yugoslavias implosion

the establishment of diplomatic relations between Serbia and Israel.
(The sfry did not have full diplomatic relations with Israel because
of its nonaligned policy and close relations with Arab countries.)
The society, under the leadership of Klara Mandić (murdered in 2001
under mysterious circumstances), and supported by the philosopher
Ljubomir Tadić, organized a “Serbia Week” in Israel with the assistance
of Dušan Mihajlović, the president of the New Democracy
Party and the Serbian minister of internal affairs. 65
In a 1985 letter to Israeli writers, Vuk Drasković described the
Serbs as the late-twentieth-century Jews: “For the Serbs, every
square foot of Kosovo is Jerusalem, for there is no difference
between Serb and Jewish suffering. The Serbs are the thirteenth,
lost and unfortunate tribe of Israel.” 66 Serbian authorities manifested
their “sympathy” with Jews through numerous articles stressing
the friendly relationship between Serbs and Jews—even though
anti-Semitism (a deep-rooted phenomenon in Serbia) was on the
rise, as evidenced by ever more frequent desecrations of Jewish
cemeteries.
The National Issue Persists
As the idea of a Socialist Yugoslav lost legitimacy. the Serbian
national elite closed ranks and discussion of the Yugoslav
issue revived. Interestingly, the number of citizens who considered
reported to Berlin as early as August 1942 that Serbia was the only country in which the Jewish
and Gypsy question had been solved . Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the
Banality of Evil, Penguin Books, 1994 . In consequence, Belgrade was officially declared the “first
city of a New Europe to be Judenrein (cleansed of Jews) .” World Jewish Congress, http://www.
worldjewishcongress.org/en/communities/show?id=34.
In recognition of their successful solution of the “Jewish question,” Nedić’s Serbia
and Nedić himself received a published tribute from the Reich leaders . Mirko
Đorđević in Nedim Sejdimović, Antisemitizam u Srbiji: od vožda, preko Nikolaja,
do grafita, 26 March 2005, http://www .nedimsejdinovic .com/?m=200503 .
65 Gordana Janičijević interviews Klara Mandić, ‘Njene rane nema ko da
leči’ (No one to heal her wounds), Duga, June 11–24, 1994 .
66 Naša reč, No . 373, Middlesex, England, November 1985 .
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