by Carl Savich

Trepca - the name will live alongside those of Belsen, Auschwitz and Treblinka… etched in the memories of those whose loved ones met a bestial end in true Nazi Final Solution fashion.
- The Mirror, 1999

Introduction

Trepca? The Trepca Crematoria? The Trepca Ovens? Does anyone remember the Trepca Propaganda Hoax? The Mirror (UK) predicted that it would be an enduring symbol for genocide, like Belsen, Auschwitz, and Treblinka. But who can even remember Trepca today? Propaganda has a short life-span. Once used up, propaganda is always discarded.

What was the Trepca Crematoria Oven Hoax? The Trepca Crematoria Oven Hoax emerged during and following the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999. NATO representatives accused the Serbian/Yugoslav forces of incinerating the bodies of 700-750 Albanian civilians at the Trepca Mine Complex near Kosovska Mitrovica in northern Kosovo. According to a Sunday Times news report of October 31, 1999, as early as September, 1998, local Albanians had seen trucks going in and out of the Trepca Complex which they alleged was a clandestine attempt by the Yugoslav forces to burn the corpses of Albanian civilians. On June 6, 1999, the Observer ran a news story that purported to detail the Serbian/Yugoslav attempt to burn the bodies of Albanians in “Serbs ‘burning bodies’ in rush to hide war crimes evidence.” The Observer report alleged that the Serbian/Yugoslav forces were burning at least 100 bodies a day at Trepca. The Trepca Complex had functioned as a crematorium for two months according to the Observer. The corpses of 6,000 Albanian civilians had been incinerated to conceal the evidence of war crimes, to destroy evidence sought by the ICTY. NATO had justified the bombing of Yugoslavia, called ‘illegal but legitimate”, on the pretext that NATO was preventing genocide in Kosovo. NATO sought to preclude  a repeat of the Holocaust, a Final Solution for Kosovo which the Balkan Adolf Hitler, Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, was seeking to implement . NATO accused Slobodan Milosevic of organizing a conspiracy to ethnically cleanse and exterminate the Albanian population of the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija. Milosevic and the forces he controlled were engaged in a systematic and planned policy of genocide against the Albanian population.

NATO was using a genocide/Holocaust propaganda rationale to justify an illegal bombardment, invasion, and occupation of Yugoslavia. “Genocide” was the key propaganda term. To make the propaganda allegation stick, the Yugoslav political and military leaders and the Yugoslav/Serbian population had to be portrayed in propaganda terms as Nazis. Slobodan Milosevic had to be portrayed as a new Adolf Hitler. What resulted was the “Nazification of the Serbs” by the NATO countries and the NATO media. NATO even created a Nazi-style propaganda office headed by the Joseph Goebbels-like Jamie Shea. After the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, NATO even conceded that it had engaged in propaganda during the illegal bombardment. But the “free and independent media” of the NATO countries did a much better job than the Joseph Goebbels wannabe Jamie Shea. The media of the free world was doing Jamie Shea’s job for him, and more effectively. On March 29, 1999, for instance, The Sun published an article that parroted the NATO “Nazification of the Serbs” propaganda strategy: “Nazis 1999---Serb cruelty has chilling echoes of the Holocaust.” The New York Times printed a story that quoted local Kosovo Albanians who said they detected an “unusual, pungent bittersweet smell, which they assumed to be burning bodies.”

The allegations that the Serbian/Yugoslav forces had incinerated bodies at Trepca was based totally on hearsay testimony from Albanians and spin-doctored information based on NATO/US State Department press handouts. US Defense Secretary William Cohen alleged that the Yugoslav/Serbian forces had murdered 100,000 Albanian civilians in Kosovo. The US Information Agency gave this figure: “The number of unaccounted-for ethnic Albanian men ranges from a low of 225,000… to over 400,000. “ But no evidence was found for these allegations. The UN, NATO, the ICTY, and the OSCE sent French, Finnish, and Spanish Forensic teams to investigate the NATO genocide allegations. But no evidence was found whatsoever. The head of the Spanish Forensic team, Emilio Pujo, left in exasperation and disgust at the NATO propaganda claims. Pujo stated: “We only found 187 cadavers and now we are going to return.”  Pujo was contemptuous of the US/NATO propaganda war. He claimed that he had found no mass graves. He had expected to examine 2,500 bodies but found 187. The Trepca Crematoria Oven allegations were attacked as a hoax and fraud perpetrated by the US government/media and NATO propaganda. John Laughland lashed out at the US government/media hoax in a scathing attack, “The massacres that never were”, in the Spectator, October 30, 1999.

Nazis 1999: The Trepca Crematoria Ovens

The Trepca Crematoria Ovens allegation, the existence of Auschwitz-style crematoria in 1999 Kosovo, was exposed as a hoax. But about a year after the original story appeared, National Public Radio revived and regurgitated the hoax in an “investigative” news report by Michael Montgomery and Stephen Smith which appeared as a production of American Radio Works (ARW).  ARW was part of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), itself a branch of NPR. Montgomery and Smith revealed the results of their investigations in “The Promise of Justice: Burning the Evidence.” They purported to show the incineration of thousands of ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces under the command of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The secret operation was part of a “highly-organized effort” to conceal evidence of possible war crimes carried out by an elite unit of the Serbian security service, JSO.

What were the sources for the story? Montgomery and Smith interviewed former Serbian/Yugoslav “fighters” in Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo. The sources were identified only by their first names: Milan, Dusko, and Branko. They remained anonymous. One has to wonder why anonymity must be maintained? It is similar to the K41 testimony in 2002 against Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY. Moreover, why go by what Serbs say? When did the Serbs gain credibility with the so-called West? Why did what Serbs say or think matter all of a sudden? How credible was their hearsay “evidence”? Why was what they said regarded as etched in stone fact? Why would they implicate themselves and prove true all the lies the US government and media had manufactured about them? What could possibly be their motive? They had been “Serbian fighters” in a secret police unit, the Unit for Special Operations, which was under the control of Slobodan Milosevic. This unit was known as the Frenkies or Frenki’s Boys, named after the their leader, Franko Simatovic. Frenki’s Boys were “a secret army” that used the blast furnaces at the Trepca Mining Complex to incinerate the bodies of Albanian civilians. They estimated that between 1,200 to 1,500 Albanians had been burned at Trepca. This is a remarkable figure because even NATO propaganda only claimed that 700-750 Albanians had been incinerated. NPR had outdone Joseph Goebbels! Even Jamie Shea had claimed at most 750 bodies were incinerated. The bodies were placed on conveyor belts, “like a factory assembly line but with bodies”, and incinerated in the furnaces. The imagery is straight out of a World War II documentary on Auschwitz and Dachau. The Holocaust propaganda paradigm worked in Bosnia so it was repeated in the Kosovo conflict by the US government/media. The bodies were dug up from mass graves/execution sites and transported to Trepca in refrigerator trucks.

How did they explain the fact that no evidence of the cremation of human remains was found at Trepca by the OSCE, French forensic investigators, and ICTY investigators? The evidence was missed because they “must have looked in the wrong place.” Moreover, Montgomery and Smith argued that it was not possible to detect whether human remains were incinerated or not. In other words, NPR argued this: Prove that the Trepca Crematoria did not exist. Prove a negative. Nevertheless, Montgomery and Smith hedge their conclusions with ambiguity. They claimed that “possibly” 1,500 Albanians were burned at Trepca while conceding that more than 1,000 Serbian and Gypsy (Roma) were also missing and presumed dead. How can the victims of genocide also be the perpetrators of genocide?

Trepca a US government/media Hoax

The NPR “investigative” report was immediately disproved and debunked. The US infowar/psyop image of Auschwitz-like crematoria ovens at Trepca was absurd. It was also a manufactured fraud or hoax. Who manufactured the Trepca Crematoria Ovens Hoax? The US government and the virtually government-run and state-run media it controls, the so-called free and independent press, created the Trepca Hoax.

The NPR Trepca Hoax was challenged and attacked by the non-mainstream media. Sarah Standefer, of Women Against Military Madness (MADD), in “The Promise of Truth”, attacked the NPR story as a domestic instance of propaganda: “The propaganda war against the Serbs and Yugoslavia came home to Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) on January 25, 2001…. This piece of journalism is the latest example in a long list used to demonize the Serbs and Yugoslavia.” Who was behind the Trepca Hoax? Minnesota Public Radio is merely the state branch of National Public Radio (NPR), based in Washington, DC. Kevin Close, the president of NPR, headed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is a holdover from the Cold War propaganda apparatus set up by the CIA. RFE/RE is a massive CIA propaganda machine. NPR is merely the domestic version, intended for domestic consumption. But MPR and NPR and American Radio Works are merely fronts for the US government. The source for the Trepca Hoax is the US government which then disseminated the hoax to a state-run media, not much different than the Soviet or Nazi media that RFE/RE was so prone to attack.

That the US government was behind the Trepca Hoax was disclosed the day after the broadcast of the NPR report. In the January 26, 2001 AP article “U.S. accuses Milosevic forces of mass burnings of bodies in Kosovo” by Barry Schweid, US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher stated at a press conference that “there were attempts to burn bodies and otherwise cover up evidence at places throughout Kosovo.” At last, the real source for the Trepca Hoax is revealed. The puppet master/master of deceit appears. But did anyone really believe that the US government did not concoct the Trepca Hoax? Is anyone that gullible? Reporters asked Boucher if the NPR story could be confirmed by the US State Department. Boucher spoke in ambiguous terms, plausible deniability. Boucher stated that there were “attempts” to incinerate bodies by the Serbian forces in Kosovo, ”but if we are actually able to say in our report, ‘They burned bodies at this site,’ I don’t know.” Boucher stated that Trepca was the place where “activity” was “going on.” In other words, Boucher did not know if the story was true or false. The investigative article on NPR was merely speculation.

The Trepca Hoax was shown to be a US government/media manufactured hoax immediately. On January 26, 2001, in the AP story “OSCE says no sign of mass burnings found in Kosovo,” by Fisnik Abrashi, Claire Trevena, an OSCE spokesperson, debunked the NPR allegations: “Our people have had a report of this, but they found no evidence to substantiate it.” She noted that a French Forensic team was sent to the Trepca Mine Complex using the “most sophisticated equipment” but “has not found anything there.” Graham Blewitt, the deputy prosecutor of the UN ICTY, the war crimes tribunal, stated that the tribunal investigators at the Trepca mine “couldn’t confirm” that bodies of Albanians had been disposed by burning. CNN published a story on January 26, 2001, that similarly debunked the NPR Trepca Crematoria Oven story/allegation: “No evidence for Kosovo furnace deaths.” Benjamin Works disproved the Trepca story in the February 8, 2001 analysis, “Kosovo: Liberals Recycling Atrocity Propaganda”. Justin Raimondo attacked the NPR allegation on Antiwar in the article “Lying about Kosovo”. Stratfor showed the falsity of the Trepca allegation in “Where are Kosovo’s Killing Fields?” In “Kosovo Killing Fields?” from the New Statesman for November 21, 1999, John Pilger exposed and disproved NATO propaganda claims of genocide in Kosovo:

Kosovo is today’s slow news. Slow news is news that is ignored or minimized. It is a highly effective, though generally unrecognized, form of censorship in democracies. The expulsion and terrorizing of 240,000 Serbs and other minorities from Kosovo since Nato took charge is of little media interest.

If NATO/US were genuinely concerned for human rights and the prevention of genocide, why is the NATO/US-sponsored ethnic cleansing of 240,000 Kosovo Serbs ignored? Why is a REAL act of genocide, the ethnic cleansing of 240,000 ethnic Serbs from Kosovo and the destruction of over 100 Serbian Orthodox churches by the UCK/KLA, censored in the US media while instead a phony atrocity hoax is concocted about the burning of Albanian corpses in the Trepca Mine Complex? The Trepca allegation by NPR was debunked and exposed as a fraud/hoax. But what purpose did it serve?

Propaganda is functional. Propaganda is never random or by accident. Infowar is never intended as  “interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen” but always serves a purpose or function. The NPR Trepca Hoax was timed to coincide with a US campaign to pressure the Yugoslav government to hand over Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague Tribunal. Moreover, the Trepca Hoax was intended to whitewash the fact that there was no evidence of genocide in Kosovo as US/NATO propaganda maintained. In other words, there was no justification or rationalization for the illegal NATO/US bombing, invasion, and occupation of Yugoslavia. The US/NATO bombing was illegal. The NPR Trepca Hoax was meant to create a smokescreen to camouflage or obfuscate this fact. NPR averred: There were no bodies in Kosovo not because there was no genocide. The US/NATO were justified to allege genocide. There were no bodies because the Serbian forces burned them. Therefore, the US/NATO war against Yugoslavia, illegal under the UN Charter and international law, can still be justified. This is what motivated the Trepca Hoax.

Propaganda of the Deed

The Trepca Hoax is an example of Propaganda of the Deed in propaganda analysis.  In short, it is a staged media event. The propagandist does not have to say or write anything. The event speaks for itself. The event tells the whole story. This is called Propaganda of the Deed. The alleged sinking of the USS Maine by the Spanish in 1898, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964, the Markale Marketplace Massacre in Bosnia, and the Orahovac and Racak Massacres in Kosovo are famous examples of Propaganda of the Deed, staged events. Daniel Boorstin termed such incidents as “pseudo-events”, manufactured events. Pseudo-events serve a propaganda function. Once the propaganda function is achieved, they are discarded. This is why no one remembers the Trepca Crematoria Oven Hoax today. No one remembers and no one cares. This is because pseudo-events are meant to be disposable and transitory in nature. Once they achieve their purpose, they are no longer needed and are trashed. Whether they are true or false is irrelevant. Who cares? We won the Spanish-American War and occupied Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Who cares how the Maine actually sank?

The beauty of propaganda is that to counter it necessitates proving a negative, which is virtually impossible. But all propagandists know this. The US propagandist asks: Can you prove that the Serbian forces did not burn Albanian corpses at Trepca? This is essentially the NPR position. NPR argues that it could be true. But all propaganda could be true. That is the secret of propaganda. Adolf Hitler noted this in Mein Kampf (1924): “At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought it insane; later, it got on people’s nerves; and, in the end it was believed…The great masses of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” The propagandist is in a win-win situation because he forces the victim to prove a negative. Proving a negative is virtually impossible.

Ambiguity is essential in propaganda. No one knows for certain why the Maine sank. Can you prove the Spanish did not sink the Maine? The inherent ambiguity of propaganda and propaganda of the deed is that it allows controversy to remain. Moreover, if you throw enough mud, some of it will indeed stick. In “Debunking the ‘Racak Hoax’ Hoax”, The Texas Mercury, Volume II, Issue 12, Matthew Hogan relied on the inherent ambiguity in propaganda of the deed to argue that exposes of hoaxes and analyses of propaganda are in themselves hoaxes. Everyone has a bias. So in theory, we will always get biased and self-interested analyses. This is also something every propagandist knows. Is there unbiased, objective truth? As Pontius Pilate asked Jesus Christ in John, 18:38: “What is truth?” So propaganda will always present epistemological issues. Ambiguity and inconclusiveness are inherent in propaganda.

The Trepca Crematoria Oven story was disproved by NATO/US itself but this information was not released. Richard Boucher stated that in May and June 1999, the US government briefed the ICTY “on the Serb campaign to destroy the evidence.” But senior French police officials who had inspected the Trepca Mine concluded that it had been closed in late March, 1999, after the NATO bombardment, and never reopened. This fact conclusively disproved the Trepca story. Moreover, as Benjamin Works showed, US satellites had infra-red heat sensors that would have detected any burning of bodies at Trepca. But Works was informed by US/NATO sources that the Trepca mines had been as “cold as a cucumber” during the NATO war. The Trepca mines had never even operated during the NATO bombardment! NATO/US had this information but had not released it. Why?

The Spanish Forensic team found no evidence of genocide in Kosovo. The search for mass graves was “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did not find one - not one - mass grave” according to Emilio Pujol, the head of the Spanish forensic team. The ICTY, OSCE, NATO investigators could find no evidence that bodies were incinerated at Trepca. The NPR story was based entirely on hearsay, innuendo, and speculation.

The Klecka Case

Ironically, the Trepca Hoax overshadowed a real case of the burning of corpses to conceal evidence of genocide. In October, 1998, Yugoslav police arrested two Albanian members of the UCK/KLA in Kosovo who were accused of incinerating the corpses of Serbian civilians after they were found at the kiln. The Albanians also disposed of the Serb bodies at a lime pit. The kiln and lime pit were located outside Klecka, a Kosovo town that was a training base for the UCK/KLA terrorist forces. The Yugoslav police alleged that the bodies of two men, one woman, and two children, aged between 8-12 years old, were found. The Yugoslav police obtained confessions from the two KLA members. The police alleged that over 100 Serbian civilians were incinerated at the kiln, later reducing this figure to 22. But unlike the Trepca Hoax, evidence was found to substantiate the claim of the incineration of human corpses. The Finnish Forensic Team found bone fragments and human tissue at the site from three adults and obtained DNA samples. The evidence showed that the KLA had incinerated corpses. The bodies showed evidence of gunshot wounds. The Yugoslav police had confessions. The Klecka case, however,  was ignored and suppressed by the US government and media because the victims were apparently Serbs. The Klecka case, a real case of genocide, was suppressed and covered up in favor of a manufactured hoax.

The US media and government, moreover, suppressed the fact that the UCK/KLA were the successors of the 21st Waffen SS Division Skanderbeg, a Nazi formation under the control of Heinrich Himmler, the “architect of genocide”, that committed a REAL genocide against Kosovo Serbs and Jews during World War II. Instead, the US government/media manufactured a phony propaganda image of the Serbian people and leaders as Nazis. But the fact that the UCK/KLA/NLA/ANA was the successor of the Nazi SS Skanderbeg Division was suppressed and covered up. The genocide the Albanian Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg committed in Kosovo was likewise suppressed and covered up. Is this possible in the Information Age? Is it plausible that the US government/media/pundits could be ignorant of the Balli Kombetar, the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS “Skanderbeg” (Albanische Nr.1), and the genocide ethnic Albanians committed during World War II when “Kosova”, Kosovo-Metohija, and “Illirida”, western Macedonia, were part of a Greater Albanian state, created and sponsored by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini?  Under the Selection Technique in propaganda, information that does not support your argument is ignored. So this information on a REAL genocide was suppressed and covered up. It was “slow news”. The Klecka incineration of Serbian corpses as the Yugoslav police alleged was censored. The expulsion and ethnic cleansing of 240,000 Kosovo Serbs was censored. Instead, the media focus was on a propaganda hoax, the Trepca Crematoria Ovens Hoax.

Conclusion

There was no incineration of bodies at Trepca. The US/NATO allegation of a crematoria at Trepca was a hoax. OSCE spokesperson Clare Trevena disproved the Trepca allegation: “Our people have the report on that, but they did not find out one evidence which would confirm that…As far as we are concerned, there was no mass killing there.” Emilio Pujol of the Spanish Forensic team left in disgust, stating: “We’re finished here.”  Michael Montgomery and Stephen Smith were not objective and unbiased investigative journalists. They were propagandists. They hid the fact that they worked for The Independent International Commission on Kosovo, which had been set up by George Soros, a main backer of the UCK/KLA terrorist army. The Soros Commission was created with the assumption that a genocide had occurred in Kosovo and that the Serbs were guilty of it. The source for the Trepca Hoax was the US government. The Trepca Hoax is an example of the propaganda technique termed Propaganda of the Deed, a staged or manipulated event or incident. Like all propaganda, once its usefulness has passed, it is discarded and forgotten. Who even remembers the Trepca Hoax today?

The Trepca Hoax, however, was meant to demonize an entire people so that they could ultimately be killed and their land taken from them.   This is what happened to the Serbian population of Kosovo-Metohija. Kosovo Serbs were murdered in “revenge killings” and 240,000 Kosovo Serbs, Roma, and Jews were expelled from Kosovo. Like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a manufactured hoax, which sought to demonize all Jews as a people, so, too, the US/NATO hoaxes, are meant to demonize the Serbs as a people. The ultimate goal of all propaganda/hoaxes is to allow the killing of the “enemy”. So, like the Protocols, the Trepca Hoax, is meant to encourage genocide, not to prevent it. So even if we prove that Trepca was a hoax, the harm has been done. The racist demonization of an entire people has been achieved. An in that regard, the propagandist has succeeded. The propagandist has won.