Chetnik collaboration with NDH

During the first four to five months, until breakup between partisans and chetniks in Serbia, almost all chetnik and Serb nationalistic groups in Eastern, Central and North-West parts of Bosnia, which where in German zone of control participated in July uprising 1941 and cooperated with Partisans.

After breakup, chetnik forces and population which supported them found themselves in the rift between Ustasha and German forces on the one side and Partisans on the other. Efforts of Major Dangić in the early 1942 to find modus vivendi with Germans in Eastern Bosnia have failed, and local leaders had to find new solution to there problems. Chetnik groups which fundamentally didn't agree with NDH authorities at any point but in partisans they saw common enemy and that was the reason which removed all obstacles for collaboration which followed between NDH authorities and many chetnik detachments.

From January 1942 all NDH forces inside zones of operations came under German command and from October 1942 entire Bosnian territory between Sava river and demarcation line become Operative Zone under German rule, those agreements represented indirect way of chetnik collaboration with Germans.

First formal agreement between NDH and Bosnian Chetniks was signed on May 28th, 1942 in village Lipac, single document which covered Ozren and Trebava chetnik detachments, and covered part of Eastern Bosnia near river Bosna and railway Sarajevo-Brod. On July 9th, amendment in form of a statement was added by which agreement regulation also cover relations of two Chetnik detachments with German and Italian forces in NDH.

It seems, but NDH government doesn't state them, that two similar agreement have been signed earlier first with Uroš Drenović, commander of Chetnik detachment "Petar Kočić" in Varcar Vakuf (Mrkonjić Grad) in county office on 27th April 1942, on NDH part agreement was signed by county Marko Jundić, Home Defense Major Ervin Rataj and acting ustasha logornik K. Urumović.

Second with Lazo Tešanović. After May 28th, during next three weeks three more agreements have been signed for areas of Central and North-West parts of Bosnia. Two of them with Radoslav Radić, commander of chetnik detachment "Borje". First was signed in Banja Luka June 9th and covered Western area and second on June 14th in Prnjavor and covered Eastern area. Third agreement was signed with Borivoj Kerović, commander of Majevica chetnik detachment on June 15th in village Lopare. In 1943 another agreement was signed with chetnik commander Radivoj Kosorić in village Kovanje, Eastern Bosnia on January 16th. Biggest agreement was the one signed on May 28th, 1942. By that agreement commanders of Ozren and Trebava chetnik detachments recognized sovereignty of NDH and as her citizens expressed there loyalty to state and poglavnik, both chetnik detachments had from that day forward to cease all hostilities against military and civilian authorities of NDH. NDH authorities where to restore regular administration in chetnik areas, and chetnik detachments promised help in normalization of situation. As long as state of emergency exist, chetnik leader where to govern in there areas, under supervision of NDH authorities. Main provision (Article 5) states:

As long as there is a danger of armed partisans gangs, chetnik formations will voluntary cooperate with Croatian armed forces in fighting's and destruction of partisans and in these operations will be under the command of Croatian armed forces. In these operation chetnik commander will command there detachment.
Chetnik formations can involve themselves in operations against partisans at there own initiative, but they must report this to Croat military commanders in advance.

Chetnik detachments will be supplied with need ammunition by NDH military authorities. Chetniks wounded in anti-partisan operations will receive care in NDH military hospitals, and widows and orphans of chetnik soldiers killed in combat against partisans will receive direct financial aid from the state equal to one being received by widows and orphans of NDH soldiers. If possible, NDH authorities will secure release and return to there homes persons taken to concentration camps, but only at special recommendation of chetnik commanders (to avoid any partisans or there supporters). Until these persons return, financial aid will be given to there families, if need. All refuges will be able to return to there homes and, if need, will receive state aid comparable to one being given to other citizens of NDH. Serbs will be allowed trade as any other citizen.

As a sort of recapitulation of agreements with Bosnian chetniks, Poglavnik HQ (poglavnikov glavni stan) sent on July 30th 1942 to Ministry of Social care report with signature of Field-Marshall Kvaternik, in which sums up provisions of these agreements in twenty clauses which in general outlines respond to provisions stated above. Copies of the report where to be sent to committee for social care at municipality courts which decided about financial aid to families of those Home Defence soldiers which had rights to it and which also decided about paying those chetniks families which had rights to it by these agreements.

Germans where for these agreements because of several reasons. First, agreements where directed against partisans which since summer of 1941 become main German problem in Yugoslavia, even in areas of Bosnia under German control; second addition of chetniks into fight against partisans reduced number of German soldiers tied to these areas; and finally these agreements helped to pacific Bosnian, North-East and North-West areas, in which Germany had important economical interests - iron ore, wood, heavy chemicals, steel and important railway lines - report of General Lüters, commander of German Army in NDH, from November 18th 1942, points out both military and economical effects of agreements between NDH authorities and chetniks. On July 15th 1942 General Glaise even suggested to General Ivan Brozović in Banja Luka to form central office in Zagreb for implementation and supervision of the agreements. Nothing become of that suggestion because at that moment such office would represent difficulties for Ustashi regime, but as it will show later one central office was put in charge for those agreements. There is no doubt that agreement included majority of chetnik forces in Bosnia east of demarcation line, because Glaise report from November 16th 1942 to Wermacht commander for South-East Europe shows that around 10,000 bosnian chetniks has agreement with NDH authorities on the principle 'live and let others live'. Map which was made by General Staff of Croatian Home Defence, dated on January 17th 1943, divides chetniks on NDH territory into three groups: Italian chetniks, concentrated around Otočac in Lika, area of Knin in Northern Dalmatia and in Eastern Herzegovina; collaborationist chetniks in Central Bosnia and in parts of East Bosnia around river Bosna; and rebel chetniks holding minor parts in North-East Bosnia and area East of Sarajevo (map can be found at Military History Institute in Belgrade).

Germans

In Belgrade, a concentration camp nearly slips away

KATKA KROSNAR Jewish Telegraphic Agency

BELGRADE Wandering around the vast, neglected site straddling Belgrade's Sava river, Aleksandar Mosic admits his project is ambitious. Mosic, a former board member of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia, wants to recreate the Belgrade Fair exhibition ground and thus build a proper memorial to the victims of what he describes as "the forgotten concentration camp" the Sajmiste camp that the site was turned into during World War II by the occupying Nazis.


Within six months of the camp being set up in December 1941, all 8,000 Jews from Belgrade, as well as from Austria and Czechoslovakia, who had been rounded up and imprisoned there had been transported to gassing trucks and murdered at the site.


Most of these were women and children, as thousands of men had been shot dead earlier.

None of the Jews sent to the camp survived. What made Sajmiste unique was its location in clear view of Belgrade's residents.

"It is the only camp in Europe which was so visible; the inmates were not hidden from the view of the rest of the population and that was the intention; to intimidate other Serbs by showing them what was going on inside " says Mosic, chairman of the newly formed Old Fair Memorial Association and author of the book "The Jews in Belgrade." The first phase of the project would see the surviving tower reconstructed and converted into a Holocaust museum containing documents, testimonies and photographs of lost Jews from Serbia. "We want to rescue the memory of the camp and its victims," he says. "There is no monument to the Jews who died or no real education specifically about the Jewish Holocaust."


A monument was erected on the riverbank eight years ago to all 40,000 Serbs who died in the camp, but Mosic points out that there is no specific monument to the Jewish victims. One item that will definitely be missing from the museum, however, is a list of all those interned in Sajmiste, since all such lists were destroyed by the Nazis.

Before the war there were 10,400 Jews in Belgrade and roughly 16,000 in the whole of Serbia. Almost 90 percent were killed in the Holocaust.


Sajmiste was destroyed by U.S. bombers in raids, which killed 80 people at the camp and injured 170. The bombers' intended target was the nearby railway station. Davor Salom, secretary of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia and Montenegro, renamed following the disintegration of Yugoslavia as a country, says the Sajmiste project will be an important contribution to the memory process.

"We are forgetting the Holocaust too quickly, and this Holocaust Museum and the reminder of what this site was will help fulfill our obligation to the memory of thousands of Serbian Jews and millions of Jews worldwide who were killed during World War II," he says.

About 700,000 killed in the Second World War with about 200, or more precisely 170, thousand killed only on the territory of Serbia are largely the victims of Nedic, Ljotic’s and other armies, chetniks included. It seems that it would now suit us to forget these victims, since they testify against the ideological movements we apparently wish to link ourselves with in the 21st century,” Dr. Dubravka Stojanovic said not long ago in a cult Radio B92 program called “Hourglass”.

Antisemitic activity in Serbia today

Antisemitic activity in Serbia is usually confined to graffiti on walls and buildings, usually belonging to Jewish individuals and organizations, but sometimes on non-Jewish ones because the perpetrators assume that the Jews control everything. Such activity was reported in many Serbian cities in 2005. For example, on 26-27 January, a memorial plate dedicated to Jewish victims of World War II in Novi Knjazevac was coated with oil paint and a swastika and the words “Jews” (Zhidovi), scrawled on it. Central Belgrade and its surroundings were covered with anti-Zionist/antisemitic posters and graffiti on 22 March. Slogans on the wall of the Jewish cemetery read: “Fight the 5 October Zionist occupation of Serbia [fall of Milosevic regime]; “B-92 is Jewish Television!” “Jewish parasites get out of Serbia”; “We want freedom and not Jewish occupation! Serbia belongs to Serbs!” Similar graffiti appeared on buildings of the Rex Cultural Center (which engages in ‘cultural decontamination’ - showing films and lectures about recent Balkan wars and Serbian responsibility for them), formerly, the Jewish Oneg Shabbat Center; the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and the Foundation for Humanity and Law. The graffiti accused the heads of the last two institutions of being “Jewish puppets.”



In May, several buildings in the city of Zrenjanin, Vojvodina, including a restaurant with a memorial plate to the synagogue that once stood there and to Jewish victims of the Holocaust were covered with fascist and antisemitic messages. In Nish, southern Serbia, the synagogue was desecrated twice – in June and July - with antisemitic slogans such as “Death to servants of Zionism” and “Arbeit macht frei.”



In February 2005 a list of Jews living in Serbia, including their home and office phone numbers and addresses appeared on the white supremacist Stormfront site, Serbian section. Although it was eventually removed, the site continues to regularly explain the damage Jewish people do to the world in general and particularly to Serbia.


An anti-fascist meeting at the University of Novi Sad was interrupted by a group of youths who resembled skinheads. Introducing themselves as ‘the National Line’, they saluted in the Nazi fashion and harassed and insulted the speakers and audience, They were apprehended and arrested a few days later. Literature found by the police on members of the National Line indicated the neo-Nazi orientation of the group.


A brochure containing the tract “Serbs in the Claws of Jews,” by Milorad Mojic, was distributed in Novi Sad, in February. The piece was originally written in 1940/1. The author claims, inter alia, that “Jews can dishonor non-Jewish girls.”

How much chetniks are paying to Julia Gorin?

Obviously Julia Gorin want to show the world from where she is been payed. Now even 2 year old child could see that chetniks are paying her with large amount of money, but that is fine by me I won't hear screams from grave of their victims. On her latest post she is glorifying chetnik movement so I wont try to comment much simply to answer as usually with image and facts:

Mihailovich's commanders with the invader (from left to tight): 1) Colonel Lučić , 2) Major Dongić, formerly of the Yugoslav Army, Četnik commander, cooperator with the Germans and Nedić's men, 3) Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin, Mihailovć's commander for Dalmatia, 4) Milorad Ljanovski, 5) Daka Tešanović, Četnik commander, and 6) Lieutenant Ignjatović.
A German officer is shown by a cross.
Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum courtesy of Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije
Copyright: Public Domain
Subject Classification: Invasion & Occupation -- Yugoslavia -- General -- Nazi Collaborators

Lie: Last fall Mihailovich kept as many as seven Nazi divisions chasing him through his Sumadija mountains.

A group of Chetniks pose with German soldiers in an unidentified village in Serbia.

Locale: [Serbia] Yugoslavia;
Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum courtesy of Muzej Revolucije naroda i narodnosti Jugoslavije

LIE: Mihailovich’s swarming raiders have preserved an “Island of Freedom”, which for a time was 20,000 square miles in area, with a population of 4,000,000.

FACT: ibidem,p.232,footnote 179; BA/MA, RH 24-15/2 Bfh. d. dt. Tr. i. Kroat.,Ia-Lagebeurteilung fuer die Zeit vom 1.3.-15.3.43 (16.3.43.)

“In the future,ammunition will be handed out only to those Chetnik units who under German command fight the Partisans.”

Lie: Mihailovich’s annihilation of Axis detachments, bombing of roads and bridges, breaking of communications and stealing of ammunition have been so widespread that the Nazis had to declare a new state of war in their “conquered” territory

FACT: Following lines were written by Edmund Glaise von Horstenau in his diary:

Quote:

“The units that could really be used against the partisans were the Serbian and partly the Russian volunteers and-Draza Mihailovic’s people.My liason officer with them was a certain major,Ritterkreuztraeger.”

>written on situation in Serbia during his visit to Belgrade in June 1944.<

LIE: Mihailovich’s example has kept all Yugoslavia in a wild anti-Axis ferment. The Axis has resorted to executing untold thousands, but the revolt continues. Last month the Nazis said they had seized Mihailo-vich’s wife, two sons and daughter, threatened to execute all relatives of Mihailovich’s army and 16,000 hostages if the General did not surrender within five days.

Fact:

“Chetniks (…) our natural allies. Only they are fighting! “Kroatische Kampfgemeinschaft” exists only on paper.”

ibidem,p.378; BA/MA, RH 19 XI/29 OKW/WfSt, Gruppe Ic/Ao Vortragsnotiz fuer Aussenchefbeschprechung am 25.7.1944 (23.7.1944)

LIE: Last October the Nazis even asked for peace.

FACT:

“DM has repeatedly tried to make contact with us” >”…mit uns ins Gespraech zu kommen.”<

ibidem,p.488; BA/MA, RW 40/86 Militaerbefehlshaber Suedost, Abt. Ia, Lagebericht fuer die Zeit vom 16.2-15.3.1944 (25.3.1944)

A lot more: Here, Here, Here and Here

Facts about Serbian-Jewish Friendship

On her blog Julia write about some Serbian-Jewish friendship as some common history relationship. Here is quote:

When that happened, Lalich says, “there was a big campaign to separate the Serbs and the Jews, because people knew there was a common history and a lot of historical parallels.”

The “friendship” in the name of the society is no accident, she says: Serbs and Jews have had a long-standing and friendly relationship, and in Belgrade, where the largest Jewish community was, Jews enjoyed cordial relations with non-Jewish Serbs.

Lets see some historical facts Julia forget to mention.

The physical liquidation of Serbian Jews began immediately in the spring of 1941. Almost all the men were killed by the autumn and the women and children and the remaining men were liquidated at the end of April and the beginning of May, 1942. The exact number of people killed is not known even from Jewish sources. Historian Jasa Romano, however, has come to the conclusion that 88% of all Serbian Jews were killed. The Serbian historian Sretenije Zrokić says that of the 11,870 Belgrade Jews only 1,115 or 9% survived the war. It was not only the Germans who captured and killed the Jews in Serbia, rather it was the Serbian Police, Nedić's volunteers and Chetniks . Most were killed in the Sajmište and Banjica concentration camps. Not a single Jew managed to escape from the camps.

Source: Ljubica Stefan, Anti-semitism in Serbia during the World War II
# Judein Grei Ljubica Stefan is retired professor: refugee from Belgrade where she lived for 30 years, researches genocide against Albanians, anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews, as well as the behavior of Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church in World War II.


The Chetniks and the Jews

At the initial stage, there were some Jews among the Chetniks, but when it turned out that the Chetniks were not fighting the invaders and their collaborators, and in fact were inclined to cooperate with them, the Jews switched to the ranks of the partisans. As the Chetniks increased their cooperation with the Germans, their attitude toward the Jews in the areas under their control deteriorated, and they identified the Jews with the hated Communists. There were many instances of Chetniks' murdering Jews or handing them over to the Germans.

The Destruction of the Jews

The German military administration in Serbia implemented the extermination of the Jews in its area with dispatch and thoroughness. In the very first days of the occupation the Jews were ordered to register, and anti - Jewish regulations were issued. For several months afterward, most of the male Jews were put on forced labor. After the outbreak of the revolt in Serbia in July 1941, all the male Jews were put in concentration camps, most of them in Topovske Šupe, and others in Šabac and in Niš.

During four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Jewish communities of Serbia enjoyed religious tolerance, internal autonomy, and equality before the law, that ended with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Serbian state.

Soon after a Serbian insurrection against Turkish rule in 1804, Jews were expelled from the interior of Serbia and prohibited from residing outside of Belgrade. In 1856 and 1861, Jews were further prohibited from travel for the purpose of trade. In official correspondence from the late 19th century, British diplomats detailed the cruel treatment of the Jews of Serbia, which they attributed to religious fanaticism, commercial rivalries, and the belief that Jews were the secret agents of the Turks. Article 23 of the Serbian constitution granted equality to every citizen but Article 132 forbade Jews the right of domicile.

The Treaty of Berlin 1878, which formally established the Serbian state, accorded political and civil equality to the Jews of Serbia, but the Serbian Parliament resisted abolishing restrictive decrees for another 11 years. Although the legal status of the Jewish community subsequently improved, the view of Jews as an alien presence persisted.

Although Serbian historians contend that the persecution of the Jews of Serbia was entirely the responsibility of Germans and began only with the German occupation, this is self- serving fiction. Fully six months before the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment.

One year later on 22 October 1941, the rabidly antisemitic "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibit" opened in occupied Belgrade, funded by the city of Belgrade. The central theme was an alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic plot for world domination. Newspapers such as Obnova (Renewal) and Nasa Borba (Our Struggle) praised this exhibit, proclaiming that Jews were the ancient enemies of the Serbian people and that Serbs should not wait for the Germans to begin the extermination of the Jews. A few months later, Serbian authorities issued postage stamps (see picture bellow) commemorating the opening of this popular exhibit. These stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian symbols, portrayed Judaism as the source of world evil and advocated the humiliation and violent subjugation of Jews.


Serbia as well as neighboring Croatia was under Axis occupation during the Second World War. Although the efficient destruction of Serbian Jewry in the first two years of German occupation has been well documented by respected sources, the extent to which Serbia actively collaborated in that destruction has been less recognized. The Serbian government under General Milan Nedic worked closely with local Nazi officials in making Belgrade the first "Judenfrei" city of Europe. As late as 19 September 1943, Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler (see picture bellow), Serbs in Berlin advanced the idea that the Serbs were the "Ubermenchen" (master race) of the Slavs.



Indeed, with Nazi blessings, Nedic established the Serbian State Guard, numbering about 20,000, compared to the 3,400 German police in Serbia. Recruiting advertisements for the Serb police force specified that "applicants must have no Jewish or Gypsy blood". Nedic's second in command was Dimitrije Ljotic, founder of the Serbian Fascist Party and the principal Fascist ideologist of Serbia. Ljotic organized the Serbian Volunteers Corps, whose primary function was rounding up Jews, Bosniaks, Gypsies, and partisans for execution. Serbian citizens and police received cash bounties for the capture and delivery of Jews.

The list goes on and on and Julia still sings same old story trying to convince readers that Serbs are good guys and friends of Jews. What a disgrace.... Read first Julia ... READ