May 8


USA/GERMANY:

Demjanjuk loses appeal to avoid war crimes trial in Germany

Justice Stevens denies the retired autoworker's bid to avoid deportation.
The alleged 'Nazi persecutor' had argued that the flight from Cleveland
would amount to torture because of his ill health.


John Demjanjuk, who allegedly aided in the murder of 29,000 Jews at a
German-run death camp in Poland, was denied an emergency appeal by a
Supreme Court justice Thursday, all but clearing the way for him to be
sent to Germany to stand trial for war crimes.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who handles emergency appeals from Ohio, denied
Demjanjuk's appeal without comment. His lawyer could ask another justice
to intervene, but the result is not likely to change.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet soldier who was captured by the
Germans during World War II and then allegedly volunteered to work in the
Sobibor death camp.

Lawyers for Demjanjuk argued that the chronically ill 89-year-old retired
autoworker would suffer "severe pain and suffering" akin to torture if he
was flown from Cleveland to Munich. As their legal basis for the claim,
they cited the Convention Against Torture. The treaty forbids the United
States from returning a person to another country where he would be "in
danger of being subjected to torture."

U.S. officials dismissed the claim as frivolous. They referred to
Demjanjuk as "a Nazi persecutor" who "grasps for a last straw to delay
this matter further so that he can continue to enjoy his life in America
until his dying day." Demjanjuk's lawyers said their client had multiple
ailments, including a spinal condition, that made travel extremely
painful.


The legal battle over his medical condition was fought with dueling
videos.

In one, cited by his family, Demjanjuk is shown with his head back and
mouth agape, gasping for air and moaning in pain, as he is carried out of
his home in April. He was returned home hours later after an appeals court
in Cincinnati agreed to consider an emergency appeal.

Secretly recorded videos later showed him walking slowly from his car into
a store. He then returned and, with some help, got back into the car.

Last Friday, after reviewing evidence of his medical condition, the
appeals court agreed that Demjanjuk could be deported. The U.S. government
"will transport [him in] an aircraft equipped as a medical air ambulance,"
the judges said.

The government's legal battle with Demjanjuk has stretched over 32 years.
The Justice Department moved to revoke his citizenship in 1977, saying he
lied when he entered this country by concealing his role as a guard at
Nazi death camps.

In 1986, he was sent to Israel, tried, convicted and sentenced to death
for being "Ivan the Terrible," a notoriously cruel guard who ran the gas
chambers at the Treblinka death camp, also in Poland. But evidence from
Soviet files indicated that another man, Ivan Marchenko, was Ivan the
Terrible. Demjanjuk's conviction was overturned in 1993, and he returned
to the United States.

In 2001, authorities charged him with having been a guard at Sobibor, and
another round of deportation proceedings began.

Though he has lost his appeals in this country, his lawyers are also
seeking an order in Germany that would block his deportation to that
country.

Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, refused to say how
quickly the government would move to deport Demjanjuk if his final legal
appeal was denied.

"We will continue to work with the government of Germany to effect the
removal of Mr. Demjanjuk," she said.

(source: Los Angeles Times)

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


Demjanjuk is number two on a list of 10 most-wanted war criminals compiled
by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Here are details about the 10 accused.

1. ARIBERT HEIM

-- Heim, known as Dr Death, is still top of the list, although German
television station ZDF and the New York Times reported this year that he
had died in Cairo in 1992, aged 78.

Heim killed hundreds at the Mounthausen concentration camp in Austria with
injections of poison and removed organs from victims without anaesthetic.
Captured by U.S. forces near the end of World War Two but released in
1947, he worked as a doctor in West Germany until coming to the attention
of war crimes investigators. He fled in 1962.

2. IVAN DEMJANJUK - United States:

-- Accused in 1977 of being the infamous "Ivan the Terrible", a Treblinka
extermination camp guard, he was extradited to Israel and sentenced to
death, then freed on subsequent evidence.

Returning to the United States in 1993, his citizenship was revoked in
2002 after a U.S. court convicted him of working at three other camps.
German prosecutors, who issued an arrest warrant for him in March, suspect
him of helping in the deaths of 29,000 Jews at the the Sobibor death camp.

The extradition was halted by an appeals court this week.

3. DR. SANDOR KEPIRO - Hungary:

-- Serbia's war crimes prosecutor in Sept. 2008 requested an investigation
into the Hungarian suspected of committing genocide against Jews and Serbs
in World War Two.

Prosecutors said Kepiro is suspected of taking part in a raid by Hungarian
forces in Jan. 1942 in northern Serbia "when, in an attempt to destroy
members of the Jewish and Serbian national groups, they killed at least
2,000 of them".

Sentenced to 10 years in jail in 1944; both that verdict, and his
acquittal later the same year, came when Hungary was under fascist rule
and an ally of Nazi Germany. In 2007 a Hungarian court ruled the then
93-year-old could not be investigated as his murder conviction had been
overturned.

4. MILIVOJ ASNER - Austria:

-- Alleged to have been a senior security official during the 1941-45 rule
of Croatia's pro-Nazi Ustasha regime, Asner says he ordered wartime
deportations of Jews and Serbs to their homelands, not to death camps in
Croatia.

Asner moved to Austria when a Nazi-tracking group found him living in
Croatia in 2005. Austria previously rejected a Croatian extradition
request on grounds that Asner's physical and mental condition was fragile.

5. SOEREN KAM - Germany:

-- The Danish-born former SS member is accused of helping Nazi forces in
Denmark, and of the 1943 murder of anti-Nazi Danish journalist Carl Henrik
Clemmensen in Copenhagen.

Kam fled to Germany after the war, obtaining German citizenship in 1956.
Following his 2006 arrest, a German court delayed a decision on his
extradition to Denmark.

6. HEINRICH BOERE - Germany:

-- Accused of killing three Dutch civilians in 1944 as a member of an SS
hit squad that targeted anti-Nazi resistance fighters, Boere confessed
after being captured by U.S. forces.

Escaping to Germany, he was sentenced to death in absentia in Holland in
1949. After refusing a 1980 Dutch extradition request, a German court
indicted him in April 2008.

Boere was due to be tried in Aachen early in 2009 in what would have been
one of Germany's last Nazi war crimes trials, but in January the court
there said a medical examination had found his health was too poor for him
to stand trial.

7. KAROLY ZENTAI - Australia:

-- Zentai is accused of killing Jewish teenager Peter Balazs in Budapest.
At the time Zentai was a 23-year-old warrant officer in the pro-Nazi
Hungarian military, but argues he left Budapest with his regiment the day
before the murder in 1944. He emigrated to Australia in the early 1950s
and was arrested by Federal Police in July 2005. A Perth Federal Court
judge last month upheld that Zentai was eligible for extradition to
Hungary to face justice.

8. MIKHAIL GORSHKOW - Estonia:

-- Alleged to have been an interrogator for the Gestapo, he is accused of
helping kill about 3,000 men, women and children in the Slutsk ghetto in
Minsk, Belarus. Estonian-born Gorshkow became a U.S. citizen in 1953 but
was denaturalised in 2002 and is under investigation in Estonia.

9. ALGIMANTAS DAILIDE - Germany:

-- Dailide volunteered for Lithuania's Nazi-backed secret police, the
Saugumas, but said he was only a humble clerk.

Entering the United States in 1950, he worked as a real estate agent. In
March 2006 Lithuania convicted the then 86-year-old of handing over Jews
attempting to flee from the Vilnius ghetto. They were subsequently
murdered. A Lithuanian court sentenced him to five years in jail, but
suspended his sentence due to his health.

10. HARRY MANNIL - Venezuela:

-- The Caracas-based auto sales millionaire and member of Venezuelan high
society is accused of arresting Jews and communists who were later
executed by the Nazis while serving in Estonia's political police force
during the Nazi occupation.

Cleared of the accusations by Estonia, he remains on a U.S. watch list
barring him from entering the United States.

(sources: Reuters/Simon Wiesenthal Center/BBC)



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

SUPREME COURT DENIES CERTIORARI----Alleged Nazi Guard Demjanjuk Hits Legal
Brick Wall



Alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk may have exhausted his legal
options in the US. The Supreme Court refused to take his case on Thursday,
opening the way for his immediate deportation for trial in Germany.


It has been a legalistic marathon, with all manner of twists and turns.
But now it looks like the last barrier to the deportation of the alleged
death camp guard John Demjanjuk from the US to Germany has been removed.
On Thursday, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens rejected a request
from Demjanjuk's lawyers to block the deportation.

Stevens made little comment on the case. The Demjanjuk request reached his
chambers on Wednesday, with additional information being sent in on
Thursday morning from Demjanjuk's defense attorney John Broadley. Just
hours later, Stevens announced his ruling.

In theory, Demjanjuk would have the possibility to turn to other Supreme
Court justices. But Broadley said his client would refrain from following
that route. "That wouldn't get us anywhere," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
"We're not going to do that." He said that all legal avenues had been
exhausted. "We have done everything we could," he said.

An American court stripped Demjanjuk of his US citizenship in 2001 in a
case related to similar accusations of war crimes allegedly committed by
the 89-year-old former auto worker who lives in Cleveland, Ohio. That case
likewise reached the end of the road when the Supreme Court decided not to
grant certiorari in May 2008.

The case once again began making its way through the American legal system
after public prosecutors in Munich issued a warrant for Demjanjuk's
arrest. They accuse Demjanjuk, who was born in Ukraine, of having been a
guard at the Sobibor death camp -- and of having been accessory to 29,000
murders while there. The arrest warrant immediately raised the possibility
that he would be deported to Germany to stand trial.

Demjanjuk's attorneys have said that their client is too old and infirm to
travel to Germany and stand trial and that a deportation would amount to
"torture." The American court system, however, showed little sympathy for
this line of argumentation. Broadley himself has already begun preparing
for the next chapter of the legal battle -- in Germany. His first aim is
that of ensuring that his client is given suitable medical checkups to
ascertain his ability to stand trial.

Demjanjuk's son John, for his part, still hopes that Germany will withdraw
its permission for his father's entry. On Wednesday, however, such a
request filed by Demjanjuk's German lawyer Ulrich Busch with a Berlin
court was rejected. Busch has filed an appeal.

"The case is ongoing in Berlin," John Demjanjuk told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "It's
not over yet."

Indeed, a separate case is also still being considered by an appellate
court in Cincinnati. That case, however, has little bearing on Demjanjuk's
deportation. And should he be deported, he will never again be allowed
back into the United States -- all ongoing court cases would be moot.

It remains unclear when Demjanjuk might be deported. A spokeswoman for the
US Attorney General confirmed that no timeframe has been announced. It is
likely, however, that it is merely a matter of ironing out the few
remaining details. A Cincinnati court has ruled that Demjanjuk can only be
flown to Germany in an air ambulance -- which must be chartered by the
Attorney General's office.

(source: Spiegel Online)





USA----NEW YORK:

ICE returns second painting stolen during Holocaust


The widely publicized return of a painting by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement ( ICE ) two weeks ago led to the recovery of another work of
art belonging to the late Jewish art dealer Dr. Max Stern. Today, at the
Leo Baeck Institute for the study of the history and culture of
German-speaking Jewry, ICE and the U.S. Attorney's Office returned a
depiction of St. Jerome back to the university beneficiaries of Stern's
estate.

An ICE investigation revealed the late 16th century oil painting was
forcibly sold by the Nazis through Lempertz Auction House in 1937. The St.
Jerome painting by famed Italian artist Ludovico Carracci ( 1555 - 1619 ),
was in the private collection of prominent Manhattan art dealer Richard L.
Feigen. Feigen unwittingly bought the painting, valued at $55,324, when it
was reoffered by Lempertz in 2000.

The ICE repatriation on April 21, 2009, of another painting from the 1937
forced sale of Stern property, "Portrait of a Musician Playing a Bagpipe,"
garnered extensive media coverage. News accounts of that ceremony led
Feigen to take a second look at the St. Jerome painting. When he realized
that it was an exact match with the one lost in 1937, Feigen immediately
made the information known.

Stern consigned more than 200 paintings to the Lempertz in Cologne,
Germany, after the Nazi regime forced him out of business. The proceeds
from these coerced sales were never forwarded to Stern, who fled Germany
to avoid further persecution and eventually settled in Canada.

"When we returned the "Bagpiper" two weeks ago, we made a plea for art
dealers everywhere to return all paintings stolen in the Holocaust," said
Peter J. Smith, special agent in charge of the ICE Office of
Investigations in New York. "ICE and the US Attorney's Office are grateful
for the cooperation of art dealer Richard Feigen in the recovery of the
Carracci and hope that his leadership will encourage his peers in the
trade to take a good look at their own works."

"On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we had the honor of returning a painting
stolen by the Nazis to the estate of Dr. Max Stern. Today, thanks to
Richard Feigen's selfless action upon hearing about that event, we have
the honor of returning another painting stolen by the Nazis to Dr. Stern's
estate. Our Office and ICE are committed to the goal of repatriating all
surviving works of art stolen by the Nazis," said Lev L. Dassin, acting US
Attorney. "Each work of art recovered is an act of remembrance, a measure
of redemption, and a commitment to justice."

"Our research has determined that there are numerous German auction houses
that have regularly offered tainted property in the post-war period", said
Clarence Epstein, head of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project at
Concordia University. "Such decisions to offer works with problematic
ownership histories into the international art market is clearly
backfiring."

"The depiction of the hermit St. Jerome may have been utilized by
prominent artists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds and passed through Italian
and French aristocratic families before I acquired it for my own
collection," said Richard Feigen of Richard L. Feigen & Co. "It was as a
result of the news on the "Bagpiper" that I made the connection between
the painting and its forced sale in 1937. There was then no question in my
mind as to how to proceed."

Stern and his wife started a foundation that supports universities and
museums across North America and Israel. The Max Stern Art Restitution
Project directly benefits Concordia University and McGill University in
Montreal and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Clarence Epstein,
director of special projects and cultural affairs at Concordia University,
accepted the portrait on behalf of the executors of the estate.

ICE, the largest investigative agency of the Department of Homeland
Security, handles investigations into cultural artifacts that show up on
the world market.

ICE is represented by Senior Special Agent Bonnie Goldblatt in the
Department of State, Office of Holocaust Art Recovery Working Group. The
group is a representation of U.S. experts in the area of Holocaust looted
art in the government and private sector.

For more about ICE's cultural heritage investigations, please go to:
http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/index.htm.

(source: Media Newswire)





USA----GEORGIA:

Commission on the Holocaust presents art exhibit from Georgia students


The Marcus Jewish Community Center is exhibiting the artwork of
the Holocaust Art and Writing contest on the theme of What Are the Lessons
of the Holocaust? The exhibit runs through May in the Fine Family Art
Gallery.

This year marks the fourteenth year for the contest, held in cooperation
with the Georgia Department of Education. The contest encouraged Georgias
middle and high school students may submit artwork and writing entries
about the lessons of the Holocaust.

The Marcus Jewish Community Center is located at 5342 Tilly Mill Road,
Dunwoody, GA, 30338.

The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust is administratively attached to
the Secretary of States Office. The Commission uses the lessons of the
Holocaust to raise cultural awareness, promote acceptance of diversity in
hope to eradicate hatred and prejudice, and provide quality Holocaust and
Diversity Education programs for teachers and students of Georgias schools
as well as for the general public throughout the State of Georgia.

(source: The Daily Citizen)






GERMANY:

Claims conference to Holocaust survivors: Criticize us and lose aid


Ahead of a potentially messy libel case, the world's richest Holocaust
restitution organization, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against
Germany, has offered to give Israeli survivors money in exchange for their
public support and a vow to refrain from criticism, Haaretz has learned.

The survivors, represented by the Centre of Organizations of Holocaust
Survivors in Israel - an umbrella group - refused the offer of the
U.S.-based Claims Conference, calling it an "insulting bribe meant to
silence legitimate criticism." Some are demanding that the Centre break
ties with the Claims Conference.

An advocate of the Claims Conference said the offer was made because of
"irresponsible and damaging behavior" by people from the Centre of
Organizations.

The dispute erupted after the Claims Conference offered a no-interest,
12-month loan of $200,000 to the Centre of Organizations in an internal,
unsigned contract, obtained by Haaretz. The loan, intended "to prevent the
Centre's economic collapse," is conditioned on the Centre "aligning
itself" with the Claims Conference and refraining from voicing any
criticism.

The Claims Conference represents world Jewry in negotiating compensation
for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. It also administers
compensation money and funds institutions providing social welfare to
Holocaust survivors, including the Centre of Organizations. Israel is home
to some 250,000 Holocaust survivors, many of them poor.

The final clause in the proposed contract stated that, should the umbrella
group take the money and then criticize the Claims Conference, it would be
required to repay the debt immediately, and the Claims Conference would
halt future funding.

The Claims Conference gives $50 million annually to the Centre's Welfare
Fund, an independent body. A spokesperson for the Claims Conference said
the final clause does not pertain to this annual funding.

Representatives from the 51 groups that make up the Centre of
Organizations met to discuss the proposal on Wednesday. "We were
outraged," one representative told Haaretz. Another said: "It's obviously
an attempt by the Claims Conference to prepare for their libel suit
against journalist Guy Meroz."

Last year the Claims Conference sued Meroz over his documentary "Musar
Hashilumim" ("The Morality of Payments"), which aired in May 2008, and
accused the organization's leaders of withholding funds from survivors
until after they had passed away. The case has not yet reached the court.

"Welfare organizations in Israel are on the brink of bankruptcy and the
Claims Conference is trying to take advantage of this," a source said.
"It's worse than offering a bribe: It's a dictatorial attempt to silence
opposition."

But Mordechai Hareli, a representative of the Centre of Organizations,
said the offer "cannot be defined as a bribe." Hareli, who called Meroz's
film "sensationalistic," added: "I highly value the Claims Conference's
work from 1951 until today. I don't know where we and this country would
be now without the Claims Conference. But that doesn't entitle them to
trample us."

He added that had the authorities in Israel "properly taken care" of
Holocaust survivors, then "survivors would not have to beg the Claims
Conference in the first place."

The Claims Conference said the Centre of Organizations is asking for
funding to cover "operational costs," not welfare projects. The Claims
Conference called this funding request "highly unusual" but said it was
considering agreeing anyway, considering the absence of other funders.

A Centre of Organizations board member countered by saying the Claims
Conference had funded operational costs for years, before pulling the plug
two years ago. "Now it's conditioned on servility," he said.

A source close to the Claims Conference's leadership said: "People from
the Centre of Organizations have recently lashed out at the Claims
Conference, damaging both bodies. It's unthinkable for the Claims
Conference to be expected to fund a body which behaves like this without
making sure it acts responsibly for the common goal of helping survivors."

Head of the Centre of Organizations, Noah Flug, declined to comment.

(source: Ha'aretz)





SERBIA:

Serbia's Nazi Past and the Holocaust of Jews

Chetnik commander Draza Mihailovich collaborated with Nazis in World War
II and assisted in the destruction of Jews in the Holocaust.



In conjunction with the war in former Yugoslavia, Serbia has undertaken a
campaign to persuade the Jewish community of Serbian friendship for Jews.
This same campaign portrays Croats as a common threat to both Jews and
Serbs, in an attempt to gain Jewish sympathy and support at a time when
most nations have isolated Serbia as a Balkan pariah.

However, even as Serbia courts Jewish public opinion, their propagandists
conceal a history of well-ingrained antisemitism, which continues unabated
in 1992. To make their case, Serbs portray themselves as victims in the
Second World War, but conceal the systematic genocide that Serbs had
committed against several peoples including the Jews. Thus Serbs have
usurped as propaganda the Holocaust that occurred in neighbouring Croatia
and Bosnia, but do not give an honest accounting of the Holocaust as it
occurred in Serbia.

During four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Jewish
communities of Serbia enjoyed religious tolerance, internal autonomy, and
equality before the law, that ended with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire
and the emergence of the Serbian state. Soon after a Serbian insurrection
against Turkish rule in 1804, Jews were expelled from the interior of
Serbia and prohibited from residing outside of Belgrade. In 1856 and 1861,
Jews were further prohibited from travel for the purpose of trade. In
official correspondence from the late 19th century, British diplomats
detailed the cruel treatment of the Jews of Serbia, which they attributed
to religious fanaticism, commercial rivalries, and the belief that Jews
were the secret agents of the Turks. Article 23 of the Serbian
constitution granted equality to every citizen but Article 132 forbade
Jews the right of domicile. The Treaty of Berlin 1878, which formally
established the Serbian state, accorded political and civil equality to
the Jews of Serbia, but the Serbian Parliament resisted abolishing
restrictive decrees for another 11 years. Although the legal status of the
Jewish community subsequently improved, the view of Jews as an alien
presence persisted.

Although Serbian historians contend that the persecution of the Jews of
Serbia was entirely the responsibility of Germans and began only with the
German occupation, this is self- serving fiction. Fully six months before
the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation restricting
Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment. One year
later on 22 October 1941, the rabidly antisemitic "Grand Anti-Masonic
Exhibit" opened in occupied Belgrade, funded by the city of Belgrade. The
central theme was an alleged Jewish- Communist-Masonic plot for world
domination. Newspapers such as Obnova (Renewal) and Nasa Borba (Our
Struggle) praised this exhibit, proclaiming that Jews were the ancient
enemies of the Serbian people and that Serbs should not wait for the
Germans to begin the extermination of the Jews. A few months later,
Serbian authorities issued postage stamps commemorating the opening of
this popular exhibit. These stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian
symbols (but did not contain Nazi symbols), portrayed Judaism as the
source of world evil and advocated the humiliation and violent subjugation
of Jews.

Serbia as well as neighboring Croatia was under Axis occupation during the
Second World War. Although the efficient destruction of Serbian Jewry in
the first two years of German occupation has been well documented by
respected sources, the extent to which Serbia actively collaborated in
that destruction has been less recognized. The Serbian government under
General Milan Nedic worked closely with local Naziofficials in making
Belgrade the first "Judenfrei" city of Europe. As late as 19 September
1943, Nedic made an official visit to Adolf Hitler, Serbs in Berlin
advanced the idea that the Serbs were the "Ubermenchen" (master race) of
the Slavs.

Although the Serbian version of history portrays wartime Serbia as a
helpless, occupied territory, Serbian newspapers of the period offer a
portrait of intensive collaboration. In November 1941, Mihajlo Olcan, a
minister in Nedic's government boasted that "Serbia has been allowed what
no other occupied country has been allowed and that is to establish law
and order with its own armed forces". Indeed, with Nazi blessings, Nedic
established the Serbian State Guard, numbering about 20,000, compared to
the 3,400 German police in Serbia. Recruiting advertisements for the Serb
police force specified that "applicants must have no Jewish or Gypsy
blood". Nedic's second in command was Dimitrije Ljotic, founder of the
Serbian Fascist Party and the principal Fascist ideologist of Serbia.
Ljotic organized the Serbian Volunteers Corps, whose primary function was
rounding up Jews, Gypsies, and partisans for execution. Serbian citizens
and police received cash bounties for the capture and delivery of Jews.

The Serbian Orthodox Church openly collaborated with the Nazis, and many
priests publicly defended the persecution of the Jews. On 13 August 1941,
approximately 500 distinguished Serbs signed "An Appeal to the Serbian
Nation", which called for loyalty to the occupying Nazis. The first three
signers were bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. On 30 January 1942,
Metropolitan Josif, the acting head of the Holy Synod of the Serbian
Orthodox Church, officially prohibited conversions of Jews to Serbian
Orthodoxy, thereby blocking a means of saving Jewish lives. At a public
rally, after the government minister Olcan "thanked God that the
enormously powerful fist of Germany had not come down upon the head of the
Serbian nation" but instead "upon the heads of the Jews in our midst", the
speaker of these words was then blessed by a high-ranking Serbian Orthodox
priest.

A most striking example of Serbian antisemitism combined with historical
revisionism is the case of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic (1880-1956), revered
as one of the most influential church leaders and ideologists after Saint
Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. To Serbs, Bishop Velimirovic
was a martyr who survived torture in the Dachau prison camp. In truth he
was brought to Dachau (as were other prominent European clergy), because
the Nazis believed he could be useful for propaganda. There he spent
approximately two months as an "Ehrenhaftling" (honour prisoner) in a
special section, dining on the same food as the German officers, living in
private quarters, and making excursions into town under German escort.
From Dachau, this venerated priest endorsed the Holocaust:

"Europe is presently the main battlefield of the Jew and his father, the
devil, against the heavenly Father and his only begotten Son... (Jews)
first need to become legally equal with Christians in order to repress
Christianity next, turn Christians into atheist, and step on their necks.
All the modern European slogans have been made up by Jews, the crucifiers
of Christ: democracy, strikes, socialism atheism, tolerance of all
religions, pacifism, universal revolution, capitalism and communism... All
this has been done with the intention to eliminate Christ... You should
think about this, my Serbian brethren, and correspondingly correct your
thoughts, desires and acts." (Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic: Addresses to the
Serbian People--Through the Prison Window. Himmelsthur, Germany: Serbian
Orthodox Eparchy for Western Europe, 1985, pp. 161-162).

Despite Serbian claims to the contrary, Germans were not alone in killing
the Jews of Serbia. The long concealed Historical Archives in Belgrade
reveal that Banjica, a concentration camp located in Belgrade, was
primarily staffed by Serbs. Funding for the conversion of the former
barracks of the Serbian 18th infantry division to a concentration, came
from the municipal budget of Belgrade. The camp was divided into German
and Serbian sections. From Banjica there survive death lists written
entirely in Serbian in the
Cyrillic alphabet. At least 23,697 victims passed through the Serbian
section of this camp. Many were Jews, including at least 798 children, of
whom at least 120 were shot by Serbian guards. The use of mobile gassing
vans by Nazis in Serbia for the extermination of Jewish women and children
has been well documented. It is less appreciated, however, that a Serbian
business firm had contracted with the Gestapo to purchase these same
victims cloths, which sometimes contained hidden money or jewelry in the
linings. In August 1942, following the virtual liquidation of Serbia's
Jews, Nedic's government attempted to claim all Jewish property for the
Serbian state. In the same month, Dr. Harald Turner; the chief of the Nazi
civil administration of Serbia, boasted that Serbia was the only country
in which the "Jewish question" was solved. Turner himself attributed this
"success" to Serbian help. Thus, 94 percent of Serbia's 16,000 Jews were
exterminated, with the considerable cooperation of the Serbian government,
the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian police
and the Serbian
public.

Today, many Serbs proudly cite the Chetniks as a resistance force and even
claim that the Chetniks were somehow allied with the United States during
the Second World War, but this is simply historical revisionism. According
to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Chetnik resistance against the Nazis
came to a complete stop as early as the end of 1941. Thereafter, the
Chetnik resistance actively collaborated with the both Nazis and Fascists,
and for this reason Jewish fighters found it necessary to abandon the
Chetniks, in favour of Tito's Partisans. In reality, the Chetniks,
dedicated primarily to the restoration of the Serbian throne and
territorial expansion of the Serbian state, were the moral counterpart of
Croatia's Ustatsha. Both were quintessentially genocidal; the Chetniks
committed systematic genocide against Muslims, who, for nearly all of 500
years had lived peacefully with the Sephardic Jewish community. Under
explicit orders from their leader Draze Mihajlovic, the Chetniks attempted
to depopulate Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia of all non- Serbs
and in the process, massacred most of the 86,000 to 103,000 Muslims who
perished during the war.

For years, the Serbian dominated Belgrade government has supported and
trained PLO terrorists. Immediately after the murder of Leon Klinghoffer
aboard the Achille Lauro in 1985, the terrorist mastermind Abu Abbas was
welcomed in Belgrade. Since the late 1980's, Abu-Nidal has maintained a
large terrorist infrastructure in Yugoslavia, in coordination with Libyan,
Iraqi, and Yugoslav intelligence services. During the 1991 Persian Gulf
War, as Iraqi missiles landed in Israel, Belgrade supported its ally Iraq.
Support of anti-Israel terrorism may be a consequence of support for
nonaligned Arab states, rather than an expression of anti-Jewish
sentiment.

Although the Jewish community of Serbia is not currently experiencing
persecution, overt expressions of Serbian antisemitism do surface in such
mainstream institutions as the Serbian Orthodox Church and the official
news media. The 15 January 1992 issue of the official publication of the
Serbian Orthodox Church, Pravoslavlje (Orthodoxy), carried an article
entitled, "Jews Crucify Christ Again." In this polemic, "treacherous" and
"surreptitious" Israeli politicians were said to be constrained from
expressing their "pathological" hatred of Christians openly because "they
know that Christian countries gave them the state." Allegedly, nuns are so
frequently beaten in Israel, that one nun was actually "happy, because
they only spit in her face." Only weeks later, when Russia extended
diplomatic recognition to the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and
Slovenia, the official Yugoslav (Serbian perspective) news agency Tanjug
blamed "a Jewish conspiracy" against Serbia, hauntingly reminiscent of the
theme of the 1941 anti-Masonic exhibit.

The essential strategy of Serbian propaganda is to portray the spiritual
kinship between Jews and Serbs as victims of the Holocaust and endangered
by Croats. This concept is disseminated through the Serbian-Jewish
Friendship Society, founded in Belgrade in 1988 and supported by the
Serbian government. In January and February 1992, Dr. Klara Mandic, the
secretary-general and principal voice of this organization, syndicated a
chilling article in the North American Jewish press. This article alleged
that Ankica Konjuh, an elderly Jewish woman, was tortured and murdered by
"Croat extremists" in September 1991. However, even as she released this
story to the press, Dr. Mandic knew that Ankica Konjuh was neither a Jew
nor could have been killed by Croats. Bona-fide witnesses have testified
that Ankica Konjuh, a 67 year-old Croat, was one of 240 civilians
massacred by Serbian forces after the last Croat defenders were driven
from the region. Moreover on 23 December 1991, the Federation of Jewish
Communities of Yugoslavia met in Belgrade and demanded in writing that Dr.
Mandic cease and desist misrepresenting Ankica Konjuh as the first Jewish
victim of the war. Nevertheless, in late February 1992, when Dr. Mandic
lectured at the Hillel House of George Washington University in
Washington, D.C., she provided the rabbi with a copy of that misleading
article, delivered without further comment. It is noteworthy that this
speaking engagement was part of a tour arranged by Wise Communications, a
Washington-based public relations firm representing the Serbian oil
company Jugopetrol, a thinly veiled proxy for the Communist Belgrade
government. Beginning with the proposition that antisemitism has never
existed in Serbia, Dr. Mandic portrayed Croatia as preparing to repeat the
Holocaust. She claimed to be a "Jewish leader," although Jews are
distinctly absent from her constituency. Less than half a dozen Jews are
actual members of her society of several thousand. She introduced herself
as an "eyewitness" speaking on behalf of Croatian Jews, although since the
war began, she has had no contact with any of the nine Jewish communities
of Croatia. When Dr. Mandic was asked to comment on Serbian (Yugoslav
Army) shelling of the synagogue of Dubrovnik, the second oldest surviving
synagogue in Europe, she denied that the synagogue had ever been damaged
at all. Meanwhile, the attack has been well documented by the Jewish
community of Dubrovnik and the World Monument Fund.

Jewish sensitivity to the Holocaust is similarly exploited by the
Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society of America (Granada Hills, California),
an offshoot of Dr. Mandic's organization. Its newsletter equates the
Jewish and Serbian positions during World War II, both as victims of
Croats, but fails to mention Serbian complicity in the Holocaust, Serbian
collaboration with the Nazis, and Serbian genocide against Croats,
Gypsies, and Muslims. It warns of an imminent Holocaust being initiated in
Croatia. A contrasting portrayal of Croatia, however, emerges from a
spectrum of Croatian Jews, American Jews who have visited Croatia, and
international Jewish agencies monitoring events on site. All concur that
there is no state-sponsored antisemitism in Croatia; the rights of the
Jewish minority are respected; and antisemitic incidents are virtually
unknown. Thus, only a few dozen of the 2,000 Jews of Croatia have chosen
to emigrate to Israel since the war began.

Serbia of today and Germany in World War II offer striking parallels. In
1991, Vojislav Seselj, a member of the Serbian Parliament and leader of
the Serbian irregulars who call themselves Chetniks, declared, "We want no
one else on our territory and we will fight for our true borders. The
Croats must either move or die." Croats in Serbian conquered regions are
forced to wear red-and-white armbands, analogous to the yellow armbands
worn by Jews in Serbia during the Holocaust. The stated purpose of the
expulsion of
Muslims and Croats from captured regions is "ethnic cleansing." The
indigenous non-Serbian populations of the invaded territories are being
driven from their homes, exterminated, or imprisoned in concentration
camps, to create regions of Serbian ethnic purity. Jewish community
centres, synagogues, and cemeteries have been damaged and destroyed by
characteristically indiscriminate Serbian artillery attacks. To all of
this, the Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society has remained conspicuously
silent.

Belgrade has promoted the myth of Serbian kinship with the Jews as fellow
victims of Nazi oppression, while concealing the true extent of Serbian
collaboration with the Nazis. It is ironic that Serbia is now seeking
Jewish support for a war in which both the idealogy and methodology so
tragically echo nazism. The European Community, the Helsinki Commission,
the United Nations, and the United States have all condemned Serbia as the
aggressor. Western diplomats have characterized the current Serbian regime
as "a lying, terrorist criminal organization." Serbia, however, claims to
be the victim and campaigns for Jewish sympathy and support, exploiting
the powerful symbolism of the Holocaust. Serbia's professed solicitude for
the Jewish people must be reexamined.

(source: Dr. Philip J. Cohen, Palluxo)