Bosnian Serbs Too Have Vowed: 'Never Again'
Houston Chronicle; Outlook
March 16, 1995 Sonja Myers
During the time when the world is remembering the 50th anniversary of
the end of the Holocaust, it seems appropriate to remind the American
public of an often overlooked fact: After the Jews and the Russians, the
next largest group to suffer the most from the genocide in WW2 were
the Serbs .
Especially hard hit were the Serbs living in Krajina and Bosnia
In 1941 Hitler established a Nazi puppet government of the Independent
State of Croatia, led by the notorious Ustasha - Croatian fascist
extremists, headed by Ante Pavelic. That puppet state comprised mainly
the territories of today's Croatia plus Krajina and the territories of
today's Bosnia-Hercegovina.
[If the U.S. sponsored Muslim-Croat Bosnian federation established a
year ago, forms a confederation with the present-day Croatia as
planned, the resulting entity will closely match the borders of Hitler's
fascist Croatia.]
Following in the footsteps of their German masters, Croatian Ustasha and
their Bosnian Muslim collaborators, immediately declared the
Christian Orthodox Serbs to be a "worthless race" like the Jews.
[Many Jews from Sarajevo were sent by the Ustasha to Auschwitz in
train-loads manned by the Muslims' "SS Handzar Division." Most of the
Jewish population of the Independent State of Croatia was exterminated.
At the time Pavelic boasted to Hitler that "the Jewish problem" was
solved in Croatia.]
The Ustasha/Muslim solution for the 2.5 million Orthodox Serbs was to
kill a third, convert a third to Catholicism and expel the remaining
third.
During the Ustasha reign of terror about 750,000 Serbs, 35,000 Jews and
several thousand Gypsies, perished together in the Jasenovac
concentration camp alone .
[Men, women, children and Orthodox clergy were hideously tortured,
decapitated or thrown half alive into the huge pits to die.]
By the end of WW2, over one million Serbs, almost half of the Serbian
population in the region, were exterminated. The unprecedented cruelty
of their puppets shocked even the Nazis. The Serbian people of Bosnia
and Krajina suffered the highest losses per capita in [WW2] the war .
Just like the Jews, the Serbs vowed: "Never again!"
The unilateral and forceful secession of Croats and Muslims from the
multiethnic Yugoslav federation in 1991 and 1992 placed the Serbian
population in Bosnia and Krajina at the mercy of the same States that
had tried to annihilate them only 50 years ago. The Serbian people of
Krajina and Bosnia rose to fight for their RIGHT TO REMAIN IN YUGOSLAVIA
.
Croatia is today involved in repugnant historical revisionism and
rehabilitation of its Nazi past .
[The state symbols of present-day Croatia, including its currency, are
identical to those of Nazi Croatia.]
While promoting inclusion of Krajina into Croatia, Mr. Tudjman's
government insists on calling the Serbs who have lived in the region for
centuries - "terrorists, invaders and aggressors." This is hardly a
reassuring gesture to the Serbs, who not so long ago suffered Croatian
government sponsored genocide.
Increasingly, in Muslim controlled areas of Bosnia, the study of the
Koran and the Arabic language is becoming compulsory in schools, mixed
marriages are discouraged, women are forced to wear scarves, and eating
pork is stigmatized. The Bosnia's Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic
is an Islamic fundamentalist [who spent two jail terms in Yugoslavia for
fanning ethnic and religious hatred. In 1970, he wrote "The Islamic
Declaration," that was recently reprinted in Sarajevo. According to the
prominent Israeli writer and columnist Jospeh Lapid, this booklet is "a
program for the Islamization of the Moslem Peoples, a tract of which
Khomeini could have been proud of." Mr. Izetbegovic also] describes the
Serbs, who lived in Bosnia long before the Muslims arrived, as
"aggressors and invaders." This can hardly inspire the Bosnian Serbs
into
believing [Mr.] Izetbegovic's rhetoric about multi-ethnic Bosnia. In
fact, even the current multi-ethnic Muslim-Croat federation exists only
on
paper. Serbian civilians in both Croatia and Bosnia are harassed,
threatened, robbed, "ethnically cleansed," raped and killed with the
acquiescence of [Mr. Tudjman and Mr. Izetbegovic.] The government. Many
of these crimes are documented by the UN and are repeatedly
reported by the president of Helsinki Watch in Zagreb, Mr . Zvonimir
Ivan Cicak .
As we watch commemorations at the Holocaust memorials in Europe, we
should also remember that the children and grandchildren of the
Serbian victims of the WW2 genocide are themselves the victims of a
renewed genocide by the Croats and Bosnian Muslims. The tragedy is
that, again, nobody cares. Indeed, the Serbs are presented as brutal
aggressors over the ["innocent and angelic"] Croats and Muslims. Modern
sound-bites feed the public with scattered data instead of real
information .
[This is why well-financed Croatian and Muslim propaganda has succeeded
by applying Adolph Hitler's doctrine: "The great masses of
people... would more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small
one." (Mein Kampf)]
It should be clear for all to see that the multi-ethnic,
[multi]-cultural Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina died together with the
multi-ethnic
Yugoslav federation four years ago. All parties in the civil wars in
Croatia and Bosnia share the blame for their conduct and none will come
out
with clean hands or a victory .
Partitioning Bosnia and allowing the Serbs in Krajina (ironically
refered to by [our] media as "Croatian Serbs") and the Serbs in Bosnia
the right
to form their own states, or make confederal links with Yugoslavia, if
they wish to do so, is the only way for lasting peace in the Balkans .
[As long as the international community tries to defy this reality,
against all historical reason and common sense, the Serbs will be
mourning their
dead, praying for the souls of those who perished in the shamefully
forgotten Holocaust in Yugoslavia, and vowing - "Never again!"]
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