'Eden' of Sarajevo Disappeared in WWII

The following letter was written by Dr. Alfred Lipson, a survivor of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz to the editor of "Forward", a Jewish weekly published in New York City. It appeared on Armistice Day, 1994.

Dr. Lipson is a Senior Researcher at Holocaust Resource Center and Archives, Queensborough Community College Of the City University of New York, Bayside, N.Y.

Jo-Ann Mort's analysis of Bosnian conflict ("Forced Into Fundamentalism", Forward, Oct. 14) is simplistic and misleading. Ms. Mort refers to Sarajevo in glowing terms as "a secular, tolerant, multi-cultural Eden" and she fears that "After more than 400 years of enlightenment, Sarajevo could lose its crowning achievements---tolerance and urbanity."

For your readers' information, the "Eden" of Sarajevo was shattered more than 50 years ago, when Bosnia was part of the Independent State of Croatia established by Nazi Germany in 1941. By early 1942, the community's "crowning achievements" and Jewish life in Bosnia and Croatia had been extinguished. Thousands of men, women, and children were taken to the hastily built Jasenovac camp and murdered byu the Muslim S.S. units and the Croatian Ustasha, with one German officer acting as observer. More than 60,000 Jews died, along with 27,000 Gypsies. The Serbs, the only anti-Nazi ethnic group in Yugoslavia, suffered the greatest losses---1.5 million.

Ms. Mort calls for "a strategic and forceful response" by America lest the Bosnian "friendly, secular nation" be forced into fundamentalism. I suggest that had the Serbs not fought against Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia, a Muslim fundamentalist regime would have been a "fait accompli".

Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnia's president, has not kept his dream a secret---the dream to establish the first Islamic state in Europe---as published in his 1970 "Islamic Declaration".

His nephew, Haris Silajdzic, Bosnia's prime minister, and a Holocaust denier, as well as other members of his government, maintain close ties with Libya and Iran, which have given generous financial support to the regime.

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Book of facts

• History of the Balkans
• Before World War One
  (Who got to the Balkans and when.)
• World War One
  (The formation of the first Yugoslavia.)
• World War II
  (Who was Nazi and who was not.)
• After WWII - Tito's Yugoslavia
  (Who controlled the country.)
• Big powers and civil wars in Yugoslavia
  (How was Yugoslavia dismantled and why.)
• Proxies at work
  (Muslims and Croats were only proxies of the big powers)
• The Aftermath