Depravity of Serbian Propaganda Against Croatia

It is a breath of fresh air to know that the Serbian movie „Dara of Jasenovac“ has not made it to the short list for Oscars 2021. Serbian attempt with this movie to receive international credibility for their lies and vicious anti-Croatian propaganda while at the same stroke of „pen“ burying further their own WWII Jew-free state – did not succeed. It is a breath of fresh air and another bright feather in the cap of humanity that this occurred. I am personally proud to have been one of several writers in the world who had the courage to publicly point to this film as Serbian nationalistic propaganda based largely on fabrications against Croatia and Serbia’s shameless, depraved and miserable push to include Serbs killed during WWII into the Holocaust numbers and Holocaust sufferings.

Instead, „Quo Vadis, Aida“ that addresses Serbian genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, did make it to the Oscars 2021 short list! Bosnia, July 1995. Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp. As an insider to the negotiations Aida has access to crucial information that she needs to interpret. What is at the horizon for her family and people-rescue or death? Which move should she take? Jasna Đuričić is utterly convincing as Aida, a translator working at a UN base near Srebrenica, who sees first-hand the failure of peacemakers to prevent an unfolding catastrophe. “Will anyone in the world witness this tragedy, this unprecedented crime?” pleads a voice on a radio. Yet it’s clear that, despite being an alleged “safe zone”, nobody is ready or willing to protect this area. Instead, thousands are forced to flee to the UN encampment, where the Dutch authorities promptly close the gates on thousands more…the massacre or genocide by Serbs of some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys followed…a fact of recent history that Serb leaders deny as genocide to this day.

Serbia has been on a constant roll with accusing Croatia of antisemitism, of implementing the Holocaust during WWII and all the while, as I have written many a time on this blog before – hiding its own depravity and mass crimes against Croats, against the Jews, against the Muslims all over the former Yugoslavia terrain. Here, is a letter written by Philip J. Cohen, an American publicist of Jewish origin who authored notable books such as “Serbia’s Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History” (1996), “The World War II and contemporary Chetniks: Their historico-political continuity and implications for stability in the Balkans” (1997) and “Serbian Anti-Semitism and exploitation of the Holocaust as Propaganda” (1992), who was former advisor to the UN in Bosnia and Hercegovina, addressed to rabbi Abraham Cooper at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on February 27th 1992. In his letter, re-published by the Croatian Cultural Council (HKV) portal on 27 February 2019, Cohen successfully unmasks the propaganda of ‘Greater Serbia’, which at the start of the nineties accused Croatia of fascism and antisemitism. Cohen points out that antisemitism is deeply ingrained into Serb history.

A pdf version of the complete letter by Philip J Cohen to rabbi Abraham Cooper can be read by clicking here. Here are some excerpts:

Dear rabbi Cooper,

A campaign is taking place that aims to convince the American Jewish community of the Serb love of Jews. It also aims to propagate the idea that there is growing fascism and antisemitism in Croatia. The purpose of this letter is to recognize it for what it is, a propaganda campaign. I furnish proof that: 1. Serbia has a history of deeply ingrained antisemitism, which still operates undiminished, today in 1992; 

2. The Serb love for the Jews is politically motivated – their aim is to win the support and backing of the Jews for Serb terrorist ambitions;

3. The Serbs abuse the victims of the Holocaust in neighbouring Croatia and Bosnia for propaganda purposes, but do not offer an honest account of the Holocaust that took place in Serbia.

———

Nenad Porges is the president of the Jewish Community of Zagreb, where 1,200 of the 2,000 Croatian Jews live. Darko Fischer is the president of the Jewish community of the Town of Osijek, where the Centre of Jewish Community was bombed by the Yugoslav army governed by Serbs. When doctor Klara Mandić was asked to comment on the bombing of the synagogue in Dubrovnik, she said that the local synagogue was not damaged at all. However, Jewish witnesses disagree. Therefore, it is difficult not to get the impression that doctor Mandić may be more interested in Serb propaganda interests than the wellbeing of the Jews. In truth, her North American tour of February 1992 was not promoted by any American or Canadian Jewish organisation, or the Jewish community of Belgrade. This tour was promoted by the firm Wise Communications with headquarters in Washington, who deal in public relations and represent the Serb oil company Jugopetrol, which is a mask under which the communist government in Belgrade is represented. The American Jewish-Serb Friendship Society, the Belgrade sister organisation, uses the Holocaust in a most dishonourable manner. This Californian branch tried and is still trying very hard to make both Serbs and Jews appear as Croatian victims during WWII. Their bulletin is full of stories about (Croatian) Ustasa atrocities. However, such selective display of the past contains serious shortcomings, namely: the Serb collaboration in the Holocaust or the Serb genocide over Croats and Slavic Muslims is never mentioned. It is worthwhile to consider the Bosnian Muslims, who for 500 years lived peacefully with the Jewish Sephardic community. During WWII the Serb Chetniks, under the explicit orders of their chief Draža Mihajlović, attempted to uproot all non-Serbs from Serbia, Bosnia and Hercegovina and Croatia, and in this mission slaughtered between 86,000 and 103,000 Slavic Muslims. Today many Serbs proudly point out that the Chetniks were their defensive force in WWII, but that is simply historical revisionism. In reality, the Chetniks primarily wanted to restore the Serb crown and the territorial expansion of the Serb state. In terms of morality, they were a version or the Croatian Ustashe, both were totally guilty of genocide. Furthermore, the Chetniks also collaborated with the Nazis and fascists, which is why Jewish soldiers decided to abandon the Chetniks and join Tito’s partisans. 

In August 1991, after I discovered the aftermentioned bulletin of the American Jewish-Serb Friendship Society, I telephoned the editor Mr. Grujić. He first denied that the Holocaust ever happened in Serbia. When I mentioned several concentration camps, he said that the Croats came to Serbia and governed those camps, which is too ridiculous to warrant further comment. With such deceptive revisionism of history, it is hard to believe that some Serbs have learnt a lesson from the Holocaust. Today, Croats in parts of Croatia under Serb rule are forced to wear red-white ribbons on their sleeves, which is a ghastly reminder of the yellow ribbons that the Jews had to wear in Serbia during the Holocaust. Doctor Mandić is the main patron of the view that antisemitism is on the rise in Croatia, and her accusations are centred around Dr. Tudjman. However, the Jewish leaders in Croatia and those Jews who visit Croatia, witness that there is no proof of any State antisemitism…

As we know, Truth is the first victim of war and communism. Regretfully, in Yugoslavia in which the Serbs governed, both war and communism were present. We have to be aware that the Jewish community is the propaganda’s favourite target. Belgrade particularly abuses the Jewish sensitivity to the Holocaust in the attempt to win Jewish sympathy towards the Serbs, who present themselves as victims while hiding their role as criminals and anti-Semites. In view of the aforementioned evidence, one has to investigate the true nature and meaning in the newly forged love of the Serbs toward the Jewish people.

Cordially, Philip J. Cohen”

———

Home to Croatia’s biggest river port, Vukovar was the scene of one of the darkest chapters of the 1990s wars of Yugoslav/Serb aggression against Croatia. It was virtually razed to the ground and suffered a huge massacre when war broke out after Belgrade-backed rebel Serbs opposed Croatia’s declaration of independence.

In November 1991, after a harrowing three-month siege, ethnically mixed Vukovar fell to Serb forces and some 22,000 non-Serbs were expelled, ethnically cleansed. About 350 people from the region are still reported missing. Serbs know where their bodies lie but they will not tell.

The Croatian Democratic Union/HDZ-led minority government of Croatia does nothing to defend Croatian people and nation from vicious Serb lies. It is up to individual citizens and foreign persons to do the work the government should be doing or at least supporting. The HDZ government permits smears and vicious lies against its own people and permits Serbia to “reign” freely with its anti-Croatian propaganda. This is undoubtedly because the minority government has decided to govern in coalition with minority parties, especially Serb one in Croatia, who promote the politics of Serbia rather than Croatia. It is a situation that is unbearable for a nation such as Croatia. The former Yugoslav communists and Serbs, the aggressors against Croatia, will not win this current war Serbia is waging against Croatia with its depraved propaganda of lies just as they did not win the war of 1990’s. Croatia has been and is blessed with multitudes of people around the world and within Croatia who stand firm on foundations of truth and justice. Ina Vukic  

„Dara of Jesenovac“ – Another Serbian Movie To Obscure Jew-Free Serbia And Its Holocaust Implementation

You may notice how on the topic of WWII Holocaust, Serbia systematically insists that the extermination of Jews (abt 94%) in WWII Serbia was not done by Serbs but by the German occupier. They will tell you that Serbia was occupied by the Nazis (Germany) then – you will not hear them saying that Germany had occupied the entire Yugoslavia (the then Serb-led dictatorship of the crumbled Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which included Croatia) in April 1941. They will tell you that only Serbia was occupied and that the German Nazis exterminated Serbia’s Jews!

Yet as a matter of historical fact, Serbia’s Milan Nedic government had with all its might implemented the Holocaust and made sure that by June 1942 Serbia was one of the first countries in Europe to become „Judenfrei“ (Clean-of-Jews/ Jew-Free). Croatia or rather its Ante Pavelic government at the time never pursued a „Judenfrei“ status, even if it was, as most countries in one form or another, guilty of racial laws that saw many perish or be ostracised, but overwhelmingly less than what Yugoslav communists with Serbs have been fabricating since 1945, and overwhelmingly less than what „Jedenfrei“ status required. Not that such reality justifies any victims of WWII racial laws, but it certainly places into perspective the intrinsic need of Serbia to hide its miserable WWII truth by pointing fingers at others, including Croatia, in order to throw attention away from itself. In that, Serbia and communist Yugoslavia, not only set themselves on the path for blaming Croatia for the WWII Holocaust within Yugoslavia’s borders but also fabricated to the unimaginable the numbers of Serbs allegedly killed by Croats in that war together with the Jews.

On 25 January 2018, in its relentless propaganda pursuits of hiding its own WWII „Judenfrei“ state, Serbia opened at the UN building in New York an exhibition called „Jasenovac – The Right Not To Forget.“  

In January 2021 it released a Serbian state-funded movie „Dara of Jasenovac“ and it has the audacity to even submit the movie as a nomination for 2021 Oscars! It did not, for example, produce a movie by a name such as „Hannah from Cannon Sheds“ (Topovske Šupe concentration camp at outskirts of Belgrade). Of course it did not, if it did it would have to produce a film about the extermination of Jews in Serbia and not pair Serbs as victims alongside the Jews as it is doing in the movie „Dara of Jasenovac“.

Here below are excerpts from the article „Dara of Jasenovac Review: A Holocaust Movie With Questionable Intentions“ written by Jay Weissberg and published by the renowned Variety Magazine portal on 25 January 2021:  

Serbia’s Oscar submission is thinly disguised propaganda, cynically using the Holocaust to push a troubling nativist agenda.

Isn’t it long past time that there was an honest discussion about why there are so many Holocaust films? Unquestionably some meet the challenge posed by the injunction “never forget” but too many others exist because the market has proven that the Holocaust sells. The movies falling into this latter category trivialize and they sensationalize, fiddling on heart strings with a facile bow whose chords jump between lurid and saccharine. A subset within this group folds more troubling objectives into their cynical understanding of the market, using the Shoah to push agendas that have little to do with comprehending the unfathomable.

It’s a testament to the cravenness of the Holocaust industry that an undisguised piece of Serbian nationalist propaganda like Peter (Predrag) Antonijević’s “Dara of Jasenovac” dressed up in concentration camp clothing, can find distribution outside its native land. Less surprising is that it’s been submitted for Oscar consideration…

The makers of “Dara of Jasenovac” emphasize that the screenplay comes from witness testimony, using that tried-and-true statement to shield themselves from criticism: It happened; therefore we are above reproach. The problems with the film however are twofold: Its unconcealed anti-Croatian, anti-Catholic nativism is badly designed as incendiary fodder for current rifts between Serbia and its neighbors, while its delight in visualizing the sadism, contrasted with childhood innocence, pushes aside any reflection on the dagers of nationalism, murderous racism and genocide, replacing them with cheap sensation and sentiment…

Were there no contemporary context to “Dara of Jaenovac,” it would be just another unmodulated Holocaust drama using violence in the same way as any number of serial killer movies. But background is inescapable, and in this case, Serbian nationalists’ use of Jasenovac as a rallying cry for Serb victimhood through the centuries turns the film into propaganda. Scholar Jovan Byford has cogently detailed how linking Serbian suffering to the Shoah has long been a play to garner international sympathy and legitimize territorial expansion together with racist policies, and that’s exactly what “Dara” plays into. In addition, situating the Ilić family’s home in Mirkovci is tossing red meat to the anti-Croatian brigades given that the town remains a bitter site of contention after the genocidal breakup if Yugoslavia. A Holocaust movie designed to stoke animosity against Germany today would be roundly condemned; to not recognize the same problems here is wilful blindness…”. Ina Vukic

Not Only Croatia Suffers From Serbian Deception

Serb Chetniks in Australia – continue deceiving with pretence Serbia was with Allied forces in WWII
Photo: Facebook

The persistent coverup of Serbia’s horrid and active role in the WWII Holocaust and the fact that in May 1942 Serbia was one of the first European countries to declare itself Jew-free (Judenfrei) had prostituted factual history to the point of yet another criminal blow to the many victims of the Holocaust in Serbia. The coverup was hatched by Yugoslav communists with headquarters in Belgrade towards the end of WWII and viciously pursued with the single aim of vilifying Croatia and Croatian people, lumbering against them distressing lies and recklessly tossing out wildly fabricated numbers of those killed in the Holocaust. There’s no doubt that some “leading” people of Jewish ancestry, such as Efraim Zuroff of Simon Weisenthal Center and Gideon Greif, an Israeli historian, have been going out of their way to coverup Serbia’s and its Chetniks’ role in the Holocaust in Serbia. One can only wonder why this is so and why these men pursue the path of this same filthy work of coverup, but one cannot avoid the thought that rewards from official Serbia for them must be large! The sickening thing is that Serbia has raised a monument to the victims of the Holocaust there, but, guess what, Germans and not Serbs are the culprits of that WWII depravity! The fact that official Serbia was a willing partner in these crimes is totally ignored and underplayed in this wicked propaganda program.

While those that seek to research facts of WWII history in Croatia and Serbia are persistently and with apparent malice labelled as revisionists, the same people who pursue with the Serbian coverup of the role of Serbs in the Holocaust on its own soil continue to work tirelessly, it seems, in attempting to discredit and stop such research! Truth has always had a difficult path to the surface, and that is a sad fact of humanity.

For the sake of justice to all the victims of crime and for the sake of demonstration how Serbs have succeeded in fooling and deceiving the world, I shall continue this post with a transfer of David Goldman’s recent article in the Independent Australia portal on the Serbian collaboration with the Nazi’s (the collaboration Serbia and its “friends” are persistently trying to coverup with the aim of vilifying WWII Croatia). David Goldman’s article from January 2020 is this:

 

Betrayal: RSL backs Nazi-aligned Serbian Chetniks

Australia’s Returned and Services League (RSL) is allowing a Nazi-aligned group from WWII and their supporters to march in Anzac Day parades.

Meanwhile, the Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Department pays their entitlements out of the public purse at a time when Australian soldiers suffering physical injuries and issues like PTSD find their health benefits being slashed.

The Nazis in question are a WWII Serbian military formation called ‘Chetniks’, that according to most widely-available histories, including all the various official histories of WWII, were listed at worst as being active Axis collaborators or at the least, a nationalist-chauvinist militia responsible for numerous bestial war crimes.

According to Winston Churchill’s liaison officer in wartime Yugoslavia, Major-General Sir Fitzroy Maclean:

The reason why we have ceased to supply Draza Mihajlovic [Supreme Chetnik commander] with weapons and support, is a simple one: He has not been fighting the enemy and moreover some of his subordinates have been making accommodations with the enemy.

Maclean further wrote in his book Eastern Approaches:

‘Some Chetnik Commanders were openly living at German and Italian headquarters. The Chetniks were either not fighting at all or fighting with the Germans against their own countrymen … [the Chetnik’s were] impeding rather than furthering the allied war effort.’

Because of his collaboration and other war crimes, Draza Mihajlovic was executed by Yugoslavia in March 1946.  In fact, Chetnik collaboration became so widespread that after the Tehran Conference of 1943, the Allies finally broke off all ties with the Chetniks, eventually even forcing their own political head, King Peter II Karadordjevic to publicly disown them by September 1944 and throw his lot in with Tito’s Communist Partisans.

The Australian government has been well aware of this for decades. For example, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in a letter to an enquiry to a retired New Zealand veteran way back in May 1993 wrote: ‘Serbia was not an ally’ and that ‘it is true that the Chetniks were collaborators’. Despite this, these units march in our major cities every April 25th.

After a follow-up enquiry by the same retired Kiwi Army Sergeant on whether anyone who served in the Chetniks during WWII was ‘eligible’ to receive Veteran’s Affairs entitlements, the response from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (DVA) also from 1993, was crystal clear:

The Chetniks were discredited on 12 September 1944, because of widespread collaboration with the Nazis and Fascists, and because they were fighting on the German and Italian side since 1941.’

Then in a twist that would have made Kafka proud, the same letter went on to say:

‘The DVA has assessed your specific concern under Section 35 of the Veteran’s Entitlements Act 1986. Due to restrictions under the Privacy Act 1988, DVA cannot inform you of the outcome.’

This despite the fact that the VA was only asked if these units ‘were eligible to receive VA entitlements’, and not whether (or not) any living individual was actually receiving them.

Postage stamps in WWII Serbia
Antisemitic – violently!
Photo: Screenshots

During WWII, Chetnik units operating across Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro found collaboration with Hitler natural as they were already part of Mussolini’s fascist army, the so-called, ‘Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia, a component of the 5th, 6th and 17th Corps of the army of fascist Italy, who according to historians were responsible for the murder of over 50,000 people, mainly innocent civilians.

One of their most revered military leaders, indicted war criminal and Serbian Orthodox priest Momčilo Đujić, who, despite being dead for 20 years, is still the central figurehead under whose symbols many Chetniks in the Anzac Day celebration march and who has from his long-cold grave given inspiration to a new generation of fanatical Nazis, including the likes of alleged NZ mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant and Norwegian mass murderer and neo-Nazi Anders Breivik among others.

Đujić also became the spiritual godfather of convicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Vojislav Seselj, whose role in financing Serb war criminals living here was documented by The Australian in 2019.

As both a loyal German as well as an Italian ally, in December 1944, Đujić sent an emissary to General Gustav Fehn of the German 264th Infantry Division with the following message:

The Chetnik Command with all of its armed forces has collaborated sincerely and loyally with the German Army in these areas from September last year. This collaboration has continued to the present day. The Chetnik Command wishes to share the destiny of the German Army in the future.

In response, General Fehn organised the safe transport of Đujić’s wounded Chetniks to the Third Reich, where after the war, he and his followers were employed by the CIA and eventually relocated to the U.S. where Đujić lived out his days.

The Washington PostIsrael’s Yad Vashem and the U.S.-based Shoah Resource Centre admitted that:

By the end of 1943, the break between the West and the Chetniks was complete. The Chetniks became collaborators and joined the forces fighting the Partisans. There were many instances of Chetniks murdering Jews or handing them over to the Germans.

Fast forward to 2019 and some high-ranking Serbian RSL members have gone on to form alliances with neo-Nazi groups such as Golden Dawn, which was implicated in the Srebrenica Massacre, nationalist Russian Cossacks on ASIO watchlists such as Simeon Boikov and various local far-right extremists like Jim Saleam and Kim Vuga.

Moreover, the leader of the Chetnik Anzac Committee for NSW, Milan Brkljac, along with his brother Draz, a serving NSW policeman, march under the banner of Serbia for Anzac Day, in clear breach of RSL protocols and by-laws, as the RSL does not even have a marching schedule for a country called Serbia, rather only one for Yugoslavia.

As mentioned, this situation has led directly to Chetnik units forming triad-like alliances with groups like the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn and pro-Putin Russian Cossacks, all aided and abetted by well-known figures in the Australian extreme Right, and coordinated by modern-day followers of the Italian and German quisling Momčilo Đujić and their fellow Anzac Day marchers.

Others in this clique have posted pictures of themselves on social media holding ‘Remove Kebab’ signs – a clear reference to, and support of the likes of Tarrant and Breivik, while more disturbing is the fact that some of their supporters have trained and fought alongside pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine in breach of Australia’s Foreign Incursions Act 1978.

Of course this circus would be incomplete without the involvement of clueless politicians like NSW Opposition leader Jodie McKay, who allowed herself to be photographed with some of these individuals a few years ago.

Just how the RSL can ignore Nazi collaborators and units from Mussolini’s fascist army tied to local neo-Nazi groups openly marching in Anzac Day parades alongside legitimate veterans, in spite of the overwhelming evidence provided to the heads of the RSL over many years is simply mind-boggling.

Even though their inclusion breaches numerous RSL and Veteran’s Affairs (VA) codes, by-laws and protocols such as provisions of Section 5(c) of the Veterans Entitlements Act which states that an ‘allied veteran’ does not include a person who was ‘at any time’ in a force which was assisting the enemy forces of Australia, the RSL has stayed mute on the subject.

On April 25 2019, in a rare act of common sense, an attempt was made to ban the Chetniks from all Anzac Day activities by the Victorian RSL, however, the branch’s leadership lost its nerve and quickly reversed this decision, allegedly due to legal threats.

Going further, by giving VA entitlements to Chetniks, Australia’s Government is also inadvertently helping fund the war in eastern Ukraine while Australian soldiers suffer constant ATO checks or entitlement cut-backs and Australian Afghan war veterans endure cuts to their medical benefits and VA entitlements.

While the bureaucratic heads of the VA department and the Veteran’s Affairs Minister Darren Chester should resign over this outrage, for its part, the RSL should consider rewording its ‘Lest We Forget’ slogan to ‘Lest We Remember’.

After all, that would be a far more accurate description of their attitude towards both WWII history and the fate of Australia’s servicemen and women.”

Ina Vukic

 

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