Judenfrei Serbia – The Right To Forget!

The concept and practice of political correctness that has evolved during the past couple of decades has also given rise to the phenomenon of oppressive righteousness that is in many ways misguided and incomplete, hence, giving rise to a need to push back against it when it spills over into absurdity, and injustice.

Thursday 25 January 2018, ahead of the international marking of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) Serbia opened at the UN building in New York an exhibition, called “Jasenovac – The Right Not to Forget”. On the face of it and given the occasion one can support the ethos and the core of human identity that trickles through such exhibitions: remembrance of victims of all crimes.

However, that ethos for Serbia’s exhibition at the UN becomes an insignificant secondary matter, even visibly and disturbingly unintended by the exhibition’s organisers (Serbia) when one focuses on the fact that in this exhibition Serbia – once again – omitted to remember its own WWII Holocaust victims. It has, one could say, forgotten the 94% of Serbia’s WWII Jews its WWII Milan Nedic government exterminated by May 1942, thus becoming boastfully one of the first “Jew-Free” (Judenfrei) nations in Europe. What this exhibition at the UN demonstrates clearly is that Serbia doesn’t really care for the victims of the Holocaust, for perpetuation of remembrance of the Holocaust victims, but it does care about covering up its own Holocaust history and pointing the guilty finger at Croatia and camp Jasenovac. Serbia of today demonstrates the continued oppression against Croatia in similar ways it operated during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and during the post-WWII communist Yugoslavia.

Using half-truths and lies has evidently become the material of Serbian leadership’s genetic makeup.

Perpetuating the false (brazenly increased) numbers of Holocaust victims that perished in Jasenovac – when reality of victim numbers was most likely up to ten times less than what Serbs claim, purposefully distorting history, when facts point to Jasenovac being an extermination camp for communist Yugoslavia purges (headquartered in Serbia) years after WWII ended, perpetuating its lies that Croatia’s Blessed Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac was a Nazi/Ustashi collaborator when independently researched facts (e.g. Dr. Esther Gitman) show that he saved both Jews and Orthodox Serbs during WWII, can lead only to one conclusion: Serbia’s propaganda agenda continues to fixate on vilification of the Croatian nation of today and of the past.

It is, therefore, an indisputable, albeit an act of human depravity, that Serbia, with the help of political lobby coming from the likes of Israeli Holocaust selective historian Gideon Greif and Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s shallow but politically bent Efraim Zuroff , has with this UN exhibition given itself “Judenfrei Serbia – The Right To Forget”.

It’s a shame that official Croatia hasn’t responded determinedly to this UN exhibition regarding the Holocaust and mounted its own exhibition in the same UN building, at the same time – exhibiting the truth and including all Holocaust victims within the territory of former Yugoslavia. But then, to come up with such constructive, just and enlightening response to Serbia’s exhibition requires a good will and determination and unity for exhibiting WWII truth, which appear to be calamitously lacking in Croatia. The corridors of Croatia’s government power-wielding echelons have been and are destructively riddled with communist Yugoslavia sympathisers in whose personal interests it is to permit Serbia to do as it pleases when it comes to guilt for sins committed against humanity during WWII – as long as the communists of the time are thus shielded from having to answer for their own sins against humanity!

Certainly, Croatia has plenty of capable and professional academics, historians, researchers, politicians, clergy, journalists and activists who have (especially after the 1991 secession from communist Yugoslavia) been pointing to and unveiling the facts about Jasenovac, about Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, about the WWII Independent State of Croatia – all of which facts blow the Serbian and communist Yugoslavia propaganda out of the water! But, these people act in relative isolation from each other so that such demonstrations of truth appear as personal endeavours rather than a nationally coordinated one.  Official Croatia has done absolutely nothing to rein in the wealth of information and facts, which point to its true WWII history (not the one generated by Serbia and communist Yugoslavia).

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said at the Belgrade-sponsored Jasenovac exhibition’s opening on Thursday evening that its goal was to prevent the deaths at the concentration camp in Croatia from being downplayed. “The goal of this exhibit is not just to introduce the international public to a lesser-known chapter of WWII. It is also to warn about the dangers from a revival of the ideology and political practice which led to such atrocities,” he said.

Apparently official Croatia tried to stop Serbia’s UN exhibition on bases that it promotes untruths and falsities but it withdrew from that upon discovery that the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres (a Socialist from his past political activities) had approved for the exhibition to go ahead even if he qualified that permission by saying that the UN has distanced itself from the exhibition and its content!

But the Croatian foreign ministry said that the use of Jasenovac for “everyday political and propaganda” purposes was “unacceptable”. The exhibit was prepared without the participation of Croatia’s Jasenovac Memorial Centre, said Croatia’s Foreign Minister Marija Pejcinovic Buric.

 

“We express deep respect for all the victims of the Ustasha regime and in the strongest possible terms we condemn all its crimes and particularly crimes committed in the Jasenovac camp,” a foreign ministry of Croatia statement said. “Because of the respect for the victims, we consider it utterly unacceptable to use the suffering in Jasenovac for propaganda purposes or the goals of daily politics,” it said.

Croatian foreign ministry response to the exhibition is fine but the Croatian government failed to capture and express the essence and the meaning for the Croatian nation this exhibition targets. Certainly, majority of people see that it is an attack on Croatia and its people because, besides posting falsehoods about Jasenovac, it actually implies that there is a threat of revival of the ideology in Croatia that led to atrocities of the Holocaust during WWII.

While Croatian politicians such as HDZ’s (political party with governing majority in the parliament) Miro Kovac reacted for Croatian media to Serbia’s exhibition with: “What official Serbia is doing now is, unfortunately, what was seen in the communist Yugoslavia, and that is a continuation of imposing a campaign of collective guilt and genocide against Croatians. Franjo Tudjman was strongly opposed to this…”, the official reactions have been inappropriately scarce.

Given the heartbreaking effect this mean-spirited and inaccurate as to facts exhibition at the UN has had on Croatian masses in Croatia and abroad, one expected the Croatian Parliament to set aside a time in its agenda with view to drawing up a strategy that would protect its people’s future from such Serbian scum (sorry, I find it difficult not to refer to lies as scum). But no – no such ingenuity or fairness from that lot that’s leading that parliament at this time!

One saving grace for such a parliament, though, was the speech delivered in Croatian Parliament on Friday 26 January 2018 by the independent Member of Parliament General Zeljko Glasnovic, representative for the Croatian diaspora. Here is what he said regarding the matter:

“…Basic human rights are jeopardised in Croatia. Which rights? The right to equality before the courts of law, the right to private ownership … not even 5% of land titles have been sorted, and yet we impersonate a plural democracy…

…is the right to truth a basic human right? When we’re talking about the truth here you have an exhibition about Jasenovac on East River, New York … 700,000 victims – falsified history again …when are we going to comprehend that a large professional Greater Serbia brokerage still reigns in Croatia, here in this country, that purposefully hides the true lists of those victims not only from Jasenovac but from the Second World War… when are we going to be conscious of that …

…From abroad, we are looked upon exclusively on the basis of the history of the Second World War, we still do not have an official history of that period… seated here are some people…doctors of history, science etc…what’s happening here? Do we wonder about that… in Josipovic’s days there was 50% of people in the government cabinet who were collaborators of former UDBA (communist Yugoslavia secret services), members of the Communist Party, and Yugophiles, like Dejan Jovic, why are we astonished!

… they are paid…they are paid professional antifascists to hold Croatia on the prosecutor’s bench … they’ve crept into the media, into NGOs etc…what can we expect! … what’s with the archives we are trying to retrieve from Belgrade? I spoke about that in terms of succession (from Yugoslavia) that they must be returned … what has happened …Nothing… global public is still being deceived with them …

…Slovenia has written a book “Slovenia in 1945” mentioning 17,000 victims killed by the communists after WWII…naming almost all, released to the worldwide market…where are our victims …nowhere … total autism of our professional archivists and professional antifascists…and then we are astonished…the Armenians placed a DVD into Time Magazine some years back addressing their tragedy when they suffered under Turks…a total success …Ukraine…Holodomor …every city in Canada has a memorial to victims of communism …

…and Serbs are in front of us, they’ve formed a commission for war victims after 1944 … what are we doing about that issue, we have 18,000 names recorded…Roman Leljak went recently to Serbia and found lists of thousands upon thousands Croats killed in Serbia in 1944 … I’m giving this list I’ve written for the media to the government to see what’s happening here …

…what’s the inert Croatian diplomacy doing …nothing … the Memorial area Jasenovac … that exhibition now being held in New York …an agreement was assembled on 28th March 2017 between Serbia’s Ministry of Education and the Holocaust Institute in Israel, what is the response by the Jasenovac Memorial Centre which to this day falsifies Croatian history and its well paid for that …

…when are we going to condemn the Greater Serbia imperialism … the core of all evils in these areas … and here are seated some people who don’t know who attacked them … and I repeat that like a parrot until I’m six meters under … that the biggest problem here is Greater Serbia imperialism, which from 1912 to 1990 murdered hundreds of thousands in these areas …ether wearing the cockade or the five pointed star …

… and there is silence, he has been rehabilitated as Titoism, that murdered hundreds of thousands of people, has been … and while we stand here today to remember the victims of the Holocaust when are we going to remember the victims of communism … hundred million victims …

…what’s the worst here is that we have destroyed minds and brains among us … that is the biggest barrier for Croatia … communist mental heritage …

…and finally, what kind of a future does a country that pays for the falsification of its own history have … how can it conduct any international politics…horror!”

Video extract from Croatian Parliament Friday, 26 January 2018:

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress,” said on August 3, 1857, Frederick Douglass when he delivered a “West India Emancipation” speech at Canandaigua, New York, on the twenty-third anniversary of the event. Truer words said have been rare indeed when it comes to fighting oppression that perpetuation of lies and falsification of history bring. Croatia has many struggles on its hands in achieving the truth of its existence: a free and democratic state. The struggles though need to accumulate into a single, focused and organised force whose aim is to perpetuate the truth and shed the communist mindset and which has its heart in the Parliament – will this happen? We wait in expectation and anticipation. Ina Vukic