Addressing the Golem
Posted on January 19, 2007
Julia Gorin’s recently published opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun (“When will world confront the undead of Croatia?” on January 16, 2007) was remarkably insulting not only to Croats, but also to thinking individuals around the world. Better known for her lame humor and partisan opinions, Gorin should seriously consider avoiding world affairs in her writing. If it’s a career in politics she’s ultimately after, she should definitely stay away from diplomacy and foreign policy.
Gorin’s weak appraisal of Serbia’s hand in the Balkan wars of the 1990’s stopped at declaring that the Serbs were “no angels”. From my understanding of the situation in the dissolving Yugoslavia of the late 20th century, three separate but related wars began in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina when Serbian attempts to control more territory within the Yugoslavian federation got to be a little heavy-handed for the other ethnic groups inhabiting these areas. By most accounts received, the war in Croatia was sparked when Serbia tried to establish autonomous, ethnically pure administrative districts there, apparently in renewed pursuit of the “Great Serbia” ideal. Here are a few examples of the results of this near Karlovac:
The original concept of “Great Serbia”, put forth by Ilija Garašnanin in 1844, pointed to Serbian unification and control over territories in which ethnic Serbs lived or constituted a majority, but were ruled by the Austro-Hungarians or Ottomans. Prior to the most recent Balkan brouhaha, the concept was dramatically fleshed out in the wee 1900’s with the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Serb under direction of the Black Hand terror organization of extreme Serbian nationalists. This particular event led to Austria’s declaration of war, which snowballed into what many credible historians refer to as World War I.
I should point out that “Great Serbia” is, in some ways, not so terribly different from the concept of establishing Israel as a sovereign homeland for the Jews, all else be damned or otherwise displaced. And I have to assume that Gorin is more than aware of this striking similarity, since she seems to sympathize with Serbs in her piece. As history shows us, it’s a slippery slope from the establishment of a sovereign homeland to ethnic cleansing and the power-mad greed of expansionism. And just as common Israeli and Palestinian people have gotten along in harmony, so many Croats and Serbs have lived – and are beginning to live again today - as neighbors and even friends. I have heard plenty of upstanding Croatians say the same thing: “There are good Serbs, and there are bad Serbs”. To them, as to many thinking human beings, accountability falls on the shoulders of individuals, not ethnic groups. Additionally, the assertion of absolute power over a region is seldom the cause of subsistence farmers, shepherds and working people.
In many parts of Croatia and, more specifically, the Zagreb Gorin manages to sloppily paint as Hitler-revering, you will find people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds co-existing – however warily – and attempting to make sense of the situation handed to them. It is, after all, a modern European city. Zagrebians are doing the best they can with what they’ve been given (which, these days, isn’t much). There will you find that the vast majority of citizens are unquestionably appalled by the atrocities of the past, and eager to progress beyond its brutal ideologies. It’s the same here in America with slavery.
Certainly, there exists a tiny minority of nutcases, still loyal to the anti-Semitic, anti-Serb, Croatian-nationalist thinking of the Ustaša during World War II. As it turns out, I had the occasion to chat over wine with one of these creatures in a café near Zagreb’s main square. Just before I snapped a photo of him striking the Nazi salute, the woman behind the bar quickly turned her back to the camera, not wanting her face included in the image.
People like the cheery fellow above are not the majority or norm in Zagreb, nor are they liked or respected by most Croatians. Similarly, we have in America the backwoods antics of the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation and scores of other white supremacist groups whose right to express fascist ideologies is protected by law. Should the existence of these ideological dark-wits - and the constitutional right to exist - signify that America is a nation of white supremacists? Should the recent attack in Paris on a French Jew by surly fans of the Paris St. Germain soccer team be construed as proof that the entire nation of France is a haven for violent, anti-Semitic brutes? By Gorin’s own hasty logic, the answer to both questions is a thoughtless ‘yes’. She also craftily exploits the facts of another recent soccer incident to forward her erroneous thinking when she wrote of Croatian fans responding to Italian fans’ taunts by forming a giant human swastika and giving the Nazi salute. Indeed, this incident actually occurred. But Croatia is hardly the only European country that claims as citizens racist soccer hooligans who create ugly or violent incidents (the Ireland of my own ancestry can be counted here). It’s a problem several governments are doing their best to address. But, since when is it wise to ascribe standard-bearing status to the drunken, overzealous fans of any sport, in any nation? It should come as no surprise that more than a few fascists-by-fashion also happen to be blockheaded sports fans with a pathological need to unite in a common “cause” to no real or beneficial effect.
What do gangs in California, Jihadist terror organizations and the Cheeseheads of Wisconsin have in common? Each group comprises individuals who identify themselves as elements of a community and derive a sense of security and meaning from belonging, whether or not that community contributes anything meaningful or beneficial to society as a whole. During World War II, Hitler, Mussolini and Pavelić understood and exploited this psychological phenomenon in the disenchanted and disenfranchised of Europe, just as televangelists, partisan politicians and Muslim fundamentalists do in crafting their rhetoric today. It is the same faulty wiring that compels otherwise healthy individuals to purchase t-shirts bearing the bloated image of Rush Limbaugh, then make mobile eyesores of themselves by wearing them in full public view. I believe those specimens refer to themselves as “Dittoheads”.
Personally, I prefer to identify as an individual, responsible and accountable for my own actions and beliefs. If you must call me by a name, please use the one boldly emblazoned at the top of this page.
In any case, this need for belonging shouldn’t be a difficult concept for Gorin to grasp, since she apparently derives meaning and motivation from identifying herself concurrently as a Conservative, a Jew and a Republican. Just as America is not a nation of Conservative Jewish Republicans, Croatia is hardly a nation of ape-like, anti-Semitic soccer fans. And, I have to deduce that she has never been to Zagreb, since she relies on an out-of-context snip from a ten-year-old article to assert her claim that the Croatian capital is teeming with Nazis. She quotes A.M. Rosenthal, who wrote in the New York Times in 1997:
“In World War II, Hitler had no executioners more willing, no ally more passionate, than the fascists of Croatia.”
Very few Croats today would dispute this fact, and from my actual experiences and interactions in the Croatia of today, their reluctance to address the subject is due more to disgust, revulsion and the desire to move forward in progress than to the denial of history. As the graphic archival film here depicts, the World War II atrocities in Croatia do not constitute polite dinner conversation. You have been warned.
But Gorin neglects to clarify (while Rosenthal, in the quoted piece, does not) that not all Croatians during World War II were fascists. Non-fascist Croats fought the Ustaša then as they continue to fight the fascist legacy and heal from its effects today. If this were not the case, there would not be a confluence of streets in Zagreb dedicated to the victims of fascism and named, simply and appropriately, “Victims of Fascism Square” (Trg žrtava fašizma). The Croats I know are concerned with feeding and housing themselves and their families during a harsh time of economic change and upheaval, not massacring ethnic minorities in a quest for racial purity in the homeland and its scattered administrative districts.
Gorin also neglected to inform readers that the reviver of the nationalism which sparked the short-lived new wave of anti-Semitism she writes of left power when he left this life. The controversial Croatian president Franjo Tuđman - variously praised and criticized for his actions in creating the new republic of Croatia - died in 1999, apparently taking with him many unsavory elements of an emerging republic with correctible birth defects. Though a Zagreb square was recently scheduled for erection in his name, the only cheers to be heard come from members of his Croatian Democratic Union party and his family. Croatia’s current ruling body, the Social Democratic Party, seems to prefer forging on into the future to glorifying controversial historical figures. I can’t say I disagree with that stance.
All party divisions aside, I have faith in beautiful Croatia and her people.
Speaking of parties, don’t bring any racism, fascism, anti-Semitism, ethnic cleansing, partisan political opinion, baseless finger-pointing, poverty, hunger, bad pop music or artificial food to mine. And if individuals like Julia Gorin show up and insist on forcing their imaginings of a Croatia full of fascist zombies on my good time and an American public largely satisfied to accept such hogwash directly from the swine pit, I will regrettably be forced to point to the groaning Zionist golem of exemption from criticism, accountability and logical examination. Verily, that golem walks the Earth today, leaving a bog stench of postured self-victimization and half-truths in its muddy wake.
As an American writer of Russian-Jewish descent, Gorin should be painfully aware of the perils of recklessly demonizing an entire ethnic group with a rich cultural heritage, not to mention a republic in the midst of the difficult transition to democracy and free-market economy. Shame on her for such irresponsibly un-American behavior.
If you’re going to vilify a nation of people as Nazis in print, you’d better update your sources and do your homework first. And, if you’re going to do PR for Serbian interests, consider this: The war in Croatia is over. Until Zagreb tries to annex western Hungary simply because Croats have walked and lived on Hungarian soil, leave Croatia to move forward in peace.
UPDATE: 1.22.07 - Nationalism is alive and well in Serbia.
» Filed Under Current Affairs, In The News, Places, Zagreb, croatia, europe
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