Germany should express remorse over the crimes committed against Serbs - opinion

Slightly more than two months ago, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution, which was not supported by a majority of its member states (84 voted in favor; but 68 countries abstained; 19 voted against, and 22 countries, including Israel, were not present for the vote). It adopted a resolution designating July 11 as the “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica,” condemning the denial of genocide, as well as the glorification of war criminals.

Why was this heinous war crime chosen out of so many massacres committed during the modern era to be designated as a case of genocide? The UN General Assembly did so, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Bosniaks who had escaped to Srebrenica, which had been officially proclaimed as a haven for Bosnian Muslims, were not harmed by the troops of the Republic of Srpska. In fact, all the women, children, and elderly men, who constituted a huge majority of the 25,000 refugees, were released unharmed.

Such an absurd decision is hardly unusual in the United Nations, where politics is the name of the game, and certain political allies have an automatic majority. Under these circumstances, Serbia did not stand a chance of preventing the passage of this resolution. Israelis can commiserate with Serbia since Israel, too, was the victim of patently politically motivated resolutions and unfair criticism passed in the General Assembly. The most famous and outrageous of which was the “Zionism is racism” resolution.

While Serbia can take some consolation in the fact that a majority of General Assembly members declined to support the resolution, one of the most infuriating aspects was that the resolution was proposed and cosponsored by Germany. While German responsibility for the horrific “Final Solution” implemented by the Nazis to completely annihilate European Jewry is common knowledge, few people outside of former Yugoslavia are aware of the extent and cruelty of Nazi crimes against the Serbs during World War II.

Nazi brutality was already on display from the first day of the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, when they launched a murderous fire-bombing attack on Belgrade, during which the National Library and its precious collection of books, some of which were even from the 12th century, were all destroyed. This was followed in the areas under German military occupation by the erection of infamous Nazi concentration camps, such as Banjica in Belgrade, and the notorious Crveni Krst (Red Cross) in Nis, where about fourteen thousand of innocent, mostly Serbs, were murdered.

Black Octobers everywhere

This was accompanied by massive reprisals against the Serbian civilian population, which were far more drastic than the measures taken in other occupied countries (100 civilians, in some cases including children, executed for the death of a German soldier, and 50 for a wounded one). The most notorious slaughter of innocents took place in Kragujevac in aptly-named “Black October” of 1941.

A substantial number of Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans), residents of Yugoslavia, acted as a fifth column during the years leading up to the war and then joined the Nazi invaders, many volunteering to join the S.S. 7th Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen.

In the annexed areas of Yugoslavia, the Germans’ allies committed horrific crimes against the Serbian civilians with the full permission and support of the Nazis. The worst perpetrators in this regard were the Croatian Ustasha, who launched a genocidal campaign against the Serbs, during which they were massively slaughtered in rural areas and in the concentration camps they built throughout the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which the Germans created following the occupation of Yugoslavia. Serbs, Jews, Roma, and anti-fascist Croatians were tortured in the most horrific ways, and ultimately murdered in Jasenovac, the camp which became a symbol of Ustasha cruelty and depravity.

'Nazi Germany had complete responsibility'

Even Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, the German military envoy in Zagreb, harshly criticized the terrible Ustasha atrocities, warning that they would cause an uprising of the local Serbian population. Nazi Germany had complete responsibility for them as well. It not only created the preconditions but also conceived the NDH. Nazi Germany never made any attempt to restrain the Ustasha genocide campaigns launched by the NDH’s dictator Ante Pavelic. On the contrary, Hitler told him that if the NDH wants to be stable, intolerant nationalist policy must be conducted for 50 years, since too much tolerance can only create problems.

The head of the foreign policy committee of the German Bundestag, Michael Roth, referring to the negative reactions from Belgrade to the passage of the resolution on Srebrenica, called them “shameful and disappointing.” He added that suggesting in response to pass a similar resolution on Jasenovac seems an attempt to divert attention. “The point is not for some to point fingers at others.”

 Despite understanding what Roth wanted to say, the lack of an elementary expression of regret and remorse is unacceptable. It is certainly not about the absence of honoring the victims as such, but the absence of special consideration for their fate, which should be forthcoming from Germany, which had full responsibility for Jasenovac as well. Until today, however, there is no feeling in the Balkans that Germany has ever expressed any remorse or regret for the crimes committed against Serbs.

Instead, for political reasons, it has too often sided with those who acted to Serbia’s detriment. Germany is among the most important investors and foreign trade partners of Serbia. It is certainly one of the central countries of the European Union, so important to Serbia as well. Precisely because of this, it would only be natural to expect an expression of historical responsibility towards the Serbian people and reverence for its victims.

Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs. Aleksandar Nikolic is an honorary consul of the Republic of Serbia to Israel.