Interviewer: Olivera Miletovic
In the introduction of the first volume of thsi book, the author, our guest, says that the 20th Century was the Century of 'Megadeath'. Two world wars, revolutions, civil wars, claimed more than 170 million ...lives. Of those, some 80 million were unarmed civilians. Among the many forms of mass murder, genocide has a central place. Just in WWII, the author states, of 55 million killed, 10 million were victims of genocide: Jews, Armenians [sic; this genocide happened during WWI], Roma, Ukranians, Russians, and approximately one million Serbs. However, little attention has been given to this genocide in intellectual circles because, as the author believes, there was an organized strategy of 'planned oblivion' and 'getting over the past'. The idea stemmed from Pope Pius XII. Thanks to protests of the Jewish diaspora, an increasing number of analysts studied genocide. The most important were the works of Theodor Adorno and the renowned Hannah Arendt. Scholarship was focused exclusively on the destruction of Jews in Germany. Genocide became a key element of Jewish identity, indeed the state of Israel is founded on it. Genocide of the Serbs, perpetrated in the Independent State of Croatia, according to methods of extermination is among the most monstrous, but this genocide has been erased from world history. Why? Is just one of the questions we put to our honorable guest the author of the two volumes of the book, Professor Dr. Smilje Avramov.
Professor Avramov, I spoke of these two volumes of your book. I will show it. It can be found at the bookstore at Nikola Street and many other bookstores. And I stated before the program that 'after reading your book I discovered many new facts even though I thought I knew much about genocide already. And it is hard to articulate the entire story in sixty minutes, but I would like to begin with the beginning. Why did genocide happen to us? Why in 1945 did the Serbs not realize what had happened to them?
Prof. Dr. Smilje Avramov (SA):
It is very difficult to answer that question with one sentence. It is very difficult to draw a line of separation between our subjective weaknesses at the time and objective circumstances. We should not forget that in 1945 was the year of the division of spheres of itnerest between the East and the West, that that was the year of the UN's founding, in which we placed huge hopes, even with, you might say, a romantic hopefulness. That's one side of the coin. We need to set forth that the Communist Party which was at that time at the helm of this country was confronted with very difficult problems, which is to say, it did not deal forthrightly with the central problem with which it was confronted. We easily forget the fact that Broz [Josip Broz Tito] liquidated, even during the war, the most eminent Communists. [The prison in zagreb] Kerestinic, where the top intellectuals were imprisoned, was attacked in an amateurish fashion, and the prisoners were all killed by the Ustashe and that attack was on Broz's orders. We should not forget that in Uzice very many Communists died. We should not forget that even today we still do not know how Sava Kovacevic died. We know something of the death of Lola and his brother but of the deaths of many Communists, of many important Generals, during the war, we know little. In 1944 and 1945, Broz found himself without any rivals. And not to mention [Mustafaa] Golubic, who was sent by Stalin to replace Tito. When he landed in Belgrade, Broz was informed and Golubic was handed over to the Germans, and he was killed here in Belgrade. Thus, Broz liquidated everyone who might stand in his way and found himself at the top of the Party, and could with the remnant of the Communists, who did nto realize their true position, do whatever he wanted, and he did so. To understand the role of Broz, this fact is very important. I just discovered it, quite accidently, I think very few in Yugoslavia know it. I came upon a book by Koch, a French theorist, called 'There Are None Innocent' where he exposes the entire story of the deaths of top Communists in Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. And, he, the author, was involved in the French Intelligence, so his facts are very authentic. That entire action was coordinated by a prominent British official, one Fields. Koch states that the U.S. Intelligence Service came during the Cold War, during the struggle between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, during infombiro that the service came to the conclusion that they could not count on the liquidation or defeat of Communists in Eastern Europe while Stalinist elites, those who dogmatically followed Stalin with dedication, existed. The British Intelligence Service was not convinced, and it states that the process was going on in Hungary, Bulgaria, and so on so that Titoism would not spread. However, the British Intelligence Service, and recently declassified information, states that these processes were organized by the British Inteligence Service. Not in one document available to us is there any contradiction of what Koch states.
[To be continued]
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