Holocaust in Yugoslavia

Dear friends:

DEATH TO FASCISM

FREEDOM FOR PEOPLE

I was pleasantly surprised to see that NSC has published Professor Norman Markowitz’s excellent review of my book "Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia: Analyses and Survival Testimonies" in the December 2006 issue. Dr. Markowitz provides a superb overview of the most important points about the subject. I would like to take this opportunity to follow up with a few additional points about my book, which I am sure the readers of this publication will certainly appreciate.

My forty pages introduction provides an overview to the subject of genocide and the Holocaust in the Balkans that does not exist in any language because it treats the history of all of Yugoslavia as one whole. Previous studies have looked either at Jews or Serbs and almost never the Romas (Gypsies), but not all three. Previous studies have looked at Croatian fascists or the Nazis who ruled in Serbia, but not all of the fascist armies: Croatian Ustashe, Nazis, the Vatican, Italy, Yugoslav Germans, Hungarians, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians and Bulgarians. There are two reasons why other studies tend to separate the victims. One reason is that they are written by individuals concerned more with the suffering of one group over the others. The other is that almost all other studies of the Holocaust have ignored the role of Imperialism as the major reason for the Holocaust and for genocide in general.

Whether we are studying the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks, the genocides against Serbs, Jews and Roma during World War II, the extermination of Native American peoples by the US government, or any other crime of genocide against an entire people, the root cause can be traced to a deliberate policy of imperialist rule. The case of Yugoslavia is instructive because it shows how the imperialist countries, in this instance Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, used smaller client states or nations, such as the Croats, the Albanians, the Bosnian Muslims, the Bulgarians, and the Hungarians to commit genocide, even when, as with the case of Bulgarians, they would not do this within their own national borders. In most instances, civil war or genocide serve the interests of imperialist powers whose aim is to rule through a condominium of power with client states. This lesson is not lost on anyone concerned with the situation in Iraq.

The Vatican, which is also a state with its own diplomatic service and foreign policy, also played a role of an imperialist power in the Balkans in World War II. Though it seems small, the Vatican’s reach is as great as that of the clergy that obeys it. Before, during and after the Holocaust the clerical fascist Croatian movement, the Ustashe, were protected and supported by the Vatican. Pope Pius XII and his regime knew about the mass extermination of the Jews, Serbs, Roman and also anti-fascists. After World War II, the Vatican helped the Ustashe to escape to South America, Canada, Australia and the US, but also helped thousands of Nazis and Nazi collaborators from all across Europe. Amongst them were many notable butchers such as Josef Mengele, Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie. No other criminal regime from the 20th Century has escaped scrutiny as successfully as the Vatican. As Professor Markowitz has pointed out, the Vatican escaped scrutiny and continues to do so because it has been protected as a client state by the United States since the Cold War, to destroy not only Communism, but almost every other progressive movement.

As Professor Markowitz points out, fascism could not have been wholly defeated had the Yugoslav Communists not organized anti-fascists from every nationality in Yugoslavia. This was not difficult to do with those nations who were targeted for death, such as Serbs, the Jews, the Romas, and also the Slovenes, whose existence was a nuisance to the territorial ambitions of Germany, Italy and Croatia. But my book also calls attention to the role of those Croats and Muslims, including many Croatian women, who fought and died either in combat or in the Jasenovac death camp, against their own fascists. The heroic resistance of the prisoners of Jasenovac is retold from many perspectives in the book, especially in the fifteen chapters by the death camp survivors. This is a history that we need to teach in order to combat the rise of neo-Nazism and racism throughout all of Eastern Europe, especially in Croatia, where old fascism holds great influence.

Unfortunately, the history of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and the crimes of genocide committed by the various fascist groups have never been properly recognized or punished, and the full story continues to be suppressed because it is not in the interests of the USA, the European Union or of the Vatican to deal with it. In order to impose their domination today, the US and the EU have destroyed Yugoslavia and replaced it with a patchwork of pre-war nationalism for inspiration. As mentioned before, in Croatia this takes on a particularly sinister form. For the people of the Balkans, the consequences of this neo-colonial dependency, division and cultural brainwashing have been disastrous and unfortunately will continue to plague them for years to come.

Our efforts to challenge this situation and the suppression of the truth must be with education, commemoration of the victims of and resistance against fascism, and progressive activism, along those lines is, thus, absolutely necessary and we thank Northstar Compass for supporting it.

Barry Lituchy
National Co-ordinator
Jasenovac Research Institute
Brooklyn, N.Y. USA