MILOSEVIC AND MIHAILOVICH AND A STRANGE CONVERGENCE
Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same sometimes.
55 years ago, another Serb was put in trial, but this one was in Belgrade.
He had been captured, too. He had just gone through a vicious war through
which he had fought valiantly, loyal to the American and English allies to
the very end, long after he had been betrayed and abandoned.
His jury and judges weren't the Swiss, or the French, or the English. They
were his fellow Serbs. And his hangman was Josip Broz.
This, too, was in July. But it ended quickly, without much fanfare, and on
the 17th, that Serb was put to death on trumped up charges. Before his
execution, the Yugoslav communists declared that "Draza Mihailovich shall be
given a fair trial, and then he shall be shot."
There was no fanfare. No internet to spread the word of his capture and
incarceration. No demonstrations in the streets. No protests on a grand
scale. Just a man in his cell, waiting to give his testimony before the
court, and some American airmen back home in this country whose lives he had
saved, fighting to speak on his behalf and being denied the right to go.
When General Draza Mihailovich was put to death, the New York Times reported
the story on the 17th of July, 1946, and there was genuine remorse in the
words. Maybe it was because somehow, somewhere, things had gotten all
twisted around, and the wrong man had paid with his life.
Slobodan Milosevich will have privileges and access and a defense that
General Draza Mihailovich never had, though he deserved all these things far
more.
But there is a strange irony to all this. Perhaps at the end of it all,
there will be a strange justice, too. Only I cannot say what I would want
that to be. 55 years ago, I would have known what I wanted that to be.
JULY 17. Remember him.
Sandy Marquette.
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