yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 1
movement was for the most part identified with the Serbs, while the
participation of other peoples in it was marginalized. The crimes
committed by the Chetniks remained overshadowed in the public
mind by those perpetrated by the Croatian Ustashas.
In fact, Yugoslav authorities had exaggerated the number of
victims in World War II in order to get as much compensation from
Germany as possible. The real number of victims remained a secret
until the early 1990s. Inflated losses, especially with regard to Jasenovac
(where they claimed that 700,000 of their ethnic kin perished),
were part of the mythology that helped enlist the Serbs in Croatia
to throw their weight behind the Greater Serbian project. When the
Committee for the Collection of Documents on the Genocide was set
up, Serbian nationalists launched a campaign to disclose the tragic
fate of Serbs and Jews in World War II to prove that both had been
victims of Croat and Muslim persecution. 63
The Society of Serb-Jewish Friendship, established in Belgrade
in 1987 under the auspices of the Serbian government, played a prominent
role in spreading such messages. Representatives of the society,
which was supported by Slobodan Milošević, paid several visits
to Israel after June 1990. The society made much of Serbian resistance
to Nazism and stressed the spiritual affinity of Serbs and Jews as victims
of Nazi persecution. 64 It also had more specific tasks, such as
63 The figure Serb propagandists use is 700,000 Serbs, Jews, and Roma killed in the
Jasenovac concentration camp . Two independent demographers (one Serb and
the other Croat) have come up with 70,000–83,000 . Vladimir Žerjavić in “Opsesije i
megalomanija oko Jasenovca i Bleiburga . Gubitak stanoovnistva Jugoslavije u drugom
svetskom ratu” [Obsessions around Jasenovac and Bleiburg, Demographic losses of
Yugoslavia in the Second World War), Zagreb, Globus, 1992; Bogoljub Kočović, “Žrtve
drugog svetskog rata” [Victims of the Second World War), Sarajevo, Svijetlost, 1990
64 During World War II, almost the entire Belgrade Jewish community perished in the Holocaust .
Having embraced the main ideas of National Socialism, especially those concerning racial
purity, Serbia’s authorities under General Milan Nedić turned into diligent executors of the
occupier’s policy against the Jews . Jews were denied the right to work, robbed of their
property, and stripped of all their civil rights . Olja Milosavljević, Potisnuta istina. Kolaboracija
u Srbiji 1941–1944 (The Suppressed Truth, Collaborationism in Serbia 1941–1944), Helsinki
Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Belgrade, 2007 . State Counselor Harold Turner