merit for his "contribution"
to the Allied victory. So, how did he receive this medal? According to the respected British historian
and world renowned scholar of Balkan history, Dr. Marko Attila Hoare, quote:
Mihailovic continued his opportunistic game of seeking to collaborate with both Axis and
Allies. In this context, he assisted the US airborne evacuation of about two-hundred and
fifty airmen from Chetnik territory in August 1944. This simply meant that the Chetniks
allowed the Americans to use their airstrip for the evacuation - scarcely a particularly heroic
action - while at the same time, Mihailovic sent a delegation along with the departing US
planes in a fruitless effort to win back Allied support. Yet it was for the rescue of US airmen
that Mihailovic would posthumously receive the Legion of Merit. On other occasions,
however, Mihailovic’s Chetniks rescued German airmen and handed them over safely
 to the German armed forces - were he so inclined, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
could follow Washington’s example and decorate Mihailovic for saving the lives of his
country’s servicemen. Yet none of Mihailovic’s intrigues saved him or his Chetnik
movement from destruction at the hands of the victorious Partisans: the revolution in the
western Balkans - Europe’s second and last successful Communist revolution - succeeded
thanks to British and American military intervention, which enabled the reestablishment of
Yugoslavia. This is a fact that Milosevic’s left-wing supporters usually prefer not to
mention. The Left Revisionists, November 2003]

Draza Mihailovich's apologists like to point out that: "an independent American commission concluded
in 1946, these Allied airmen were instructed by their American and British superiors to look for any
signs of collaboration, they were given freedom of movement by Mihailovic forces, and yet not one of
these hundreds testified of Mihailović collaboration with the Axis."

In fact, this was far from so called "independent American commission" and the medal for Nazi
collaborator Draza Mihajlovic was result of intensive lobbying by Serbian-Americans who were
part of Chetnik forces. These included Lieutenant Nick Nikola Lalich (an American of Serbian
heritage), Captain George Musulin (also an American of Serbian heritage), Pro-Serbian US
Army Colonel Robert H. McDowell (friend of Nikola Lalich) and Ruth Mitchell, the sister of the
late Gen. William (Billy) Mitchell. They lobbied for Draza Mihajlovich's medal, and he got it as a
result of their lobbying, and as a result of testimonies of many other pro-Serb oriented members
of Chetnik forces who emigrated as "refugees" to the USA and other countries to avoid
prosecution for war crimes.

PHOTO: In the Ranger Mission, the U.S. Army Lt. Col. Robert H. McDowell "with the
help of Lieutenant Nick Lalich" (Nikola Lalich, an American of Serbian heritage), gathered
intelligence on Nazi troop movements and wrote a report on Draza's Chetniks movement.
McDowell wrote a report that he "never saw any type of collaboration between Mihailovich
and the Germans", however the photo of Draza Mihailovich and pro-Serbian US Army Lt.
Col. McDowell with Ustasha's and German Nazis was recorded in this photograph taken at
Dvori near Bijeljina, September 28 1944. 1) Draza Mihailovich, 2) Pro-Serbian US Army
Colonel Robert H. McDowell (friend of Nikola Lalich, an American of Serbian origin who
 fought in Draza Mihailovich's Chetniks), and 3) Mustafa Mulalic and a group of Ustashas.
Source: Web Archive - the Trial of Dragoljub Draza Mihailovich 1946.

Allies confirm Chetnik NAZI Collaboration

At first, the western Allies had viewed the Chetniks as the core of the resistance movements in
Yugoslavia against the invaders. But reports from British parachutists who had joined the fighting
forces in Yugoslavia began to reach the West, indicating that the Chetniks' policy was to fight the
anti-fascist Partisans under Josip Broz Tito, rather than the Germans and their allies.
Consequently, the attitude of the western Allies underwent a change in the second half of 1942,
and they switched their aid to the Partisans who were fighting the German enemy. By the end of
1943, the break beetween the west and the Chetniks was complete. The Chetniks had become
collaborators and joined the forces fighting the Partisans.

The first experiments in mass executions of camp inmates by poison gas were carried out in
Serbia. Serbia was the first country to proudly declare itself "Judenfrei" ("cleansed" of Jews)
The long concealed Historical Archives in Belgrade reveal that Banjica, a concentration camp
located in Belgrade, was primarily staffed by Serbs.

As Dr Hoare points in his article "Adding Insult to Injury: Washington Decorates a Nazi Collaborator,"
quote:
According to Israel Gutman’s Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, “There were many instances
of Chetniks murdering Jews or handing them over to the Germans”.... The sixtieth
anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany is not, one might imagine, the time when one
would expect the US government to decorate Nazi collaborators. But one would be wrong.
Last month, a delegation of US war-veterans posthumously presented the Legion of Merit
to Serbia’s General Dragoljub ‘Draza’ Mihailovic, leader of the ‘Chetnik’ movement during
World War II; a convicted war-criminal and Nazi collaborator. The award was originally
made to Mihailovic in 1948, two years after his execution by the Yugoslav authorities. Yet
it is only now that the US has decided to hand over the award to Mihailovic’s daughter. It is
as if the US had chosen the anniversary of VE day to present an award to Marshal Petain,
or to the Dutch policemen who arrested Anne Frank. The US action has provoked sharp
protests from Croatians, Bosnians and Kosovars. To understand this bizarre decision, the
tangled threads leading up to it require some untangling.

After War Attempts to Rewrite History

In the late 1980s, with the blessing of Slobodan Milosevic, a group of Serbs organized the Serbian
Jewish Friendship Society, which has propagandized endlessly about Serbia's 'Holocaust decency.' The
attempts to rewrite history in Nazi Chetnik favor had limited success.

In conjunction with the war in former Yugoslavia, Serbia has undertaken a campaign to
persuade the Jewish community of Serbian friendship for Jews (the Serbian Jewish Friendship
Society). This same campaign portrays Bosniaks (Muslims) and Croats (Catholics) as a common
threat to both Jews and Serbs, in an attempt to gain Jewish sympathy and support at a time
when most nations have isolated Serbia as a Balkan pariah. However, even as Serbia courts
Jewish public opinion, their propagandists conceal a history of well-ingrained antisemitism,
which continues unabated in 1992. To make their case, Serbs portray themselves as victims in the
Second World War, but conceal the systematic genocide that Serbs had committed against several
peoples including the Jews. Thus Serbs have usurped as propaganda the Holocaust that occurred in
neighbouring Croatia and Bosnia, but do not give an honest accounting of the Holocaust as it occurred
in Serbia.

During four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Jewish communities of Serbia enjoyed
religious tolerance, internal autonomy, and equality before the law, that ended with the breakup of the
Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Serbian state. Soon after a Serbian insurrection against
Turkish rule in 1804, Jews were expelled from the interior of Serbia and prohibited from residing
outside of Belgrade. In 1856 and 1861, Jews were further prohibited from travel for the purpose
of trade. In official correspondence from the late 19th century, British diplomats detailed the
cruel treatment of the Jews of Serbia, which they attributed to religious fanaticism, commercial
rivalries, and the belief that Jews were the secret agents of the Turks. Article 23 of the Serbian
constitution granted equality to every citizen but Article 132 forbade Jews the right of domicile.
The Treaty of Berlin 1878, which formally established the Serbian state, accorded political and
civil equality to the Jews of Serbia, but the Serbian Parliament resisted abolishing restrictive
decrees for another 11 years. Although the legal status of the Jewish community subsequently
improved, the view of Jews as an alien presence persisted.

Although Serbian historians contend that the persecution of the Jews of Serbia was entirely the
responsibility of Germans and began only with the German occupation, this is self- serving
fiction. Fully six months before the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation
restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment. One year later on 22
October 1941, the rabidly antisemitic "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibit" opened in occupied Belgrade,
funded by the city of Belgrade. The central theme was an alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic plot for
world domination. Newspapers such as Obnova (Renewal) and Nasa Borba (Our Struggle) praised this
exhibit, proclaiming that Jews were the ancient enemies of the Serbian people and that Serbs should not
wait for the Germans to begin the extermination of the Jews. A few months later, Serbian authorities
issued postage stamps (see picture bellow) commemorating the opening of this popular exhibit. These
stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian symbols, portrayed Judaism as the source of world evil
and advocated the humiliation and violent subjugation of Jews.

Serbia as well as neighboring Croatia was under Axis occupation during the Second World War.
Although the efficient destruction of Serbian Jewry in the first two years of German occupation
has been well documented by respected sources, the extent to which Serbia actively collaborated
in that destruction has been less recognized. The Serbian government under General Milan Nedic
worked closely with local Nazi officials in making Belgrade the first "Judenfrei" city of Europe.
As late as 19 September 1943, Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler, Serbs in Berlin
advanced the idea that the Serbs were the "Ubermenchen" (master race) of the Slavs.
 PHOTO: Serbian Nazi Chetnik Milan Nedic and Adolph Hitler meeting, September 19
1943.

Although the Serbian version of history portrays wartime Serbia as a helpless, occupied territory,
Serbian newspapers of the period offer a portrait of intensive collaboration. In November 1941,
Mihajlo Olcan, a minister in Nedic's government boasted that "Serbia has been allowed what no other
occupied country has been allowed and that is to establish law and order with its own armed forces".
Indeed, with Nazi blessings, Nedic established the Serbian State Guard, numbering about 20,000,
compared to the 3,400 German police in Serbia. Recruiting advertisements for the Serb police force
specified that "applicants must have no Jewish or Gypsy blood". Nedic's second in command was
Dimitrije Ljotic, founder of the Serbian Fascist Party and the principal Fascist ideologist of Serbia.
Ljotic organized the Serbian Volunteers Corps, whose primary function was rounding up Jews,
Bosniaks, Gypsies, and partisans for execution. Serbian citizens and police received cash bounties for
the capture and delivery of Jews.

Jews are, according to Serbian Chetnik Dimitrije Ljotic, a cursed people. In his views, there are 4
methods the Jews have of ruling over other nations and the whole world, which include: Capitalism,
Democracy, Freemasonry, and Marxism. He openly called for action against Jews because they were, in
his opinion, the most cynical and dangerous opponents of Christian values.

The Serbian Orthodox Church openly collaborated with the Nazis, and many priests publicly defended
the persecution of the Jews. On 13 August 1941, approximately 500 distinguished Serbs signed "An
Appeal to the Serbian Nation", which called for loyalty to the occupying Nazis. The first three
signers were bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. On 30 January 1942, Metropolitan Josif, the
acting head of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, officially prohibited conversions of
Jews to Serbian Orthodoxy, thereby blocking a means of saving Jewish lives. At a public rally, after the
government Minister Olcan "thanked God that the enormously powerful fist of Germany had not come
down upon the head of the Serbian nation" but instead "upon the heads of the Jews in our midst", the
speaker of these words was then blessed by a high-ranking Serbian Orthodox priest.

A most striking example of Serbian antisemitism combined with historical revisionism is the case
of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic (1880-1956), revered as one of the most influential church leaders
and ideologists after Saint Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. To Serbs, Bishop
Velimirovic was a martyr who survived torture in the Dachau prison camp. In truth he was brought to
Dachau (as were other prominent European clergy), because the Nazis believed he could be useful for
propaganda. There he spent approximately two months as an "Ehrenhaftling" (honour prisoner) in a
special section, dining on the same food as the German officers, living in private quarters, and making
excursions into town under German escort. From Dachau, this venerated Serbian priest endorsed
the Holocaust, quote:
Europe is presently the main battlefield of the Jew and his father, the devil, against the
heavenly Father and his only begotten Son... (Jews) first need to become legally equal with
Christians in order to repress Christianity next, turn Christians into atheist, and step on their
necks. All the modern European slogans have been made up by Jews, the crucifiers of
Christ: democracy, strikes, socialism atheism, tolerance of all religions, pacifism, universal
revolution, capitalism and communism... All this has been done with the intention to
eliminate Christ... You should think about this, my Serbian brethren, and correspondingly
correct your thoughts, desires and acts. (Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic: Addresses to the
Serbian People--Through the Prison Window. Himmelsthur, Germany: Serbian Orthodox
Eparchy for Western Europe, 1985, pp. 161-162).

Despite Serbian claims to the contrary, Germans were not alone in killing the Jews of Serbia. The long
concealed Historical Archives in Belgrade reveal that Banjica, a concentration camp located in
Belgrade, was primarily staffed by Serbs. Funding for the conversion of the former barracks of the
Serbian 18th infantry division to a concentration, came from the municipal budget of Belgrade. The
camp was divided into German and Serbian sections. From Banjica there survive death lists written
entirely in Serbian in the Cyrillic alphabet. At least 23,697 victims passed through the Serbian
section of this camp. Many were Jews, including at least 798 children, of whom at least 120 were
shot by Serbian guards. The use of mobile gassing vans by Nazis in Serbia for the extermination
of Jewish women and children has been well documented. It is less appreciated, however, that a
Serbian business firm had contracted with the Gestapo to purchase these same victims cloths, which
sometimes contained hidden money or jewelry in the linings. In August 1942, following the virtual
liquidation of Serbia's Jews, Nedic's government attempted to claim all Jewish property for the Serbian
state. In the same month, Dr. Harald Turner; the chief of the Nazi civil administration of Serbia,
boasted that Serbia was the only country in which the "Jewish question" was solved. Turner
himself attributed this "success" to Serbian help. Thus, 94 percent of Serbia's 16,000 Jews were
exterminated, with the considerable cooperation of the Serbian government, the Serbian
Orthodox Church, the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian police and the Serbian public.

Today, many Serbs proudly cite the Chetniks as a resistance force and even claim that the Chetniks
were somehow allied with the United States during the Second World War, but this is simply historical
revisionism. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Chetnik resistance against the Nazis
came to a complete stop as early as the end of 1941. Thereafter, the Chetnik resistance actively
collaborated with the both Nazis and Fascists, and for this reason Jewish fighters found it
necessary to abandon the Chetniks, in favour of Tito's Partisans. In reality, the Chetniks, dedicated
primarily to the restoration of the Serbian throne and territorial expansion of the Serbian state, were the
moral counterpart of Croatia's Ustatsha. Both were quintessentially genocidal; the Chetniks
committed systematic genocide against Bosniaks Muslims, who, for nearly all of 500 years had
lived peacefully with the Sephardic Jewish community. Under explicit orders from their leader
Draze Mihajlovic, the Chetniks attempted to depopulate Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and
Croatia of all non-Serbs and in the process, massacred most of the 103,000 Bosniaks who
perished during the war.

The main force of Serbian Chetniks rallied around Draza Mihailovic, a 48 year-old Army officer who
had been court-martialed by Nedic and who had close ties to Britain. Early in the war, Mihailovic
offered some resistance to the German forces while collaborating with the Italians. By July 22, 1941,
the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile in Britain announced that continued resistance was impossible.
Although Mihailovic and his exiled government would maintain a fierce propaganda campaign to
convince the Allies that his Chetniks were inflicting great damage to the Axis, they did little for the war
effort and often openly collaborated with the Germans and Italians while fighting the Partizans. At its
peak, Mihailovic's Chetniks claimed to have 300,000 troops. In fact they never numbered over 31,000.

Meanwhile, Josip Broz Tito, organized multi-ethnic resistance group, which took up the fight against
the Nazis, as well as against the Ustasha's and Chetniks. The overwhelming bulk of resistance
activity against German nazis occurred in Bosnia and Croatia. According to Yugoslav statistics,
at the height of the war in late 1943, there were 122,000 partisans active in Croatia, 108,000 in
Bosnia, and only 22,000 in Serbia. The largest proportion of Bosnian partisans were Bosniaks
Muslims, who were being slaughtered by all sides.

Attempts to form a pro-Axis Bosniak division failed when the Bosniak Muslim conscripts
revolted against the Germans at a training base south of Le Puy, France in September 1943. It
was the only large-scale mutiny within the German army during the War.

The Bosniak-Muslim clergy in 1941 issued resolutions condemning atrocities being carried out by
Ustashe and Chetniks, and condemned persecution of Jews and Serbs. Bosniaks Muslims
suffered the highest per capita losses of any nationality in Yugoslavia.

Serbian Chetnik forces initially fought against the Ustashe regime, as its goal of a “Greater Serbia” was
in conflict with the Ustashe's “Greater Croatia”. But the Chetniks' main enemy was the partisans, so
Chetniks eventually became full-scale collaborators of the Nazis.

By February 1943 the Western Allies condemned the Chetniks as collaborators, threw their support to
the Partisans and began to airdrop supplies to the Partisans. Mihailovic was executed in 1946 for
treason. Ironically, his son and daughter Branko and Gordana went over to the Partisans in 1943
and both publicly supported their father's execution after the war.

While it is true that during the War, both the Partisans and pro-German Serbian-Nazi Chetniks
aided Allied pilots in escaping, they did so because they were paid in gold for each one.

For years, the Serbian dominated Belgrade government has supported and trained PLO terrorists.
Immediately after the murder of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro in 1985, the terrorist
mastermind Abu Abbas was welcomed in Belgrade. Since the late 1980's, Abu-Nidal has maintained a
large terrorist infrastructure in Yugoslavia, in coordination with Libyan, Iraqi, and Yugoslav
intelligence services. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as Iraqi missiles landed in Israel, Belgrade
supported its ally Iraq.

Although the Jewish community of Serbia is not currently experiencing persecution, overt expressions
of Serbian antisemitism do surface in such mainstream institutions as the Serbian Orthodox Church and
the official news media. The 15 January 1992 issue of the official publication of the Serbian
Orthodox Church, Pravoslavlje (Orthodoxy), carried an article entitled, "Jews Crucify Christ
Again." In this polemic, "treacherous" and "surreptitious" Israeli politicians were said to be
constrained from expressing their "pathological" hatred of Christians openly because "they
know that Christian countries gave them the state." Allegedly, nuns are so frequently beaten in
Israel, that one nun was actually "happy, because they only spit in her face." Only weeks later, when
Russia extended diplomatic recognition to the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia, the
official Yugoslav (Serbian perspective) news agency Tanjug blamed "a Jewish conspiracy" against
Serbia, hauntingly reminiscent of the theme of the 1941 anti-Masonic exhibit.

The essential strategy of Serbian propaganda is to portray the spiritual kinship between Jews and Serbs
as victims of the Holocaust and endangered by Croats. This concept is disseminated through the
Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society, founded in Belgrade in 1988 and supported by the Serbian
government. In January and February 1992, Dr. Klara Mandic, the secretary-general and
principal voice of this organization, syndicated a chilling article in the North American Jewish
press. This article alleged that Ankica Konjuh, an elderly Jewish woman, was tortured and
murdered by "Croat extremists" in September 1991. However, even as she released this story to
the press, Dr. Mandic knew that Ankica Konjuh was neither a Jew nor could have been killed by
Croats. Bona-fide witnesses have testified that Ankica Konjuh, a 67 year-old Croat, was one of
240 civilians massacred by Serbian forces after the last Croat defenders were driven from the
region. Moreover on 23 December 1991, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia met
in Belgrade and demanded in writing that Dr. Mandic cease and desist misrepresenting Ankica
Konjuh as the first Jewish victim of the war. Nevertheless, in late February 1992, when Dr.
Mandic lectured at the Hillel House of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., she
provided the rabbi with a copy of that misleading article, delivered without further comment. It
is noteworthy that this speaking engagement was part of a tour arranged by Wise
Communications, a Washington-based public relations firm representing the Serbian oil
company Jugopetrol, a thinly veiled proxy for the Communist Belgrade government. Beginning
with the proposition that antisemitism has never existed in Serbia, Dr. Mandic portrayed Croatia
as preparing to repeat the Holocaust. She claimed to be a "Jewish leader," although Jews are
distinctly absent from her constituency. Less than half a dozen Jews are actual members of her
society of several thousand. She introduced herself as an "eyewitness" speaking on behalf of
Croatian Jews, although since the war began, she has had no contact with any of the nine Jewish
communities of Croatia. When Dr. Mandic was asked to comment on Serbian (Yugoslav Army)
shelling of the synagogue of Dubrovnik, the second oldest surviving synagogue in Europe, she
denied that the synagogue had ever been damaged at all. Meanwhile, the attack has been well
documented by the Jewish community of Dubrovnik and the World Monument Fund.

Jewish sensitivity to the Holocaust is similarly exploited by the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society of
America (Granada Hills, California), an offshoot of Dr. Mandic's organization. Its newsletter equates
the Jewish and Serbian positions during World War II, both as victims of Croats, but fails to mention
Serbian complicity in the Holocaust, Serbian collaboration with the Nazis, and Serbian genocide
against Croats, Gypsies, and Bosniaks Muslims. It warns of an imminent Holocaust being initiated in
Croatia. A contrasting portrayal of Croatia, however, emerges from a spectrum of Croatian Jews,
American Jews who have visited Croatia, and international Jewish agencies monitoring events on site.
All concur that there is no state-sponsored antisemitism in Croatia; the rights of the Jewish minority are
respected; and antisemitic incidents are virtually unknown. Thus, only a few dozen of the 2,000 Jews of
Croatia have chosen to emigrate to Israel since the war began.

Serbia of today and Germany in World War II offer striking parallels. In 1991, Vojislav Seselj, a
member of the Serbian Parliament and leader of the Serbian irregulars who call themselves Chetniks,
declared, "We want no one else on our territory and we will fight for our true borders." Croats and
Bosniaks in Serbian conquered regions are forced to wear red-and-white armbands, analogous to the
yellow armbands worn by Jews in Serbia during the Holocaust. The stated purpose of the expulsion of
Bosniaks and Croats from captured regions is "ethnic cleansing." The indigenous non-Serbian
populations of the invaded territories are being driven from their homes, exterminated, or imprisoned in
concentration camps, to create regions of Serbian ethnic purity. Jewish community centres, synagogues,
and cemeteries have been damaged and destroyed by characteristically indiscriminate Serbian artillery
attacks. To all of this, the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society has remained conspicuously silent.

Belgrade has promoted the myth of Serbian kinship with the Jews as fellow victims of Nazi oppression,
while concealing the true extent of Serbian collaboration with the Nazis. It is ironic that Serbia is now
seeking Jewish support for a war in which both the idealogy and methodology so tragically echo
nazism. The European Community, the Helsinki Commission, the United Nations, and the United
States have all condemned Serbia as the aggressor. Western diplomats have characterized the
current Serbian regime as "a lying, terrorist criminal organization." Serbia, however, claims to
be the victim and campaigns for Jewish sympathy and support, exploiting the powerful
symbolism of the Holocaust. Serbia's professed solicitude for the Jewish people must be
reexamined.