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From: "Michael Albert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ZNet Commentary / Sept 26 / Diana Johnstone / Nazi Nostalgia
Date sent: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 16:46:13 +0100
Here is today's ZNet Commentary Delivery from ....
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NAZI NOSTALGIA IN CROATIA
By Diana Johnstone
When I visited Croatia three years ago, the book most prominently
displayed in the leading bookstores of the capital city Zagreb was a new
edition of the notorious anti-Semitic classic, "The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion". Next came the memoires of the World War II Croatian
fascist Ustashe dictator Ante Pavelic, responsible for the organized
genocide of Serbs, Jews and Romany (gypsies) that began in 1941, that is,
even before the German Nazi "final solution". However, if the Croatian
fascists actually led, rather than followed, the German Nazis down the
path of genocide, that doesn't mean they have forgotten their World War II
benefactors. After all, it was thanks to Hitler's invasion of Yugoslavia
that the "Independent State of Croatia" was set up in April 1941, with
Bosnia-Herzegovina (whose population was mostly Serb at the time) as part
of its territory. And the hit song of 1991, when Croatia once again
declared its independence from Yugoslavia and began driving out Serbs, was
"Danke Deutschland" in gratitude to Germany's strong diplomatic support
for Zagreb's unnegotiated secession.
In the West, of course, one will quickly object that the Germany of today
is not the Germany of 1941. True enough. But in Zagreb, with a longer
historical view, they are so much the same that visiting Germans are
sometimes embarrassed when Croats enthusiastically welcome them with a
raised arm and a Nazi "Heil!" greeting.
So it should be no surprise that this year's best seller in Croatia is
none other than a new edition of "Mein Kampf".
This is not a critical edition, mind you, but a reverently faithful
reproduction of the original text by that great European leader,
benefactor of Croatian nationalism and leader of the Third Reich, Adolf
Hitler.
The magazine "Globus" reported that "Mein Kampf" is selling like hotcakes
in all segments of Croatian society.
For those who want to read more, there is a new book entitled "The
Protocols of Zion, the Jews and Adolf Hitler" by Mladen Schwartz, leader
of the Croatian neo-Nazi party New Right, and "Talks with Hitler" by the
Fuhrer's aide Herman Rauschning, as well as various other memoires
celebrating the Ustashe state whose violent massacres of Serbs shocked the
Italian fascist allies and even German diplomatic observers at the time.
The dissident Croatian writer Predrag Matvejevic, who has Italian
citizenship, has sent the Rijeka daily "Novi List" an open letter to the
Association of Croatian Writers and the Croatian center of the
International PEN club denouncing their failure to protest at this
promotion of the absolute worst of racist Nazi propaganda. "Passing
through the streets of Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik and other cities in
Croatia, countless Croatian citizens whose parents took part in the
anti-fascist Partisan struggle are ashamed to see the works and
photographs of Hitler and other Nazi and Ustashe criminals displayed in
bookshop windows," he wrote. "Their publication is a disgrace to Croatia
and its culture". This is "no accident", he said, "in Tudjman's Croatia."
For this is the same regime, he noted, that has allowed the destruction of
thousands of monuments to the victims of fascism, from one end of Croatia
to the other, and in which mass is celebrated non-stop in honor of the
Ustashe "fuhrer" Pavelic in the churches of Split and Zagreb, the Italian
daily "Il Manifesto" reported on September 3.
In another report in "Il Manifesto", Giacomo Scotti reported from Zagreb
that the terrorist campaign by nationalist bands led by the neofascist
"Croatian Party of Rights" has been stepping up its pogroms against the
small number of Serbs now living in the Krajina region. The overwhelmingly
Serb population was driven from the Krajina by the U.S.-backed "Operation
Storm" in August 1995. Officially, under heavy international pressure, the
Croatian government has allowed some Serbs to come back, mostly old
farmers. However, on August 25, the Croatian Supreme Court denied local
tribunals the right to hear complaints from citizens who had not been
allowed to enter their property, thus encouraging lawlessness. With the
complicity of the authorities, armed bands have been breaking into the few
homes reoccupied by their Serb owners, beating and threatening old people
and devastating their farms, chopping down trees and destroying crops to
force them to leave. These facts are contained in two letters to the
Croatian government from the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.
By now, however, it is abundantly clear to everyone that crimes of
intimidation, physical violence, murder, robbery, vandalism or "ethnic
cleansing" are of no interest to Western governments, to international
media or to any court in the world so long as the victims are Serbs.
A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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