Introduction: Propaganda as History

There has been a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign launched by neo-Ustasha Croatian “scholars” and “historians” to distort, manipulate, and falsify the role of Belgrade and Serbia in the Holocaust and during World War II. This Croatian propaganda campaign was intended initially to support the destruction and ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Krajina Serbs during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia that began in 1991.  In 1995, the Krajina Serbs were driven out an expelled from Croatia en masse, the largest ethnic cleansing campaign of the Balkans conflicts and the largest act of genocide, the total destruction and elimination of an ethnic and religious group or community, in Europe since World War II. This Croatian ultra-nationalist propaganda and disinformation campaign waned after the Serbian population of Krajina was wiped out and eliminated. The propaganda and falsification campaign had achieved its purpose and it was jettisoned. Nevertheless, the residue of the Croatian neo-Ustasha and ultra-nationalist propaganda remained and was subsequently recycled and reused by Bosnian Muslim and Albanian Muslim ultra-nationalists. They wanted to recycle the propaganda to help them achieve a Greater Muslim Bosnia and a Greater Albania.

	Serbian civilians hanged in Pancevo by German occupation forces

Concomitantly, there is a Communist history manufactured by Communist Yugoslav historians after World War II that distorted and manipulated the facts and events to preserve an ideological construct of the conflict. The Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian Muslim, and Albanian sides were divided into “Ustashi”, “Chetnici”, “Turci”, and “Balisti” respectively. They were all equated and shared equal moral responsibility and culpability. They were all the same. It was only the Communist Partizani who were against the German occupation and who actively resisted. All the other factions were “collaborators”. A stereotypical and overly simplistic model emerged that was based not on facts and actual events but on ideology and the Communist Party line of Yugoslavia. The role of Serbian resistance and guerrilla leader General Draza Mihailovich was distorted, manipulated, and falsified by Communist historiography. Mihailovich was equated with Ante Pavelic. The roles of Serbia and Croatia during the Holocaust and World War II were equated.

The Croatian propaganda campaign, similarly, relied on equating the Ustasha NDH regime with German-occupied Serbia. The modus operandi is to equate the two entirely different cases. The Croatian disinformation campaign makes the following erroneous claims:

“The first experiments in mass executions of camp inmates by poison gas were carried out in Serbia. Serbia was the first country to proudly declare itself ‘Judenfrei’ (‘cleansed’ of Jews).”

Both of these claims are false.

Then Croatian propaganda hit upon using the Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition that was staged in Nazi-occupied Belgrade from October 22, 1941to January 19, 1942 when a series of four postage stamps were issued. The objective of this disinformation scheme was to show that Serbs committed genocide against Jews during the Holocaust. This is a totally preposterous and insane idea. But this makes use of the Hitlerian Big Lie Technique. The bigger the lie is, so much the better.

Reviving The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

The anti-Masonic stamp campaign was the showpiece of Croatian propaganda in all its brilliant and splendid glory. In this Croat disinformation campaign, medical doctor Philip J. Cohen was hired to present the Croatian thesis, a revival of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Serbia’s Secret War: Propaganda and The Deceit of History was the name of the book, published in 1996 by Texas A & M University Press. An ad for the book appeared in the prestigious Foreign Affairs and Richard Holbrooke cited it in his bibliography for his autobiography, To End a War. Holbrooke did not cite many sources, but Cohen’s book is one that he went out of his way to cite, along with Croatia: A Nation Forged in War by Marcus Tanner, a total propagandistic whitewash of Croatia’s history.

Philip J. Cohen, a medical doctor, was the paid front man of a propaganda tract from the Croatian Ministry of Information.

Who concocted this anti-Masonic stamp thesis to show the Serbian genocidal “worldview”? Was it Philip J. Cohen? Cohen was a front man. The Croatian backers of the book used him because of his Jewish name to front this rubbish and trash. Cohen is not even a historian. He is a hack, a paid “scholarly” mercenary.

Who is Philip J. Cohen? Philip J. Cohen was born in 1953 and received a degree from the New College in Sarasota, Florida. He studied at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey. He later worked at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. His interest in Serbian or Yugoslavian history is as a hobby or as a dilettante. He has no scholarly or academic background on Serbia. Does this raise any red flags? In 1996 he published Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. Who is Philip J. Cohen? Cohen is a hack, a ringer, a front man. He is a paid “presstitute”, a literary whore for Croatian neo-Ustasha propaganda. It is a case of a medical doctor writing “history” on the side as a hobby. It is like Harvey Sarner, who is a lawyer, not a historian, writing a “history” about Albania during the Holocaust. It is a hoot. He was hired to front man this trash by his Croatian paymasters and handlers. His Croatian masters just wanted to use his Jewish last name to lend credibility to the mindless drivel which originally derived from the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993. Indeed, it was just a rehash of the Ljubica Stefan book from 1993. The most hilarious part of the diatribe is a preface by the late sociologist David Riesman in which he claims that, like the Germans, the Serbs kept meticulous and detailed records of their alleged crimes. This is an insane instance of confusing a supposed trait of German society and culture with that of Serbian society and culture. Riesman does not have a clue. His Croatian handlers should have informed him that these alleged German national traits are not those of Serbs. Indeed, Riesman writes that the Serbian people are primitive, backward, and “illiterate”. But then how could “illiterate” Serbs keep such detailed and accurate records when they cannot even read or write? The stupidity that Riesman exhibits is mind boggling. If Cohen’s book wasn’t reprehensible for its racism, it would be a hilarious spoof of racist thinking and buffoonery. And these people call themselves “educated” and “scholars”. They are educated fools and morons.

Like the discredited The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and The Eternal Jew “documentary” by the Nazis, Philip J. Cohen posits a Serbian worldwide conspiracy, “Serbia’s Secret War”, much like the supposed Zionist or Jewish conspiracy. Cohen argues that it reveals a Serbian “worldview”. You extrapolate from a few individuals to an entire people and an entire religion. Voila! You have a worldview. What is a “secret war”? It has allusions to clandestine intelligence operations or subversion, such as “the CIA’s secret war”. It also has allusions to a global Jewish or Zionist “conspiracy”, but with the Serbs as the culprits. But how credible is Cohen’s notion of a global Serbian conspiracy? What would happen if he substituted the word “Jewish” for “Serbian”. Then he would be attacked as a mindless, anti-Semitic racist and thoroughly discredited. But use the same racist paradigm against the Serbs, and you get your ads in Foreign Affairs and your book extolled by Richard Holbrooke and Margaret Thatcher. How credible is Cohen’s insane accusation?

The “Myth” of Jasenovac and the Ustasha Genocide

What Cohen really means by his mindless drivel is that some Serbs maintain the “myth” of the Jasenovac concentration camp and the “myth” or “fairy tale” genocide committed by the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim Ustasha during World War II.  This is really the gist and purpose of the book. Cohen is really the window dressing to make this insanity palatable to prominent Jewish figures in the US. The source of the book is the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ljubica Stefan, who was born in Macedonia and lived most of her life in Belgrade. But how accurate is Cohen’s allegation?

	An order by the Croatian government in 1941 ordering Serbs and Jews in Zagreb to leave certain neighborhoods, 1941.

What “secret war”? The Croatian Jasenovac concentration camp is one of the most censored and covered-up events of the Holocaust and World War II. There has never been any mainstream historical account of the Ustasha genocide against Serbs. There has been no mainstream account of the Jasenovac concentration camp in the US and the West. Why? Part of the reason for this massive cover-up is because the Vatican and the Croatian Roman Catholic Church were involved and implicated in the genocide. There is a book, Genocide in Satellite Croatia, published by the American Institute for Balkan Affairs, by French historian Edmond Paris, and a book, The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, published by Prometheus Books, by Vladimir Dedijer, a Communist crony of Tito’s, that examine the Croat Ustasha regime and the genocide. But these are hardly mainstream historical accounts. They are fringe books to say the least. So the notion of a “secret war” is absurd and ridiculous. Cohen and his Croatian handlers need not worry. Jasenovac and the Ustasha genocide remain as the most censored and covered-up topics of the Holocaust and World War II.

An Exercise in Croatian Public Relations

Who was the target of the Cohen book? Prominent Jews in the US were the targets. Holbrooke cited it and Margaret Thatcher wrote a positive blurb for it. It was published by the Texas A & M University Press. This should set off some red flags and alarms. This is where Stjepan Gabriel Mestrovic and Norman Cigar are based. This is the hub of the neo-Ustasha cabal. Stjepan Mestrovic is a sociology professor at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, not a historian. He wrote the foreward to Cigar’s Genocide in Bosnia.

Mestrovic orchestrated essentially a PR campaign to improve the image of Croats and Croatian-Americans.  He “recognized the efforts of Croatian-Americans to promote and preserve their culture, but said most importantly they need to change the image that much of the world holds of ‘demonic Croatians as Ustasa,’ which was perpetuated during World World II.”

Mestrovic emphasized that the objective was to change the genocidal image of Croatians: "But the hard work is yet to be done: changing Croatia's image…Italy invented fascism, but people think of pizza when they think of Italy.”

How is this to be achieved? Mestrovic maintained that the focus should be on “influencing Washington: "We have to send the best charmers, the Bill Clinton clones, to embassies in Washington and London."

Mira Radielovic Baratta, the former adviser on foreign affairs to former Senator Bob Dole when he was senator, emphasized that Croatian-Americans should “influence policy” in the US by focusing on “issues that are relevant to the U.S. government, such as human rights, democracy and the flight of refugees.”

She encouraged Croatian-Americans to become involved in political fund-raising for candidates who support their causes. "This is an important means to building influence," she wrote.

Finally, she suggested that Croatian-Americans seek out and cooperate with other organizations, such as human rights groups. "Coalitions are effective," she wrote.

Hidden Manipulators

What is the source for this Croatian propaganda? Who really wrote it and created it? Did Philip J. Cohen concoct this disinformation campaign?

The origin of this disinformation campaign can be found in the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The thesis appears in From Fairy Tale to Holocaust by Ljubica Stefan, a tract published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Zagreb in 1993. Who is Ljubica Stefan?

Ljubica Stefan is described as a retired professor, a “refugee” from Belgrade where she lived for 30 years, who “researches genocide against Albanians, anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews, as well as the behavior of Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church in World War II.” She was born in Prilep in Macedonia, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, in 1921 and died on March 17, 2002 in Zagreb. She moved to Zagreb in 1992 and began writing virulently anti-Serbian polemics and diatribes as evidenced by publications such as From Fairly Tale to Holocaust, which was published and subsidized by the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Croatian government. This was state-sponsored propaganda and disinformation, not objective scholarly or academic research, not history. She has written a book on The Serbian Orthodox Church and Fascism, published in 1996 by Globus in Zagreb, and Stepinac and the Jews, published in 1998 by the Croatiaprojekt in Zagreb, a revisionist apologia meant to rehabilitate Croatian Roman Catholic priest Alojzije Stepinac, a convicted war criminal implicated in genocide and war crimes.

An anti-Semitic brochure, Zidovi (Jews), from the anti-Semitic exhibition held in Zagreb from May 1 to June 1, 1942.

Stefan conceals the fact that, in 1942, an anti-Semitic exhibition was held in Zagreb called “Zidovi”, the Croatian word for “Jews”, from May to June. The cover photo showed a Croatian using a sword to kill a giant snake, representing global Jewry. A brochure was published by the city of Zagreb that mapped the location of Jews in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina and showed Jewish-owned businesses. This was a prelude to the ustasha expropriation, incarceration, and mass murder of the Jewish population of the NDH.

Anti-Semitic exhibitions were routine in Nazi-occupied Europe. Not only did the German occupation forces sponsor such exhibitions in Serbia and Croatia, but in Belgium as well. From March 5 to April 26, 1943, there was an anti-Semitic exposition or exhibition in Brussels. These Nazi “exhibitions” were created and sponsored by German occupation authorities and featured the same Nazi propaganda posters and images from the 1930s and 1940s. For example, the Nazi propaganda posters in the Brussels and Belgrade “exhibitions” featured the same 1930s Nazi propaganda poster from Germany. The movie poster for the Nazi movie The Eternal Jew, or Der Ewige Juden (1940) by Fritz Hippler was exhibited. The posters and “stamps” were derivative of German anti-Semitic posters. What distinguished the Croatian case was that Croatia was a willing ally of Nazi Germany. Serbia was not. Serbia was a militarily occupied and dismembered rump statelet. The Croatians, by contrast, created a Greater Croatia as allies and willing coalition partners with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Croatia: A Nazi Ally

Holocaust historian Christopher Browning noted that there was a major difference and distinction between the Croatian Ustasha regime and the General Milan Nedic regime in Serbia. Browning concluded that the Croatian regime was directly and significantly involved in the murder of Jews. This is different from the case in Serbia where the German military and civil occupation authorities organized and conducted the murders themselves. Indeed, the German occupation authorities faced obstruction, resistance, and opposition in Serbia. Serbia was under direct German military occupation with a mass resistance movement headed by General Draza Mihailovich. This was unique to Serbia. The Serbian case is more akin to the Judenrat or Jewish Councils which the Nazi occupation forces established in Nazi-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. These were administrative bodies composed of Jewish political and religious leaders in the Jewish community who were responsible for local government in the ghettoes. The German authorities made the councils responsible for organizing lists of Jews, deportations, and labor recruitment. The Judenrat was imposed by force. There was no choice involved. Similarly with Serbia, the regime Germany established in Serbia had no choice in the matter. They were not allies or loyal partners as Ante Pavelic was. The goal was to preserve the Serbian population. It was known as the government of “salvation”. Like the Judenrat, the alternative was even more brutal Nazi measures against the population.

Croatian historiography seeks to equate the puppet regime of General Milan Nedic in Serbia with that of Ante Pavelic in Croatia. Is this accurate? On August 29, 1941, the German military occupation authorities in Serbia installed the puppet or quisling regime of General Milan Nedic, a veteran of the Balkan Wars and World War I. This was called the "Government of National Salvation" because the goal of the regime was to preserve the Serbian population from total destruction and extermination. It may be perceived as a misguided and controversial attempt to prevent total national annihilation. Adolf Hitler had dismembered Serbia to the point of a rump state. Hitler detached Kosovo-Metohija and created a Greater Albania. The Banat region was made into an Autonomous region under direct German military control and put under Volksdeutscher administration. Hitler created a Greater Croatia that included Bosnia-Hercegovina and consisted of territory that included Semlin or Zemun just outside of Zagreb. Hitler annexed the Bachka region to a Greater Hungary. Hitler installed Nedic in the rump territory that remained. Hitler emphasized that the only alternative was a brutal direct German military administration that would be even more destructive. On September 1, 1941, Nedic gave a speech on Radio Belgrade where he explained that his regime was formed to "save the core of the Serbian people".

	General Milan Nedic, the Nazi-installed puppet of rump Serbia, making a speech in 1941.

The Nedic regime was able to save an estimated 600,000 Serbian refugees who fled the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim genocide in the neighboring NDH, Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. An estimated 86,000 Serbian children were saved from the Ustasha massacres. Most of the refugees and expellees were Serbs, but there were also Slovenes who escaped to safety in Serbia. Milan Kucan, who later became the president of Slovenia, was one of those who found refuge and safety in Nedic’s Serbia. These were real victims of “ethnic cleansing”.

Moreover, over 150,000 Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija were expelled when Hitler made Kosovo a part of Greater Albania from 1941 to 1944. These Kosovo Serb refugees found shelter in Nedic’s Serbia. Tens of thousands of Serbian refugees and expellees from Srem and the Bachka region annexed to a Greater Hungary by Hitler, found refuge in Serbia. Finally, and estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Slovenes and Croats fled to Nedic’s Serbia as well. To equate Ante Pavelic with Milan Nedic is preposterous and totally inaccurate. It is not supported by the facts and the evidence.

In Nedic’s Serbia, it was the German occupation authorities who ran the death and concentration camps. In the Ustasha Croatia under Ante Pavelic, it was the Croatians themselves who ran the death and concentration camps.

Croatians Committed Genocide against Jews

The cases are totally different in German-occupied rump Serbia and in Ustasha Croatia. In Croatia, it was Croatians who set up their own extermination or concentration camp at Jasenovac, as well as other death camps at Stara Gradiska, Sisak, Djakovo, Lepoglava, and Loborgrad. Here the Croatians killed the Jews, Serbs, and Gypsies themselves. The Croatians themselves organized, planned, and committed the mass murders of Jews. Not only did the Croatians commit the genocide themselves, they even shocked the Germans with their bestiality and perfervid mania to kill. In Greater Croatia, approximately 33,000 Jews were killed, almost exclusively in camps created by Croatians themselves. The Croats turned over approximately 5,000 Jews to the Germans who subsequently killed them in the German concentration camps. The number of Jews killed in Serbia was approximately 14,000, killed almost exclusively by German occupation forces. This is an important difference and distinction. Croatian and Bosnian Muslim propaganda, masquerading as historiography, seeks to blur the meaningful distinctions. In Greater Albania, Albanian Muslim troops in the Kosovar Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg rounded up and apprehended the Kosovo Jews and turned them over to the German occupation forces who then deported them to the Nazi death camps.

Moreover, the Croatians made up the armed forces of the NDH, forming joint divisions with the Germans, made up of ethnic Germans, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims. The German Army raised the 369th, the 373rd, and the 392nd German-Croatian Infantry Divisions in the NDH. In other words, Croatians and Bosnian Muslims made up the military forces in the NDH. Indeed, the Croatian NDH regime event sent the 369th Croatian Reinforced Regiment, made up of Roman Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims, to Stalingrad in 1942, where it was destroyed. In addition, the Croats sent naval and air force regiments with the German Army in the invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union. In Serbia, by contrast, the German army had to occupy Serbia directly with German military formations because German troops were the only reliable forces in the conflict with the Serbian insurgents. This is what the Croatian government, through mouthpiece Stefan and front man hack Philip Cohen seeks to conceal. This is what they want to obfuscate. This is the “deceit of history and propaganda” they want to get away with.

This obviously does not mean that all Croats, all Bosnian Muslims, and all Albanians were Nazi or fascist collaborators. Many Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians were in the resistance movements and opposed Nazism and fascism. The NDH, which consisted of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Greater Albania, which consisted of Kosovo-Metohija and Western Macedonia, were both products of the Nazi invasion, occupation, and dismemberment of Yugoslavia. They were both regimes and “states” that Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler created. But this is not the point. This hides and conceals, however, the differences and meaningful distinctions.

	Croatian NDH Nazi stamps commemorating the Croatian Legions sent to the USSR, incluring the Regiment sent to Stalingrad.

There was a systematic, planned, and organized Croatian genocide of Jews. In Croatia, the Croatians themselves ran the death or concentration camps. In Serbia, Germans ran the camps. Even the Sajmiste camp, regarded as a camp in Serbia, outside of Zemun, was in Croatia at the time, as part of the territory of the NDH, a Nazi Greater Croatia whose territory extended to Zemun outside of Belgrade. The camp was run by German authorities. Croatian political and religious leaders advocated the extermination of Jews, Serbs, and Gypsies, and even participated in the mass murders, forced conversions, and deportations. In Serbia, by contrast, it was Serbian civilians were murdered by German occupation forces at Kragujevac, Pancevo, and Kraljevo because of Serbian resistance. There was an insurgency and uprising in Serbia, unlike any other country in Europe. This is an important fact. Serbs rejected the Nazi New order in Europe, while Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians accepted it and even embraced it as their own.

Holocaust historian Christopher Browning noted that Croatians themselves were responsible for the genocide against Jews in Croatia, while Germans were responsible in Serbia. Browning wrote that “the gas van was invented by the Germans, an early version used in euthanasia and the ‘improved’ version used at the death camp at Chelmno and elsewhere. One such van, manufactured in Germany, was sent to Belgrade and used by the Germans to kill the Jewish women and children interned at Semlin.  I have found no evidence that the Nedic regime was significantly involved in the murder of Serbian Jews, in contrast to the Ustashe regime and the Jews of Croatia. As for Turner, he was an SS officer in charge of the German ‘military administration’ (Militaerverwaltung) in Serbia.  There was no civil administration.”

Croatian and Bosnian Muslim propaganda masquerading as history claims:

“In August 1942, Dr. Harald Turner (the chief of the German civil administration in Serbia) announced that Serbia was the only country in which the ‘Jewish question’ was solved and that Belgrade was the ‘first city of a New Europe to be Judenfrei.’ Turner himself attributed this success to Serbian help.”

The purpose here is to implicate Serbia and the Serbian population. In fact, at the time of the murders, the Serbian population was engaged in an unprecedented insurgency or resistance movement against the Nazi occupation. The German military occupation authorities in Serbia had promulgated a law that mandated that for every German soldier killed, 100 Serbian civilians would be executed in retaliation. For every German soldier wounded, 50 Serbian civilians would be executed. This kind of resistance and opposition to the Nazi occupation was unheard of and unknown in other parts of Europe. This is what the Croatian propaganda seeks to obfuscate and to conceal.

In fact, “Dr. Harald Turner” was the SS Gruppenfuehrer who headed the German Military Administration in Occupied Serbia. His title was “Chef der Militarverwaltung in Serbien”. What Turner actually said was: “…Serbia is (the) only country that has solved (the) problem of the Jews and gypsies.” So both the Gypsy and the Jewish Questions were “solved” in Serbia. As Browning noted, there was no “civil administration” in Serbia because Serbia was always under direct German military occupation and administration. Turner was the one responsible for the murders of Jews in Serbia. The reason Croatian/Bosnian Muslim propaganda fakes the facts by claiming Turner was the head of the “civil administration” is to conceal the fact that Serbia was under military occupation and administration, unlike Croatia. The Croatian propagandist skillfully makes it appear like “Dr. Harald Turner” is merely a civilian observer in Belgrade who is “exposing” the Serbian “government” for its “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”. In fact, Turner was a member of the SS, a high ranking SS Gruppenfueher, who was in charge of the German military occupation in Serbia who was a fanatical anti-Semite who organized the murders of the Jews in Serbia himself. The trick here is to associate the actions of Turner with those of the Serbian people or the Serbian “government”. It is a pretty idiotic and moronic attempt at racism and ethnic and religious vilification. But it gives an excellent indication of the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim mindset on the Holocaust and World War II history.

	Ante Pavelic, center, an ally with Nazi Germany, with Vatican legate to the NDH Ramiro Marcone, on left.

Herald Turner wrote a letter on April 11, 1942 to SS Obergruppenfuehrer Karl Wolff, chief of Heinrich Himmler’s personal staff, which described the murders of Jews in Serbia. Wolff was photographed and filmed reviewing the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division Handzar with Himmler later in the war. In the fifth paragraph, Turner described the "delousing van" or "Entlausungswagen," which was used in the "definitive clearing out" of the camp of Jewish women and children, which occurred after the men were shot:

“Dear Comrade Wolff!

…Already some months ago, I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on in this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD got my hands on a "delousing van," that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp, which in any event since the arrival of Meyssner and the turning over of this camp to him, was continued by him. Then the time is come in which the Jewish officers to be found in prisoner of war camps under the Geneva Convention find out against our will about their no longer existing kinfolk and that could easily lead to complications.

Heil Hitler!

I am as always your loyal Turner.”

SS Gruppenfuehrer August Edler von Meyszner became the Higher SS and Police Leader in Serbia, Höhere SS und Polizeiführer Serbien, H.S.S.P.F., in January, 1942. Coming from German-occupied Norway, he was responsible for internal security, the war against the resistance and the implementation of the "final solution" in Serbia, from 1942 to 1944.

Mobile Gas Vans

What were the mobile gas vans? When and where were they first used?

Mobile gas vans consisted of trucks that were transported to execution sites where the victims were asphyxiated to death using carbon monoxide gas produced the engine of the vehicle itself. Mobile gas vans were used to kill an estimated 700,000 persons during the Holocaust. The first use of the mobile gas vans was as part of the “euthanasia” or T4 program in Germany itself in the late 1930s, a program which targeted physically and mentally handicapped German citizens. This was part of the controversial Nazi racial hygiene program that was later discontinued because of widespread opposition within Germany. Carbon monoxide exhaust gasses generated by the combustion of gasoline by the engine of the vehicle were channeled into sealed chambers.

	Croatian leader Ante Pavelic, left, in friendly company with Adolf Hitler

In September, 1941, Soviet prisoners of war were murdered in Sachsenhausen by channeling the carbon monoxide exhaust fumes into the sealed compartment of the truck itself. In November, 1941, mobile gas vans were sent to the occupied Soviet Union where Einsatzgruppen used them to gas Soviet Jews. Mobile gas vans were used at the Chelmno camp in December, 1941.

In the internment camp Sajmiste at Semlin or Zemun, 6,280 Jews were killed by a special command using gas vans. What is left out, however, is that the Sajmiste camp was part of Croatia, in the Nazi-fascist created Independent State of Croatia, the NDH, a Ustasha regime committed to exterminating the Jewish, Serbian, and Gypsy populations of Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. This was not the first time that the German forces used mobile gas vans as Croatian propaganda erroneously claims.

Mass Executions of Serbian Civilians

The German military occupation conducted mass executions of Serbian civilians. These mass murders of Serbian civilians were to deter guerrilla activity and to prevent resistance to Nazi occupation of Serbia.

German military photographer Gerhard Gronefeld (1911-2000) was with a Wehrmacht propaganda company and was able to photograph the mass executions of Serbian civilians in Pancevo, northeast of Belgrade in Vojvodina. Gronefeld had worked for Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer of the NSDAP, the Nazi Party, since 1935. During World War II, Gronefeld was a member of the Wehrmacht “propaganda company”.

He took photographs for the German military propaganda pictorial “Signal”and was on occasion a special correspondent. He documented German military operations and military “retaliatory measures”, such as the executions of Serbian civilians by hanging and firing squad in Pancevo during the Balkans campaign.

Gronefeld recalled the German executions of Serbian civilians in Pancevo in a news dispatch from the Associated Press from March 7, 1997, by Terrence Petty:

“MUNICH, Germany (AP) - Thirty-six Serb civilians visit Gerhard Gronefeld sometimes as he sleeps. He photographed them, just before they were hanged or shot to death by a German army unit in 1941.

On those haunted nights, waking him in terror, is his memory of the pleading eyes of the Serb victims - 35 men and one woman.

‘Those eyes, those eyes. They will never give me peace,’ says the 85-year- old Gronefeld, who went from battle to battle across Europe as a propaganda photographer in the German armed forces.

Eleven of his photographs of the reprisal massacre in Pancevo, Serbia, are part of a traveling exhibit that documents atrocities committed in the Balkans and the Soviet Union by Germany's regular armed forces, the Wehrmacht.

The exhibit has caused a furor during its current stop in Munich. The governing conservative party of Bavaria state calls it an insult to the Wehrmacht. Leftist politicians retort that critics of the exhibit are trying to gloss over history. And about 5,000 neo-Nazis marched through Munich on March 1 to protest the display.

The exhibit confronts Germans with a fact many would rather not admit: Ordinary soldiers, not just special units like the Nazi SS elite guard, killed Jews and other civilians.

Of hundreds of photos in the Wehrmacht exhibit, only Gronefeld's were taken by a professional photographer assigned to the Wehrmacht. The German army destroyed most evidence of its involvement in the Holocaust and other atrocities.

Suspecting that his photos of the killings would likely be destroyed, Gronefeld never turned them over to his superiors. Nor was he asked for the photos. Gronefeld says he kept the pictures because he wanted to some day tell the world what happened at Pancevo.

Gronefeld says he did not like Hitler or his ideas, and refused to join the Nazi party. But he willingly took photos for the Wehrmacht after he was drafted into a propaganda unit in 1940.

‘I never saw myself as a soldier, but as a photographer. I didn't even know how to shoot a gun,’ says Gronefeld, who is now confined to a wheelchair.

After the war, Gronefeld did freelance work for German publications and for foreign magazines such as Life and Look.

Gronefeld rode on German patrol boats off the coast of England, photographed triumphant German troops after they marched into Paris, and accompanied Wehrmacht units as they invaded the Soviet Union. His wartime pictures appeared in German publications to illustrate army victories.

Gronefeld says the execution at Pancevo was the only atrocity he witnessed. The 36 civilians were rounded up at random in revenge for the killing of two SS officers by Serb partisans.

Gronefeld photographed the civilians being taken to the cemetery, where they were executed. He snapped frame after frame as the victims were made to stand on chairs, nooses were placed over their heads and the chairs were kicked away.

‘In their eyes before they died, I saw their last appeal for mercy,’ Gronefeld recalled.

After 18 died on the gallows, the remainder were taken to the cemetery wall and executed by firing squad. Gronefeld photographed a soldier who drew his pistol and finished off a wounded victim.

At the time, he says, he understood the Wehrmacht's desire to avenge the death of German soldiers. But he also felt pity for the victims, and still does.

‘They were completely innocent of any wrongdoing,'' he says.’”

Serbs were victims during the Holocaust, not perpetrators of crimes as asserted by Croatian disinformation campaigns meant to conceal their genocidal history during the Ustasha period. In World War II, an estimated 200,000 persons died in Serbia during the German occupation. An estimated 70,000 persons were killed in German-run concentration camps and in reprisal for resistance activity, while 69,000 Chetnik and 67,000 Partisan guerrillas and insurgents are estimated to have been killed in the conflict.

Conclusion: The End of the German Occupation

Harald Turner was tried by a Yugoslav war crimes court at Belgrade for his role in ordering atrocities, deportations, and mass executions during the German occupation of Serbia. He was sentenced to death and executed on March 9, 1947. According to research by Peter Havlasa, in the March 19, 2004 article, “EU Congress is either insane, lying or both”: “The widow of SS Gruppenfuhrer Harald Turner, who’s claim to infamy was ordering the ‘killing of everything that’s possible’ in Yugoslavia, received officer grade pension.”

SS Oberfuehrer Wilhelm Fuchs was tried, convicted, and executed for war crimes in Serbia in 1947. As leader of Einsatzgruppe "Serbien", Fuchs was held responsible for the murders of Jews in Serbia. SS Gruppenfuehrer August Meyszner, the Higher SS and Police Leader in Serbia, was tried for war crimes, convicted, and executed in 1947 in Belgrade. SS Oberfuehrer Emanuel Schafer was the head of the security police in Serbia during the German occupation. Schaefer was sentenced after the war, in Germany, to six and a half years in prison, for his role in the murder by gassing of 6,280 Jewish women and children in Serbia.

The German occupation of Serbia came to an end on October 10, 1944 when the German forces retreated from Belgrade to prevent an encirclement by advancing Russian troops. The Nazi occupation had come to an end. But the propaganda and disinformation war had only begun as the history of the period was distorted, manipulated, and falsified.

Bibliography

Browning, Christopher R. Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution. NY: Holmes and Meier, 1985.

---“The Wehrmacht in Serbia Revisited,” International Symposium on Military War Crimes: History and Memory, NY, December 1999.

---“Germans and Serbs: The Emergence of Nazi Antipartisan Policies in 1941,” A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, ed. By Michael Berenbaum (NY: NY University Press, 1990), 64-73.

---“The Final Solution in Serbia. The Semlin Judenlager—A Case Study,” Yad Vashem Studies XV (1984), 55-90.

---“Wehrmacht Reprisal Policy and the Mass Murder of Jews in Serbia,” Militargeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 1983/1, 31-47.

“Harald Turner und die Militarverwaltung in Serbien, 1941-42,” Verwaltung contra Menschenfuhrung, ed. By Dieter Rebentisch and Karl Teppe. Gottingen: V and R, 1986, 351-373.

---Correspondence with Author. August 11, 2006.

---Conquest of the Balkans. Alexandria-Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1990.

Kogon, Eugen; Langbein, Hermann; Rückerl, Adalbert; eds. Nazi Mass Murder, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1993.

Mitchell, Ruth. The Serbs Choose War. NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1943.

Simic, Charles. A Fly in the Soup: Memoirs. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, 2004