Yugoslav Quotes

A decade ago young people en masse began declaring themselves as Yugoslavs. It was a form of rising Yugoslav nationalism, which was a reaction to brotherhood and unity and a feeling of belonging to a single socialist self-managing society. This pleased me greatly.

At Balkan, it was more like, ‘I’ll do your mum up the arse.’ They were mental Yugoslavs who smoked like chimneys and flung their boots about, and I thought, Great, just like at home.

Most American view World War II nostalgically as the "good war," in which the United States and its allies triumphed over German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese militarism. The rest of the world remembers it as the bloodiest war in human history. By the time it was over, more than 60 million people lay dead, including 27 million Russians, between 10 million and 20 million Chinese, 6 million Jews, 5.5 million Germans, 3 million non-Jewish Poles, 2.5 million Japanese, and 1.5 million Yugoslavs. Austria, Great Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and the United States each counted between 250,000 and 333,000 dead.

Our guys were just playing at being gangsters—the Yugoslavs had been thieving and killing in Europe for real over decades. They were seriously tough, and to this day, if you want to kill somebody in Bulgaria and you want the job done reliably and cheaply, then you hire a Serb. They are the best assassins.

Apparently the Yugoslavs compensate for general societal slowness once they get behind the wheel of a vehicle.

The difference between a communist party and a bourgeois party in State leadership is not a 'minor' one, but a very great, profound, class difference of principle, which cannot be reduced to the 'rotation' of party leaders in political power

The goat herder was so unaccustomed to human company that he was short of words even in his inner speech. It was common knowledge that the Yugoslavs hated each other more than they could ever hate a foreigner or an invader. A guilty man wishes only to be understood, because to be understood is to appear to be forgiven. Atrocities are something nothing less than the vengeance of the tormented. The human heart likes a little disorder in its geometry. Love delayed is lust augmented.

The Soviet Union suffered 65 percent of all Allied military deaths, China 23 percent, Yugoslavia 3 percent, the United States and Britain 2 percent each, France and Poland 1 percent each. About 8 percent of all Germans died, compared with 2 percent of Chinese, 3.44 percent of Dutch people, 6.67 percent of Yugoslavs, 4 percent of Greeks, 1.35 percent of French, 3.78 percent of Japanese, 0.94 percent of British and 0.32 percent of Americans.

The bourgeois pseudo-democracy, the parliament which allegedly chooses the government, is nothing but a puppet in the hands of the power of capital which operates "behind the scenes" and dictates in various forms everything from outside.

The deadlock was broken when we ordered Walter Stoessel, the U.S. ambassador in Warsaw, to approach Chinese diplomats at the next social function and express the desire for a dialogue. The setting for this encounter was a Yugoslav fashion show in the Polish capital. The Chinese diplomats in attendance, who were without instructions, fled the scene. The Chinese attaché’s account of the incident shows how constrained relations had become. Interviewed years later, he recalled seeing two Americans talking and pointing at the Chinese contingent from across the room; this prompted the Chinese to stand up and leave, lest they be drawn into conversation. The Americans, determined to carry out their instructions, followed the Chinese. When the desperate Chinese diplomats speeded up, the Americans started running after them, shouting in Polish (the only mutually intelligible language available), “We are from American embassy. We want to meet your ambassador… President Nixon said he wanted to resume his talk with Chinese.”35

IN AN OLD YUGOSLAV JOKE mocking police corruption, a policeman returns home unexpectedly and finds his wife naked in their marital bed, obviously hot and excited. Suspecting that he surprised her with a lover, he starts to look around the room for a hidden man. The wife goes pale when he leans down to look under the bed; but after some brief whispering, the husband rises with a satisfied, smug smile and says “Sorry, my love, false alarm. There is no one under the bed!,” while his hand is holding tightly a couple of high denomination banknotes.

On June 3, Britain, France and Italy announced their full support for Polish, Czech and Yugoslav statehood. On the following day, encouraged to do so by the British, Dr Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader, met the Emir Feisal, the leader of the Arab Revolt, near the port of Akaba, and worked out with him what seemed to be a satisfactory Arab support for a Jewish National Home in Palestine. A senior British general noted after the meeting that both T.E. Lawrence, who helped set the meeting up, and Weizmann, ‘see the lines of Arab & Zionist policy converging in the not distant future

The initial shooting that led to the conflict was itself a farce. The assassin in question was a Yugoslav nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. He had given up in his attempt to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria following a failed grenade attack by Princip’s colleague, and gone to a café. It is often said that he got himself a sandwich, which would surely have been the most significant sandwich in history, but it seems more likely that he was standing outside the café without any lunch. By sheer coincidence the Archduke’s driver made a wrong turn into the same street and stalled the car in front of him. This gave a surprised Princip the opportunity to shoot Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. Over 37 million people died in the fallout from that assassination.

How many rapes occurred inside the walls of the main camp of Ravensbrück is hard to put a figure to: so many of the victims—already, as Ilse Heinrich said, half dead—did not survive long enough after the war to talk about it. While many older Soviet women were reluctant to talk of the rape, younger survivors feel less restraint today. Nadia Vasilyeva was one of the Red Army nurses who were cornered by the Germans on the cliffs of the Crimea. Three years later in Neustrelitz, northwest of Ravensbrück, she and scores of other Red Army women were cornered again, this time by their own Soviet liberators intent on mass rape. Other women make no excuses for the Soviet rapists. ‘They were demanding payment for liberation,’ said Ilena Barsukova. ‘The Germans never raped the prisoners because we were Russian swine, but our own soldiers raped us. We were disgusted that they behaved like this. Stalin had said that no soldiers should be taken prisoner, so they felt they could treat us like dirt.’ Like the Russians, Polish survivors were also reluctant for many years to talk of Red Army rape. ‘We were terrified by our Russian liberators,’ said Krystyna Zając. ‘But we could not talk about it later because of the communists who had by then taken over in Poland.’ Nevertheless, Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechs and French survivors all left accounts of being raped as soon as they reached the Soviet lines. They talked of being ‘hunted down’, ‘captured’ or ‘cornered’ and then raped. In her memoirs Wanda Wojtasik, one of the rabbits, says it was impossible to encounter a single Russian without being raped. As she, Krysia and their Lublin friends tried to head east towards their home, they were attacked at every turn. Sometimes the approach would begin with romantic overtures from ‘handsome men’, but these approaches soon degenerated into harassment and then rape. Wanda did not say she was raped herself, but describes episodes where soldiers pounced on friends, or attacked them in houses where they sheltered, or dragged women off behind trees, who then reappeared sobbing and screaming. ‘After a while we never accepted lifts and didn’t dare go near any villages, and when we slept someone always stood watch.

I suggest that I sleep on the cot. “Not open to discussion,” declares Svetlana in a friendly but firm tone. “We Yugoslavs are a hardy people. I myself can sleep on the floor if required. We are Yugoslavs. We are tough.” Her casual remark, certainly not intended to hurt me, inflicts a wound. I see I have much to learn about being flexible and adaptable.

On June 28 Cominform (the post-war successor to Comintern) expelled the Yugoslavs and appealed to "healthy elements" in the Party to overthrow the leadership. Tito's flattering secret codename OREL ("Eagle") was hurridly downgraded to STERVYATNIK ("Carrion Crow").

But so far as I can ascertain [the] record now is, despite our commitments and moral obligations: (1) we have failed to take effective action [to repatriate accused Yugoslav war criminals], (2) we have prevented [the] British from taking effective action, (3) we have not insisted that Italy take effective action, (4) we are apparently conniving with the Vatican and Argentina to get guilty people to haven in the latter country. I sincerely hope I am mistaken, particularly regarding [this] latter point. How can we defend this record?…”31

Their first Olympic match was against Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavs sent spies to the practice session. The Uruguayans caught on and practised by kicking the ground and sending the ball up into the clouds, tripping at every step and crashing into each other. The spies reported: ‘It makes you feel sorry, these poor boys came from so far away.’ Barely two thousand fans showed up. The Uruguayan flag was flown upside down, the sun on its head, and instead of the national anthem they played a Brazilian march. That afternoon, Uruguay defeated Yugoslavia 7–0.

Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis, Peaceworks No. 8, United States Institute of Peace, 1996 by Vesna Pesic The sheer complexity of the former Yugoslavia's current crisis has supported numerous interpretations of its origins. One explanation that has acquired a certain currency is "nationalism as a power game," which views the main cause of the Yugoslav crisis as an ideology (in the sense of "false consciousness") of "aggressive nationalism," perpetuated by members of the old nomenklatura who seek to preserve their threatened positions of power in the face of democratic change. … The problem with this approach is that it treats the "national question" as an epiphenomenon of the struggle to preserve power and privilege. In doing so, it forgets that political battles in Yugoslavia have almost always developed around the "national question." Such an understanding of nationalism as "false consciousness" discounts the power of national sentiment among the region's ethnic groups. … By its very nature, Yugoslavia has never had a staatsvolk ("state-people") that could "naturally" dominate by its numbers and serve as the foundation on which a modern nation-state could be built. (As members of the most populous national group, Serbs constituted only 40 percent of the total Yugoslav population.) … An aggressive Serbian nationalism broke the thin thread holding together Yugoslavia's nations in a compromise arrangement, pushing toward an extreme solution of its national question through threats and warmongering: Either Yugoslavia's various nations would accept Serbia's vision of a "normal," unified state that served Serbian interests, or Serbs from all the republics would "join together" and achieve their national unity by force.

I think that it is important for everyone to understand the brutality of the Bosnian War. The Army of Republika Srpska (VRS, operated by Serbian Chetniks), The Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA, who transferred from their army and into the Army of Republika Srpska), The Croatian Army (HV), and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) committed genocide against Bosnians, the majority of them being Bosniaks. Political parties that supported Croatian and Serbian nationalism included the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS). 90 percent of war crimes were committed by Serb forces while Croats were responsible for 6 percent of war crimes.

And what does this apologist of the bourgeoisie have in mind when he talks of the extension of the «dimensions of true freedom» for the workers? Is it the «freedom» to be unemployed, the «freedom» to leave their families and homeland in order to sell the power of their muscles and minds to the capitalists of the Western world, or is it the «freedom» to pay taxes, to be discriminated against and savagely exploited by the old and the new Yugoslav bourgeoisie, as well as by the foreign bourgeoisie?

they were erasing the Yugoslav past, blaming Yugoslavia for every misfortune, including the war, I reviving that past in the form of the everyday minutiae that had made up our lives, operating a volunteer lost-and-found service, if you will.

Croatia, with hundreds of thousands of Serbs within its boundaries, was not ready to accept such an outcome. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman had long dreamed of establishing Croatia as an independent country. But the boundaries of his “country,” drawn originally by Tito to define the republic within Yugoslavia, would contain areas in which Serbs had lived for centuries. In the brief war in Slovenia the Yugoslav Army seemed to be defending the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia; when that same army went to war only a few weeks later against Croatia, it had become a Serb army fighting for the Serbs inside Croatia. The Croatian-Serbian war began with irregulars and local incidents, and escalated rapidly to full-scale fighting. In August 1991, an obscure Yugoslav Army lieutenant colonel named Ratko Mladic joined his regular forces with the local irregulars—groups of young racists and thugs who enjoyed beating up Croats—and launched an attack on Kijevo, an isolated Croat village in the Serb-controlled Krajina. There had been fighting prior to Kijevo, but this action, backed fully by Belgrade, “set the pattern for the rest of the war in Croatia: JNA [Yugoslav] artillery supporting an infantry that was part conscript and part locally-recruited Serb volunteers.”12 Within weeks, fighting had broken out across much of Croatia. The JNA began a vicious artillery assault on Vukovar, an important Croat mining town on the Serbian border. Vukovar and the region around it, known as eastern Slavonia, fell to the Serbs in mid-November, and Zagreb was threatened, sending Croatia into panic. (The peaceful return of eastern Slavonia to Croatia would become one of the central issues in our negotiations in 1995.) After exhausting other options, the European Community asked the former British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington to take on the task of bringing peace to Yugoslavia. Carrington, an urbane man of legendary integrity, told me later that he had never met such terrible liars in his life as the peoples of the Balkans. As the war in Croatia escalated and Vukovar crumbled under Serb shells, Carrington put forward a compromise plan

What, if any, of those things defines me more than another? I say none of them, and all of them, and if anyone has to choose, it is me. I am what I chose to be, not what others want me to be. I am a Yugoslav. This is my land. I have nowhere else to go. That is a little of what I know.

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls: The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles' Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch; and I don't like anybody very much!

The Soviet Union suffered 65 percent of all Allied military deaths, China 23 percent, Yugoslavia 3 percent, the United States and Britain 2 percent each, France and Poland 1 percent each. About 8 percent of all Germans died, compared with 2 percent of Chinese, 3.44 percent of Dutch people, 6.67 percent of Yugoslavs, 4 percent of Greeks, 1.35 percent of French, 3.78 percent of Japanese, 0.94 percent of British and 0.32 percent of Americans. Within the armed forces, 30.9 percent of Germans conscripted into the Wehrmacht died,

To tidy away,” he said once, “is to replicate on a miniature scale what Hitler did with the Jews, the Young Turks with the Armenians, and what the Yugoslavs are doing now to each other. Hence the term ethnic cleansing. Cleansing, cleaning, tidying — all these things are forms of genocide.

South Slav (Yugoslav)

Several dozen Britons, most of them former British army or police officers (by mid-March 1948 some 23o British soldiers and thirty policemen had deserted),32 also served in Palestinian Arab ranks,-3-3 as did some volunteers from Yugoslavia and Germany. The Yugoslavs, possibly in their dozens, were both Christians, formerly members of pro-Axis Fascist groups, and Bosnian Muslims;-3' the handful of Germans were former Nazi intelligence, Wehrmacht, and SS officers.35

On July 1, President Calvin Coolidge signed the measure into law. With the act’s ratification, the country was set on a course to, by its own definition, “maintain the racial preponderance of the basic strain [of] our people” and “stabilize the ethnic composition of the population.” The act proved so restrictive for Asians and eastern Europeans that in 1924 more Italians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Poles, Portuguese, Romanians, Chinese, and Japanese left the United States than arrived as immigrants

The lesson taught by the pursuit of the Yugoslav war criminals is that there can be no sustainable peace without some measure of justice.

I was born in Szabadka in Hungary. By the treaty of Trianon in 1919 Szabadka was incorporated in Yugoslav territory. In 1921 I went as a student to the University of Buda-Pesth. I obtained a Yugoslav passport for the purpose. While I was still at the University my father and elder brother were shot by the Yugoslav police for a political offense. My mother had died during the war and I had no other relations or friends. I was advised not to attempt to return to Yugoslavia. Conditions in Hungary were terrible. In 1922 I went to England, and remained there, teaching German in a school near London until 1931, when my labor permit was withdrawn. I was one of many other foreigners who had their labor permits withdrawn at that time. When my passport had expired I had applied for its renewal to the Yugoslav legation in London, but had been refused on the grounds that I was no longer a Yugoslav citizen. I had afterwards applied for British naturalization, but when I was deprived of my labor permit I was forced to find work elsewhere. I went to Paris. I was allowed by the police to remain and given papers with the proviso that if I left France I should not be permitted to return. I have since applied for French citizenship.

During this period, ‘Brits’ were still the main source of labour, but gradually the demographic of the country began to change as world events drove increasing numbers of Europeans to Australia, opening the floodgates and gradually relaxing the White Australia policy. Italians, Germans and Greeks arrived to join the communities established in the late 1900s. Following on were many Hungarians who had escaped after the 1956 revolution, then Czechs after the Soviet occupation in 1968. Gradually people from South America and the Middle East came, many fleeing persecution. In the 1970s thousands of ‘boat people’ from Vietnam were allowed in, and in the 1990s refugees from the Yugoslav Wars. This resulted in a pronounced cultural shift from what was essentially a British, or perhaps Anglo-Celtic, society to a multicultural country. It was a remarkably rapid conversion into what we see now in modern Australia – a nation of people whose heritage can be traced back to 190 countries. In the 2016 census the proportion of the total population born abroad was 26 per cent, but where they come from shows the changes in policy, attitudes and global economics since the start of the twentieth century.

A part war drama, part coming-of-age story, part spiritual pilgrimage, Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is the story of a young woman who experienced more hardships before graduating high school than most people do in a lifetime. Yet her heartaches are only half the story; the other half is a story of resilience, of leaving her lifelong home in Germany to find a new home, a new life, and a new love in America. Mildred Schindler Janzen has given us a time capsule of World War II and the years following it, filled with pristinely preserved memories of a bygone era. Ken Gire New York Times bestselling author of All the Gallant Men The memoir of Mildred Schindler Janzen will inform and inspire all who read it. This is a work that pays tribute to the power and resiliency of the human spirit to endure, survive, and overcome in pursuit of the freedom and liberty that all too many take for granted. Kirk Ford, Jr., Professor Emeritus, History Mississippi College Author of OSS and the Yugoslav Resistance, 1943-1945 A compelling first-person account of life in Germany during the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. A well written, true story of a young woman overcoming the odds and rising above the tragedies of loss of family and friends during a savage and brutal war, culminating in her triumph in life through sheer determination and will. A life lesson for us all. Col. Frank Janotta (Retired), Mississippi Army National Guard Mildred Schindler Janzen’s touching memoir is a testimony to God’s power to deliver us from the worst evil that men can devise. The vivid details of Janzen’s amazing life have been lovingly mined and beautifully wrought by Sherye Green into a tender story of love, gratitude, and immeasurable hope. Janzen’s rich, post-war life in Kansas serves as a powerful reminder of the great promise of America. Troy Matthew Carnes, Author of Rasputin’s Legacy and Dudgeons and Daggers World War II was horrific, and we must never forget. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is a must-read that sheds light on the pain the Nazis and then the Russians inflicted on the German Jews and the German people. Mildred Schindler Janzen’s story, of how she and her mother and brother survived the war and of the special document that allowed Mildred to come to America, is compelling. Mildred’s faith sustained her during the war's horrors and being away from her family, as her faith still sustains her today. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is a book worth buying for your library, so we never forget. Cynthia Akagi, Ph.D. Northcentral University I wish all in the world could read Mildred’s story about this loving steel magnolia of a woman who survived life under Hitler’s reign. Mildred never gave up, but with each suffering, grew stronger in God’s strength and eternal hope. Beautifully written, this life story will captivate, encourage, and empower its readers to stretch themselves in life, in love, and with God, regardless of their circumstances. I will certainly recommend this book. Renae Brame, Author of Daily Devotions with Our Beloved, God’s Peaceful Waters Flow, and Snow and the Eternal Hope How utterly inspiring to read the life story of a woman whose every season reflects God’s safe protection and unfailing love. When young Mildred Schindler escaped Nazi Germany, only to have her father taken by Russians and her mother and brother hidden behind Eastern Europe’s Iron Curtain, she courageously found a new life in America. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is her personal witness to God’s guidance and provision at every step of that perilous journey. How refreshing to view a full life from beginning to remarkable end – always validating that nothing is impossible with God. Read this book and you will discover the author’s secret to life: “My story is a declaration that choosing joy and thankfulness over bitterness and anger, even amid difficult circumsta

Zoki walks into the classroom, puts a piece of paper down on the teacher’s desk, and shouts: “Everyone write your name.” There are three columns: Muslim / Serb / Croat. We all gather round, we all hesitate. “Come on, guys.” Zoki writes his name under Serb. Kenan takes the pen from Zoki and writes his name under Muslim. Both Gorans put their names under Serb. Edin puts his name under Muslim. Alen puts his name under Muslim. Marica puts her name under Serb. Goca puts her name under Serb. Kule asks what this is all about. Zoki says: “So we know.” Kule says: “Fuck you.” Zoki says: “Anyway, you’re Muslim.” “What I am is Fuck you,” Kule says. Elvira makes a new column, writes Don’t know at the top, and puts her name there. Alen takes the pen back and crosses his name out and writes it again under Don’t know. Goca too. Marko puts his name under Serb. Ana puts her name under Don’t know, thinks for a second, crosses it out, adds Yugoslav as a fifth heading, and puts her name there. Zoki writes Kule under Muslim. Kule says: “Zoki, you dumb horse, I’ll fuck your mother.” The Gorans plant themselves in front of Kule and the one with the long incisors says: “What’s wrong, Kule? Shoes too tight?” Kule grabs the pen out of Zoki’s hand and tries to scribble something on Goran’s forehead. Goran shoves him, Kule shoves back, and we move between them. Everyone’s shouting all at once until Kule raises his arm—the gesture says, Everything’s cool, I’m cool. He goes up to the desk and makes a sixth column. On top it says, Fuck all of you. Kule writes Kule in that column, stomps on the pen, which breaks, and leaves the classroom. No one follows Kule. The list disappears. A couple months later, Muslims in several cities are ordered to wear white armbands. An Eskimo family lived in Višegrad at the time, above the supermarket on Tito Street. Actually they had no connection with the Inuit—it was just a joke answer on the 1991 census, which was included in the actual statistics and then recognized by the state. The father repeated it during the Serbian occupation, but no one laughed. So he left the city, with his wife and baby daughter. Today they live closer to the North Pole and speak decent Swedish.

The volcano has not yet gone dormant; the wars of ethnic survival continue to break out. The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, and the Syrian, Kurdish, and Ukrainian conflicts of the following decades demonstrate that the old dynamics are still there.

The Soviet Union suffered 65 percent of all Allied military deaths, China 23 percent, Yugoslavia 3 percent, the United States and Britain 2 percent each, France and Poland 1 percent each. About 8 percent of all Germans died, compared with 2 percent of Chinese, 3.44 percent of Dutch people, 6.67 percent of Yugoslavs, 4 percent of Greeks, 1.35 percent of French, 3.78 percent of Japanese, 0.94 percent of British and 0.32 percent of Americans. Within the armed forces, 30.9 percent of Germans conscripted into the Wehrmacht died, 17.35 percent of the Luftwaffe (including paratroopers and ground personnel), 34.9 percent of the Waffen SS. Some 24.2 percent of Japanese soldiers were killed, and 19.7 percent of naval personnel. Japanese formations committed against the Americans and British in 1944–45 lost far more heavily—the overall statistics are distorted by the fact that throughout the war a million of Hirohito’s soldiers remained in China, where they suffered relatively modest losses. One Russian soldier in four died, against one in twenty British Commonwealth

The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus,” wrote Danilo Kiš, the Yugoslav writer. “Nationalism is the line of least resistance, the easy way. The nationalist is untroubled, he knows or thinks he knows what his values are, his, that’s to say national, that’s to say the values of the nations he belongs to, ethical and political; he is not interested in others, they are of no concern of his, hell—it’s other people (other nations, another tribe). They don’t even need investigating. The nationalist sees other people in his own image—as nationalists.”1

Contrary to what the author of the Donauschwabe article claimed, the German officials in the former embassy did not support the ethnic Germans in their struggle against the obstructive Yugoslav authorities but, rather, tried on several occasions to restrict their access to the Federal Republic of Germany. The Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior even went so far as to demand the restriction of Aussiedler immigration from Eastern Europe altogether.

For example, in 1965, the family of Josef K.—who, according to the BVA, was an ethnic German born in 1927 to two German parents—was not granted an entry visa because his non-German wife, Djurdja, did not speak any German and the children had “typically Slavic first names.”37 The fact that past applicants from their hometown Sokolovac in Croatia had had a good knowledge of the German language was held against this candidate. In a similar case in 1964, Emil S. and his wife, Jelka, from Slavonian Vukovar were denied entry despite the “typically German” first names of their three children—Josef, Emmerich, and Karl—because Jelka’s Croatian Volkstum was judged to be dominant in the family.38 In contrast, Stefan V., a Hungarian German man from Czerwenka (Crvenka) in Serbia was accepted, even though he had his father’s typically Hungarian surname and was registered as Hungarian in his Yugoslav identification. His son Tibor bore an equally Hungarian first name. Yet Stefan and his children spoke excellent German and, according to the embassy in Belgrade, “made a very good impression.” Therefore, their application was granted without hesitation.39

Some people have said that "Titoism is a communism with a human face." I would rather define it as a "milder communism." In some circumstances the face of that communism, sometimes called "Titoism," wasn't exactly human; it embittered the lives of many people. However, the circle of freedom had expanded: From Satellite No. 1, we had become the most liberal communist country, but still communist. The standard of living increased, faster than in the countries of the Soviet Bloc, although much slower than in the world of economic freedom and liberal democracy. When we dissatisfied Yugoslav citizens wanted a little consolation, we only had to glance across the border to Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, where until the end of the 190s "Yugoslavia" was an unachievable dream... On the other hand, if we needed a reality check, we only had to glance across the border at Austria or Italy. For more than thirty years we enjoyed the privilege of freedom of movement to the East and to the West. In the world of communist tyranny--to which in some degree we belonged--we were still an exception, the only communist country outside the iron curtain, outside the collective prison of a billion and a half people, a country in the slippery area of prescribed freedoms in which so much was permitted, but in which it was dangerous to seek freedom without a prescription.

The showdown with Yugoslavia emerged as a disturbing example of how the intrinsic weakness of international law concerning crimes against humanity helped shape the cold war and was in turn shaped by it. Tito’s government made repeated, detailed requests to the Western Allies to turn over scores of Yugoslav Nazis and collaborators who had fallen into U.S. and British hands.

Cabot continued. “But so far as I can ascertain [the] record now is, despite our commitments and moral obligations: (1) we have failed to take effective action [to repatriate accused Yugoslav war criminals], (2) we have prevented [the] British from taking effective action, (3) we have not insisted that Italy take effective action, (4) we are apparently conniving with the Vatican and Argentina to get guilty people to haven in the latter country. I sincerely hope I am mistaken, particularly regarding [this] latter point. How can we defend this record?…

My grandfather Alexander and my grandmother Shlomit, with my father and his elder brother David, on the other hand, did not go to Palestine even though they were also ardent Zionists: the conditions of life there seemed too Asiatic to them, so they went to Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, and arrived there only in 1933, by which time, as it turned out, anti-Semitism in Vilna had grown to the point of violence against Jewish students. My Uncle David especially was a confirmed European, at a time when, it seems, no one else in Europe was, apart from the members of my family and other Jews like them. Everyone else turns out to have been Pan-Slavic, PanGermanic, or simply Latvian, Bulgarian, Irish, or Slovak patriots. The only Europeans in the whole of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s were the Jews. My father always used to say: In Czechoslovakia there are three nations, the Czechs, the Slovaks, and the Czecho-Slovaks, i.e., the Jews; in Yugoslavia there are Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Montenegrines, but, even there, there lives a group of unmistakable Yugoslavs; and even in Stalin’s empire there are Russians, there are Ukrainians, and there are Uzbeks and Chukchis and Tatars, and among them are our brethren, the only real members of a Soviet nation.

Grain for the Tommies, bread for home consumption in Britain (27 million tonnes of imported grains, a wildly excessive amount), and generous buffer stocks in Europe (for yet-to-be-liberated Greeks and Yugoslavs) were Churchill’s priorities, not the life or death of his Indian subjects. When reminded of the suffering of his victims his response was typically Churchillian: The famine was their own fault, he said, for ‘breeding like rabbits’. When officers of conscience pointed out in a telegram to the prime minister the scale of the tragedy caused by his decisions, Churchill’s only reaction was to ask peevishly: ‘why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?

History must never forget what the Germans and their eager partners, the Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, Ukrainians, and Yugoslavs, did to the Jewish people and to the world. It is fundamentally important for the world to read about the bestial behavior of these white-gloved monsters, and to know of their unspeakable atrocities committed during the most brutal seven-year period of human history.

Mirjana je imala baletanke s kombinacijom šare tigrasto-pistaći. Šta su govorile Mirjanine baletanke? Životna odvažnost, tu nema kalkulisanja, mogla sam da ih vidim kako ih sa zadovoljstvom kupuje, kao što će uplatiti i letovanje, malo skuplje od onoga čime raspolaže, ali kud puklo da puklo! To je bila žena što u ponoć zove drugaricu na krofne koje su joj se prijele, žena koja veruje da će joj one male karipske banane nići u Cvijićevoj, u smogu, žena koja će po povratku s posla odlučiti da tog dana sobu ofarba u purpurno. Stavi broš jastoga na žuti bolero, Mirjana, pa nek sve puca, neka liči na neku gvatemalsku čorbu, koja bi te okrepila posle plivanja sa providnim ribama u egzotičnim morima. Ako, ako! To je moda, u incidentu!

Kada neko umre, prođe vreme u kome nisi kako treba, a onda dođe dan kada više ne plačeš.

Čini mi se da sve treba jedni drugima da kažemo, jer ljudi ćute, a onda umru i ta misao ode s njima.

Poenta s odlaskom nekud je da se vratiš, pa da nekom ispričaš kako je bilo. Počni od početka, govorila je baka, reci mi kako je bilo na putovanju od trenutka kada si izašla iz kuće.

Bol je život, ima šta da boli, nije gotovo dok ima šta da boli, a tamo više ništa ne boli, kažu ljudi da je to dobro, kad se umre, dobro je jer ne boli.

Smrt. Smrt je kad nekog dugo nisi video. I to je to.

Thoughts at a Café Table Between the Kazan and the Iron Gates Progress has now placed the whole of this landscape underwater. A traveller sitting at my old table on the quay at Orsova would have to peer at the scenery through a thick brass-hinged disc of glass; this would frame a prospect of murk and slime [...] Moving a couple of miles downstream, he would fumble his way on to the waterlogged island and among the drowned Turkish houses; or, upstream, flounder among the weeds and rubble choking Count Széchenyi's road and peer across the dark gulf at the vestiges of Trajan on the other side; and all round him, above and below, the dark abyss would yawn and the narrows where currents once rushed and cataracts shuddered from bank to bank and echoes zigzagged along the vertiginous clefts would be sunk in diluvian since. [...] He could toil many days up these cheerless soundings, for Rumania and Yugoslavia have built one of the world's biggest ferro-concrete dams and hydro-electric power plants across the Iron Gates. This has turned a hundred and thirty miles of the Danube into a vast pond which has swollen and blurred the course of the river beyond recognition. It has abolished cayons, turned beetling crags into mild hills and ascended the beautiful Cerna valley almost to the Baths of Hercules. Many thousands of the inhabitabnts of Orşova and the riparian hamlets had to be uprooted and transplanted elsewhere. The islanders of Ada Kaleh have been moved to another islet downstream and their old home has vanished under the still surface as though it has never been. Let us hope that the power generated by the dam has spread well-being on either bank and lit up Rumanian and Yugoslav towns brighter than ever before because, in everything but economics, the damage is irreparrable. [... M]yths, lost voices, history and hearsay have all been put to rout, leaving nothing but this valley of shadow. Goethe's advice, 'Bewahre Dich vor Räuber und Ritter und Gespenstergeschichten',* has been taken literally, and everything has fled. _____________ * Beware of the robber, the cavalier, and ghost stories.

of Yugoslavs, 4 percent of Greeks, 1.35 percent of French, 3.78 percent of Japanese, 0.94 percent of British and 0.32 percent of Americans. Within the armed forces, 30.9 percent of Germans conscripted into the Wehrmacht died, 17.35 percent of the Luftwaffe (including paratroopers and ground personnel), 34.9 percent of the Waffen SS.

At the conference I was asked whether all Yugoslav writers were now forced to live in exile. I answered that I was far more concerned about the people who were not writers who were forced into exile. Writers are familiar with the conditions of exile; exile is not foreign to writers, they often choose to live that way. Exile can be one’s state of mind even while living in one’s own homeland. I’ve chosen to live in many different countries over the years because I’ve always felt closer to mankind per se than to any nation in particular, even my own. Until recently it had seemed banal to say that every person is entitled to think and breathe under the same sky, but as our imperfect human race has difficulty recalling its own history, we’re now obligated to state the obvious over and over again.

I look up some old friends, journalists. One is a senior editor at L’Express, and he complains to me that he has in his hands extensive documentation of war crimes in Yugoslavia but no one, including his own magazine, will print it. He asks me if I would translate it into English. With the documents are photographs of hundreds of Yugoslav children brutally murdered in villages from all over the country. The documents detail the facts about the massacres of Serbs in Glina, then at the Gracanica bridge. There are murky stories about prisoners and death camps. Looking through those photographs I realize that no language would ever be adequate to convey the horror - but how will I be able to write poetry again?