Crimes of Fascism, Crimes of Silence - the Myth of Albanian Revenge
By George Thompson (posted 12-17-1999) Introduction by Jared Israel
Editor's Note: This is the fifth of six parts of an Report that every American needs to read. It has bothered me for several years that the American press has NEVER made any effort to honestly report what is happening in the Balkans.
How can I say that? Because every report, going back to the Bosnian conflicts, were invariably reported only from the Muslim perspective. I spent a lot of time checking numbers of Muslims who actually lived in the towns where, it was reported, large numbers of Muslims were "massacred" by Serbs. The numbers killed often exceeded the numbers that were there in the first place by thousands. Reporters were not reporting where all the supposedly "missing" Muslims had come from.
It has not been said in this report, but the facts are so different than what you are being told, just as was the case in the 1930s when Adoph Hitler was convincing the German people that the Poles were planning to "attack Germany," as he planned his attack ON Poland, that you, as an individual are faced with the sobering challenge: Are Americans standing silently by as an entire nation of people are being killed or forced to flee yet ANOTHER European nation?
Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
The Committee for National Solidarity Tolstojeva 34, 11000 Belgrade, YU
www.emperors-clothes.com
GETTING BACK TO "REVENGE"
As I noted, one of the reasons Westerners don't rise up against the terror inKosovo is - they have been told over and over that the Serbs deserve it. Even if Westerners don't believe this lie fully, it serves to blunts opposition.
To emphasize Serbian guilt, NATO and the media pose Albanian attacks on Serbs as acts of revenge. This started soon after NATO took over Kosovo. Here is a speech which Clinton adviser Sandy Berger made which sums up the NATO position:
"Now let me turn to Kosovo. What I want to do today is look backward and look ahead. All across Kosovo we see reminders that America and our allies did the right thing in taking a stand against ethnic cleansing. We see it in the heart-rending returns of the living and in the stark and silent testimony of the dead. The Serb forces responsible for the violence are gone. Already more than 72,000 of the roughly one million refugees have returned, but there is also tremendous sadness from the pain of remembering and the devastation left behind by Milosevic's campaign of hate. And in many victims there is rage, a desire for justice and sometimes revenge. (The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, July 26, 1999, Transcript #6479)
The REVENGE argument is inserted in virtually every news story about Kosovo: I call this "Editorial Guidance". The point of "editorial guidance" is to orient readers for a proper information experience by protecting them from conclusions that might follow, helter-skelter, from mere fact.
For example, there are many news reports of Albanians murdering aged Serbian women, children, non-Serbs who speak languages that sound Serbian, and even one story reporting Albanian demands that a dog be put to death because it was (I kid you not) Serbian as opposed to Albanian(?!).
Now, presented with such raw info, an unguided mind might wander into inappropriate areas such as: "Maybe these Albanians are anti-Slav racists." The next thing you know our reader is mired in SPECULATION: "If the Serbs are all bad and the Albanians are all good and NATO bombed Yugoslavia to forge multiethnic peace - why, since NATO conquered Kosovo, has there been 5 months of unmitigated violence against Serbs?"
This kind of thinking will get you nowhere since it calls into question the whole NATO experience; therefore stories about Albanian terrorism must include reminders that such mysterious attacks (such as, let us say, the strangling of a 95 year old Serbian woman in her bath or the driving of 30,000 residents from an immense housing complex in Pristina after which the apartments are sold or rented to UN employees) are "revenge for the brutal policies of Milosevich's forces during the NATO bombing." This makes everything clear and citizens of the Western democracies can eat their MacFood in peace and leave the thinking to machines. ( From: Why do you say "Of course!", Mr. Hume?, see note # 27 at the end)
The revenge argument is put forward by spokesmen for Position One (like Berger) and by advocates of Position Two. The Serbian Orthodox monk, Fr. Sava, is a Position Two man. Often quoted in the West, Sava differs from Berger only in orientation.
Here's a typical statement by Fr. Sava:
SAVA: Those people who took part in repression and crimes during the war, they of course left before the K4 and Albanians would come. But many innocent people stay here who wanted to live together with Albanians and others in peace and they hoped and believed that it was possible... I am afraid they [KFOR-or NATO]Roma and other minority population fairly unprotected. Of course we know it is impossible to protect all people but I think that after three months we don't have almost a single criminal case against Serbs completely investigated.
An alternative to the 'revenge' argument
Those who advocate Position One and Position Two say: if Albanians are NOT motivated by Revenge then why are they so hell-bent on attacking Serbs? What, other than persecution, could make them so hostile?
In the first instance, the revenge argument is absurd. Because it's not only Serbs whom the Albanian secessionists are attacking. It's also "Gypsies", Slavic Muslims, Turks, Croatians who live in Kosovo, Catholic Albanians, Muslim Albanians who oppose the KLA. Are we to believe that EVERYONE in Kosovo was involved in a conspiracy against ethnic Albanians, organized by the Yugoslav government? Including other Muslims? Including - ethnic Albanians?
But if those Albanians who are attacking Serbs et al are not motivated by Revenge, what IS their problem?
The answer can be found by looking at history. During World War II, Kosovo (and Albania) were under Italian Fascist and then German Nazi control. The local Albanians ruled the roost. A large section of the Albanian population actively backed Nazism. Indeed, many were more fanatical than most Germans. The local Slavs as well as Jews and Gypsies were at the mercy of these pro-Nazi Albanians who expelled or murdered them or sent them to concentration camps or used them for slave labor.
These Kosovo Albanians were driven from power when Partisans and Russians swept into Kosovo at the end of the war. Many could not accept this defeat. They continued to fight during the late 1940s and they have indoctrinated their children (as Nazi's always do, or try to do) with their beliefs. Keep in mind that Kosovo Albanian culture is clan-based, with tremendous power in the hands of the oldest male. Myths of Paradise Lost (i.e., World War II Nazism) are especially effective in such a climate: once we ruled, but now we have to co-exist with untermenschen.
The Western media has pictured Kosovo Albanians as being analogous to black people in the segregated American South. Wrong. Albanians have much more in common with Southern whites who had been part of the slave system just and who had been "robbed" of their wealth and status by the American Civil War.
With slavery shattered, these whites watched in horror as Northern armies installed Reconstruction governments of "white trash" and - horror of horrors - freed slaves.
These Southern whites organized terrorist groups to right the "imbalance" - to put the untermenschen back in their place. That's where the KKK came from.
Albanians in Kosovo reacted the same way, first openly fighting for control, and then operating in a hidden way. Thus we have Ibrahim Rugova's "non-violent resistance", which was neither non-violent nor a movement of resistance to oppression. Instead it was a coercively organized attempt to destabilize Kosovo society and create Western public support for secession. The same is true of the KLA, though of course their methods are openly terrorist. The motor force behind Albanian secessionism is race hate. And it's rooted in the World War II "experience" when racism ruled Kosovo.
So let's take a look at World War II in Kosovo; because in Kosovo, WWII was not so very long ago...
A little history: Kosovo in World War II by George Thompson (posted 12-17-99)
"The Serbian population in Kosovo should be removed as soon as possible Serbian settlers should be killed." (Albanian fascist leader Mustafa Kroja, June 1942.)
"He, like many KLA officers, says openly that he dreams of a Kosovo without Serbs." (Description of KLA death squad commander "the Teacher", Agence France Presse, August 19, 1999)
"As Germany overtook Yugoslavia in 1941, the Kosovar people were liberated by the Germans. All Albanian territories of this state, such as Kosova, western Macedonia and border regions under Montenegro, were re-united into Albania proper. Albanian schools, governmental administration, press and radio were re-established." (From www.klpm.org , a Kosovo Liberation Army-affiliated affiliated website)
Mussolini's Italy occupied Albania proper in April, 1939, and established a collaborationist regime with the apparent enthusiasm of most Albanians.
After Hitler invaded and occupied Yugoslavia in spring 1941, the bulk of current Kosovo-Metohija was placed under Italian-Albanian collaborationist control and annexed to Albania.
When Italian forces moved into Kosovo they were accompanied by Albanians from Albania. Albanians living in Kosovo joined the invasion force as it made its way North and West, and also ambushed Yugoslav Army units moving to meet the invaders. These Albanians, natives of both Albania and Kosovo, instituted a campaign of murder and expulsion of Serbs. Initially, the mayhem was carried out by disorganized "kachak" (irregular) units. These were Albanian brigands from both sides of the border who had fought Yugoslavia throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
However, soon a native Kosovo militia was formed. This militia, called the Vulnetari, and various gendarme units, began more systematic persecution.
Italians Taken Aback
Italian authorities in Kosovo seemed a bit distressed by the terror against Serbs and occasionally intervened to prevent Albanian attacks, at least in urban areas. Thus a Serbian historian wrote: "Italian troops were stationed in the towns of Kosovo and acted as a restraining force ..."
And Carlo Umilta, a civilian aide to the Commander of the Italian occupation forces, described several instances where Italian forces fired on Albanians to halt massacres of Serbs.
Because of manpower limitations and the de facto alliance between Albanians and the Axis powers, these efforts at restraint were limited. Nevertheless, the Italian occupiers reported their disgust at Albanians actions to the authorities in Rome. The Italian army reported that Albanians were "hunting down Serbs", and that the "Serbian minority are living in conditions that are truly disgraceful, constantly harassed by the brutality of the Albanians, who are whipping up racial hatred."
Carlo Umilta described some of the atrocities in his memoirs and observed that "the Albanians are out to exterminate the Slavs."
His words were echoed by those of German diplomat Hermann Neubacher, the Third Reichs representative for southeastern Europe: "Shiptars (i.e., Kosovo Albanians) were in a hurry to expel as many Serbs as possible from the country."
The atrocities were deliberate, part of a plan to create a Serb-free "Greater Albania". In June 1942 the fascist puppet president of Albania, Mustafa Kroja, declared his goals candidly before his followers in Kosovo:
"The Serbian population of Kosovo should be removed as soon as possible .
. All indigenous Serbs should be qualified as colonists and as such, via
the Albanian and Italian governments, be sent to concentration camps in Albania.
Serbian settlers should be killed." Similar sentiments were expressed by
a Kosovo Albanian leader, Ferat-bey Draga:
"time has come to exterminate the Serbs . . . there will be no Serbs under
the Kosovo sun."
The anti-Serb pogroms intensified after Italy's collapse in September 1943. The German Nazi's assumed control of Albania, including Kosovo. Italian military units pulled out and were replaced by three divisions of the German XXI Mountain Corps. The German presence freed the Albanians of restraint. Kosovo Albanian nationalist militias called the "Balli Komb?tar" (or "Ballistas") carried out a campaign of deportation and murder of Serbs in 1943 and 1944.
Then, on Hitlers express order, the Germans formed the 21st "Waffen-Gebirgs Division der SS" - the Skanderbeg Division. With German leaders and Kosovo Albanian officers and troops, Hitlers hoped that using the Skanderbergs Germany could "achieve its well-known political objective" of creating a viable (i.e., pure) "Greater Albania" including Kosovo.
In general, German policy was to organize volunteer military units among Nazi sympathizers in occupied countries. Of all the occupied nations only the Serbs, Greeks and Poles refused to form Nazi volunteer units. Rather than joining the Nazis, as the Albanians in Kosovo did, the Serbs organized the largest anti-Nazi resistance in Europe. Both the Communist Partisans and thee Royalist Chetniks were mainly Serbs and both groups fought the Germans and their local allies throughout Yugoslavia.
The Germans recruited the 9,000 man Skanderbeg division to fight these resistance groups But the Skanderberg's Albanians had little interest in going up against soldiers; they mainly wanted to terrorize local Serbs, "Gypsies" and Jews. Many of these Kosovo Albanians had seen prior service in the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian SS divisions which were notorious for slaughtering civilians.
What explained this passionate hatred for non-Albanians? A big factor was militant Islam. The Fundamentalist "Second League of Prizren" was created in September 1943 by Xhafer Deva, a Kosovo Albanian, to work with the German authorities. The League proclaimed a jihad (holy war) against Slavs. They were backed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, El Haj Emin Huseini, who was pro-Nazi and had called for getting rid of all Jews in what was at that time British-occupied Palestine. Albanian religious intolerance was shown by their targeting Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries for destruction.
No one is certain of human destruction suffered in this Fascist Albanian Holocaust. Estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 Serbs murdered. At least 100,000 were driven from Kosovo and replaced with "immigrants" from Albania proper.
In justifying current Kosovo Albanian demands to secede from Serbia, the media has repeated, like a mantra: 90% of the population is Albanian. While this figure is most likely exaggerated (nobody knows for sure because Kosovo Albanians boycotted the census for years!) - the province has been largely Albanian. But a major cause of the current demographic imbalance: was the Albanians' success as Hitler's willing executioners during World War II.
And their attention was not limited to Serbs. Unknown numbers of Roma ("Gypsies") were liquidated. And Kosovo Albanians, acting alone as well as under German direction, eliminated many of Kosovo's Jews. The definitive work on Hitler's "Final Solution" in Yugoslavia estimates that 550 Jews lived in Kosovo Hitler took over Yugoslavia. 210 of them, or 38 percent, were murdered in Kosovo, mainly by Albanians.
In fact, the Skanderbeg division's first operation was to act as an "einsatzgruppen" against the Jews, and its second was a similar extermination foray against the Serb village of Velika where more than 400 Serbians were murdered.
Ceda Prlincevic, head of the Jewish community in Pristina and an executive of the provincial archives, has explained to Emperors-Clothes that the Jews who were not murdered outright were sent by the Skanderbeg division to the German death camps Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen. One train, on its way to the latter camp, took the wrong track and was intercepted by advancing Russian soldiers.
According to Mr. Prlincevic, were it not for that fortunate detour, the entire Jewish population of Kosovo would have been eliminated. Although KLA supporters