Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
Jewish
Historical Museum, Belgrade, Yugoslavia Antisemitism
and Jewish Identity in Serbia after the 1991 Collapse of the
Yugoslav State Himmler
was their defender - more on Bosnian collaboration during
the war Post-war
Arab links to the ODESSA network The
International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance
Claims The
Vatican and Franciscan order are sued in the
USA Vatican
accused of war crimes in the
Ukraine
How
the Papal State collaborated with fascism in the Balkans:
The Vatican, Croatia and the Nazi Gold Shamash:
The Jewish Internet Consortium: Holocaust Home
Page From the
Encyclopedia of Holocaust, Edition 1990, Vol. 2,
page 704. The caption under the photograph reads: Hajj
Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, inspecting troops
in Bosnia (1943). During the
Second World War in Yugoslavia, as with the Catholic
Church in Croatia,
many Muslim clerics in Bosnia and Kosovo were willing
accomplices in the genocide of the nations Serbian, Jewish
and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the
Nazi-installed regime of Ante
Pavelic in Croatia
carried out some of the most horrific crimes of the
Holocaust (known as the Porajmos by the Roma), killing over
800,000 Yugoslav citizens - 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and
26,000 Roma. In these crimes, they were helped by Muslim
fundamentalists in Bosnia and Kosovo who were openly
supported by the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj
Amin al-Husseini. A notorious anti-Semite, he openly
encouraged Muslims to join Nazi units that would be later
implicated in genocide and crimes against humanity - the
infamous Hanjar (or Handschar) 13th Waffen SS division. One
of these crimes was the The
Massacre at Koritska Jama Gorge, in Bosnia during
1941.
The Nazi's also established a puppet state in Serbia under
General Milan Nedic, who along with the Cetniks also
particapated in the Holocaust in wartime Croatia (which
included Bosnia) and Serbia. What united
al-Husseini and the Third Reich was a common hatred of the
Jewish people. The Nazis had taken al-Husseini under their
protection following the wartime invasion of Iraq. He was to
spend most of the war living in a luxurious suite at the
Hotel Adlon in Berlin. Hitler had enjoyed quite a following
among the nationalist youth of Egypt during the war, after
Nassiri Nasser, the brother of the future president of
Egypt, had published an Arab edition of Mein Kampf in
1939, describing its author as the "strongest man of
Europe". Not surprisingly, Egypt became like Argentina after
the war - a safe haven for SS war criminals who fled there
after the war. Many were keen to help President Nasser in
his attempts to destroy the State of Israel. There is
evidence that the shadowy ODESSA network helped many of them
to Egypt. Apart from Syria - who still host the wanted SS
war criminal Alois Brunner, it was in Egypt that the
Post-war
Arab links to the ODESSA network
were strongest. Many of the
victims of the Holocaust/Porajmos were murdered in the
Second World War's third largest death camp - Jasenovac,
where over 200,000 people - mainly Orthodox Serbs met their
deaths. Some 240,000 were "rebaptized" into the Catholic
faith by fundamentalist Clerics in "the Catholic Kingdom of
Croatia" as part of the policy to "kill a third, deport a
third, convert a third" of Yugoslavia's Serbs, Jews and Roma
in wartime Bosnia and Croatia (The Yugoslav Auschwitz and
the Vatican, Vladimar Dedijer, Anriman-Verlag, Freiburg,
Germany, 1988). The most senior
Muslim cleric to be involved in the Holocaust/Porajmos was
Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who according to the Encyclopedia
of the Holocaust (Edition 1990, Volume 2, Pages 706 and
707), made a substantial contribution to the Axis war effort
by organizing "in record time" recruitment to Muslim SS
units in Croatia that would be involved in some of the worse
atrocities of the Second World War. Altogether, it
is estimated that some 20,000 Muslims fought in the Hanjar
(Sword) SS Division, which fought against Yugoslav partisans
led by General Tito, and carried out police and security
details in fascist Hungary. The Nazi's recruited two SS
divisions from Yugoslavia's Muslim population: the infamous
Bosnian 13th Waffen Hanjar (or Handschar) SS division, and
the Albanian Skanderbeg 21st Waffen SS division. SS
conscription in Yugoslavia during the war produced 42,000
Waffen SS and police troops The
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust states: According to
one article on the web, Ethnic
Conflicts in Civil War in Bosnia,
Alija
Izetbegovic, the current President of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, is the person who connects the present and the
World War II. During the World War II, he was also linked to
the SS Handschar Division. He joined the organization "Young
Muslims" in Sarajevo on March 5, 1943, and is alleged to
have engaged as a member of the organization in recruiting
young Muslims for Handschar Division in collaboration with
German intelligence services (ABWER and GESTAPO). Thus, in
the spring of 1943, as leader of the Muslim youth in
Sarajevo, he welcomed the Nazi collaborator Amin-el
Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, to Sarajevo. In
1946, however, he was sentenced by the Yugoslav Supreme
Military Court to three years of imprisonment and two years
of deprivation of civil rights, because of his fascist
activities. What was alleged to be his "criminal record" was
published by Russian gazette "Izvestija" on 17th November
1992.
They
participated in the massacre of civilians in Bosnia and
volunteered to join in the hunt for Jews in Croatia . . .
The Germans made a point of publicizing the fact that
Husseini had flown from Berlin to Sarajevo for the sole
purpose of giving his blessing to the Muslim army and
inspecting its arms and training exercises.
Have
you ever wondered why Bosnia never officially accused
Croatia of aggression for attacking it as it has done
with Yugoslavia? What do Bosnian Moslem's people say
about this: "Izetbegovic was Pavelic's soldier in last
war !!!" Comment
of a Muslim reader from Bosnia
(November 2000)