ALBERT EINSTEIN ON SERBIAN REIGN OF TERROR

By Ivanka Kuzmanovic

The Milwaukee Journal, p.A18,
17 June 1993.

It seems to me that Stevan Pirocanac, in his In My Opinion March 31 and letter June 9, is clearly afflicted by the Serbian national delusion of Serbian victimization. Blaming Germany and Croatia for Serbian aggression and the genocide committed by the Serbs during the last two years is appalling.

It is one more excuse for crimes against those “dangerous” Bosniak civilians in the bread lines, soccer fields and hospitals.

Pirocanac needs to be reminded that his own Serbs have a history of brutal aggression in the 20th century. In the Balkan wars, they slaughtered Bosniaks, Albanians and Macedonians. The period between 1918 and 1941 is known as the Serbian “reign of terror.”

The conditions in Croatia, under the Serbian yoke at that time, prompted Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann to write the following to the International League for the Rights of Man:

"The facts show that cruelty and brutality practiced upon the Croatians only increase. In view of the frightful situation, we urge the International League for the Rights of Man to do everything possible to suppress this unrestrained rule of might which prevails in Croatia.”

“Murder as a political weapon must not be tolerated; and political Serbian murderers must not be made national heroes. The League should muster all possible aid to protect this small, peaceful and highly civilized people…” (The New York Times, May 6, 1931).

As far as Serbian “love” for the Jewish people: Serbs have expelled Jews from Serbia as far back as 1804, 1856 and 1861. The Serbian-led Nazi regime in Belgrade is responsible for that city’s dubious honor of being the very first in Europe to be free of Jews in World War II.

It was in Belgrade on Jan. 1, 1942, that Serbian authorities issued four anti-Semitic postal stamps. In Belgrade alone, more than 11,000 Jews were killed by the Serbs between 1941 and 1945. Philip Cohen, in his well-documented April 20 paper called “Desecrating the Holocaust: Serbia’s Exploitation of the Holocaust as Propaganda” writes, among other things:

“Even as Serbia courts Jewish public opinion, their propagandists conceal a tradition of well-ingrained anti-Sermitism, which persist to the present. Moreover, Serbs portray themselves as victims in the Second World War, which indeed they were, but conceal the genocidal massacres that various Serbian formations perpetrated against several peoples, including the Jews…”

There is no justification for the heinous crimes that Serbs are committing on the innocent people in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Pirocanac needs to remember that his ancestors migrated to Croatia and to Bosnia-Herzegovina to escape Turkish persecution, or as a result of Serb colonization of those lands. Nothing from the past can be used to justify the brutal Serb aggression now.