Yosef Amrani, Israeli Ambassador to Croatia
Photo: politikaplus.com

The deplorable, hateful and blatant lie uttered by Croatia’s Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic on the occasion of Remembrance Day for the Victims of the Holocaust last Monday 27 January can, without doubt, be interpreted as an attempt to justify WWII and post-WWII massive communist crimes rather than to pay due regard and convey deep piety to the victims of the Holocaust.

“Until April 1941 there had been no mass executions of people because of they were of a different religion and origin. That had changed during that April with the formation of the Independent State of Croatia, which had commenced with mass murders within weeks… Only at the end of June 1941 mass murders, primarily of Jews, started in Eastern Europe. That was not yet the time of concentration camps, that was the time of mass murders by firearms … We know what occurred after that. It was necessary to rise against such a State of Croatia and hundreds of thousands of Croats did that …  Communism came and so did revenge… Revenge happened but before it mass murders happened … Revenge is simply not morally justified …” said Zoran Milanovic in his speech for the Victims of the Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The problem with Zoran Milanovic is that he omits, purposefully, to characterise the communist revenge for what it truly was: mass murder and mass execution of multitudes of innocent people because of their different political leanings and nationality. This was no different in nature to the mass executions and murders committed by the pro-Nazi Independent State of Croatia regime. So why not call it for what it truly was?

Perhaps Zoran Milanovic, pro-communist, took a particularly bitter issue with the symbolism of the fact that the suspected communist criminal extradited to Germany, Josip Perkovic, had reportedly just been transferred to a Nuremberg jail, pending final criminal charges!? It’s obvious that Milanovic does not see all mass murders as crimes of the same nature. That is a shame for humanity, for Croatia’s path to a future where all crimes from the past are dealt with and condemned with equal moral and judicial wrath is once again obstructed; and more fuel to political slinging matches on the backs of all victims of WWII and post-WWII crime has been poured by no other than the communist protégés at the helm of Croatia’s government.

Although without directly pointing to what Zoran Milanovic had sad Israeli Ambassador to Croatia Yosef Amrani addressed Croatia’s public with statement that clearly rebukes Milanovic’s deplorable claims as to when mass executions commenced in Europe.

History is horrible enough without Milanovic’s falsifications. Yosef Amrani emphasised that people were sent to concentration camps before 1941.

“Holocaust is an historic fact and an incomprehensible historical event and it cannot be tied to the date of the holding of the conference at Wannsee on 20th January 1942 and the decision by the German authorities to destroy the Jewish people through the process called ‘the Final Solution’ … Sadly, that process, that coordinated effort to make the Jewish people the culprits for all social and economic adversities in Europe, began before then and originates from the Nazi ideology and antisemitism … Speeches and comments regarding that important day (Remembrance Day for the Victims of the Holocaust) by people in authority should remind us of the bestiality, of the cruelty of the Nazi regime and of the apathy of the international community,” stated Yosef Amrani and continued:

“Europe kept quiet, the world kept quiet. The Crystal Night (Kristallnacht), which occurred in November 1938, is a direct attack against innocent people; the revocation of German citizenship from Jews just because of their Jewish origins was not enough for Europe and the world to wake up… While remembrance and lessons are alive in our conscience, as human beings we must teach and instruct history as it really happened.”

Back to the deplorable falsification of history thrust upon us by Zoran Milanovic, it’s most opportune to remind ourselves that Adolf Hitler established the first concentration camps in January 1933, and Dachau was opened in March 1933.  There were about 45,000 people in those camps before the Reichstag fire ( February 1933). The fact that these were not the so-called death camps at the time does not change the fact that people were murdered in their masses.

Instead of concluding that the establishment of the Jasenovac camp (in Croatia) was modeled upon the Nazi camps, Milanovic imputes in his speech last Monday that the Nazi camps were modeled on Jasenovac.

What an evil communist vomit!

What is Zoran Milanovic still doing as Prime Minister of Croatia!? Who stands behind him to give him courage to utter such blatant lies!?

It’s of note that in this his anti-Croatian propaganda speech Milanovic completely disregarded the mass executions by the communist regime of Joseph Stalin and perhaps there lies the fact that Milanovic decided to talk about Europe and not the whole region affected by Nazi regime and its expansionist thrusts? But just for the record and for the devastating fact that Joseph Stalin’s judges sat on Nuremberg trials against Nazis, and that Stalin was an ally of the Allies in WWII here are some facts of communist crimes in Russia, which actually strike a harrowing resemblance in nature and intensity to communist crimes in post-WWII Croatia.

In February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti contains grim bookkeeping that included the following tragic episodes: 1 million imprisoned or exiled between 1927 to 1929; 9 to 11 million peasants forced off their lands and another 2 to 3 million peasants arrested or exiled in the mass collectivization program; 6 to 7 million killed by an artificial famine in 1932-1934; 1 million exiled from Moscow and Leningrad in 1935; 1 million executed during the ”Great Terror” of 1937-1938; 4 to 6 million dispatched to forced labor camps; 10 to 12 million people forcibly relocated during World War II; and at least 1 million arrested for various “political crimes” from 1946 to 1953.

In “Europe A History,” British historian Norman Davies (1996) counted 50 million killed between 1924-53 in communist purges, excluding wartime casualties.

And so, once again, Zoran Milanovic (and pro-communist echelons) calls the WWII and the post-WWII mass murders and mass executions of innocent people by the communists – revenge! Milanovic uses the crimes committed by the Independent State of Croatia regime as justification for the horror that occurred at the hands of communists! He uses the word “revenge” in order to soften the brutality of the communist crimes that were perpetrated – the Bleiburg massacres, the Croatian Way of the Cross … the 850 + filled mass graves of innocent Croats executed by the communists!

Clearly, Zoran Milanovic puts justification of communist crimes before piety for the victims of the Holocaust.  Why else would he contaminate the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust in such a twisted and evil manner? Does he really believe that the Jewish people, the victims of the Holocaust accept revenge murder as just?

I would think that no-one bar communists can truly justify indiscriminate revenge murders that include innocent lives. Hence, a possible reason why the Israeli Ambassador Yosef Amrani found it necessary to speak out about the real truth of the beginnings of persecution of the Jews in 1930’s Europe, to indirectly rebuke Zoran Milanovic’s claims as to where and when mass executions commenced in Europe. And indeed, it is so important for humanity to offer each victim the respect and space he/she deserves and not to poison the remembrance and piety as Zoran Milanovic did. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)