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DEFENDING
THE TRUTH ABOUT JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP IN THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF
CROATIA (Letter No. 2) This letter is written and addressed to you by three
Jewish survivors of the death camp Jasenovac in the Nazi Independent State of
Croatia during the Second World War who are still alive in Serbia:
Cadik Danon, the architect, who escaped from the Jasenovac
concentration camp in 1942 Bozo Svarc the retired colonel of the Yugoslav Army, who escaped
from the Jasenovac concentration camp in the same
year and Josif Erlih the
retired major of the Yugoslav Army, who was held in Jasenovac to the very bitter
end and participated in the break out on 22 of April 1945 when the Croat fascist
guards started slaughtering all remaining prisoners LITUCHY HARRASING JEWISH
SURVIVORS
Mr Barry Lituchy
offered a distorted picture of the meeting of the Jewish Federation
in Serbia
which considered the proposal of 25 survivors to remove from his post Mr
Aleksandar Mosic because he took part in the lawsuit against the creators of the
Proceedings of the First International Conference on Jasenovac in 1997. His
whole letter sent on 26 of February was devoted to this
question.
He said that "the motion to sanction certain members of the Jasenovac
Research Institute and to endorse and distribute the unauthorised and enjoined
book was completely defeated" without mentioning that the case was dropped only
after defective information was provided to the meeting and that Mr. Makara, the
Federation and our group of survivors were told that the plaintiffs would not
sign unless the Federation drops the case.
Mr. Lituchy said also that our letter to Mr. Mosic that was discussed at
the meeting of the Executive Committee of Federation was a "bogus letter of
slander ostensibly signed by 25 Jewish Holocaust Survivors" and that it
contained many "scurrilous and libellous allegations."
This "bogus" letter was signed by the three of us Jasenovac survivors and
22 others: Andreja
Preger, PhD, outstanding
pianist and retired professor at the Academy of Music in Belgrade. He joined the
partisans, while his father and uncle were killed at the very entrance of the
Jasenovac camp; Jasa
Almuli, past President of
the Jewish Community in Belgrade and Honorary Chairman of the Belgrade Chapter
of Holocaust survivors and war veterans. He video taped 170 testimonies of
survivors in Yugoslavia and Greece and published two books on the
Holocaust; Hana Atijas
Vlacic from Sarajevo, who survived
Croat Ustasha prison and German camps and now lives in
Australia; Eva
Timar, a chemical engineer
who survived Auschwitz; Eva
Cavcic, PhD, who survived
several Hungarian and German prisons and after the war became a chemical
scientist; Luci
Mevarah Petrovic
survived by escaping to Albania
under the Italian control and was over 30 years the secretary of the Federation
of the Jewish Communities in former Yugoslavia; Haim Mile
Pinkas, a successful businessman from
Belgrade who survived in Italian interment and recently financed the publication
of books countering testimonies of Yugoslav survivors (published by the Jewish
Historic Museum in Belgrade); Moric
Levi, who with his close
family hid in Belgrade and Serbia during the
occupation; Boza
Rafajlovic who, after escaping from
Italian internment, joined Tito's partisans and, as an outstanding journalist,
covered most visits of the late Yugoslav president to non-aligned countries;
Ana
Somlo, journalist and
writer, Editor in Chief of the magazine "Most" published for the Yugoslav
immigrants in Israel; Ivan
Ninic, a publisher and
designer from Novi Sad living now in Israel with his wife Ana
Somlo; Rafael
Abravanel, jumped
out from the train transporting
Jewish victims from the town of Pirot in Serbia to Treblinka and reached
Palestine before the end of the war. He lives in the kibbutz Shaar Haamakim near
Haifa; Greta
Davidovic Terzic, MD, survived thanks
to interment in Italian controlled territory and lives now in
France; Flora
Sokolovic, who was hiding with
her mother and granny in the house of Serbian friends during three years in
Belgrade; Vida
Jankovic, PhD, retired
professor of English at the University of Belgrade where she was during the
occupation; Sarina Lili
Alkalaj, who fled from
Belgrade to Pirot and later escaped from the death train to Macedonia and
Albania and joined the partisans; Dr. Marko
Anaf, was hiding for
three years in an attic bunker with his mother in her house in Belgrade and was
professor of biology at the Medical School of the University of
Belgrade; Matilda
Baruh, was hiding during
the occupation in Belgrade together with her brother and mother; Natalija
Danon, the Serbian widow
of the general Misha Danon who escaped from the Jasenovac
camp; Lily
Alpar,
was hiding in
Budapest; Djordje
Alpar, her
husband, was first hiding in
Dalmatia and afterwards joined Tito's partisans; Dragutin
Mladenovic, also a Serb and
friend of our community and husband of the late Ljiljana Ivanisevic, who as a
child was imprisoned in the Jasenovac camp. He expressed his desire to join our
action and we consented. These
persons signed or endorsed by emails our letter urging Mr. Mosic to disassociate
himself from the court action against the creators of the book of the
Proceedings of the Jasenovac conference. The letter with their signatures is
kept by Mrs. Luci Mevorah
Petrovic, retired
Secretary of the Jewish Federation. Her address is Kicevska 1a, 11000 Belgrade,
Serbia.
Thus far about the "bogus" character of our letter.
As for the allegation of Mr. Lituchy that it contains "scurrilous and
libelous allegations" we shall reproduce here the letter, and you judge for
yourself. ______________________________________________________________ Mr. Aleksandar
Mosic Ilije Garasanina 33 B e l g r a d e
We Jews who sign this Letter and who survived the camp of Jasenovac and
the Nazi genocide during World War Two are calling on you Mr Mosic to withdraw
your lawsuit against Petar Makara and Wanda Schindley, lodged because of alleged
breach of your copyright of your paper in the Proceedings of the First
International Conference on Jasenovac, held in New York in
1997.
The lawsuit of 5th of August 2005 lodged by you together with
Barry Lituchy, Joe Friendly, Memory Films Productions and the Jasenovac Research
Institute (JRI), under the control of Barry Lituchy, halted in 2005.the
distribution of this book and caused damage to the spreading of the truth about
Jasenovac. According to the initial request of the plaintiffs, the already
distributed copies of the books should be retrieved. Now they ask for the
permanent injunction of the undistributed copies and high payments for damages
by the defendants to the plaintiffs. This means that some people in the world
would make profit from the Jasenovac victims. The lawsuit is already filling the
pockets of lawyers with money which should be dedicated to the cause of
Jasenovac.
This book on Jasenovac was sent to Yad Vashem and Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, which both thanked the editors. The book was also sent to many public
libraries, universities and schools and Holocaust Centres. One thousand copies
of the book were printed, and they were mostly donated without charge. The price
of the book was set at $20.00, although it has 400 pages and hard cover, in
order to make it accessible to as wide a range of readers as possible.
We do not wish to enter into details of the legal aspects of he court
proceedings regarding this book. However, we can’t accept the assertions of the
plaintiffs that the publishing of this book interfered with their plans to
publish it. They did not do it during a full seven years, and now when others
published the book, they are preventing its distribution. We think that it hurts
the memory of Jasenovac victims and victims in all the other camps where Jews,
Serbs and Roma were destroyed. We were informed that the accused creators of he
book did not use the video series of the plaintiffs and that they used papers
submitted and raw footage which was given to them for use without any
restrictions by the videographer Vladimir Bibic, who declined to join the
lawsuit. He considers that his raw footage should be freely accessible to
everybody.
We wish to draw your attention to your actions in his lawsuit as a Jew
and President of the Memorial Commission of the Federation of Jewish Communities
of Serbia and Montenegro. In the Conference of 1997, you delivered a short
report on the archive and memorial material in the Jewish Historic Museum in
Belgrade. You handed your report paper to the organizers of the conference with
the assumption that they could use it without restrictions. Only in 2005 did you
protect it with copyright in the USA. Is it morally correct to request copyright
for data derived from the Jewish Historic Museum in Belgrade, which among the
duties has the preservation and spreading of information on crimes committed
against Jews during World War Two? You joined the lawsuit against the creators
of the book, affirming that your copyright was breached as they did not ask you
for permission to publish your report in the book.
And we ask you now: When did we Jewish survivors of Serbia and Yugoslavia
cover our reports on the Shoa with copyrights and limit the spreading of what we
remember and tell? We believe that you made a mistake by registering
subsequently your report of 1997 and joining the lawsuit. You had to bear in
mind that you were President of the Memorial Commission of the Jewish Federation
in Serbia and Montenegro. Instead of spreading the truth about Jasenovac, you
are curtailing it.
We have some additional questions. Do you receive any payment, and how
much, as Editor in Chief of the Newsletter of the Jasenovac Research Institute?
If you receive it, we ask you if you really think that it is in order to get
financial reward from the source whose money is ear marked for the research of
crimes committed against our nation.
We were informed by the Belgrade-based Association of the former
concentration camp inmates that you not only joined the lawsuit against the
creators of the book on the First International Conference on Jasenovac but that
you undertook an action to dissuade the Jasenovac survivors from giving support
to the accused. You visited Mara Vejnovic while she was ill, without
announcement, and talked her into withdrawing the support she gave to the
editors of the book. However, she informed the Association of former camp
inmates about it and, assisted by them, she cancelled what you extracted from
her.
We appeal to you as a long-time Jewish activist to reconsider your
actions in this case and to inform us and the court in New York about the
withdrawal of your suit. The accused creators of the Proceedings informed us
that you should also give them permanent permission to use your report and that
they will pay you for it. If you stick to your suit, we intend to inform the
Jewish public opinion of our country about your actions and to request from the
President and the Executive Committee of our Federation to decide whether you
could continue to hold the position of President of the Memorial Commission.
In addressing you, we are motivated by the need of our small and
vulnerable community to preserve its aims and traditions: mutual solidarity of
its members and solidarity with Jews in the world and Israel; defence and
spreading of the truth about the Holocaust, the struggle against anti-Semitism,
preservation of the Jewish identity, and much more. Your suit because of some
copyright does not fit into these objectives. However, we believe that you would
like to remain an activist of our community with the head raised high.
The following persons who know the subject of this court litigation
agreed with and supported the content of this letter and signed
it: (The letter ended with list of names and signatures which
we already quoted) ______________________________________________________________
This letter to Mr. Mosic represented our effort to save the Jasenovac
book and induce him to return to his previous honourable role in our Federation.
Our effort failed, and he stuck to some interests tied up with his loyalty to
Mr. Lituchy.
We are outraged by Lituchy's writing. We wander how dare he try to
discredit and harass the Jewish survivors in Serbia.
We learned that Mr. Lituchy was dismissed by Kingsborough College where
he was a lecturer without a PhD. We hope that this will be the beginning of his
downfall from the mountain of abuses, harassment, and intimidation which he
climbed to reach and preserve the top position of CEO of Jasenovac Research
Institute. We agree that he should leave this position and hand over the JRI to
its founders and honest Jewish, Serbian and American
researchers. |
