July 13



GERMANY:

Berlin Holocaust memorial on schedule


Construction of the vast Holocaust memorial in central Berlin is
progressing on schedule and should be done in time for commemoration next
May.

Now in its 15th year from concept to construction, workers have erected
nearly half of the 2,751 concrete slabs that are laid out to resemble a
Jewish cemetery on a site the size of two soccer fields.

The inauguration is scheduled for May 8, the 60th anniversary of the end
of World War II, and will acknowledge more than 6 million Jews killed in
Nazi death camps.

Reviewing the progress Monday, Wolfgang Thierse, speaker of the German
parliament, praised the work, saying it served as " a reminder that we
should resist anti-Semitism at its roots."

The project has not been without controversy, The Times of London said. As
a measure to prevent spray-painted hate messages by neo-Nazis, the slabs
have been coated with a special anti-graffiti spray. However, the spray is
manufactured by the German company Degussa, which also manufactured the
Zyklon B gas used in death camps by the Nazis.

(source: United Press International)





BELARUS:

Belarussian Gypsies want recognition as WWII holocaust victims


The Gypsy community of Belarus will ask the parliament to recognize
Gypsies killed in the World War Two years as holocaust victims, head of
the Belarussian Gypsy community Oleg Kozlovsky told Interfax on Monday.

"We will initiate discussion of Gypsy genocide in the WWII," he said. "We
want Belarussian Gypsies murdered by the Nazis to be recognized as
holocaust victims, the same as Jews and people of other nationalities."

Kozlovsky said they are collecting historical documents, which will be
presented to the parliament. "The search for documents about Gypsies
killed in the WWII years is very difficult because Gypsies did not have
passports back then. Historians say that about 1% of pre-war Gypsies were
left on the Belarussian territory after the WWII," he said.

The official Gypsy rate in Belarus is about 57,000-58,000 nowadays,
Kozlovsky said. Belarussian Gypsies stopped wandering about 50 years ago
and settled in towns. The majority of Belarussian Gypsies reside in the
Gomel region," Kozlovsky said.

(source: Interfax)





USA:

Holocaust museum explores role of science -- 'Deadly Medicine' exhibit
explores how 'science' backed Nazi ideology


Forced killings are ``mercy deaths," the condemned are ``research
material" and ``disinfecting" describes sterilizations, killings and
exile.

``Deadly Medicine," a new special exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, navigates the pseudo-science that underpinned the
Holocaust.

How Germany, which had been a medical leader early in the 20th century,
devolved into an epicenter of bad science is the exhibit's central
concern.

``We're trying to help people understand how something like this could
evolve," said Arthur Berger, the museum's director of communications.

The exhibit abounds with medical instruments, artifacts and records and
explains how science, economics and politics acted as catalysts for the
Holocaust.

Science to most would seem a benevolent instrument, but the exhibit shows
how science can abet, if not spawn, gross-scale genocide.

The role of science in legitimizing large-scale forced killings,
sterilizations and deportations is a contributing factor to the uniqueness
of the Holocaust, compared to other repressive and genocidal regimes, said
exhibit curator Susan Bachrach.

The roots of the Nazis' ``science" date to the 19th century, when
scientists worldwide wondered whether Charles Darwin's ``survival of the
fittest" theory could be applied to humans.

This application -- eugenics -- sought to improve the human genetic code
via selective breeding. A confluence of events in Germany propelled the
program from obscurity to a sadistic national movement.

An economic crisis created a pretext for the Nazis to pour resources into
filtering the population of those ``unfit" elements who were a financial
burden, and physicians afforded the development credibility.
Significantly, the Nazi party enjoyed a rate of membership among
physicians higher than most other professions, including many Jews who
continued to practice medicine in the Nazi state until restrictions rained
down.

``The underlying idea and ideology was that some people were less valuable
than others," Bachrach said.

German eugenics eventually cast Jews and others, including blacks and
Gypsies, as an economic dredge whose very existence taxed the economy and
their compatriots.

``Mercy deaths" first befell disabled infants and children but rapidly
expanded to Jews and others deemed undesirable.

``Deadly Medicine" divides the history into three periods. ``Science as
Salvation" tracks the pre-Nazi period; ``The Biological State" is
concurrent with the rise of the Nazis; and ``Final Solutions" covers the
forced murders that began under the shadow of war.

The stark layout uses sharp graphics to evoke the Holocaust chronology.

The exhibit begins with bright lights, and then grows dim and opaque.
Shades of green create the feel of a medical laboratory and patches of
antiseptic white tiles suggest psychiatric wards. Late in the exhibit, the
few splashes of color come from artistic works of condemned
schizophrenics.

A chair with raised ridges along the seat once forced photographic
subjects into upright posture, a steel gynecological examination chair
resembles a torture device and an acrylic cube displays two plaster-cast
human heads used for medical education, one of Nordic descent, the other
African.

A European map tracks the distribution of the races by colored dots, and
its key ranks the races in descending order. Nordics top the list while
Jews and Africans fall to the bottom.

Posters depict ``undesirable" members of society as literally
backbreaking. In one, a fit Aryan, the German racial ideal, bears a
shoulder-straddling pole seating two sickly men. Others calculate the
annual economic burden of such individuals in terms of tens of thousands
of Reichsmarks and appeal to economic and nationalist sensitivities.

The exhibit concludes with a cast of a Jewish face once used for medical
study.

The exhibit points out that other nations took similar measures, but never
at the level of a nationwide compulsory program.

In the United States, laws that banned marriages between races and between
the so-called normal- and feeble-minded were borne of the same ideals, but
were not carried out on the same scale. The U.S. Supreme Court approved
forced sterilizations, with the usually liberal Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes reasoning, ``three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Unlike the smattering of American states and foreign nations that passed
such laws and carried them out loosely, Germany dedicated a higher
priority to such measures.

``This is a national health policy enforced with the power of the police,"
Bachrach said.

The exhibit teaches that society should be wary of Machiavellian medical
ethics, said Dr. Gilbert Meilaender, the Richard & Phyllis Duesenberg
Professor of Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University in Indiana.

``It demonstrates that it's precisely in aiming at health that we have to
be careful because health is an undeniable good," he said. ``Curing
illness and relieving suffering are important goods, but they are not the
only goods.

But visitors should be careful to distinguish science as an accomplice to
evil from science as a source of evil, said Dr. Ruth Faden, executive
director of the Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute at the Johns Hopkins
University and the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

``It's unrealistic to think that science can be an island of rectitude in
the wider ocean of culture," she said. ``You have to look at how in one
country these pernicious theories found fertile political ground.''

The exhibit, open daily during museum hours, is open through October 2005.
An online accompaniment captures the bulk of the content and can be found
at the museum's Web site, http://www.ushmm.org.

(source: (Cleveland) Jewish News)


**************************


Parody of Nazis, once silenced, will be heard


With the upcoming performance of The Emperor of Atlantis, music silenced
by the Holocaust will be heard again.

On Dec. 29, the Concert Association of Florida will present the one-act
opera, composed by Viktor Ullmann while he was incarcerated at the
Theresienstadt concentration camp near Prague during World War II.

The camp was a holding station primarily for artists and musicians before
they were transported to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where Ullmann and
thousands of others were killed. Ullmann completed more than 20 musical
works while imprisoned. The Emperor of Atlantis (Der Kaiser von Atlantis)
has been called his masterpiece.

There will be one performance of the opera at the Lincoln Theater in Miami
Beach.

''Being Jewish, I felt that this was a very important thing to present to
the community. I am very obsessed with trying to bring back this music of
these great composers. Emotionally, I felt I had to do it. I know it's
going to be a success,'' said Judy Drucker, president of the Concert
Association.

The opera, written in German by Petr Kien, is a parody of Hitler and the
Nazi rule. Death gets tired of senseless killing and decides to go on
strike. When Hitler commands that prisoners be killed, Death doesn't carry
out the deed. Hitler ends the stalemate by taking his own life.

''It is harrowing because the whole story is so touching, and the music is
totally gorgeous,'' Drucker said, referring to a scene in which a Nazi
soldier thinks twice about killing a young Jewish girl, instead falling in
love with her.

Former principal conductor for the Paris Opera, James Conlon will lead 14
musicians and seven singers -- all students from New York's Juilliard
School -- in the piece.

Conlon said the piece is ''life affirming and uplifting'' as it combines
classical music with cabaret music heard in Berlin in the 1930s.

''There's a comfort in juxtaposing serious music and popular music in a
way that Mozart did with The Magic Flute,'' he said.

Conlon is now conducting the piece at concert halls in Spoleto, Italy, and
The Emperor of Atlantis was performed last March at the Central Synagogue
in New York.

''It is a very emotional piece. You could feel that response in the
audience,'' Conlon said by phone from Italy.

Conlon said performing Ullmann's opera all over the world serves artistic
and moral purposes.

''We cannot give these composers their lives back,'' he said. ``They lost
their lives, but we can deprive the Nazis of the victory of silencing the
music.''

(source: Miami Herald)





SERBIA & MONTENEGRO:

Serbia & Montenegro: The Kragujevac Massacre


In the summer of 1941, Serbian guerrillas launched an uprising in central
Serbia against the German occupation. The Serbian uprising spread and
increased in intensity threatening the German military occupation of
Serbia and endangering the German southern flank in Europe. The Serbian
uprising came at the time of the German invasion of the USSR. Adolf Hitler
immediately perceived the danger that the Serbian insurrection posed to
the stability of the Balkans region and for German control. Swift action
was taken. Hitler ordered that brutal measures be taken to suppress the
Serbian revolt. Hitler ordered that the rebellion be quelled by the most
rigorous methods.

Pursuant to these instructions, Wilhelm Keitel ordered that for every
German occupation soldier killed in Serbia, a hundred Serbian civilians
would be executed, while fifty Serbian civilians would be killed for every
wounded German soldier. This unprecedented order, that 100 Serbs would be
shot for every German soldier killed, was given to quell the Serbian
insurgency. This order would result in one of the most brutal massacres of
civilians during World War II, the Kragujevac Massacre, when an estimated
5,000 Serbian civilians were executed. Serbia was a hotbed of opposition
and resistance to the Nazi New Order in Europe. The first organized
resistance movement in Europe was launched in Serbia under the command of
Serbian Colonel Draza Mihailovic at Ravna Gora. By the summer of 1941, the
first major popular uprising to German occupation occurred in Serbia.
Hitler was appalled at this unprecedented act of defiance to the New Order
in Europe. To terrorize the Serbian population and resistance, Hitler
ordered that Serbian civilians be rounded up and executed as reprisals for
Serbian resistance. Thousands of Serbian civilians would be executed. One
of the most brutal acts of reprisal occurred in the central Serbian town
of Kragujevac, where to fulfill the hundred to one quota, thousands of
civilians were killed. The Kragujevac Massacre became one of the most
notorious and tragic events of World War II. Like the massacres at Lidice,
Babi Yar, Oradour, and Nanking, Kragujevac symbolized the horrors of war
and occupation and the cost of resistance to military occupation.

Operation Punishment

Yugoslavian Prime Minister Dragisa Cvetkovic and Foreign Minister
Alexander Cincar-Markovic had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany on
March 25, 1941. On March 27, Serbian military officers under Yugoslav Air
Force General Dusan Simovic overthrew the regime and established Peter II
as the titular ruler of Yugoslavia. The overthrow followed violent Serbian
anti-German demonstrations in Belgrade and wide-spread popular antipathy
towards a Yugoslav-German agreement. Hitler immediately reacted. Hitler
perceived the coup detat as an affront and insult to Germany and as an
unacceptable act of defiance. While the new Simovic regime requested a
dialogue, Hitler immediately decided on the total destruction of
Yugoslavia as a country.

Under Directive No. 25, Hitler ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia on March
27, 1941 after the coup detat in Belgrade. The invasion of Yugoslavia was
known as Operation Punishment (Fall Strafe) while the invasion of Greece
was Operation Marita. Hitler ordered that Yugoslavia must be destroyed as
quickly as possible. Hitler announced his plans for the invasion of
Yugoslavia as follows:

It is my intention to break into Yugoslavia in the general direction of
Belgrade and southward by a concentric operation from the area of
Rijeka-Graz on the one side and from the area around Sofia on the other
and to give the Yugoslav forces an annihilating blow. In addition I intend
to cut off the extreme southern part of Yugoslavia from the rest of the
country and seize it as a base for the continuation of the German-Italian
offensive against Greece As soon as sufficient forces stand ready and the
weather situation permits, the ground organization of the Yugoslav Air
Force and Belgrade are to be destroyed by continuous day and night attacks
of the Luftwaffe. Hitler also emphasized in this directive the plan to
exploit the pro-German Croats, formerly a part of German Austria-Hungary,
who would be used as a Fifth Column to destroy Yugoslavia. Hitler stated
that the domestic political tensions in Yugoslavia will be sharpened by
political assurances to the Croats. This was the policy of divide and
conquer.

The Axis attack on Yugoslavia consisted of 24 German divisions and 1,500
aircraft, 23 Italian divisions and 670 aircraft and naval vessels which
attacked on the Adriatic, and 5 Hungarian divisions. The total number of
Axis divisions was 52 with a total of 2.300 aircraft. The Yugoslav army
could muster 30 under strength divisions that were poorly trained,
inadequately equipped, and demoralized.

Yugoslavia was to be attacked by Axis troops based in Austria, Hungary,
Romania, and Bulgaria. The Second Army, commanded by Maximilian von
Weichs, stationed in Klagenfurt, Austria and Barcs, Hungary was to attack
from the north. The second formation was the German 12th Army stationed in
Bulgaria under Field Marshal Sigmund Wilhelm List, one element of which
was to occupy Macedonia while another was to press on to Belgrade. XLI
Panzer Corps under the command of Georg-Hans Reinhardt was stationed in
bases in Romania and was to attack Belgrade. Attached to the XLI Panzer
Corps, was the 2nd Waffen SS Panzer Division Das Reich which had been
transferred from southern France. The Das Reich Waffen SS Division was the
spearhead of the attack on Belgrade. Das Reich was an elite formation
commanded by SS Oberstgruppenfuehrer Paul Haussner, known as Papa Haussner
because he was regarded as the founder of the Waffen SS or Armed SS, the
military wing of the SS.

Belgrade was declared an open city which meant that it was not defended.
This allowed the Luftwaffe to bomb the city non-stop for three days,
destroying much of the center of the city and killing 17,000 Serbian
civilians, men, women, and children. As an open city, there was only a
garrison in Belgrade with hardly any front line troops. This led to the
tragic-comical and absurd capture of the city. Nothing better illustrates
the hollowness and emptiness of war than the capture of Belgrade. The
actual capture of Belgrade has rarely been told. This was achieved by the
commander of No.2 Company of the SS Motorcycle Reconnaissance Battalion,
SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Fritz Klingenberg of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das
Reich. Klingenberg, along with one platoon leader, two sergeants, and five
privates of the SS motorcycle assault company, crossed the Danube on a
requisitioned motor boat. They rode their motor cycles through the streets
of Belgrade unopposed. They did not meet any military forces or any
resistance. They drove to the Yugoslav War Ministry in Belgrade which they
found abandoned. They raised a Nazi swastika flag over the ministry
building. They then went over to the German Embassy where another Nazi
swastika flag was raised. The mayor of Belgrade then agreed to turn over
the city to prevent further bombing of the city and the killing of more
civilians. Hitler awarded Klingenberg a Knights Cross of the Iron Cross
for the capture of Belgrade and Klingenberg became a celebrity and hero in
Nazi Germany as the man who captured Belgrade. Klingenberg would himself
be killed in 1945 when Russian and US troops occupied Germany. Belgrade
would be occupied by the 1st Panzer Army under Generaloberst Ewald von
Kleist. Kleist was photographed in front of the Skupshtina or Yugoslav
Parliament building in Belgrade saluting a German tank commander of a
Panzer Kampfwagen IV Ausf D tank on April 14. The 11th Panzer Division
which had moved from Bulgaria seized Belgrade. The Germans casualties in
the invasion of Yugoslavia were 151 killed, 392 wounded, and 15 missing.
They captured 337,684 Yugoslav POWs, plus 6,028 officers. But 300,000
Serbian troops escaped into the mountains and country-side. They would
continue the conflict as a guerrilla war. German Occupation

Serbia was the only area of dismembered Yugoslavia in which an outright
German military government was established. Serbia was the only Balkan
country that Germany and the Axis countries occupied militarily throughout
World War II. Why was this so? The Germans could never control Serbia and
the Serbian population. Without direct German military occupation, Serbia
could not be militarily and politically subdued. On April 20, 1941, Field
Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, the Chief of the German Army High Command
(OKH), ordered the establishment of a German military government in
German-occupied Serbia. The office of the Military Commander in Serbia was
the chief of the occupation. He was subordinate to the Quartermaster
General of the Army High Command and to the commander of the German 2nd
Army which occupied Serbia. The main responsibilities of the Military
Commander in Serbia were enunciated as follows in the Dienstanweisung or
brief as follows: To safeguard the railroad line between Belgrade and
Salonika and the Danube shipping lanes, to execute the economic orders of
Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering who was the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year
Plan, and to establish and to maintain law and order.

German Air Force General Helmuth Foerster was the First Military Commander
in Serbia. He was replaced in June, 1941 by Antiaircraft Artillery General
Ludwig von Schroeder. Air Force General Heinrich Danckelmann replaced him
when Schroeder was killed in a plane crash a month after assuming command.
In June, 1941, the Germans brought in four under-strength divisions to
occupy or garrison Serbia under the command of General of Artillery Paul
Bader: the 704th, 714th, 717th, and 718th divisions. The German Second
Army was deployed to the Russian Front. On June 9, under Directive No. 31,
Hitler unified the command structure by making Wilhelm List the Armed
Forces Commander in Southeast Europe who was directly subordinate to
Hitler. List was responsible for the security and the defense of Serbia
and Greece and General Bader was subordinated to him. List had his
headquarters in Salonika.

Two Concepts of Guerrilla Resistance

Two rival guerrilla or resistance movements emerged in Serbia following
the German occupation. The Ravna Gora Chetnik Movement was headed by
Colonel Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovic which was based in the UK where the
Yugoslav Government-in-Exile fled. The guerrillas under Mihailovic engaged
in sabotage but opposed direct attacks on German troops because such
attacks were futile from a military standpoint and because the goal or
objective of the guerrilla movement was to lay the groundwork for the
Allied invasion of Yugoslavia which was to occur later in the war.
Mihailovic opposed attacks on German troops because he did believe the
sacrifice in Serbian lives was worth the cost. Mihailovic maintained that
it was not worth sacrificing fifty Serbs for a single German or a section
of railway line. Mihailovic, a veteran of World War I, also recalled the
brutal retaliation the German forces took against Serbian civilians for
uprisings in that conflict. The Partisan or Communist guerrillas began
uprisings began in Serbia in July, following the German invasion of the
Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. On July 3, 1941, Tito convened a
meeting of the Politburo of the Communist party of Yugoslavia in a suburb
of Belgrade after Joseph Stalin had made a call for Communist resistance
in the occupied countries. The following day, Tito issued a proclamation
calling for a general uprising in Serbia. The Partisans managed to seize
Uzice in western Serbia and to set up a so-called Communist Republic. The
Partisans were internationalist in outlook and were not indigenous to
Serbia. Josip Broz Tito was a Croat-Slovene Roman Catholic born in Croatia
when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He spoke with a Croatian
accent and did not know the Serbian terrain. He was like a foreigner in
Serbia. He had been a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World
War I, had been captured by the Russians in 1915, and joined the Red Army
in 1918. He fought in the Red Army from 1918 to 1920 and became a
Communist leader who would lead the Yugoslav Communist Party. His wife was
the Russian Pelagija Belousova, whom he married in 1919 in Russia. The
Partisans wanted to create as much bloodshed and carnage and destruction
as possible. This was their raison detre. They wanted to destroy the
pre-Communist foundations and to create legitimacy for Communist rule by
after the war by demonstrating that they had liberated the country from
German occupation. Thus the forces under Mihailovic and Tito were fighting
under two opposing concepts of guerrilla resistance.

The Serbian population was anxious to drive out the German forces from
Serbia. The Serbian insurgency thus had overwhelming popular support in
Serbia. Both the forces under Mihailovic and Tito were involved in the
rebellion, even cooperating against the Germans and engaging in joint
actions. The German military occupation of Serbia was threatened. The
German combat troops had been redeployed to the Russian Front so that
Serbia was occupied by under-strength garrison troops. The German police
and the three German divisions were unable to suppress the Serbian
insurgency. On September 4, the 125 Infantry Regiment was sent to Serbia
from Greece.

On September 19, Tito and Mihailovic met for the first time at Struganik
following Mihailovics meeting with Partisan representatives in August.
They sought to organize their forces in a common front against German
troops. Mihailovic and Tito agreed not to attack each other. No real
agreement, however, was reached to cooperate because of conflicting
concepts of resistance. A second meeting between Tito and Mihailovic took
place on October 27 at Brajici located between Uzice and Ravna Gora.
Captain D.T. Bill Hudson of the British mission to Draza Mihailovic came
along to the Brajici meeting. Mihailovic and Tito were unable to reach an
agreement to cooperate against the German forces.

Insurgency in Serbia

Following the German occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece, guerrilla
movements launched a massive resistance campaign against German occupation
forces. In Serbia, a large insurrection against German occupation began in
the summer of 1941. There were attacks and sabotage against communication
and transportation lines. German troops were tortured, mutilated, and
killed by Serbian resistance forces. The German response to these
guerrilla attacks was to attempt to suppress the resistance by mass
hangings and mass executions of Serbian civilians and hostages.

In June, 1941, Wilhelm List became the Wehrmacht Commander Southeast, the
supreme representative of the German Army in the Balkans and exercised
executive authority in Serbia which was occupied by German troops. List
had been the Commander-in-Chief of the 12th Army during the German
invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece. List was assigned the duty of
safeguarding of the unified defense of areas occupied by German troops in
Serbia against attacks and unrest. Hermann Foertsch, who had become the
Chief of Staff of 12th Army on May 10, remained Lists Chief of Staff in
his new position as Wehrmacht Commander Southeast.
By September 5, the uprising in Serbia was spreading rapidly and
endangering the stability of the German occupation. List issued an order
on the suppression of the revolt:

In regard to the above the following aspects are to be taken into
consideration:

Ruthless and immediate measures against the insurgents, against their
accomplices and their families. (Hanging, burning down of villages
involved, seizure of more hostages, deportation of relatives, etc., into
concentration camps.)

On September 16, Hitler issued a personally signed directive, Directive
No. 31a, to List charging him with the suppression of the insurgency in
Serbia:

I assign to the Wehrmacht Commanderthe task of crushing the
insurrectionary movement in the southeastern area. It is important first
to secure in the Serbian area the transportation routes and the objects
important for the German war economy, and thento restore orderby the most
rigorous methods.

List then recommended and requested that General Franz Boehme, a pre-war
Austrian officer who then commanded the XVIIIth Army Corps in Greece, be
commissioned to handle military affairs in Serbia. The entire executive
authority for Serbia was subsequently transferred to Boehme. Boehme was
made the Plenipotentiary Commanding General. Boehme thus was delegated
supreme authority to suppress the insurgency in Serbia although he
remained subordinated to List. Boehme took command of all German troops in
Serbia and directed all actions against the Serbian insurgents on
September 19. Boehme was a veteran of the German Army military campaigns
in France and Poland. He would later be transferred to serve with the 20th
Gebirgsarmee in Norway as a General der Gebirgstruppen and ended the war
in Norway. The 342th Infantry Division was transferred from France and
deployed in Serbia to suppress the insurgency. The 100th Tank Brigade was
also deployed to Serbia. Danckelmann was relieved of command in Serbia
while Boehme took over the command of Serbia. Danckelmann was held
responsible for letting the Serbian rebellion get out of control and
spread.

Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the supreme command of the German
armed forces, pursuant to Hitlers directive, sent instructions for the
suppression of insurgency movements in the occupied territories, which
List issued to his subordinate commanders:

Measures taken up to now to counteract this general communist insurgent
movement have proven themselves to be inadequate. The Fuehrer now has
ordered that severest means are to be employed in order to break down this
movement in the shortest time possible. Only in this manner, which has
always been applied successfully in the history of the extension of power
of great peoples can quiet be restored.

The following directives are to be applied here: (a) Each incident of
insurrection against the German Wehrmacht, regardless of individual
circumstances, must be assumed to be of communist origin. (b) In order to
stop these intrigues at their inception, severest measures are to be
applied immediately at the first appearance, in order to demonstrate the
authority of the occupying power, and in order to prevent further,
progress. One must keep in mind that a human life frequently counts for
naught in the affected countries and a deterring effect can only be
achieved by unusual severity. In such as case the death penalty for 50 to
100 communists must in general be deemed appropriate as retaliation for
the life of a German soldier. The manner of execution must increase the
deterrent effect. The reverse procedure to proceed at first with
relatively easy punishment and to be satisfied with the threat of measures
of increased severity as a deterrent does not correspond with these
principles and is not to be applied.

The German punitive expedition was headed by Franz Boehme and focused on
the Macva valley between the Sava and Drina rivers, Sabac. Boehme, a Roman
Catholic born in Steiermark, Austria and a former Austrian military
officer who was a veteran of World War I, focused on collective punishment
of the entire Serbian civilian population. Boehme rationalized or
justified the executions as revenge for the Serbian role in World War I.
The Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip had precipitated World War I by the
assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
Austrian troops suffered high casualties against the Serbian army during
the first year of World War I. Boehme saw the mass executions of Serbian
civilians as retribution for Austrian deaths during the Great War. Boehme
issued orders to the military units under his command on September 25 and
October 10, 1941, in which he ordered that the whole population of Serbia
was to be hit severely. Boehme ordered that for one German solider or
Volksdeutsche killed, a hundred Serbs were to be executed. Keitel had made
a vague reference to the death penalty for 50 to 100 communists. Boehme
now had ordered that for every German soldier or ethnic German outside of
the Reich, a Volksdeutsche, killed, a hundred Serbs would be executed:

If losses of German soldiers or Volksdeutsche occur, the territorial
competent commanders up to the regiment commanders are to decree the
shooting of arrestees according to the following quotas: (a) For each
killed or murdered German soldier or Volksdeutsche (men, women or
children) one hundred prisoners or hostages, (b) For each wounded German
soldier or Volksdeutsche 50 prisoners or hostages.

Boehme ordered that: In all commands in Serbia, all Communists, male
residents suspicious as such, all Jews, a certain number of nationalistic
and democratically inclined residents are to be arrested as hostages, by
means of sudden actions.

On October 4, List issued to following order to General Paul Bader for
treatment of the Serbian population:

The male population of the territories to be mopped up of bandits is to be
handled according to the following points of view: Men who take part in
combat are to be judged by court martial. Men in the insurgent territories
who were not encountered in battle, are to be examined and, If a former
participation in combat can be proven of them to be judged by court
martial.

If they are only suspected of having taken part in combat, of having
offered the bandits support of any sort, or of having acted against the
Wehrmacht in any way, to be held in a special collecting camp. They are to
serve as hostages in the event that bandits appear, or anything against
the Wehrmacht is undertaken in the territory mopped up or in their home
localities, and in such cases they are to be shot.

Following Lists order, the executions of Serbian civilians and hostages
increased and reprisals against the Serbian population were conducted
based on the ratio of a hundred to one, the 100 to 1 ratio, 100 hundred
Serbs killed for one German soldier killed. There was a reprisal killing
of Serbian civilians outside the Serbian town of Topola. General Boehme
ordered on October 4 and October 9 that Serbian civilians be shot. Boehme
sent List the following report of the executions by shooting of about
2,000 Communists and Jews in reprisal for 22 murdered of the Second
Battalion of the 421st Army Signal Communication Regiment in progress.
List also received reports of reprisal shootings of Serbian civilians
conducted by the Security Police and S.D. The Topola mass shooting was
mentioned in the War Crimes Judgment at Nuremberg. List believed that the
way to deal with the insurgency in Serbia was to bring more troops to the
area. Hitler and Keitel, however, argued that terrorism and intimidation
of the population would suppress the resistance movement without
significant additional German occupation troops. List was thus not in
agreement with many of the pacification programs and policies of the
German High Command. Illness on October 15 forced the retirement of List
from active service.

The Kragujevac Massacre, October 20-21, 1941

The central Serbian town of Kragujevac had a pre-war population of 27,249,
located in the political, cultural, educational, and industrial center of
Serbia known as Shumadija at the Lepenica river, a tributary of the
Morava. Kragujevac was first mentioned in the Turkish Tapu Defter as
Kragujevdza in 1476 as a village with 32 houses. By 1822, it had 283
houses with a population of 2,000. Kragujevac was the capital of the
Serbian Principality when Milos Obrenovic proclaimed it the capital from
1818 to 1839. The first Serbian court was established in Kragujevac in
1820, the first high school in 1833, the first theater in 1835, the first
Lycee in 1838, the first cannons in 1853, and the first electric power
station in 1884. By 1851, the town had become the industrial center of
Serbia. In 1853, the oldest Serbian military plant was established with
French assistance to produce cannons. The military technical institute
(Vojno Tehnicki Zavod) was established in Kragujevac which oversaw Serbian
military armaments and weapons production. In 1929, a railroad line
between Kragujevac and Kraljevo was established. The town produced
military vehicles. Ford trucks were built in the late 1930s for the
Yugoslav army.

On October 15, Mihailovics forces captured a German platoon. The next day,
the commander of the 920th German regiment in Kragujevac sent his third
battalion to free the platoon. This rescue regiment was ambushed by both
Mihailovics and Titos forces. Ten German soldiers were killed and 26
wounded. On October 19, 300 civilians were executed in three surrounding
villages in retaliation or as reprisals. All roads leading out of
Kragujevac were blocked. All houses were searched. All males between 16
and 60 were taken to district military headquarters for identification,
then to huts overlooking the town. Civil servants were rounded up from
offices and 300 students over 16 were taken from the high school along
with 18 teachers. The roundup continued into the afternoon. 100 were shot
on October 20. 10,000 were assembled. On October 20, 2,300 were executed
according to the official German report by Boehme. Laza Pantelic, the
headmaster of the First Boys High School was shot. When he observed 35 of
his students being led away to execution, he asked the German soldier:
Where are they being taken? To be shot answered the German soldier. Im
their headmaster. Let them go, and take me instead. Thats impossible,
replied the German soldier. My place is not here---its with my boys. He
joined the students where they embraced and faced the firing squad
together. Shoot, I am still in class. The students from the Kragujevac
high school were reported to have said: We are Serbian children. Shoot.
The Serbian civilians from Kragujevac were executed by German firing
squads throughout the two days of October 20 and 21. The firing squads
faced exhaustion and some soldiers were reported to have broken down from
the mental and emotional strain of the mass executions. The Germans
reportedly spared a few hundred townsmen so that the horror could be
spread to terrorize the population. Approximately 600 were kept at the
execution site in Shumarica where they buried the dead for the next 4
days. The bodies were buried in shallow graves, which allowed dogs
unearthed the bodies and ate them. The graves were later marked by Serbian
Orthodox crosses which the Communist regime later had removed.

An announcement from the local German command office in Kragujevac on
October 21, 1941, was as follows:

For every dead German soldier, 100 residents have been executed, and for
every wounded German soldier, 50 residents have been executed, and before
all others, Communists, bandits, and their assistants were targeted, all
totaling 2,300.

On October 29, Felix Benzler, sent this report to his ministry:

In the past week there have been executions of a large number of Serbs,
not only in Kraljevo but also in Kragujevac, as reprisals for the killing
of members of the Wehrmacht in the proportion of 100 Serbs for one German.
In Kraljevo 1,700 male Serbs were executed, in Kragujvac 2,300.

The town of Rudnik was subsequently razed. In Gornji Milanovac, the town
was systematically destroyed with incendiary bombs by the German forces,
72 houses out of 464 were left standing. In Kraljevo, railway and aircraft
factory workers were executed and the Germans reportedly shot one member
of each family in the town.

In the villages of Meckovac, Grosnica, Milatovac, 427 civilians were
executed. In Draginac and Loznica, 2,950 hostages were killed, for
guerrilla activity around Kraljevo. In Kraljevo, 1,736 civilians were
killed.

A telegram between the Plenipotentiary of the German Foreign Ministry and
the military commander in Serbia explained the reason why civilians from
Kragujevac were chosen for execution:

The executions in Kragujevac occurred although there had been no attacks
on members of the Wehrmacht in this city, for the reason that not enough
hostages could be found elsewhere.

The executions in Kragujevac were indiscriminate. Serbian civilians were
selected merely to fill the quota of 100 hundred Serbs for every German
soldier killed. The German military command in Serbia listed the number of
executed at Kragujevac at 2,300. The Communist regime manipulated and
inflated the figures to 7,000 killed after the war for propaganda
purposes. A more accurate and objective number for the total number of
Serbian civilians executed in Kragfujevac and in the neighboring villages
and towns for the entire period is approximately 5,000.

On October 24, Walter Kuntze was assigned Deputy Wehrmacht Commander
Southeast and Commander-in-Chief of the 12th Army. This was a temporary or
interim appointment to last until List could return to duty. On October
31, Boehme submitted a report to Kuntze in which he detailed the shootings
in Serbia:

Shooting: 405 hostages in Belgrade (total up to now in Belgrade, 4,750).
90 Communists in Camp Sebac. 2,300 hostages in Kragujevac. 1,700 hostages
in Kraljevo.

Executions of Serbian civilians continued. Kuntze in a directive of March
19, 1942:

The more unequivocal and the harder reprisal measures are applied from the
beginning the less it will become necessary to apply them at a later date.
No false sentimentalities! It is preferable that 50 suspects are
liquidated than one German soldier lose his life.If it is not possible to
produce the people who have participated in any way in the insurrection or
to seize them, reprisal measures of a general kind may be deemed
advisable, for instance, the shooting to death of all male inhabitants
from the nearest villages, according to a definite ratio (for instance,
one German dead---100 Serbs, one German wounded---50 Serbs).

The Kragujevac massacre had a profound effect on Mihailovic. The
Kragujevac Massacre convinced Mihailovic that he was correct in avoiding
attacks on the German occupation forces that would lead to executions of
Serbian civilians. He told British officer Christie Lawrence:

You have heard of the result of my revolution last autumn? Of the hundreds
of villages burned and the terrible reprisals that the Germans inflicted
on our innocent people? When it was over I resolved that I would never
again bring such misery on the country, unless it could result in our
total liberation.

The Communist Partisans, by contrast, were indifferent to the losses of
the civilian population in Serbia. The Partisans were motivated by an
ideology that prevented them from seeing that German occupation troops in
Serbia were not Nazi party members but recruits who had no choice but to
serve in the German Army. The senseless murder of German occupation troops
would invite reprisals that would lead in the loss of innocent civilian
lives. The Partisans, however, were also guided by a political agenda.
Their goal was to control territory and set the stage for a Communist
takeover of the country. Edvard Kardelj said: Some comradeshave a fear of
reprisals---destruction of villages, executions, and so on.In war we must
not be afraid of whole villages being destroyed. Tito replied to
Mihailovics assertion that large-scale attacks against the Germans would
result in reprisals that would lead to the destruction of those units and
the loss of innocent civilian lives: Thats of no importance. Im looking
further ahead. The terror will unquestionably lead to armed action
Communist leaders reacted to the bewilderment caused by their callousness
toward suffering by saying that if the Serbs perished in this war, there
were enough Chinese to settle Serbian lands. In other words, the goal was
in achieving political power. This was what the partisans wanted. They
were not concerned if innocent civilians were killed. The ends justified
the means. So long as a Communist dictatorship was created in Serbia and
Yugoslavia, the cost in human life was irrelevant.

The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials and the Kragujevac Massacre

Franz Boehme (1885-1947) was captured on May 9, 1945 in Norway. Boehme was
placed on trial by the U.S. Military Tribunal for war crimes and crimes
against humanity in Serbia for the mass executions of Serbian civilians in
Kragujevac and adjoining towns and villages. This trial was the Hostages
Trial, Case No. 47, which was held from July 8, 1947 to February 19, 1948.
He committed suicide prior to his arraignment on May 29, 1947 by jumping
off the fourth floor of the prison building in Nuremberg, Germany. The
defendants in the Hostages Trial were German military commanders who had
ordered reprisal killings against civilians or hostages in order to
maintain order in occupied territories under attack from guerrillas. Franz
Boehme, Wilhelm List, Walter Kundze, Maximilian von Weichs, Hermann
Foertsch, Lothar Rendulic, Helmuth Felmy, Hubert Lanz, Ernst Dehner, Ernst
von Leyser, Wilhelm Speidel, and Kurt von Geitner were charged with
committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Yugoslavia, Greece,
Albania, and Norway. They were charged in a four count indictment that
charged them with will unlawfully, willfully and knowingly committing war
crimes and crimes against humanity under Article II of Control Council Law
No. 10 with being principals in and accessories to the murder of thousands
of persons from the civilian population of Greece, Yugoslavia, Norway and
Albania between September 1939 and May 1945 by the use of troops of the
German Armed Forces under the command of and acting pursuant to orders
issued, distributed and executed by the defendants. They were further
charged in participating in a deliberate scheme of terrorism and
intimidation wholly unwarranted and unjustified by military necessity by
the murder, ill-treatment and deportation to slave labour of prisoners of
and the civilian populations. Under the first count, they were charged
with the murder of hundreds of thousands of persons by mass executions of
civilians, that they issued, distributed and executed orders for the
execution of 100 hostages in retaliation for each German soldier killed
and fifty hostages in retaliation for each German soldier wounded. Under
count two, they were charged with destroying cities, towns, and villages
by burning and leveling them. Under count three, they were charged with
the summary execution of POWs and the murder of relatives of those
combatants. Under the fourth count, they were charged with the murder,
torture, and systematic terrorization and imprisonment in concentration
camps of the civilian populations in the occupied territories. These acts
were held to violate the 1907 Hague Regulations, international
conventions, the laws and customs of war, general principles of criminal
law, and the internal penal laws of the occupied countries which were
declared, recognized and defined as crimes by Article II of Control
Council Law No. 10 which was promulgated by the US, USSR, France, and the
UK.

The Nuremberg court found Wilhelm List guilty on counts one and three and
he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Walter Kuntze was found guilty on
counts one, three, and four and received a life sentence. Hermann Foertsch
was acquitted and released. Maximilian von Weichs was severed from the
case due to illness. Generalfeldmarschall Ewald von Kleist was extradited
by Yugoslavia on August 16, 1946, was tried for war crimes, convicted, and
sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Kleist was extradited by the USSR in
1948 where he was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to life
imprisonment. Kleist died in the Vladimir POW camp in 1954 in the USSR.

The Nuremberg court found that hostages could not be taken and then
executed during a military occupation based on military expediency. Every
available method to secure order must be used before hostages can be
taken. The court found that the Serbian/Yugoslav guerrillas were not
entitled to be classed as lawful belligerents. The court found that the
guerrillas were franc tireurs, from French for free shooters. Thus, they
were not entitled to POW status. As franc tireurs, upon capture the
guerrillas could be subjected to the death penalty, that is, summarily
shot. The court, however, rejected the defendants defense of superior
orders. The defendants argued that they were not responsible because they
were only following orders of those superior to them in rank and power. In
following superior orders, the court held that one must show excusable
ignorance of the illegality of the orders to be excused. If one knows that
the order is illegal and follows it, one cannot use the defense. An order
is illegal if it violates International Law and outrages fundamental
concepts of justice. The court held that following superior orders is not
a defense in the commission of a criminal act. The court found that
Wilhelm List and Walter Kuntze were following orders they knew to be
illegal and criminal because the orders from Hitler and Keitel violated
international law and fundamental concepts of justice. The executions of
Serbian civilians at Kragujevac were thus found by the Nuremberg Tribunal
to constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

(source--This article, by guest author Carl Savich, originally
appeared on Serbianna.com.

Carl K. Savich is a graduate student in the History Department at Oakland
University in Rochester, Michigan. He received his BA from the University
of Michigan. He has been a contributor to Ancient Serbia (Stara Srbija),
The Voice of Ravanica, Liberty (Sloboda), The American Srbobran, The
Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, The Macomb Daily, Foreign Policy,
and The Oakland Post. He has a journalistic, academic, and legal
background and is currently on the staffs of Liberty (Sloboda) and The
Oakland Post newspapers, of which he is an editor. His areas of interest
and expertise are history, political science, and law.)