JASA ALMULI MINIMIZED THE HOLOCAUST

JASA ALMULI IS ON RECORD FOR MINIMIZING GENOCIDAL SUFFERING OF JEWISH PEOPLE IN SERBIA AND DEFENDING SERBIAN WAR CRIMES

Reading time: 12-15 minutes.

Short Intro: Jasa Almuli claimed that the Banjica concentration camp housed "only 455" Jews. Furthermore, he claimed that Serbian collaborationist fascists and their Nazi puppet government never harmed any Jews. He is also on record for claiming that there was no evidence of Serbian war crimes, "It's NATO propaganda."

During the 1990s, Jasa Almuli - a Serbian Jew [or in his own words: "Serb of Moses faith"] and Slobodan Milosevic's close associate - worked tirelessly to (1) minimize the Holocaust suffering of Jewish victims in Serbia, (2) rehabilitate Serbian Nazi Chetniks from any responsibility in the destruction of Jews in Serbia, and (3) erase genocidal crimes of Serbia's Nazi puppet government in World War II. Milosevic's regime also employed Almuli as a "journalist" and a "publicist."

Slobodan Milosevic retained Jasa Almuli to "rehabilitate" Serbian war crimes in the Balkans. Almuli actively participated in sending protest letters in the media, defending Serbia's war crimes, and presenting himself as a single voice of the Jewish community in Serbia (later, local Jewish people forced him to resign and stop misrepresenting their cause in Serbia).

Like Milosevic's close assistant, Smilja Avramov, Almuli was a Holocaust revisionist who - at the expense of Jewish victims - attempted to dissolve Serbian Nazi fascists from being accomplices to the Holocaust in World War II.

He used his close relationship with Milosevic and his credentials, as a local Jewish 'leader,' to campaign on behalf of the Serb nationalist cause - going as far as minimizing the Holocaust of Jews in Serbia.He claimed that Serbia's quisling Nazi government and Serbia's fascist puppet state, under the leadership of Milan Nedic, never passed any "anti – Jewish legislation," never established or run any death camps for Jews, and "virtually no killing perpetrated." He shamelessly claimed that the Serbian-operated concentration camp Banjica in Belgrade (background) imprisoned "only" 455 Jews.

However, historical facts tell a different story. In her book ‘Until the final solution: The Jews in Belgrade 1521-1942,' historian Jennie Lebel (Zeni Lebl) writes:

"The decision [to establish the Banjica camp] was taken in the staff of the German military commander for Serbia on 22 June 1941, and the same day the chief of the administrative staff Dr Turner informed the first person of the Commissars’ Administration [Serbian quisling government] Milan Acimovic of it. As it was a question of a joint, Nazi-collaborationist camp, the carrying out of the order was entrusted to the administrator of the city of Belgrade, Dragi Jovanovic, i.e. to the Administration of the city of Belgrade, the Belgrade municipality and the Gestapo. Dragi Jovanovic appointed on 5 July Svetozar M. Vujkovic as the first manager of that first concentration camp in Belgrade; and for his assistant, Djordje Kosmajac. They maintained daily close contact with the Special Police and with them decided the question of life or death for tens of thousands of prisoners in the camp. The security of the camp was exercised by a special detachment of the gendarmerie of the city of Belgrade, under the supervision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and with the special engagement of the Department of the Special Police. The German part of the camp was under the administration of the Gestapo. The camp building had to be very quickly repaired and organised to suit its new purpose. According to the model of German concentration camps, metal walls, iron doors and bars were put up at Banjica, and grates were put on the windows. The first prisoners were brought to the newly formed camp already on 9 July, while the adaptation of the building was still in progress, even before the building of the high camp walls. The bringing of prisoners, Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, was carried out at a fast tempo, as were their daily executions."

Regardless of Jasa Almuli's revisionist claims, it is obvious that the concentration camp housed more than 455 Jews, who were primary victims of the Holocaust. Serbian historian Sima Begovic, who was imprisoned in the Banjica concentration camp during the war, wrote a two-volume history of Banjica (’Logor Banjica 1941-1944, 1989). Here is his testimony:

"Larger groups of Jews reached the camp at Banjica on 14, 15 and 16 September 1941. Among them appear the surnames of well known Belgrade Jewish families: Albano, Gris, Finci, Pijade, Konfino, Sabitaj, Demojorovic, Mandilovic, Ruso, Gozes, Solomon, Almulzino, Amar, Demajo, Benvenisti, Janjatovic, Frajdenfeld, Isakovic, Zonensajn, Nisim, Altarac, Singer, Adanja, Melamed, Karic, Masic, Kon, Nahimijas, Kabiljo, Naftali, Grinberger, Anaf, Mor, Razencvajg, Munk, Blau, Hercog, Gutman and others. From the Banat group there were in the Banjica camp four Jews, doctors by profession: Djordje Farago from Petrovgrad (Zrenjanin), Franjo Loza from Srpska Crnja, Pavle Miler from Kovino, and Branko Auspic from Vrsac. In those three days alone 202 Jews were brought to the camp at Banjica. All of these were transferred, as recorded in the first register of the Banjica camp, to a different camp on 17 September 1941. Because the camp at the Old Fairground still was not completely finished, this was probably a matter of transfer to the camp at Topovske supe. It is a still more likely assumption that they were then, or a little later, executed at the village of Jabuka in the Banat, where the first executions were carried out both of Banjica prisoners and of Jews imprisoned at Topovske supe.... It is not easy or straightforward to determine the number of Jews who resided at the camp at Banjica and from it taken to the execution site. Judging by the Banjica registers, that number just exceeded 900 individuals. However, not all Jews were recorded in the registers of the Banjica prisoners."

British historian, Dr. Marko Hoare, concludes: "Thus Almuli’s claim, that ‘only 455′ Jews passed through Banjica, is false. His figure of 23,697 prisoners at Banjica is also rejected by both Begovic and Lebel, who point out that this only represents the number of prisoners recorded in the camp registers, and does not include the thousands or possibly tens of thousands more who went unrecorded."

Hoare continues, "The guard was kept by Nedic’s gendarmes, who were inhuman and, to show their loyalty to the Germans, often worse than the latter. They prohibited them things that the Germans sometimes permitted. At the entrance there were not many guards, and even on the occasion of the transport of the prisoners to work there was not a particularly prominent guard. But it was made clear to them that every attempt at escape would be punished most strictly. They were soon convinced of this: when some nevertheless attempted to escape and were caught, in front of all the prisoners they were hanged in the camp courtyard."

Hoare quotes Serbian historian, Olivera Milosavljevic (Potisnuta istina: Kolaboracija u Srbiji 1941-1944, 2006), as exposing Milan Nedic's anti-semitism. She wrote:

"The principle of a ‘clean’ nation encompassed all spheres of social life in [Milan] Nedic’s Serbia, in which state officials, professors, pupils and students had to demonstrate that they were Serbs. The ‘Aryan paragraph’ entered the official documents of Nedic’s goverment which, on the occasion of employment in state service, required that candidates provide evidence that they were of Serb nationality and ‘Aryan origin’ and that their families did not have ‘Jewish or Gypsy blood’. Confirmations were provided by the municipal authorities."

According to Dr. Philip J. Cohen (A Monthly Jewish Review - Mindstream - November 1992. Volume XXXVIII No.8.),

"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 commemorating the opening of this popular exhibit. These stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian symbols (but did not contain Nazi 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 Naziofficials in making Belgrade the first 'Judenfrei' city of Europe. As late as 19 September 1943, Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler, Serbs in Berlin advanced the idea that the Serbs were the 'Ubermenchen' (master race) of the Slavs."

Dimitrije Ljotic was another Serbian Nazi fascist leader whose militia hunted down and killed Jews. Ljotic was a central figure of the Serbian quisling regime in World War II. According to Dr. Hoare, some of Ljotic's antisemitic statements included:

"I have said, that the Christian nations have become so blind, that they see danger in every imperialism – except the most dangerous imperialism: the Jewish’; ‘Only the Jew could on the one hand be the creator and user of capitalism, and on the other create Marxism and lead revolutions, supposedly against capitalism’; ‘And to the Jews it must be clear that for the forseeable future the realisation of their dream of world revolution is ended’; ‘You will only then, with the fall of red Bolshevik Moscow, see what wrong toward the Russian nation and toward you, Serbian tribe, has been committed by those renegades, who convinced you that that Jewish-Unrussian creation is – your Slavic Russia."

In 1999, Jasa Almuli gave an interview to a Serbian sympathizer Linda Grant. When asked about the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Serbs against other non-Serbs, Jasa Almuli responded "Where is the evidence of atrocities? It's NATO propaganda. The war itself has nothing to do with humanitarianism but is a plot for US dominance of the world."

Jasa Almuli is also known for attacking Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Belgrade, because the Helsinki Committee’s 2006 report stated historical fact, namely that:

"During the course of the Second World War, the Jews in Serbia perished at a high rate, not only at the hands of the German occupation authorities, but at the hands of the Government of National Salvation of Milan Nedic, the Ljoticites [Serbian fascists], gendarmes and Special Police, whose effective work contributed to the fact that, already in August 1942, Belgrade, as the first European capital city, was proclaimed a city cleansed of Jews (Judenrein)."

After Kosovo war, Almuli was forced to resign as Belgrade Jewish community president in the face of opposition among Belgrade Jews who did not want to be represented by a man who defended Serbian Chetnik fascists. Almuli's initiative to publish an attack on the leadership of the Croatia's Jewish community in Zagreb was an added insult to the injury of Belgrade's Jewish community.

Due to irreconcilable disagreements with a local Jewish community, Jasa Almuli subsequently left Serbia for good and settled in the United Kingdom.

Want to know more? Read about Serbia's Nazi Past and the Holocaust of Jews at the following link:

http://www.bosniak.org/serbian-nazi-past-and-genocide-against-jews-in-the-holocaust/