Last year at the request of some of my readers I published part one of a breif summary of Antun Miletić and Vladimir Dedijer´s 1990 book Genocid nad Muslimanima (Genocide of the Muslims) about one of the least known episodes of mass murder during the Second World War. The Chetnik genocide in eastern Bosnia and Sandžak. While Bosniaks were the primary target of the genocide, The Ravna Gora Chetnik movement also targeted ethnic Albanians, Croats, Partisans, Communists, and other “anational elements”. It should also be noted that during the period 41-42 Communists collaborated with the Chetniks and various anti-NDH Serb rebel group which resulted in Partisan participation and/or collusion in massacres of civilians in the first years of the war, most prominently in North and North-West Bosnia. As professor Max Bergholz of Concordia University notes in his work: The Strange Silence: Explaining the Absence of Monuments for Muslim Civilians Killed in Bosnia during the Second World War: The Communists had in their ranks absorbed a large number of former Serb insurgents who had participated in massacres of Bosniak and Croat civilians and that their transformation from Serb rebels and/or Chetniks into Partisans meant that the post-war Communist authorities decided to sweep this under the rug out of fear of implicating the Serb rebels-turn Partisans, many of which were by then prominent members of the movement. This dovetailed with the Bosniak survivors fear of Communist retribution if they spoke out and a general desire to move on, which lead to to this “strange silence” that lasted over 40 years until the last decade of former Yugoslavia.
In his work Bergholz cites among other documents a report commissioned by SUBNOR ( Union of Fighters from the People´s Liberation War) in 1983 and completed by 1986 that pointed out that only one-third of all the places where atrocities had been committed during WW2 were marked. One passage noted that in places like Bosanska Krajina, Hercegovina and eastern Bosnia almost all the sites are un-marked by monuments to the victims. “People are still silent about Muslim victims”, the report said and continued by stating that it´s time to tell people the truth. “There is still a lack of political will to tell the truth. It´s time to tell people that during the first days of the war we lost tens of thousands of Muslim lives”.
Bergholz also writes that many Serbs harboured resentments towards Muslims and Croats which dated back long before WW2 and that many had taken up arms simply to fight “The Turks”. As well as the fact that once in a position to attack, there was very little or no difference between the methods used by Serb insurgents and the Ustasha. During attacks on non-Serb villages insurgents usually killed everyone; men, women and children and burned the villages down. The failure to address these Serb atrocities left among many survivors a sense of bitter resentment, resentment that is only now being slowly addressed. ( Not without resistance ) One such case is a series of articles in a Bosnian weekly STAV which implicated the late writer Branko Ćopić in one such massacre early on in the war. Survivors of the massacre implicated Ćopić in the massacre, saying that he was one of the instigators. Looking objectively at the series of articles as well as what preceded it´s fair to say that it´s part of long running political battle, also involving another, more controversial writer and his treatment at the hands of the former regime. A battle in which both sides are certainly guilty of cynical evocation and distortion of WW2 genocide and resistance. It´s difficult for me to say what the truth is when it comes to Ćopić ´s involvement in the massacre. It is however fairly telling that the people defending Ćopić simply brushed aside the testimony of the survivors of the massacre and went on to distort what had actually been written. The point was to defend what Ćopić stood for in WW2 narrative advanced by the former Communist regime.
Personally I have zero interest in smearing Ćopić, I don´t think that he was a “Chetnik” and no one has actually accused him of being that, despite what people like Dragan Bursać, Enver Kazaz and others say. Stories about Ćopić´s possible involvement in murder of Bosniak civilians had circulated for years, some even speculated that his suicide in 1984, he had jumped of a Belgrade bridge to his death, was due to guilt over his role. It should be added though that´s all it was; speculation. A more likely reason for Ćopić´s suicide was the fact that he had in the latter years of his life fallen out of favour with the regime he had worked so long to prop up, and aside from the stigma that comes with being in the crosshairs of an authoritarian regime one also has to take into account Ćopić´s disillusionment. As for Kazaz and Bursać ? Well both men have a long history when it comes to using false equivalence and when it comes to Kazaz, a philosophy professor at Sarajevo University; outright distortions in his pompous ad-homenim filled rants that pass for serious commentary in thankfully smaller and smaller circles.
Bursać, a Banja Luka-based columnist for “Buka”, and a former soldier in the VRS, the Bosnian Serb Army, who by his own admission had participated in the vicious siege of Bihać recently compared the booing of the Greek national anthem by a small group of Bosnian national side ultras to “Nazis in black shirts”, The incident took place during the return leg of the World Cup qualifiers and is seen as a reaction for the actions of Greek fans in Athens in the first leg: The burning of the Bosnian flag, the beating of a Bosnian supporter and the display of the now infamous Nož, žica, Srebrenica ( Knife, Wire, Srebrenica) banner mostly used by Serb extremists in games against the Bosnian national side, or teams from Bosnia in general as well as teams from Turkey and Albania.
The banner has also been used by Serb fans in games in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The BiH-Greece games also carry with them a lot of bad history dating back to the staunch support Greece gave to Slobodan Milošević´s regime, including extensive military aid to Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs, as well as the presence of Greek far-right paramilitary units in Bosnia ( Greek Volunteer Guard & Golden Dawn) during the war and their presence during the Srebrenica genocide. It should also be said that FIFA fined the Greek Football Federation for the actions of the their fans and they have fined the Bosnian Federation as well for the actions of the BH Fanaticos. The actions of the Bosnian fans were out of place but I suspect Bursać might have a hard time proving they are “Nazis”. They most certainly do not share the long history of violence and fascist celebrations that Serbian (and Bosnian Serb) fans and ultras have become notorious for. And in the case of the Serbian ones; served as a recruiting pool for paramilitaries that would later rampage through Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina.
The ostensible goal of Bursać´s article was a feeble attempt try to equate Bosnian supporters to Serb nationalists by pointing to the excessive use of flags and patriotic symbols by Bosnian supporters. An argument that quite frankly defies comment, given what one sees during any random game between two national sides. What he´s basically saying is; Bosnian supporters are not allowed to wave Bosnian flags because it upsets his delicate sensibilities. Good luck with that. And of course Bursać´s ridiculous comparison of Bosnian ultras to Nazis led to him being made the butt of jokes online. The gist of the jokes being that Bosniaks in general should not wear black because they risk being mistaken for Nazis by Dragan Bursać. I´ve since traded in my black Saab 93 for a blue Volvo. Best to be on the safe side.
But kidding aside it´s like Bursać and others like him live in a vacuum. Completely isolated from their surroundings. In a country where the vast majority of in particular Serbs deplore any sign of Bosnian patriotism and show nothing but disdain for Bosnia and Herzegovina, openly advocating a union with Serbia as a part of a “Greater Serbia”, where the vast majority of Serb politicians openly and proudly sabotage any progress and undermine Bosnia and Herzegovina every step of the way, and where Serbs stone and burn mosques and houses of Bosniak returnees every time Serbia or Novak Đoković lose a game Dragan Bursać choses to write a polemic against Bosnian supporters who proudly and loudly support the national side. The country of their birth. Looking from above his “analysis” and articles in general might seem like angry rants, but ultimately his “conclusions” always tend to lead him exactly where he wants to be. When it comes to WW2 he and others like him wants to at all cost defend a narrative that is deeply flawed and that sweeps under the rug diabolical violence perpetrated by some of those who would later be celebrated as antifascist. The survivors of their atrocities confined to silence or flight in order to avoid persecution as Bosnia and Herzegovina went from one form of totalitarianism to another.
Going back to WW2: The final Partisan-Chetnik break which came in the winter and spring of 1941/42 also lead to a shift in focus for the NOP when it came to recruitment and agitation and a deeper turn towards collaboration with the Axis powers for the Chetnik movement, first with the Italians and later with the Germans. The chauvinism, irredentism and nationalism of the Chetniks meant that any real cooperation with Tito was out of the question for them as the latter sought, ostensibly anyway to form a multiethnic resistance force. The evolution of the Partisan movement in to a multiethnic revolutionary force and the evolution of other movements on the territories of former Yugoslavia during WW2 is covered with much more lucidity by other historians, most notably by Marko Hoare and Jozo Tomasevich. While Antun Miletić and Vladimir Dedijer´s book presents a formidable source of documents and testimony collected in the archives of former Yugoslavia, documents that show the extent of the atrocities committed.
According to Miletić and Dedijer the third mass slaughter of Bosniaks at the beginning of 1943 was tied to a massive German-Italian/Collaborationist offensive in Bosnia and Herzegovina codenamed Operation White (Fall Weiss).
The offensive pitted the NOP against German, Italian, NDH forces, (Ustasha and the Croatian Home Guard) and between 12,000 to 15,000 Serb Chetniks from territories of former Yugoslavia, and other groups loyal or in other way friendly to the Axis powers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the operation began in January 1943, the preparations were taking place in last months of 1942. As the two historians note the commander of the Lim-Sandžak Chetnik Detachment, Pavle Đurišić wrote at the end of December 1942 that: ”in order to destroy the last remnants of the communist bands that have found a safe heaven in one part of Bosnia, the Main Command has ordered us to send 2000 Chetniks from this detachment.”(referring to Operation White)
The joint Axis offensive and the large Chetnik participation saw, as Hoare notes Draža Mihailović Chetnik movment at the hight of it´s sucsess against the Partisans. According to Hoare, Mihailović informed his Chetnik Corps of his plan to destroy the Partisan forces of the Bihać Republic in North West Bosnia. As Hoare writes, Mihailović´s ”March on Bosnia” involved in addition to a campaign against the Partisans, a genocidal campaign against the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sandžak. Mihailović had ordered his men to ”win the support of the Muslims and the Croats” but according to Hoare this represented mearly a tactical manoeuvre that did not change the fundamentally anti-Muslim character of the Chetnik movement. Hoare cites Draža Mihailović from March 1943: ”In Sandžak we have liquidated all the Muslims in the villages, except those in the small towns”. While both Hoare and Miletić and Dedijer cite a report from the commander of the Lim-Sandžak Chetnik Detachment, Pavle Đurišić. written on February 13, 1943 where he writes to Mihailović about his success of his campaign in Eastern Bosnia and Sandžak, more precisely the Čajniče, Plevalja and Foča districts: ”All Muslim villages in the mentioned districts were totally burned so that not a single home remained in one piece. All property was destroyed except cattle, corn and senna. During the operation total destruction of Muslim inhabitants was carried out regardless of sex and age. In this operation our total losses were 22 dead, of which 2 through accidents and 32 wounded. Among the Muslims around 1,200 fighters and up to 8,000 other victims: women, old people and children.”
Hoare also cites a UNS-report ( the NDH surveillance service) from March 1943 about the town of Goražde. According to the UNS-report the Chetniks massacred about five hundred Muslims in the Goražde district. Mostly children, women and old people, and raped many women. In the village of Moćevići they built a lavatory out of Muslim corpses and wrote on the entrance: “Muslim mosque”. (page, 104-105 The Bosnian Muslims In The Second World War: A History)
The massacre in Goražde was a repeat of the massacre carried out by Chetnik major Jezdimir Dangić ´s men in December 1941. Miletić and Dedijer mention the massacre in December 1941. Hoare had previously written about the massacre in his book: Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia. According to the aforementioned accounts Italians handed over Goražde to the Chetniks. As with Foča in part one, and Višegrad and Čajniče. The Chetniks had reached an agreement with the Italians to hand over control of the town to them. The agreement reached between Chetnik major Boško Todorović and the Italian forces in eastern Bosnia under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Castagnieri meant that the Italians evacuated from those towns, leaving them in the hands of the Chetniks as well as receiving significant amounts of food, arms, ammunition and other war equipment. In return, as Enver Redžić notes the Chetniks were obliged to help the Italians in the Goražde-Foča area against the Partisans and Ustasha forces.
The deal between Castagnieri and Todorović was in that way an extension of the one made by the Italians and Montenegrin Chetniks under the command of Pavle Đurišić and Đorđe Lašić. (see part one) Dangić, Boško Todorović, Lašić and Đurišić were all of course subordinate to Mihailović and were authorized by the latter to make the deals with the Italians.
Dangić and his men entered the town some time between the 29th of November and December 1st. After entering the town Dangić gathered a crowd of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats in the town and gave a speech saying that the three groups could no longer live together. In the days that followed Dangić´s men executed all the NDH officials in the town along with members of the Croatian Home Guard that had surrendered and then proceeded to spread through the town systematically killing Muslim and other non-Serb civilians. The bridge across the river Drina leading into Goražde was used as an execution site with a large portion of those killed being later dumped into the river. In that instance several hundred people were killed. On the very night the Chetniks entered the town they began dividing up the population of the town.
The killings and looting began as it did in other towns captured by Chetniks. According those who survived the slaughter, and some Serb witnesses, aside from the citizens of Goražde, the Chetniks brought with them prisoners from surrounding towns. Places like Rogatica, Višegrad, Čajniče and Foča. As Hoare notes in his book these massacres were not “revenge” for Ustasha atrocities given that there had not been any large-scale atrocities by NDH forces in eastern Bosnia at that time. It was an expression of the genocidal policy and ideology of the Serb nationalist Chetnik movement, and it would also enable the Ustasha commander for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jure Francetić to recruit survivors fleeing the Chetnik terror in eastern Bosnia into the Black Legion.
BiH News Platform 