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Cahiers de l’Urmis

6 | 2000 Multiculturalisme : politiques publiques et usages de l'ethnicité

The Wish to be a Jew: The Power of the Jewish Trope in the Yugoslav Conflict*

Marko Zivkovic

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/urmis/323 DOI : 10.4000/urmis.323 ISSN : 1773-021X

Éditeur Urmis

Édition imprimée Date de publication : 15 mars 2000 ISSN : 1287-471X

Référence électronique Marko Zivkovic, « The Wish to be a Jew: The Power of the Jewish Trope in the Yugoslav Conflict* », Cahiers de l’Urmis [En ligne], 6 | mars 2000, mis en ligne le 15 septembre 2003, consulté le 08 septembre 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/urmis/323 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ urmis.323

Les contenus des Cahiers de l’Urmis sont disponibles selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modifcation 4.0 International. The Wish to be a Jew : The focus on the Ustasa genocide against Power of the Jewish Trope in during the Second World War. Here the Yugoslav Conflict* I outline some of the ways the "Jewish trope" provided a bridge between what I Marko Zivkovic call, in shorthand, the "" and the Ph.D. candidate at the Anthropology "Jadovno" narrative cycles. Department, The University of Chicago. In order to understand the uses of the Jewish trope in it is necessary to When Serbian writer Vuk Draskovic situate them in at least three major proclaimed in 1985 that "Serbs are the contexts. First, the Jewish trope was a part thirteenth, lost and the most ill-fated tribe of the national discourse, produced by a of ", he was invoking an analogy that particular group of Serbian intellectuals, has long existed as one of what I call the that paved the way for Milosevic's rise to "stories Serbs tell themselves (and others) power. Secondly, Serbian national about themselves". I have tried to show narratives were to a significant degree in a elsewhere (Zivkovic 1997) how these (contentious) dialogue with the similar stories were resurrected and put to work in narratives of other Yugoslav nations, and the service of various political agendas in the way these competing narratives Serbia since the mid-1980s. I divided conditioned each other played an Serbian national narratives into three main important part in the dynamics of "cycles" – the Kosovo, WWI, and WWII Yugoslavia's dissolution. The second cycles. While it is true that, on the most context for Serbian uses of the "Jewish general level, the common denominator of trope" is thus uses of that same trope by all these stories is a theme of eternal other Yugoslav nations, most importantly victimization, I have made it my task to by Slovenes, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. investigate the actual narrative elements Finally, the importance of the Jewish trope through which this message was in all these discourses was immediately and enunciated. The "Jewish trope" as I will decisively conditioned by the importance call it here, was one of the most important of the Jewish trope in "Western" of these narrative elements, especially in (European and American) discourses. linking the central Serbian myth of Kosovo to the more recent cycle of narratives that MILOSEVIC'S RISE : "MOUNTING THE HORSE ALREADY SADDLED BY THE

* A shorter version of this paper was first SERBIAN INTELLIGENTSIA" presented at the Ninth International Conference of Europeanists, March 31-April 2, 1994, in The story of Slobodan Milosevic's rise Chicago. I want to thank Milica Mihajlovic of to power involves at least two separate the Jewish Historical Museum in for lines of development or "tracks" that are helping me with press clippings from the Yugoslav periodicals 1989-1993 collected by commonly seen to have come together at the Museum and other with other relevant his fateful speech in Kosovo Polje on April sources on Jewish life in Yugoslavia. 24, 1987. One track involves Milosevic's 70 climbing through the Serbian Communist some fifteen thousand Serbian and Party ranks on the coat tails of his mentor Montenegrin protesters gathered around Ivan Stambolic1. On the other track, an the Kosovo Polje cultural center, screaming important segment of the Serbian "Thieves, murderers" and throwing rocks. intelligentsia, gathered around the Serbian As police moved to stop the crowd from Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) storming the building by beating people and the Serbian Writers' Association with their truncheons, Milosevic stepped (UKS)2, was moving from Yugoslavism to outside and uttered the sentence that Serbian particularism (Budding 1998). miraculously transformed him from a bland Aside from increased conflict with apparatchik to the Serbian nationalist icon : Slovenia, the major impetus for this "No one should dare beat you" (Niko ne movement was the plight of Kosovo Serbs. sme da vas bije). The mood suddenly The two tracks merged when Ivan changed and the crowd started chanting Stambolic dispatched Milosevic to Kosovo "Slobo, Slobo". Whether he was genuinely Polje to quell the near explosive moved by the plight of Kosovo Serbs (and frustrations of Kosovo Serbs and many analysts think that he indeed was) or Montenegrins. While Milosevic was whether he cynically realized the potential meeting with various local functionaries of nationalism, from then on Milosevic and representatives of Kosovo Serbs, used his new status as a "Tsar of Serbs" to oust his mentor, Ivan Stambolic, and rise to ultimate power in Serbia. 1. Milosevic was still a student at the Belgrade Practically all accounts stress the way Faculty of Law when he first befriended Stambolic. As Stambolic rapidly ascended the Milosevic appropriated, simulated, or, as rungs of political power in Serbia, he typically Djilas put it, cannibalized3 nationalist arranged for his protégé to succeed him in his discourses. These dis courses were being previous position. When Stambolic became developed by a significant segment of president of the Serbian League of Communists most influential Serbian intellectuals quite in 1984, he appointed Milosevic as head of the Belgrade Party Committee, and when he became president of Serbia, Milosevic succeeded him as 3 "The mass movement of Kosovo Serbs... was a chief of the Serbian Party. not openly anticommunist, though it could 2 The Serbian Writers' Association (Udruzenje easily have become so. Milosevic only knjizevnika Srbije – UKS) was the most gradually overcame his caution and started prominent stage for the new prophet-poets of supporting it, but he was nonetheless the first Serbdom. In the early eighties, the Association leading communist to do so. With the help of publicly confronted the Yugoslav regime over the party-controlled media and the party book bans and political persecution of writers machinery, he soon dominated the movement, and dissident intellectuals in general. By 1987, discovering in the process that the best way to however, UKS discourse changed from that of escape the wrath of the masses was to lead freedom of speech and democracy to that of them. It was an act of political cannibalism. The Serbian victimhood as it organized "protest opponent, Serbian nationalism, was devoured evenings" in support of Serbs from Kosovo and its spirit permeated the eater. Milosevic who sought redress for their persecution at the reinvigorated the party by forcing it to embrace hands of the Albanian majority. nationalism" (Djilas 1993: 87).

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 The wish to be a Jew : The power of the Jewish Trope in the Yougoslav conflict 71 independently of Milosevic's rise through Numerous deep pits are a prominent the party hierarchy, indeed initially in fierce feature of the limestone landscape5 of the opposition to the Serbian Party's anti- area of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia nationalist policies. And when the two that was populated mostly by the Serbs of tracks met, it was not so much Milosevic the so-called Krajinas (Military who tried to attract the national Borderlands) and that belonged to the intelligentsia as much as that the Independent State of Croatia during WWII. intelligentsia eagerly embraced him. As It was in these pits that slaughtered Serbs Vuk Draskovic said four years after the were thrown by the Croatian and Muslim event : "With his speech in Kosovo Polje Ustase as a part of their campaign to Milosevic mounted the horse that the eliminate all Serbs on their territory. One of Serbian intelligentsia had saddled long the most notorious pits was called ago" (in Djukic 1992 : 130). "The crucial "Jadovno" and, just as Auschwitz came to thing that intellectuals have done for stand for all concentration camps and the Milosevic, says Budding, was to Holocaust in general, so Jadovno came to "generalize" Kosovo, spreading the belief stand for all the pits and for the genocide that not just Kosovo's Serbs, but all Serbs itself. were deprived of their national rights, and Archbishop Atanasije Jevtic of the urgently in need of a savior" (Budding Serbian Orthodox Church made a 1998 : 358). pilgrimage in 1983 from Kosovo to Jadovno In terms of the national narrative, this and published his travel diary in 1987. In "saddling" was accomplished by the introduction, his colleague, connecting what I call the "Kosovo Archbichop Amfilohije Radovic, wrote : narrative cycle" to the "Jadovno narrative « Kosovo is the beginning and measure cycle" – a task eagerly and quite of Serbian Jadovno, and Jadovno is a successfully taken up by novelists and, continuation of Kosovo. ... In Jadovno, even more importantly, by a few highly Kosovo culminates ; the word and reality influential poets4. of Jadovno is the full revelation of the secret of Kosovo and confirmation of the 4 It was poets who provided the most extreme, condensed and persuasive forms of the new mythicized speech in the mid-1980. They were 5 It is interesting to note that most poets and the prophets of the re-awakened nation, writers who were active in assimilating Kosovo professional wordsmiths whose poetic to Jadovno actually hail from those regions hyperbolae were so extreme as to preclude any (Beckovic is Montenegrin and Draskovic is rational discussion. Preeminent among them, from Herzegovina). The WWI cycle, with its enjoying near divine status as both an emphasis on the Serbian peasantry, however, is academician and president of the Serbian predominantly promulgated by novelists (not Writers' Association, was Matija Beckovic, a poets) hailing from the Serbian heartland of distinguished looking, white-haired Sumadija. This is an interesting case of Montenegrin whose poetry was steeped in Highlanders vs. Lowlanders (and limestone vs. regional dialect and "Montenegrin mud), a dichotomy very relevant to Serbian (as metaphysics". well as Croatian) politics (See Ûivkovic 1997a).

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 72 Kosovo choice and Kosovo covenant. Up THE JEWISH TROPE IN SERBIA until then, Serbian fate had unfolded under the sign of Kosovo ; from then on it would Let me dwell a moment longer on the unfold between these two poles, Kosovo imagery of pits. in this case is a and Jadovno, the base and the peak of mine shaft in Kosovo. In the late winter of Golgotha » (Jevtic 1987 : 5). 1989, the tension in Kosovo culminated When in 1988 and 1989 the holy relics with the hunger strike of 1300 Albanian of Prince Lazar, the leader of the Serbian miners who vowed to stay underground army at Kosovo, were carried from until their demand for the resignation of the Belgrade, through parts of Croatia and pro-Milosevic leadership of the province Bosnia, and finally back to Serbia and was met. On February 27, while the strike Kosovo, this ritual was marking the extent was still going on, a meeting was held in of what was seen as the maximal potential the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, in the extent of Serbian territory. It was Vuk Cankarjev dom concert hall, to express Draskovic, by then the leader of the largest Slovenian support for the . The opposition party, who famo usly stated in Slovenian youth organization – one of the 1989 that, in the case of Yugoslavia's organizers of the meeting – distributed demise, its Western borders should traditional Albanian skull-caps with a Star coincide with the WWII pits and graves of David affixed on them to the that the Croatian Ustasa leader Ante participants. The intended message was Pavelic had filled with slaughtered Serbs. clear – Albanians are the , a Draskovic's fellow writer, poet and party persecuted minority, and by implication, member, Milan Komnenic, formulated the the Serbs are the Nazis. Underlying this Kosovo-Jadovno axis succinctly in 1988 : was also the identification of Slovenes, as "the borders of the Serbian people are a minority in Yugoslavia supposedly marked on the east [Kosovo] by sacred dominated by the majority Serbs, with places that must not become pits, and on Albanians in Kosovo, so that the link the west by pits that must become sacred could also be read as : Slovenes equal places" (In Draskovic 1990 : 89). Albanians equal Jews. The meeting, which In their quest for the most powerful was televised live throughout Yugoslavia, metaphor, the most extreme analogy, the caused a burst of outrage in Serbia, a big allegory that would top any other allegory, rally in Belgrade, and barrage of harsh Serbian myth-makers of the 1980s turned to denunciations of Slovenes in the regime yet another resource that could bring media. And it was Matija Beckovic, the together both Kosovo and the WWII pits. "Prince of Serbian Poetry," who came up There exists a people whose narrative of with the most extreme formulation. Here is martyrdom and suffering, of exile and what he said about the whole event after return, of death and resurrection is, in its the strike was over : moral impact, probably unrivaled in the « The first Albanians thrown into pits West – the Jews. were volunteers who came out of it hale and happy. In Ljubljana they were

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 The wish to be a Jew : The power of the Jewish Trope in the Yougoslav conflict 73 proclaimed Jews thrown into pits by Serbs. of the conquered Serbian Empire, was They forgot that the pits are the only proclaimed to be the Serbian ; ethnically clean Serbian habitations and and the waves of Serbian migrations from that somewhere under the ground the Turkish domains were likened to the Jewish kinship of Jews and Serbs has been forever exodus. « Even after the liberation from the sealed » (Beckovic 1989 : 436). Turkish rule, Draskovic wrote, the Serbian So, according to the Slovenes, Golgotha continued – one third of the Beckovic implies, the Serbs are Nazis. And population died in the two world wars – they are "throwing" (that is to say, forcing) and it was in that last "genocidal poor Albanians into a pit (the mine). In the slaughter" that the centuries long history pit, Albanians are starving to protest of Jewish-Serbian martyrdom was sealed Serbian oppression. But it is all staged, and signed in blood. It is by the hands of Beckovic implies, and the "starving" the same executioners that both Serbs and miners emerged healthy into the light of Jews have been exterminated at the same day at the end of the strike, while the Serbs concentration camps, slaughtered at the never returned from their pits. He invokes same bridges, burned alive in the same the WWII Independent State of Croatia in ovens, thrown together into the same which the Serbs, thrown in pits only pits » (Draskovic 1987 : 73). because they were Serbs, and the Jews, It is as if, Draskovic wrote, « we Serbs exterminated in Ustasa concentration are the thirteenth lost and the most ill-fated camps only because they were Jews, tribe of Israel ». And he concluded : « I hail cohabitate in a joint, ethnically clean6 you (the Israeli writers) as our brothers and underground realm. with the same oath that our ancestors This is probably the most powerful and heard from the Jews, the meaning of which succinct statement of the thesis for which is carried in the heart of every Serb expelled the locus classicus could be found in the from Kosovo : If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, "Letter to the Writers of Israel" written in let my right hand be forgotten... » (Ibid. 75). 1985 by Vuk Draskovic. The five hundred After this proclamation, the following years Serbs endured under Turkish rule set of correspondences gained currency in were likened by Draskovic to the Serbia : Babylonian slavery ; Kosovo, as the cradle – Both Serbs and Jews are the "chosen peoples" – slaughtered, sacrificed, denied expression, yet always righteous, always 6 The term "" was originally used in Serbia to describe the program of ethnic defending themselves, never attacking. Albanians to eliminate all non-Albanian – The Kosovo Albanians stand to the minorities in the province, most importantly Serbs as the Palestinians stand to the the Serbian and Montenegrin minority, and its . connotations in Serbia were thus obviously – Serbs are the ones who should say negative. In Serbian discourses "ethnic cleansing" was at first something that others did "" like Israel, and rely on their to Serbs, not what Serbs did to others (most military power to defend their brethren notoriously in Bosnia). wherever they happen to be living in

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 74 Yugoslavia, bringing them together into a profile and was mostly left in peace8. With unitary state which alone can guarantee the imminent breakdown of the country, them safety in a hostile world. the Yugoslav Jews found themselves The discourse set in motion by stranded in mutually hostile republics. Draskovic's letter in 1985 came to be Owing to their small numbers and relative embodied in the Serbian-Jewish Friendship inconspicuousness, the issue of loyalty to Society (Drustvo srpsko-jevrejskog the new regimes turned out, however, to be prijateljstva) established in 1988 by a less pressing than the dilemma posed by number of prominent Serbian writers and the symbolic charge of Jewish symbols intellectuals together with a smaller number that their respective republics sought to of Jews. The majority of Serbian Jews did appropriate to their own political ends. not join the Society, feeling that it had Perhaps more than with anti-semitism, become primarily a political organization those Jewish communities had to cope with openly backing the Serbian regime. the efforts their Croatian, Serbian, or The Society immediately set itself on Slovenian compatriots were making to woo improving the ties between Israel and them, identify with them, or co-opt them for Serbia.7 It organized a delegation of 440 the media struggle against the hated businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals enemy. Responses were varied – some who went to Israel in 1990, and helped Yugoslav Jews allowed themselves to be establish sister-city relations between 15 co-opted by their new regimes, some even Serbian and Israeli cities. During the Gulf enthusiastically offered their services, but War, a delegation of 12 city mayors from the majority tried to walk the tightrope of Serbia went to Israel to demonstrate politely refusing to lend their heritage of Serbian solidarity with Israel's plight. suffering and its attendant symbolic power Underlying these activities was a naive to political uses, while still affirming their hope of eliciting Israel's support for the loyalty to their new states9. The power of Serbian cause, and even of obtaining Israeli weapons for the "reconquest of 8 Originally a supporter of Israel's Kosovo" – the Serbian Jerusalem. There independence, Tito's Yugoslavia broke were also attempts to enlist the American diplomatic relations with Israel after the 1967 Jewish lobby, imagined to wield immense, war, and as a leader of the Non-Aligned mythical power, to help in the "Serbian Movement, sided firmly with the Arab states and the Palestinian cause. Despite this official cause". anti-Israel policy, the Yugoslav Jewish In Tito's Yugoslavia, the Jewish community was allowed to keep its contacts community, numbering no more than 6000 with Israel with the tacit agreement that it (largely assimilated) members, kept a low stayed low key and minded its own business (See Gordiejew 1999, and Freidenreich 1979) 9 In the wake of the Cankarjev dom incident, the Federation of Jewish Communities of 7 The Yugoslav Federal authorities, or what was Yugoslavia (SJOJ), as an official representative left of them, were still refusing to re-establish of all the Yugoslav Jewish communities, with diplomatic relations with Israel at that time. its seat in Belgrade, was faced with a delicate

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 The wish to be a Jew : The power of the Jewish Trope in the Yougoslav conflict 75 the Jewish trope, however, was largely out statements of their president, Franjo of the hands of Yugoslav Jews themselves. Tudjman. The various republican regimes fighting to The media in Serbia tried their best to secure the most advantageous media image exploit these weak spots both on the in the West could not resist exploiting it. domestic and the international fronts. On What follows are brief analyses of the the domestic front, harping on WWII ways the imagery of Jewish suffering, or genocide was largely successful, if not in what I here call the "Jewish trope," was wholesale mobilizing of the Serb used in Croatia and Bosnia. population for war, then at least in insuring its passive acceptance of things like the Yugoslav Army's shelling of Dubrovnik Croatia and Vukovar. On the international scene, Croatia has been largely successful in however, it is my sense that this strategy presenting itself as a Westernized, achieved much less. Predisposed to let democratic, and free-market oriented bygones be bygones, and charging Serbs republic oppressed by the Byzantine, with being obsessed with history, the totalitarian, Bolshevik Serbs. Yet there were Western media did not, with some a few blemishes on that image, most exceptions, unduly pester Croatia with its importantly the atrocious record of the unsavory past. Tudjman's anti-Semitic Independent State of Croatia during the statements, on the other hand, especially in Second World War, when Croatian fascists his book "Wastelands of Historic Reality" committed wholesale slaughter of Jewish, (published in in 1989), earned him Gypsy and Serbian populations. The other, the opprobrium of international Jewish more current, problem was the anti-Semitic organizations, such influential figures as Simon Wiesenthal, and criticism from the situation. Reacting too strongly against the Croatian Jewish community, while Israel Slovenes could be interpreted as Jewish had stalled with establishing full diplomatic support for the Serbian regime, especially as it relations with Croatia for years after it would come from Belgrade, while, on the other hand, there was an urge to react officially and recognized Croatia's independence. demand that the Jews and their suffering be left On the Croatian side, official protests out of Yugoslav squabbles. After a period of were, of course, made that the English agonizing over what the right and properly translation (provided by Serbs) was diplomatic response to the abuses in the misleading, that the quotes were out of Cankarjev dom should be, the Federation issued its public protest. The Slovenian Youth context, etc., while Tudjman himself Organization was reminded that during the war publicly apologized in 1994, revising the Jews were wearing that same Star of David controversial parts for the new edition. while being taken to concentration camps and This damage control, however, does not gas chambers, and that there were no gas seem to have been particularly successful. chambers in Kosovo. The Federation saw such political uses as trivializing and debasing The atrocious Croatian WWII record, symbols burdened with heavy associations to whatever the successes or failures of an all too real experience of suffering. Serbian propaganda in exploiting it, was

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 76 perceived in Croatia as a dangerous threat By the end of 1990, the official Catholic to their media image. To simplify what was newsletter (Glas Koncila) in Zagreb often a convoluted struggle over numbers published a series of texts entitled : "The of victims and interpretations of history, " in Serbia during the the Croatian media essentially pursued a Second World War. The author, Tomislav two-track strategy in dealing with this Vukovic, tried to show that anti-Semitism issue. On the defense, the main strategy was firmly entrenched in Serbian mentality has been to present anti-Semitism in the and that it was the Serbian collaborationist Independent State of Croatia as a purely authorities under German occupation who Nazi import, the Croatian population at were largely responsible for large as strongly opposed to the Ustasa in Serbia – thus transferring the blame from regime, as exhibiting solidarity with their the Wermacht, SS and to the Jewish compatriots and as perishing Serbs themselves. In 1992, the same author alongside them in the anti-fascist published a 200-page book titled Overview struggle10. Yet, while this strategy might of Serbian Anti-Semitism with some 400 have worked well domestically to calm any footnotes and over 100 references. For the lingering sense of guilt, the record of who international media campaign, however, the did what during the war was far too reliable Croatian Ministry of Information relied and complete for this strategy to really primarily on a few simple points, such as a work on international Jewish organizations, report to Hitler in 1942 that proudly Wiesenthal, or Israel. The second track, proclaimed Serbia as the first judenfrei therefore, relied on the maxim that attack is country in occupied Europe. The trick the best defense, and rather than consisted in not mentioning that the report minimizing one's own responsibility, the was sent by Harald Thurner, the Head of attempt was made to show that the Serbs Wermacht Military Administration in were actually no better and possibly worse Serbia, to Lieutenant General Alexander than Croats when it came to genocide Löhr, Commander for South East Europe, against their Jews during the war. thus implying that it was the Serbian authorities who had done the dirty job. 10 Theodor Barth, who studied the Zagreb The culmination of this strategy is a Jewish community in the late 1990s, points out book by Philip Cohen, Serbia's Secret that even in Croatia there was some War : Propaganda and the Deceit of identification with the Jewish position. He says History (Cohen 1996). The strategy is that "the role model of the "Jew" as the epitome of historical victim and suffering was elaborated simple and effective : assemble all the in Croatia beyond the simple rhetorical use of manifestations of Serbian anti-Semitism the comparison. Quite a few Croatians were during the last 150 years, and the thesis serious about this. And in a number of cases the easily emerges that anti-Semitism is a yearning for things Jewish crossed the threshold deeply-rooted, institutionalized, and all- of hostility, or remained ambiguously defined in terms of philo- and anti-Semitism : « the pervasive tenet of Serbian mentality and stronger the silence on Jasenovac, the stronger national ideology. What is sophisticated the desire » (Barth 1999: 215). about this argument is that there is no need

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 The wish to be a Jew : The power of the Jewish Trope in the Yougoslav conflict 77 to lie or distort the sources (as far as I was Serbian Jews should side more strongly able to check, Cohen did neither). It with the Serbs and defend them more suffices to neglect to weigh that evidence. actively against the demonization carried The reader gets no inkling of the actual out in the ex-Yugoslav and international societal impact these manifestations of media12. anti-Semitism had in Serbia, and no sense of whether they were marginal or dominant Bosnia (I will return to this question in the last The jockeying for position on the section). "Jewish issue" in the former Yugoslavia The Jewish Community in Serbia was was from the beginning heavily influenced again faced with a delicate situation – the by the surrounding "symbolic landscape" historical facts were well established for of the Western media, which all the that period in Serbia11 and it was relatively participants rightly perceived as highly easy to refute the gross distortions in sensitive to the history and legacy of Vukovic's thesis, but the Serbian record in Jewish suffering. It was, however, only the Second World War, while definitely with the start of the war in Bosnia that the better than the Croatian, was nevertheless Holocaust, and more generally, the Second far from spotless. If the Jews in Serbia had World War, definitively emerged as the taken it upon themselves to refute the dominant metaphor, particularly in the Croatian claims, this could easily have been construed as rehabilitation of Serbian 12 I was present at one meeting in the Serbian collaborationist authorities and para- Jewish Community where these issues were military units who did, in fact, help the debated. The faction of mostly older members Germans in exterminating Jews in Serbia. who were for a more vocal support of Serbs in Such absolution, because it would come the current media war were using the old Jewish from the Jews themselves, would indeed argument that history teaches us that you never carry much weight. The dilemma then was know how the things might turn for the Jews (meaning, we are now safe in Serbia, but it can how to counter the abuses of history and turn ugly ...). The then president of the instrumentalization of Jewish suffering Community first disputed that Jews should be coming from the Croatian side, while at the offering any kind of support that would end up same time avoiding the corresponding implicitly endorsing Serbian collaborationist instrumentalization by the Serbian side. authorities like General Nedic or Ljotic, for both were indeed anti-Semitic and did indeed help the While the majority of Jews in Serbia and Germans in carrying out the extermination of the leaders of the Federation tried to hold Serbia's Jews. Secondly, he said, it is true that to this precarious line, some members of "you never know" how it may turn, but what the Serbian Jewish community argued that history teaches us is that no show of loyalty to the regime had ever made any difference if things did indeed turn for the worse. And if 11 Main sources: Browning 1985; Romano expressing loyalty to the regime has absolutely 1980; Hilberg and Holmes 1985; Encyclopedia no influence on whether the Jews will be left in of the Holocaust, London: Collier MacMillan, peace or persecuted, then why compromise 1990; one's integrity and offer support to Milosevic?

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 78 American media. Milosevic was cast as The rhetorical strategy of presenting Hitler,13 a number of Western leaders seen Bosnia as the Holocaust reached its as appeasing him were likened to crescendo with two powerful symbolic Chamberlain in Münich, the International events of April 1993 – the 50th anniversary Commission for the War Crimes in the of the uprising, and the former Yugoslavia was seen as the new opening of the Holocaust Memorial Nürnberg, and Bosnian Moslems were Museum in Washington. The war in presented as Jews facing another Bosnia haunted both occasions and there Holocaust at the hands of Serbs14. was hardly a dignitary in attendance who failed to draw a parallel to it. The Museum in Washington, in particular, was generally 13 It is interesting to note that Milosevic comes seen as a reminder to the Civilized World as the last in the long list leaders demonized by the Western (esp. USA) media. Thus, for never to let Holocaust happen again15. instance, Quaddafi was the Idi Amin of , Situated so prominently on the Mall, in the Saddam Husein, the Quaddafi of , and center of American memory and power, the Milosevic the Saddam of Serbia [interestingly, Holocaust Museum emerged as perhaps this equation was appropriated by early anti- the most important nodal point in the Milosevic protesters in Belgrade, who used to chant "Slobo-Sadame" during 1991 and 1992 emotionally charged debate over Western rallies]. The ultimate referent in this chain is, of policy in the Balkans. In the light of all this, course, Hitler - the incarnation of the it is quite understandable that the Moslem- unspeakable evil. It is not necessary to go into led Bosnian government did its best to specific circumstances of each case, it suffices present the plight of Bosnian Moslems as to invoke a name of a previous bad guy. In that way, the effort spent in demonizing one another Holocaust. What is less easy to dictator is never wasted, because the cluster of understand is the quickness and zeal with associations and conditioned reflexes built which American Jewish organizations and around one figure can be readily and a number of prominent Jewish intellectuals economically transferred to the next one in line. jumped on the bandwagon. While the 14 Here are a few representative titles that Jewish community in Yugoslavia for the appeared in the leading American daily newspapers over a period of several months in 1992 and early 1993: What do we say when "never again" happens? (Stuart Goldstein USA Tribune, August 30, 1992); It's not a holocaust: Today, August 5, 1993); The Holocaust analogy Rhetoric and Reality in Bosnia, (Richard Cohen, is too true, (Henry Siegman, President AJC, Los Washington Post, Feb 28, 1993). Angeles Times, July 11, 1993); "Never again" - 15 However, a number of Jewish intellectuals Except for Bosnia. (Zbignew Brzezinski, New offered a dissenting view. Rather than as a York Times, April 22, 1993); Make "never" strengthening of memory, they saw the mean never. (USA Today, April 22, 1993); Are Holocaust Museum as a domestication, comparisons to Bosnia valid? (interview with Americanization, and ultimately as "the taming Patrick Glynn, USA Today, April 20, 1993); of the Holocaust." "I see the existence of the Stopping Holocaust. (Abraham Foxman, Atlanta museum as a statement of raw power, and that's Constitutioin, Aug. 6, 1992); "This is a the only thing I like about it," wrote Melvin Holocaust": Surrounded by Death, Sarajevo Jules Bukiet in (April 18, Resolves to Live , (Storer Rowley, Chicago 1993).

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 The wish to be a Jew : The power of the Jewish Trope in the Yougoslav conflict 79 most part tried hard not to involved on they are the wronged party in this drama", anybody's side, and to remain neutral in wrote Tom Hundley in that article16. the ongoing conflict, their American The Holocaust analogy was again at counterparts seemed only too eager to join the very center of justifying the NATO the Balkan game of the political bombing of Serbia in the spring of 1999. In instrumentalization of the Holocaust. an interview he gave to Radio Free Europe on May 18 1999, the famous Yugoslav film POSTSCRIPT : THE JEWISH TROPE AND director Dusan Makavejev invoked a New ANTI-SEMITISM IN SERBIA AFTER THE York Times article17 on General Wesley NATO BOMBING Clark published a few days before : « Our national morbid identification If we take Draskovic's 1985 "Letter to with the bones of slaughtered ancestors Jewish Writers" as the starting point, over has been transposed onto the planetary the next fifteen years the Jewish trope only level. We are now learning that Clark's intermittently claimed the spotlight of ancestors perished in the Holocaust and Serbian national identity discourses. It that he is resolved to "go all the way". played a prominent role in the "saddling of Rasa Karadzic shot at Turks in Sarajevo, Milosevic's horse" in the late eighties, and while Clark thinks that Belgrade is it was present whenever Kosovo was inhabited by Germans who killed his compared to the Serbian Jerusalem, but the grandfather. » strong philo-Semitism and identification Makavejev was obviously referring to with the Jews were more of a continuous the NYT article from memory and got it undercurrent to Serbian narratives of wrong. Clark's grandfather "was a Russian victimhood, than a dominant "story". Jew who fled his country to escape the The latest Kosovo crisis, which led to there a century ago", according the NATO intervention, re-awakened the to the article, not a victim of the Holocaust. Kosovo theme with its Jewish associations But when we distort our memories we once more, but it was the bombing itself usually distort them along the lines of that made even Serbs who had been up to dominant narrative patterns, and that point immune to the state- Makavejev's mistake is very telling. Two disseminated paranoia see themselves as innocent victims. As The Chicago Tribune 16 One would have to wonder, however, reported on September 27 1999, in the wake whether the likening of the plight of Kosovo of the bombing, Serbs were claiming "We Albanians to that of Jews in the Holocaust, are the new Jews of Europe". "The analogy served as the central justification for the NATO with the Jews may be breathtakingly bombing, was significantly less "breathtakingly inappropriate, but most Serbs truly feel inappropriate." 17 "His Family's Refugee Past Is Said to Inspire NATO's Commander" by Elizabeth Becker. The blurb says: "Some say General Clark's roots give him empathy for Kosovo's victims." (NYT May 3, 1999)

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 80 weeks after he read the article the story in « In Serbia anti-Semitism is a peripheral his mind had migrated from Russian phenomenon. Not because of some special pogroms to the truly central story of the tolerance, but because there are a lot of Holocaust. I would venture to say that this minorities here, so that Jews don't stick was exactly what was intended by the NYT out. The main channel of hate is oriented article. towards nations with which you are in The centrality of the Holocaust for the conflict, the Croats, Muslims, Albanians. ideology of "humanitarian intervention" as The South Slav brothers hate each other so a newly forged global interventionist badly they don't need Jews to have policy of the US and its allies deserves someone to hate » (in Bisevac 1997). further study. It would, however, be a Another prominent Jew from Serbia, study of "Stories Americans tell18", writer Filip David, however, recently whereas I am mentioning American uses of remarked that as Serbia kept losing its the Jewish trope here only to point out that wars, "the list of 'enemies' became it conditions some of the "stories Serbs (as exhausted. In the end, only the 'domestic well as Slovenes, Albanians, Croats or traitors' and 'world conspirators' remained. Bosnian Moslems) tell themselves and And while it is already known who the others". 'domestic traitors' are, the role of As a Jew in Serbia I never personally 'conspirators' is traditionally easiest to experienced anti-Semitism. Moreover, in all hang on to Jews" (David 2000). my personal interactions with Jews in Innumerable variations on the theme of Serbia, I have never found even one who world conspiracy against Serbs have been complained of Serbian anti-Semitism. The highly prominent features of everyday life opinions of the Jews I talked to ranged in Serbia during the last fifteen or so years. only from neutral to highly pro-Serb (but Most of them feature the usual cast of see Mihailovic 1996 for anti-Semitism in Serbian enemies – Germany, the Comintern, Serbi in the nineties). And even though I the Vatican, and of course, the "New was aware of occasional anti-Semitic World Order". As these theories incidents (documented by the Jewish conveniently transfer responsibility for the community in their Bulletin and other whole series of the last decade's disasters publications), I tended to agree with what a (four lost wars, one of the world's highest prominent Jewish intellectual, sociologist hyperinflations, Serbia's pariah status, etc.) Laslo Sekelj19 said in Nasa Borba : from Milosevic's regime to outside enemies, they have been actively promoted by the regime itself. An important node in 18 For the role the Holocaust plays in American this dissemination of conspiracy theories is imagination see Peter Novick (1999). the so-called "New Serbian Right" – a small 19 That Sekelj is very far from those Jews living group of neo-fascist intellectuals led by the in Serbia who tend to endorse the regime position is perhaps best proved by the fact that the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Association sued book The Time of Infamy: Essays on the Rule of him for slander that allegedly appeared in his Nationalism.

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 The wish to be a Jew : The power of the Jewish Trope in the Yougoslav conflict 81 Belgrade art critic Dragos Kalajic. Their More importantly, however, the quasi-erudite theories often feature the hyperbolic philo-Semitism inaugurated by Freemasons, or the "Usurers' International" Draskovic, and later, in the early 1990s, by as the secret enemy of Serbdom (or the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Association, Orthodox Slavdom in general) and it is fueled quite unrealistic and naive hopes quite clear they are using the classical that both the "powerful Jewish lobby" in World Jewish Conspiracy as their template. America and the state of Israel would leap Yet even there, it is very hard to encounter to the defense of Serbia in the international any overt negative reference to Jews. I media arena as well as in terms of military would argue that the power of the Jewish hardware. What happened instead was that trope in Serbian discourses on identity Israel (understandably) remained neutral, acted to counteract overt manifestations of while many prominent Jewish figures in the anti-Semitism, and led even the likes of West stepped to the forefront of Dragos Kalajic and the New Serbian Right, denouncing Serbian savagery in Croatia whose neo-fascist ideology predisposes and Bosnia (Alain Finkielkraut, Susan them to virulent anti-Semitism, to Sontag, Bernard Henry-Levy, etc.). This sometimes pay lip service to the prevalent provoked resentment and a sense of philo-Semitism. betrayal in the Serbian public that This however, seems to be changing as culminated when, on September 1 1993, conspiracy theories, which yet again over 100 prominent individuals (inclusding gripped Serbia during and after the such prominent Jewish figures as Elie bombing, seem increasingly to display Wiesel, Josef Brodsky, , openly anti-Semitic tones. Grabbing at any Susan Sontag, the director of the American support they could get, some diaspora Jewish Congress, Henry Siegman, etc.) Serbs disseminated anti-Semitic articles signed an open letter to President Clinton written by American extreme right-wingers asking that, among other things, NATO over the internet during the NATO warplanes bomb the Bosnian Serbs and bombing. The bombing itself was officially even military targets in Serbia proper. Some justified by Holocaust analogies, and members of the Serbian Jewish community, endorsements of the "humanitarian including then chief Cadik Danon, intervention" coming from Jews were given publicly denounced the Jewish signatories a lot of attention in the NATO media. of the open letter, and a message was sent Clinton's team featured several Jews to international Jewish organizations (Defense Secretary Cohen, White House asking them to refrain from passing Spokesman, Rubin, etc.) while Albright and judgment and taking sides in the Yugoslav Clark both conveniently discovered their civil war "because they don't understand forgotten Jewish roots around that time. It its historical roots". Ordinary citizens wrote is then no surprise that the "conspiracy of letters to editors of the type "we (Serbs) the whole world" or "the new world order" sacrificed ourselves for Jews in WWII, we against Serbs was often presented as a offered them our friendship, but see how Jewish conspiracy in Serbia. the Jews pay us back – by leading the

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 82 demonization campaign in the West I see this latest conspiracy theory as a against us and by calling on Clinton to kind of "compromise" between two bomb us". opposing narrative forces at work in The latest twist came with the contemporary Serbia. On the one hand, the conspiracy theory that is now circulating in and paranoia actively fostered Belgrade. As Filip David reports, the by the regime, and finally driven home by Belgrade TV channel "Palma" started the NATO bombing, seems to be bringing promoting theories about Jews as "killers classical Jewish World Conspiracy theories and criminals", responsible for all the to the fore in a way seldom seen before in catastrophes of modern history, from the Serbia. On the other hand, it seems that October Revolution and both World Wars among national intelligentsia there is still a to the recent bombing of Yugoslavia. large investment in portraying Serbian A long-held "secret" is unveiled that victimhood as analogous to Jewish the modern (Ashkenazi) Jews are actually victimhood, and in keeping alive the story not real, but "false" Jews – the of that special Serbian-Jewish friendship, descendants of the Khazars, a Turkic tribe forged in common suffering. The "Khazar that converted to and then theory" thus finds a "happy" resolution to miraculously disappeared. This is this contradiction by splitting the Jews into (according to these theories), a great the evil ones, who are false, and the "real deception, for the Judaized Khazars Jews", who could still supposedly be our actually assimilated the (real) Jews. Now "friends". these "false Jews" or Khazars fill the The link that came to be established highest positions in the US and Russia, are between the Holocaust and the state of heads of leading European states, receive Israel helped promote the perception that instructions from secret conspiratorial to be a victim of a genocide is to be entitled cabals, and pull the strings of world to a state. Thus the narrative strategy of politics aiming to rule the entire world and identifying with Jews as archetypal victims destroy Serbia in the process (David of an archetypal genocide is a high-stake 2000)20. game in that part of the world in which the Holocaust had come to assume the place of the central morality story. It pays to be a 20 I was able to trace this theory to Dejan Luçic, the author of such bestsellers as "The Secrets of the " (Tajne Albanske mafije) the fire in the Balkans, not only in Yugoslavia, and "The Rulers from the Shadow" (Vladari iz but also in Greece, , Romania, Cyprus... senke), Described on the "Bad Serb Club" web This is the beginning of the World War Three, site as "a cult writer for all of those who are and not against the small Yugoslavia. This top looking for the essence behind the politics that of the ruling pyramid is "the thirteen invincible we see," Dejan Luçic is reported to have free masons". The first of the invincibles is attributed the NATO aggression against David, also known as David Rockfeller, who Yugoslavia to "The rulers from the shadow, 13 comes from a Turkish tribe which accepted of them, [who] are planing to bring "the new Judaism" (www.computec- world order" by the year 2000. The first step is int.com/bsc/war/archives/masons1.htm).

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 The wish to be a Jew : The power of the Jewish Trope in the Yougoslav conflict 83 Jew (symbolically) – thence the "Wish to Barth and M. Enzell. Oslo : be a Jew", or, as some have called it, ARENA/The Van Leer Institute. "Holocaust Envy", The war of words that Beckovic, Matija. 1989. Kalendar 1982-1989. accompanied and even fueled the In Serbia i komentari za 1988/89, Yugoslav wars of the last decade has edited by Z. Stojkovic. Beograd : shown how such a powerful morality story Zaduzbina Milosa Crnjanskog. as that of Jewish suffering could be Bisevac, Safeta. 1997. Ima li antisemitizma u misused – precisely because it was Jugoslaviji : Ovde, za mrznju, Jevreji perceived as powerful. In the south-east nisu neophodni. Nasa Borba, March corner of Europe it was misused by Serbs 26, 1997. and Slovenes, Albanians and Bosnian Budding, Audrey Helfant. 1998. Serb Muslims, as they strove to position Intellectuals and the National themselves as victims, but these local Question, 1961-1991. Unpublished misuses were contingent on and sometimes Ph.D. dissertation, History Department, fatally interlocked with misuses of the Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Jewish trope in the global media space Cohen, Philip J. 1996. Serbia's Secret War : dominated by the US and Western Europe. Propaganda and the Deceit of History. It is hard to steer between the strong College Station, TA : Texas A&M ethical messages that the Jewish narrative University Press. of suffering can impart and the dangers of David, Filip. 2000. Antisemitizam medju its misuse in international relations. In my nama. Danas (Vikend), January 6-9, personal efforts to find a "moral 2000, gyroscope" in this situation, I find best www.danas.co.yu/20000106/vikend8.ht guidance in the gut feelings of those m#1. Serbian Jews who were as uneasy with the Djilas, Aleksa. 1993. A Profile of Slobodan outburst of philo-Semitism in the late Milosevic. Foreign Affaris 72 (3) :81-96. eighties and early nineties as they might be Djukic, Slavoljub. 1992. Kako se dogodio uneasy now with the anti-Semitic vodja : borbe za vlast u Srbiji posle conspiracy theories propagated by the Josipa Broza, Biblioteka posebnih Belgrade TV in the wake of the NATO izdanja. Beograd : Filip Visnjic. bombing. Draskovic, Vuk. 1987. Odgovori. Beograd : Glas. Draskovic, Vuk. 1990. Koekude Srbijo. 4th BIBLIOGRAPHY ed. Beograd : Nova knjiga. Freidenreich, Harriet Pass. 1979. The Jews Barth, Theodor. 1999. Ben Zug – Jewish of Yugoslavia : A Quest for Community. Identity : the Books of Zagreb and Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Sarajevo. In Collective Identity and Society of America. Citizenship in Europe : Fields of Gordiejew, Paul Benjamin. 1999. Voices of Access and Exclusion, edited by T. Yugoslav Jewry. Albany : State University of New York Press.

Cahiers de l’URMIS, n° 6, 2000 84 Hilberg, Raul, and Meir Holmes. 1985. The Destruction of European Jews. New York. Jevtic, Atanasije. 1987. Od Kosova do Jadovna, Biblioteka "Glas Crkve" : Posebna izdanja ; knjiga 5. Sabac : Glas Crkve. Mihailovic, Milica, and Srecko. 1996. Anti- Semitism in the Nineties. In Ethnicity in Postcommunism, edited by D. Janjic and S. Bianchini. Beograd : Institute of Social Sciences : Forum for Ethnic Rela- tions : International network Europe and the Balkans. Novick, Peter. 1999. The Holocaust in American Life. Boston and New York : Houghton Mifflin. Zivkovic, Marko. 1997. Stories Serbs Tell Themselves : Discourses on Identity and Destiny in Serbia Since the Mid- 1980s. Problems of Post- 44 (4) :22-29. Zivkovic, Marko. 1997a. Violent Highlanders and Peaceful Lowlanders : Uses and Abuses of Ethno-Geography in the Balkans from Versailles to Dayton. Replika (Special issue : Ambiguous Identities in the New Europe) :107-119.

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