It took more than three decades for any of the five Allied Anglo-Saxon democracies which fought against Nazi Germany in World War II (United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand), and against all logic, admitted at least hundreds, if not thousands of Nazi criminals as immigrants, to take any legal measures against those persons who had lied to obtain entry. It was only in 1979, that the United States, which admitted the largest number of former Nazis, estimated at 10,000, established the “Office of Special Investigations” to exclusively prosecute former Nazi collaborators who lied on their immigration applications in order to obtain permission to enter the United States and subsequently become American citizens. Three additional countries – Canada in 1986, Australia in 1989, and Great Britain in 1991 – followed suit and passed laws enabling to pursue legal measures against former Nazi collaborators. The only country which refused to prosecute those who lied about their service with the Axis forces, was New Zealand.
Nazi Quarry to Chicago School. The book details how after being promoted to oversee 12 men at the Gross-Rosen facility, Kulle marched prisoners to a quarry (pictured) where the 12-hour shifts were so brutal few lived for more than a month.
This year, now that almost all of the perpetrators are no longer alive, and it appears that there will not be any more Nazi trials, historians, journalists and writers can summarize the results achieved by each of the countries which tried to take legal action against the Holocaust criminals who sought refuge in Anglo-Saxon democracies, and the same is true for Germany. So far, four excellent books have been published this year, about four different countries which summarize their efforts to bring Holocaust perpetrators to justice. Tobias Buck‘s The Final Verdict; The Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century focuses on the belated trials in Germany, but also gives excellent insights to explain why West Germany made it so difficult to prosecute Nazi criminals, and why so many murderers were spared trials and punishment. Jon Silverman and Robert Sherwood‘s Safe Haven; The United Kingdom’s Investigation Into Nazi Collaborators and the Failure of Justice explains the failures of the British War Crimes Unit, which account for the paltry results achieved (only one perpetrator convicted and punished). Historian Jayne Persian‘s Fascists In Exile; Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia explains the reasons for the even worse results in Australia (no convictions).
In view of such dismal results all over the globe, Michael Soffer‘s Our Nazi; An American Suburb Encounter With Evil is a genuine breath of fresh air for several reasons. First of all, the major focus of the book is a case of a German Nazi who immigrated to the United States, which has the most successful record of all the Anglo-Saxon democracies who faced this problem. For the record: 109 Nazis who immigrated to the U.S. illegally have been punished either by denaturalization and/or deportation for immigration and naturalization violations.
The first book to lay bare the life of a Nazi camp guard who settled in a Chicago suburb and to explore how his community and others responded to discoveries of Nazis in their midst. “Our Nazi; An American Suburb’s Encounter With Evil,” The University of Chicago Press, 2024, 306 pages, $25.00
And what makes this book even more interesting is the particular problems which arose in the case of German Reinhold Kulle, who served as an S.S. guard in the notorious Gross-Rosen concentration camp, and whose diligence and dedication to his job posed some difficult dilemmas for his employers and his neighbors.
Behind the Smiling Façade. Nazi prison camp guard Reinhold Kulle who hid in plain sight in America for nearly three decades, is seen here in the Oak Park and River Forest High School’s 1966 yearbook.
Kulle was considered an outstanding school custodian, beloved and respected by the staff and students of Oak Park and River Forest High School. His work performance was uniquely appreciated, as was his personal conduct and exceptional relations with the students, many of whom found it difficult to believe that Kulle had been an S.S. guard in a Nazi concentration camp.
Hiding in Plain Sight. Reinold Kulle, during his time as a Nazi before he fled to the US and a quiet, Midwestern life. Kulle was one of around 10,000 Nazis who entered the US after the war and, like others, blended into his community, his neighbors oblivious to his past. Throughout World War II, Kulle had not only been a member of the Nazi’s Waffen-SS, but had worked at Gross-Rosen concentration camp where 40,000 Jews died.
To make the story more understandable, Soffer provides an excellent summary of the history of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), its establishment, and the obstacles that they faced to pursue the cases in the United States. Of particular interest, are his descriptions of the OSI lawyers, such as Bruce Einhorn and Eli Rosenbaum, for whom the Kulle case was his first at OSI, and later for many years became its director.
School for Scandal. The school hired Kulle even though the marriage certificate it had on file for him had his SS rank, the concentration camp where he worked, and a Reichsadler eagle stamp. Top left: Kulle at his Brookfield home in 1983, at the time of his deportation hearing. (Photography: (Kulle) Chicago Tribune; (school) Pioneer Press)
He also described in great detail the local personalities on both sides of the debate about Kulle and how to decide his fate. What was of particular interest was the tireless efforts of some of the Jewish women residents of Oak Park, who never gave up despite the pressure they faced from their colleagues and neighbors. Leah Marcus, Rima LuninSchultz, and Rae Lynne Toporoff, helped make history and achieve justice, and deserve the mention that Michael Soffer gave them.
About the writer:
Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the former director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center dedicated to Holocaust research, the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, and confronting antisemitism. As the world’s last Nazi hunter, Dr. Zuroff co-created the project, “Operation Last Chance” that operated across 14 countries in Europe and South America, offering financial rewards for information which could facilitate the prosecution of Nazi Holocaust perpetrators. Dr. Zuroff is also the author of over five hundred scholarly articles, publications, and books about the Holocaust and related subjects.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
A lifelong personal journey of a grandson to expose Lithuanian complicity in the mass murder of its Jewish citizens in the Holocaust.
By Grant Gochin
Growing up in South Africa, you implored me to “remember” -“Zachor”. I was to remember who we Jews are, and where we came from. You showed me the photos and told me stories. You taught me only love. You asked me to visit our family cemetery in the “old country” and to recite Kaddish for our family.
Zayde, I have.
So then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I traveled to the “old country”, specifically, Lithuania. Once there, my first destination was your shtetl. There was nothing Jewish remaining. They destroyed everything. Deliberately. I erected a new gravestone where I could say Kaddish.
The cemeteries were in utter disarray and in shambles. It was glaringly apparent to me that the overgrowth was intentional. No one wanted to remember that Jews had lived in Lithuania.
Together with others, I began to document and restore dozens of Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania.
Zachor Zayde, we preserved memory.
I searched for survivors. I found Sarah, our only cousin who survived the Shoah. Sarah’s descendants and I have formed strong family bonds. We remember. We are a family again. Everybody else was murdered. Lithuanians did it. Not Nazis.
Research led me to other survivors who could have easily been our Jewish relatives. I helped them Zayde, to the best of my ability. We worked tirelessly to support and love them. That is what you would have expected from me; I delivered.
I began to research your life. You did not tell me of the brutality and cruelty Lithuanians perpetrated against you, your mother, your father and your siblings. You sheltered me because you worried that I was too young to comprehend. Indeed, even as an adult, it is almost impossible to comprehend the cruelty and viciousness Lithuanians perpetrated against our family. They did so viciously, opportunistically and joyously.
Zayde, you embodied the dignity of Litvaks. I wanted the Lithuanians to know your name. Simply for them to know you had existed, and to record your name in a modern document. I applied for Lithuanian citizenship. I did not need their citizenship, because I am American now. I just wanted to preserve your memory. Lithuania denied you existed. They lied. They slandered you. When I applied , they used every tool they could create to deny citizenship to any Jew.
Zayde, you were pure love and dignity, I would not allow such monstrous people to obliterate and sully your name. I declared moral war on the Lithuanian Government and fought them in their own courts. I exposed their modern virulent antisemitism. I won. I am now a citizen of Lithuania; many of your grandchildren are also. We have used Lithuania’s slanders against you to crack open their stealth wall of hate. Now, through and because of you, many thousands of Jews have reclaimed their Lithuanian citizenship. Because of the principles you instilled in me to fight for truth; stand for respect and defend the vulnerable. Zachor.
Reciting Kaddish as you asked me to, I discovered the identity of the murderer of our own family. His name was Jonas Noreika. Lithuania considers him their national hero! Initially, I could not believe that such an evil ideology was still possible. I did what you asked of me Zayde, I stood up for truth. I approached the Lithuanian Government to explain to them that they had made a “mistake”. In my own mind, it was not possible that a monster who murdered thousands of his own co-citizens simply because they were Jews, could be elevated to their modern-day national hero. But I made a horrific discovery. The Lithuanian Government has fraudulently rewritten their national history and has zero interest in the truth. I tried everything; I was able to show them the facts. They treated me just as they had treated you, and all of our relatives; with contempt and brutality.
Zayde, you had no ability to stand up to Lithuanians during your lifetime, so, I did it for you. I did it for all their victims, for all Jews. I demanded the Lithuanian Government tell the truth. I fought them with every fiber of my being. Lithuania almost won. They declared their murderers as their heroes and contemptuously told us few surviving Jews that Lithuania was a rescuer nation. Zayde, they spat in your face. They had only contempt for the 220,000 Jews their national heroes had murdered.
No Holocaust organization would help me. They were bystanders. No Jewish institution helped me. Almost nobody would help me fight for truth. I realized that if I did not stand up for you, and for all 220,000 murder victims, Lithuania would successfully declare themselves the victim of their own murders, and the memory of every Lithuanian Jewish murder victim would be murdered again. It was the murder of truth and the murder of memory. How could I accept this and still face you? I could not.
Your life lessons left me no choice but to fight. I sued them in every court in their country, I sued them in the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations. I faced down their death threats; their threats of criminal and constitutional charges, their slanders and their attacks. It was them or you. I had no choice. You were love, they are hate. I could not have lived with myself had I allowed them to repeat their vile conduct.
I fought them for fifteen years. I spent hundreds of thousands of hours fighting them. You gave me no option. Allowing them to win would have been a betrayal of you and every Jewish victim.
I led a decade long international media campaign against the Lithuanian Government to expose the truth. I spent years researching, bringing truths to light, and preserving memory. I sat on Boards where we preserved documents and authentic history. I dedicated my life to remembering, documenting and preserving. Respect for you dominated my world and motivated all of my actions.
Good Lithuanians helped. Noreika’s own Granddaughter, Silvia Foti, stepped forward to tell the truth about her grandfather. Michael Kretzmer made an extraordinary documentary to expose the truth. And under the withering glare of international media, Lithuania finally crumbled.
Lithuania has admitted only some of Noreika’s crimes. They remain the most intense Holocaust revisionists in the world. They continue to lie about their many murderer heroes whose crimes I have exposed. Lithuania’s national history is a fraud, but we have finally penetrated the wall of their deceptions. And the world now knows. I have restored the truth.
Zayde, I have honored your legacy. You may now rest in peace. I love you.
*Feature picture: The writer’s grandfather, Samuel Gochin, in Lithuanian uniform of 5th Grand Duke Kestutis Doughboys Infantry. (Source: Gochin Family Archive).
About the writer:
Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
With time running out, the trial of Nazi death camp guard provides last opportunity for Holocaust survivors to relate their stories in a court of law.
By Dr Efraim Zuroff
The title of Tobias Buck’s Final Verdict is somewhatmisleading. While it does focus on one of the very last trials of a Nazi war criminal in a German court, the trial of Stutthof watchtower guard Bruno Dey was not the last such proceeding conducted recently in Germany. Nor was it one of the most interesting of the “belated trials” in Germany of Holocaust perpetrators. During the eight months Dey served in the Nazi concentration camp, he apparently did not murder any of the inmates, nor did he ever shoot his rifle.
It was precisely Dey’s relative insignificance, however, and the enormous difference between him and the major Nazi criminals, who served in notorious death camps, such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, or the important desk mass murderers like Eichmann, that piqued Buck’s curiosity, and attracted him to the case. He was quite certain that Dey would not have been a mass murderer, or a commander of a death camp, but he was not sure that Dey would be able to admit his guilt, and whether he would fully grasp his responsibility.
The gripping narrative of one of the last Nazi criminal trials in Germany – that of Bruno Dey, a 93-year-old former concentration camp guard charged with aiding the murder of more than 5,000 people – and a larger exploration of Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust, from silence to memory to today’s rising tide of fascism and antisemitism. (Hachette Books, 2024, 327 pages, $32.00)
Another aspect which attracted Buck’s interest was that he viewed the trial as one of the last opportunities for:
– Holocaust survivors to relate their stories in a court of law
– an old man to confront his guilt in front of a judge and
– a German court to show that justice could still be done, even many years after the crimes had been committed.
Buck explained that it was also a last opportunity for him to re-visit Holocaust issues, which as he put it “had held a grip on me since my early teenage years in Germany, when I developed a sudden and deep curiosity about the Nazi period, and specifically the murder of Europe’s Jews.” This interest prompted him to visit Auschwitz and to interview Holocaust survivors, something extremely rare among German youth his age. (Oddly enough, it was only once he began covering the Dey trial, that he began to research his own family, and discover that his grandfather Rupert was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933-1945, and a member of the S.S. from 1933-1935.)
It was Buck’s interest in Holocaust issues, and especially in the failure of the German judiciary to bring so many major Nazi Holocaust perpetrators to justice, that motivated him to write a book not only about the Dey trial, but also to explain the terrible failure of German justice, and explain how and why Germany dramatically changed its prosecution policy vis-à-vis Holocaust perpetrators, the step which led to eight trials of individuals who served in death and concentration camps, who would never have been brought to justice without the change in policy.
According to Buch:
“There was no single cause that can explain the historical failure of the West German judiciary to prosecute Nazi crimes. There were practical, as well as legal reasons, political reluctance, as well as popular resistance. Justice was thwarted by German amnesia, and American realpolitik (U.S. High Commissioner John McCloy pardoned some prisoners, and reduced the sentences of others), and by an unspoken agreement between key German leaders to draw a line under the past and move on.”
The statistics speak for themselves. From 1949, when West Germany assumed responsibility for its judiciary, until 1985, 200,000 Germans were investigated for Nazi crimes, the majority of whom (120,000) were indicted, but less than 7,000 were punished, many with extremely light sentences, some of which were subsequently commuted.
The situation hardly improved after German unification, until an extraordinary change in German prosecution policy vis-à-vis Nazi Holocaust perpetrators was implemented by Thomas Walther and his colleague Kirsten Goetze, a pair of dedicated prosecutors working at the German Central Office for the Clarification of Nazi War Crimes. They, and Anne Meier-Goering, the judge in the Dey trial, are the heroes of Final Verdict.
Despite the restrictions of the Covid pandemic, Judge Anne Meier-Goering pressed on with the trial against 93-year-old German Bruno Dey accused of being an SS guard involved in the mass murder of thousands of prisoners, many of them Jewish in the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp near Gdansk, Poland.(Fabian Bimmer/Pool via AP)
Until 2008, the main obstacle to the prosecution in Germany of Holocaust perpetrators, was the requirement that there was available evidence that the suspect had committed a specific crime against a specific victim, which was almost impossible to prove decades after the crime had been committed. Walther and Goetze suggested that instead of trying to convict suspects of murder, which was nearly impossible to prove, why not charge the suspects with “accessory for murder.” In that case, what the prosecution would have to prove in a case of a death camp guard, was “only” that:
1) the defendant was present in the camp when the Jews were being murdered
2) that during his or her service in the camp, at least a certain number of Jews were killed
3) that the suspect had assisted in the murders due to his or her function in the camp hierarchy
The case chosen to test this strategy was quite famous, that of Ivan Demjanjuk, who had initially been convicted in the United States (of immigration and naturalization violations), and in Israel (of mass murder in the Treblinka death camp), but was ultimately released on the grounds of mistaken identity, and sent back to the United States. There, he was tried again, only this time for service in Sobibor, not Treblinka, and ordered deported. Based on the new policy, Germany was able to obtain his extradition and convict him for the deaths of some 28,000 Jews in Sobibor, a decision which paved the way for the trials of seven men and women who served in Nazi concentration camps, among them Bruno Dey.
Expected to be one of the last Nazi-era trials, as both survivors and perpetrators are now very old, and in some cases their memories are failing, former Nazi guard Bruno Dey hides his face behind a folder during his trial which he was found guilty of mass murder at Stutthof Camp.
The Dey trial posed several technical and judicial problems for Judge Meier-Goering. The corona pandemic erupted during the trial, but Judge Meier-Goering managed to continue despite all the restrictions.
In order to convict Dey, she believed that the prosecution had to prove that the watchtower guard knew what was happening in Stutthof. Time and again, she asked Dey whether he conversed with the inmates to learn about their conditions. But Dey refused to “cooperate” with her, and claimed that he never witnessed an execution, a public whipping, or any other form of punishment. He even claimed that he didn’t know where the gallows were, but the detailed testimonies of the survivors about the gas chambers, the horrible lack of food, and the refusal to provide medical treatment for ill inmates, made Dey’s supposed ignorance about the purpose of the camp much less believable. And indeed, Judge Meier-Goering clearly and extensively mentioned the crimes that Dey witnessed day after day and the fact that he made no effort to be reassigned to a different task. In that respect, Judge Meier-Goering’s verdict established a ruling that could have enabled the prosecution of thousands of Holocaust perpetrators who were never prosecuted in Germany, that there is nothing as a “small cog” in a concentration camp.
The crematoria at Stutthof concentration camp after liberation, 9 May 1945.
Final Verdict is an extremely valuable book, which deserves wide circulation, not only in Germany, but throughout the Western world. I can only hope that it will be translated to as many languages as possible.
About the writer:
Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the former director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center dedicated to Holocaust research, the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, and confronting antisemitism. As the world’s last Nazi hunter, Dr. Zuroff co-created the project, “Operation Last Chance” that operated across 14 countries in Europe and South America, offering financial rewards for information which could facilitate the prosecution of Nazi Holocaust perpetrators. Dr. Zuroff is also the author of over five hundred scholarly articles, publications, and books about the Holocaust and related subjects.
His works include the following books: (1) Occupation Nazi-Hunter; The Continuing Search for the Perpetrators of the Holocaust; (2)The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust; (3) The Activities of the Vaad Ha- Hatzala Rescue Committee of the Orthodox Rabbis, 1939-1945; (4) Operation Last Chance – One Man’s Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice and (5) Our People; Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust, co-written with Ruta Vanagaite.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
One of the strangest outcomes of World War II was the mass postwar emigration of Nazi war criminals to the Anglo-Saxon democracies which fought against the Nazis and played a major role in the defeat of the Third Reich. Thus, for example, some 200,000 American soldiers lost their lives fighting against the Germans, yet an estimated 10,000 Nazi perpetrators were admitted as immigrants to the United States during the decade after the war. And a similar situation developed in Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The only exception in this regard was South Africa, which was hermetically closed to immigration in the aftermath of World War II.
Safe Harbor. With serious flaws in the screening process during the post war period, how many Nazis and their collaborators sneaked into Australia? Seen here are migrant arrivals from Europe arriving in Sydney harbor in 1947.
For more than three decades in the United States, and more than 40 years in the other Anglo-Saxon democracies, no effort was undertaken to identify, investigate, and if possible, prosecute any of these perpetrators. But as knowledge and interest in the Holocaust grew throughout the world, efforts to bring these criminals to justice were launched.
The first government to take steps to enable the prosecution of the Holocaust perpetrators, who had immigrated by lying about their service with the Nazis, was the United States, which established its Office of Special Investigations in 1979. Nazi collaborators were stripped of their American citizenship, and could then be deported. Eight years later, Canada passed a law enabling criminal prosecution of Nazi criminals, and in 1989, Australia passed a similar law. In the UK, it took almost another five years to pass similar legislation in 1991. The only country which refused to take legal action against immigrants who lied about their service with the Nazis was New Zealand.
Now that at least three and a half decades have passed since the efforts to prosecute these perpetrators commenced, and there is no political will in any of these countries to bring ninety-year-olds to justice, the time has come for historians to assess the results. So far, two books on the “belated” trials of Holocaust perpetrators in Anglo-Saxon countries have been published this year – Safe Haven by Jon Silverman and Robert Sherwood on Great Britain, and Jayne Persian’s Fascists in Exile on Australia.
Easy Entry. A new life for immigrants from Europe disembarking in Sydney could so easily include Nazis and their collaborators as the screening was poor on departure and even worse on arrival in Australia.
The latter is the subject of this review, and well deserving of public attention. Anyone interested in post-Holocaust justice, the history of Australian Jewry, the critical role of Eastern European Nazi collaborators in the Final Solution, and related topics will find this book of great interest. Unlike Safe Haven, which covers the history of the issue starting with the passage of the British War Crimes Act in 1991 (after a heated struggle that took four and a half years with fierce opposition by the House of Lords, which twice rejected the bill), Fascists in Exile covers the entire issue, from the post-World War II emigration of the Eastern European refugees to Australia to the present.
Fascists in Exile: Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia Jayne Persian Routledge, 182 pages, A$49.99
Persian does an excellent job of exposing the serious flaws in the screening, or the lack thereof, both in Europe prior to immigration and in Australia after arrival. During the years 1947 to 1952, 170,000 non-Jewish Displaced Persons settled in Australia, the overwhelming majority of whom were Eastern Europeans from countries in which the local population actively participated in the mass murder of the local Jewish population. Although there was extensive information available on the World War II service of such individuals, hardly any effort was made by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) to prevent their immigration, or even inform the Australian authorities about their past.
Persian explains in great detail what went wrong in Europe, as well as in Australia. First of all, in Europe, most of the investigations were carried out by inexperienced officers and enlisted men, who were not aware of the role played by Eastern European Nazi collaborators in the Holocaust. To make things worse, the British Foreign Ministry instructed its military officers to protect the 20,000 members of the Latvian SS Legion, who fought for the victory of the Third Reich. Quite a few of the Latvia SS Legion’s members joined after serving in the Arajs Kommando mass murder squad, or the Latvian SD, both of which played major roles in the annihilation of Latvian Jews, as well as German and Austrian Jews deported to Latvia.
Another example of the totally irresponsible screening of large numbers of prospective immigrants occurred with respect to the Ukrainians of the Galicia Division of the SS, which also participated in the mass murder of Jews. Only 180 out of 8,000 men were interviewed individually. Thus, is it not at all surprising that the IRO acceptance rate for immigration was 82.6%.
To make matters worse, all the flaws in the screening process in Europe were exacerbated by the policies of the Australian government, which believed that once the IRO vetted the refugees, they were no longer responsible for any additional security checks. In addition, the major concern of the Australian government was that the refugees would fit into “White Australia”, and help solve the country’s population and labour force deficits. In effect, their only concern was that the new arrivals might join and strengthen local fascist organisations.
To add insult to injury, the only Europeans whose immigration to Australia was considered undesirable by the government were Jews. In the words of an Australian immigration official quoted by Persian:
“We have never wanted these people and still don’t want them.”
Australia’s Attitude. In spite of the alarming rise in the Nazi persecution of German Jews, Australia’s attitude towards Jewish refugees remained inhospitable as was expressed at the Evian Conference in 1938, by Australia’s chief delegate, Colonel T. W. White, (above) who declared: “as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration”.
And in instructions sent in 1949 to the Australian mission in Europe, the staff were instructed that “The term [Jewish] referred to race and not religion and the fact that some DP’s who are Jewish by race have become Christian by religion is not relevant.”
Given this attitude, it is not surprising that all the protests and warnings, especially by Jewish activists, about the immigration to Australia of Nazi collaborators were ignored or summarily dismissed. All this changed in 1983, in the wake of the ouster from power of the Liberal Party, which was the political home of the overwhelming majority of the right-wing Eastern European refugees. Labor was open to investigating the Nazi war criminals who had immigrated to Australia, and the combination of the deportation of Latvian suspect Konrad Kalejs from the US to Australia, and a five-part exposé on radio and TV by journalist Mark Aarons, led to the 1986 decision to establish an official government inquiry, headed by Andrew Menzies, a former deputy secretary in the Attorney-General’s Department.
Heading ‘Home’. Deported by the US and Canada and unwanted in Britton, accused WWII Latvian death squad commander Konrad Kalejs flees to Melbourne where this photo caption heading reads, “Flying home”.
The final chapters of the book are devoted to the efforts of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which was established in 1987 by the government as a result of the findings of the Menzies investigation. It opened with a total of 841 files, but according to Persian, that figure is misleading since some suspects had two or three files. The country of origin with the highest number of suspect files was Lithuania with 238, followed by Latvia with 111, Ukraine with 84, Hungary with 45, and Croatia with 44. (The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s office in Jerusalem sent the Australian authorities a total of 487 suspects, mostly from the Baltics, between 1986 and 2005). Two hundred and forty-eight of the suspects were not located in Australia, and 262 persons were assumed to be deceased due to their advanced age.
Unearthing the Truth. Between 1987 and 1993 the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) carried out investigations into allegations that Nazi collaborators and mass killers had migrated to Australia following the end of WWII. During those investigations the SIU undertook the exhumation of the human remains of Jewish victims who were executed as seen here during the course of the Serniki exhumation, where the SIU forensic team counted 553 bodies.
According to Persian, SIU interviews of suspects were a fairly informal process, which relied on a cooperative interviewee. Suspects could simply refuse to be interviewed, others simply answered “No comment, no comment.” In case after case, it was clear that the suspects had served in killing squads, but no one admitted that they had committed murder, nor were there any eyewitnesses who could testify that a certain suspect had committed murder. Thus, it was not surprising that the first three prosecutions failed, which gave the government of Paul Keating an excuse to close down the SIU long before it finished its task.
There are a few factual mistakes in Jayne Persian’s book that should be mentioned. The American OSI won cases against slightly more than 100 Holocaust perpetrators, not against “several hundred people”. Canada only prosecuted one case on criminal charges, not three. And Persian failed to mention the successful prosecution in Germany of Ernst Hering, who was discovered due to the (failed) trial in Australia of Heinrich Wagner, who served in the same unit that murdered 104 Jews in Israelovka, Ukraine. She also failed to mention the jailing of Karoly Zentai, who sat in prison in Perth for several months awaiting extradition to Hungary to face charges for the murder of Peter Balasz, an 18-year-old Jewish boy whom he caught in Budapest on a tram without the obligatory yellow star.
Despite this, Persian’s book is extremely informative, and well-researched and written, and should be required reading in every Australian high school and university.
Jewish Reaction. Australian Jewish students shout slogans at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne before the arrival of alleged Nazi mass murderer Latvian-born Konrad Kalejs. (Photo: Reuters/Will Burgess / Bridgeman Images)
About the writer:
Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Slightly more than two months ago, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution, which was not supported by a majority of its member states (84 voted in favor; but 68 countries abstained; 19 voted against, and 22 countries, including Israel, were not present for the vote). It adopted a resolution designating July 11 as the “International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica,” condemning the denial of genocide, as well as the glorification of war criminals.
Why was this heinous war crime chosen out of so many massacres committed during the modern era to be designated as a case of genocide? The UN General Assembly did so, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Bosniaks who had escaped to Srebrenica, which had been officially proclaimed as a haven for Bosnian Muslims, were not harmed by the troops of the Republic of Srpska. In fact, all the women, children, and elderly men, who constituted a huge majority of the 25,000 refugees, were released unharmed.
Such an absurd decision is hardly unusual in the United Nations, where politics is the name of the game, and certain political allies have an automatic majority. Under these circumstances, Serbia did not stand a chance of preventing the passage of this resolution. Israelis can commiserate with Serbia since Israel, too, was the victim of patently politically motivated resolutions and unfair criticism passed in the General Assembly. The most famous and outrageous of which was the “Zionism is racism” resolution.
Outrageous Resolution. On November 10, 1975, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog – later the sixth President of Israel – delivered one of the most influential speeches in history denouncing the UN General Assembly resolution that equated Zionism with racism.
While Serbia can take some consolation in the fact that a majority of General Assembly members declined to support the resolution, one of the most infuriating aspects was that the resolution was proposed and cosponsored by Germany. While German responsibility for the horrific “Final Solution” implemented by the Nazis to completely annihilate European Jewry is common knowledge, few people outside of former Yugoslavia are aware of the extent and cruelty of Nazi crimes against the Serbs during World War II.
Crveni Krst Concentration camp. Located in Crveni Krst, Niš, more than 10,000 inmates are thought to have been killed here by the German Gestapo who operated this notorious camp.
Nazi brutality was already on display from the first day of the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, when they launched a murderous fire-bombing attack on Belgrade, during which the National Library and its precious collection of books, some of which were even from the 12th century, were all destroyed. This was followed in the areas under German military occupation by the erection of infamous Nazi concentration camps, such as Banjica in Belgrade, and the notorious Crveni Krst (Red Cross) in Nis, where about fourteen thousand innocents, mostly Serbs, were murdered.
Banjica Concentration Camp. Located in the Banjica neighborhood of Dedinje – a suburb of Belgrade, a German soldier points his rifle at a prisoner in Jajinci, which served as an execution site for Banjica inmates.
BLACK OCTOBERS EVERYWHERE
The killing of a German soldier was accompanied by massive reprisals against the Serbian civilian population, which were far more drastic than the measures taken in other occupied countries. One hundred civilians (in some cases including children), executed for the death of a single German soldier, and 50 for a wounded one. The most notorious slaughter of innocents took place in Kragujevac in aptly-named “Black October” of 1941.
Mass murder of Serbs. On October 21,1941, Nazi soldiers killed over 4,000 civilians, including children, as part of an “atonement exercise” in occupied Serbia, which today hardly features in Germany’s historical recollection of WWII.
A substantial number of Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans), residents of Yugoslavia, acted as a fifth column during the years leading up to the war and then joined the Nazi invaders, many volunteering to join the S.S. 7th Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen.
In the annexed areas of Yugoslavia, the Germans’ allies committed horrific crimes against the Serbian civilians with the full permission and support of the Nazis. The worst perpetrators in this regard were the Croatian Ustasha, who launched a genocidal campaign against the Serbs, during which they were massively slaughtered in rural areas and in the concentration camps they built throughout the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which the Germans created following the occupation of Yugoslavia. Serbs, Jews, Roma, and anti-fascist Croatians were tortured in the most horrific ways, and ultimately murdered in Jasenovac, the camp which became a symbol of Ustasha cruelty and depravity.
‘NAZI GERMANY HAD COMPLETE RESPONSIBILITY’
Even Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, the German military envoy in Zagreb, harshly criticized the terrible Ustasha atrocities, warning that they would cause an uprising of the local Serbian population. Nazi Germany had complete responsibility for them as well. It not only created the preconditions but also conceived the NDH. Nazi Germany never made any attempt to restrain the Ustasha genocide campaigns launched by the NDH’s dictator Ante Pavelic. On the contrary, Hitler told him that if the NDH wants to be stable, intolerant nationalist policy must be conducted for 50 years, since too much tolerance can only create problems.
The head of the foreign policy committee of the German Bundestag, Michael Roth, referring to the negative reactions from Belgrade to the passage of the resolution on Srebrenica, called them “shameful and disappointing.” He added that suggesting in response to pass a similar resolution on Jasenovac seems an attempt to divert attention. “The point is not for some to point fingers at others.”
Selective Characterization. A Bosnian Muslim survivor of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre walks among headstones as she visits the graves of her relatives at the memorial cemetery in Potocari, near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, July 11, 2024. Serb officials deny that the 1995 massacre was a “genocide,” instead referring to it as a “terrible crime”. (Photo: Elvis Barukcic, AFP)
Despite understanding what Roth wanted to say, the lack of an elementary expression of regret and remorse is unacceptable. It is certainly not about the absence of honoring the victims as such, but the absence of special consideration for their fate, which should be forthcoming from Germany, which had full responsibility for Jasenovac as well. Until today, however, there is no feeling in the Balkans that Germany has ever expressed any remorse or regret for the crimes committed against Serbs.
Instead, for political reasons, it has too often sided with those who acted to Serbia’s detriment. Germany is among the most important investors and foreign trade partners of Serbia. It is certainly one of the central countries of the European Union, so important to Serbia as well. Precisely because of this, it would only be natural to expect an expression of historical responsibility towards the Serbian people and reverence for its victims.
About the writers:
Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs.
Aleksandar Nikolic is an honorary consul of the Republic of Serbia to Israel.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
In a post October 7 world when Jews again are tagged and targeted, the name of cycling legend Bartali personifies true heroism– reflections and recollections during the 2024 Tour de France.
By David E. Kaplan
This year’s 2024 Tour de France – won in spectacular fashion by Slovenian Tadej Pogačar – had plenty of high moments and the breaking of long-held records. For the most part, I watched on TV all 21 stages. What particularly caught my attention was on the Saturday and penultimate stage of the grueling 21-stage race that ended the next day in Nice in a nail-biting ‘time trial’, was the commentator’s line which he repeated again and again:
“If Pogačar wins today’s mountain stage, he will equal the record of 5 mountain stage wins in a Tour with Gino Bartali.”
Bartali? Where had I heard that name before?
Records and Revelations. Tour de France 2024 race leader Tadej Pogačar climbs to victory on penultimate stage 20 atop Col de la Couillole, equaling the record of the great Gino Bartali who saved Jews during WWII in Italy. (Photo: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
It rang a clangor and for more than only cycling. I let the thought linger until the end of the stage when Pogačar won in spectacular fashion and the animated commentator was battling to catch his breath as if he had himself just raced the132.8 km and said:
“Theonly other man to have won five mountain stages in one Tour was Gino Bartali in 1948.”
Again, the name Bartali and coupled with a “76-year-old record had been equaled.”
76 years…Bartali……!
And then I remembered.
Pogačar had equaled a record of not only the leading cyclist of his era, a three-time winner of the Giro d’Italia (1936,1937 and 1946), who won the Tour de France in 1938 and again after the war, a decade later in 1948 but had, in the intervening years, saved the lives of Jews in wartime Italy.
It all came back to me when I recalled back to a Yom HaShoah ceremony many years earlier in my hometown of Kfar Saba in central Israel. That year, the annual memorial ceremony for the six million victims of the Holocaust focused on the connection between sport and the Holocaust and related the story of an Italian, not Jewish and a great cyclist named Gino Bartali, who at great risk to himself and his family, had saved Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. There was good reason why on July 7, 2013, Yad Vashem recognized Gino Bartali as Righteous Among the Nations.
Writing on the Wall. Years later, Gino Bartali sticks his head out his car window to view graffiti honouring him and other Tour de France winners – Ottavio Bottecchia (1924), himself (1938), Fausto Coppi (1949) and Gastone Nencini (1960).
During his lifetime, Bartali didn’t talk about his wartime activities and was only after his death in 2000 that details began to emerge.
A villager from a poor Tuscan family, Bartali in the second half of the 1930s was reaching the peak of his career having won his first Giro d’Italia in 1936 and then retaining the title in 1937 when war clouds began to ominously loom over Europe. When he then in 1938, won his first Tour de France, it was in the aftermath of this triumph that revealed as much about Bartali’s moral character as his cycling prowess.
Cycling Courier. Gino Bartali and his bicycle that helped saved the lives of Jews.
As related by Bartali’s son Andrea, there was one particular fan of his father who was following the cyclist’s progress with more Machiavellian than sporting interest – Benito Mussolini, the country’s fascist leader. Under the evil spell of Hitler, “He believed,” said Andrea, “that if an Italian rider triumphed in the Tour de France it would show that Italians too belonged to the master race.”
Man of Modesty. Bartali wanted to be remembered for his sporting career on his bike and when asked about his wartime excursions, used to say: “I did the only thing I was good at, I cycled.” In truth, he did so much more risking his life to save Jews from the clutches of the Nazis in wartime Italy.
Bartali would go on to win won the 1938 Tour de France but for him, unlike for Mussolini it was a ‘race’ only in a cycling not in an ethnicity sense. While the Italian leader felt Bartali had contributed to fascist prestige and wanted to exploit the cyclist’s win, Bartali would have none of that.
“When my father was invited to dedicate his win to Mussolini and the fascist cause, he refused,”revealed Andrea. A risk-taker on the saddle, he was even more so when off. By refusing to dedicate his win to the fascist cause “my dad was insulting il Duce.He was taking a great personal risk.”
However, he would take far more serious risks in the near future.
Streets of Salvation. Bartali’s bike on display in the cycling museum in Madonna del Ghisallo Church, Lombardy. Withing the frame and handlebars, were hidden the photographs and counterfeit ID documents for Jews fleeing for their lives from the Nazis.
In the middle of that year’s 1938 Tour de France, on the 14 July, Mussolini published the Manifesto della razza (Manifesto on Race), which led to Italian Jews being stripped of their Italian citizenship and any position in government or the professions. These antisemitic laws demonstrated the increasing influence of Adolf Hitler over Mussolini. Nevertheless, Italy still managed to remain a country in which Jews could at least take refuge, but that all terrifyingly transitioned when Italy surrendered to the allies in 1943 and the German army responded by occupying northern and central parts of the country. They immediately started rounding up Jews and sending them to concentration camps.
Smiling Monsters. Bartali defied them both – Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler riding in an open car, circa 1940s.(Fotosearch/Getty Images)
It was at this point that Bartali, a devout Catholic, was asked by the Cardinal of Florence, ArchbishopElia Dalla Costa, to join a secret network offering protection and safe passage to Jews.
His role in the network spearheaded by the Cardinal together with Rabbi Nathan Cassuto (later arrested by the Nazis, deported and sent to his death) was uniquely suited to his temperament and talents. As an internationally renowned cyclist; a national hero with a face recognised by all, he became an unsuspecting courier – on two wheels – relaying forged documents, most of it relating to Jews trying to escape.
ON THE ROAD
So, on the ‘surface’ (literally as well as figuratively), Bartali was undertaking long training rides for which he was renowned, but in reality, he was carrying photographs and counterfeit identity documents to and from a secret printing press produced by the Assisi network, another rescue operation initiated by Church people in that town. All these secret documents were hidden in the frame and handlebars of his bicycle.
Riding through many roadblocks manned by Italian fascists as well as Nazis, when Bartali was stopped and searched, he specifically asked that his bicycle not be touched “since the different parts were very carefully calibrated to achieve maximum speed.”
A perfectly credible explanation.
At remarkable risk, Bartali cycled thousands of kilometres across Italy, peddling between cities as far apart as Florence, Lucca, Genoa, Assisi and the Vatican in Rome.
At one point he was arrested and questioned by the head of the Fascist secret police in Florence where he lived and for a period, went into hiding, living incognito in the town of Citta Di Castello in Umbria.
In addition to these defiant exploits, Bartali hid his Jewish friend Giacomo Goldenberg and his family.
“He hid us in spite of knowing that the Germans were killing everybody who was hiding Jews,” Goldenberg’s son, Giorgio would later reveal.
“He was risking not only his life but also his family. Gino Bartali saved my life and the life of my family. That’s clear because if he hadn’t hidden us, we had nowhere to go.”
The Goldenberg family would emigrate to the emerging Jewish state after the war. Young Giorgio Goldenberg, son of Bartali’s friend, would take with him a signed 1940 photo Bartali had given him of his cycling victories. Giorgio now goes by the name of Shlomo Paz and has three children and five grandchildren and lives outside of Tel Aviv.
BRAVE BARTALI
Portrait of a Cyclist. The 1941 photo Gino Bartali gave to young Giorgio Goldenberg who would change his name to Shlomo Paz and live outside Tel Aviv.
Andrea Bartali says that eventually “little by little my father told me about his actions during the war.” However, “he made me promise at that time not to tell anyone.”
An unusual type of hero was Bartali.
When asked why he could not speak about his father’s heroic wartime exploits, he replied that his father had said:
“You must do good, but you must not talk about it. If you talk about it, you’re taking advantage of others misfortunes for your own gain.”
Father and son. Gino Bartali with his son Andrea who would years later be in Jerusalem to see his late father honoured at Yad Vashem.
Because Bartali didn’t want to be acknowledged for what he had done, very few of those he helped ever knew his name or what role he had played in their rescue.
Andrea Bartali says his father refused to view his actions as heroic.
“When people were telling him, ‘Gino, you’re a hero’, he would reply: ‘No, no – I want to be remembered for my sporting achievements. Real heroes are others….”
Really? If Bartali been caught by the Nazis – despite being a sporting hero – he most likely would have been shot.
Living Legacy. Bartali’s son Andrea Bartali visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem in 2013, where his father was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations for risking his life to save Jews during WWII.
None of this was related by the sports commentator at this year’s 2024 Tour de France while he constantly made the comparisons between Pogačar and Bartali. Probably, like the Jews Bartali saved, the commentator did not even know the story.
However, for those who do know and remember, in a post October 7 world when Jews again are tagged and targeted, the name Bartali personifies true heroism – others before self.
The Road Ahead. Members of the ISRAEL-PREMIER-TECH team at the 2024 Tour de France emblazoning to a global audience on their cycling attire the name ISRAEL and the Star of David.
*Feature picture: Hero on and off the bike. Gino Bartali rides uphill in the 1938 Tour de France.(Photo STF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
The book ‘Safe Haven’ is one that should attract several diverse audiences of readers. Former BBC reporter Jon Silverman, who covered the British Nazi War Crimes Act issue from beginning to end, and his co-author Robert Sherwood, an expert on the post-World War II prosecution of Nazi war criminals, have written an excellent history of the fate of the legislation passed in the British Parliament in Spring 1991 to enable the prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators living in the United Kingdom. Theirs is a cautionary tale regarding an important and highly justified judicial initiative, launched to prosecute Nazi war criminals who had illegally immigrated to Great Britain, which in practical terms, only ONE individual was convicted and punished out of many clearly guilty perpetrators. This was a miserable failure but ultimately had a positive impact on Holocaust consciousness in the United Kingdom.
Escaping Justice. ‘SAFE HAVEN’ by Jon Silverman and Robert Sherwood is the first book to examine the police and legal inquiries in the UK after the passage of the War Crimes Act in 1991. It provides revelatory information about Nazi collaborators in Eastern Europe given refuge in Britain after 1945 and explains why there was only one conviction out of hundreds of cases.
The authors explain the practical “failure” of the bill in great detail, and point out how quite a few more mass murderers could have been convicted, had the British legal bureaucracy been more flexible, and had there been greater political will to convict and punish these Eastern European Nazi collaborators. Thus, this story is not only about the Holocaust, or post-World War II justice, but also about how governments function and how justice is or isn’t achieved in a leading Western democracy. On a personal level, the book also deals with an important chapter of the efforts of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to help facilitate the prosecution of Nazi criminals. In 1986, I was hired by the center to open an office in Jerusalem, which would focus on Eastern European Nazi collaborators who had immigrated to Western democracies. By this point, it was common knowledge that all the major Anglo-Saxon democracies which had fought against the Nazis had admitted at least dozens, if not hundreds, of the worst of Hitler’s henchmen as refugees. (The only exception was South Africa, which was closed hermetically to immigration in those years.) Canada and Australia had already been alerted to the problem and were discussing possible steps to take, but Great Britain and New Zealand ostensibly had no indication that they also had the same problem. On October 22, 1986, however, the Wiesenthal Center submitted a list I compiled of 17 Latvian and Lithuanian Nazi collaborators living in Great Britain to Donald Ballentine, the British consul in Los Angeles, which marked the beginning of the process that led to the War Crimes Act. We subsequently sent 50 more names to the British authorities and did our best, together with the local supporters of the initiative, to convince the government to pass the bill and maximize its impact. The “heart” of the book and its most interesting chapters are about the sole conviction, how it was achieved, and the cases of suspects who were obviously guilty but for technical reasons or simple bad luck (their premature demise or the refusal of eyewitnesses to their crimes to testify against them) could not be convicted. Thus, for example, Anthony Sawoniuk, a cruel Byelorussian policeman who participated in many executions of Jews in his hometown of Domachevo, was successfully convicted because of the testimony of eyewitnesses to the murder of local Jewish women and the fact that he was the only person in town named Andrusha. In three other cases, the British police and prosecutors were not so lucky, and as a result, mass murderers from Lithuania, Latvia, and Belarus escaped punishment.
Murderer of Thousands. War crimes suspect Anton Gecas who died in 2001 and never brought to trial, was the head of a special police battalion responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, partisans and Communist Party members in Lithuania and Belarus in 1941.
The most famous case was that of Antanas Gecevicius, who changed his name in Scotland to Anton Gecas. He was the “star” of my original list, having served as an officer in the notorious Lithuanian 12th Auxiliary Police Battalion, which was sent in October 1941 to Belarus, where they murdered at least 20,000 Jews. According to members of his unit, who were prosecuted in Soviet Lithuania, Gecas not only issued orders to murder Jews but finished off those not killed by the initial round of bullets. Gecas denied the accusations and filed a defamation suit against Scottish TV, and he sued me for libel because I accused him of those crimes in my book Occupation: Nazi-Hunter. Gecas lost his suit against Scottish TV and was called a criminal; but luckily for him, the standard of proof was based on the civil standard, which fell short of the threshold of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which would have paved the way for his prosecution. In addition, at least a dozen veterans of Gecas’s unit were found living in the UK, to whom the Scottish war crimes team were ready to grant immunity if they testified against Gecas. But the British refused to exempt them from prosecution, and without that promise none of them were willing to testify against him. Some of them were willing to answer a few questions about the unit but not to deliver strong enough evidence against Gecas.
Jew-Killer Convicted. In Britain’s war crimes trial at the Old Bailey in 1999, Anthony Sawoniuk was given two life sentences in 1999 for the murder of 18 Jews in his hometown of Domachevo, which was then in Nazi-occupied Byelorussia (now Belarus) in 1942. (Photo: Reuters)
A second case of a murder squad officer who immigrated to Britain and escaped prosecution, was that of Latvian Harijs Skiveris, who had been a senior officer in the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police, commonly referred to as the Arajs Kommando (named for its commander Viktor Arajs, who was convicted in Germany of the murder of 13,000 Jews and was sentenced to life imprisonment). Thirty additional members of the unit were executed for war crimes in the Soviet Union. Skiveris, who signed documents as “Head of Security, Kommando”, and “Battalion Commander”, was obviously one of the most important officers in the unit, which played a key role in the majority of the murders of approximately 30,000 Jews in and around Riga (initially in Bikerenieki Forest, and later at Rumbula), as well as in the provincial Latvian towns. In 1942, moreover, the unit was sent to combat pro-Soviet partisans in Belarus, where they killed partisans and burned down entire villages. Skiveris, of course, denied that he committed any crimes or even was present when Germans shot Jews. The problem was, however, that he could not be prosecuted because there was no direct evidence that Skiveris served as Arajs’s adjutant or as a battalion commander, and the prosecution did not have any live, legally admissible eyewitness evidence of his participation in the murder of innocents.
Killers in the UK. Latvian Harijs Skiveris, who immigrated to Britain and escaped prosecution had been a senior officer in the infamous Latvian Auxiliary Security Police commonly referred to as the Arãjs Kommando, seen here in this 1942 group photo. (Photo: State Archive of Latvia.)
The third case of a guilty criminal who escaped punishment despite his crimes was that of Szymon Serafinowicz, who was the first person prosecuted under the 1991 War Crimes Act. Various testimonies accused Serafinowicz of active participation in the mass murder of the Jews of Mir, especially the testimony of Dov Resnik, who saw Serafinowicz murder his 16-year-old son and a friend Aron Rudicki, along with his wife and two children. On July 12, 1995, Serafinowicz was arrested and charged with four counts of murder. At that point, he was 84 years old but was considered physically and mentally capable to stand trial. According to the authors, if Serafinowicz would have been put on trial in 1995 or early 1996, a historic conviction could have been obtained. Unfortunately, the trial was delayed by a committal procedure, which was a test run of the prosecution’s case before a magistrate without a jury, a step which the lawyers who supported the War Crimes Act recommended to omit. And indeed, the delay caused by the committal process spared Serafinowicz from a conviction and a punishment, since he had begun to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and could not be prosecuted. Sawoniuk was convicted in 1999 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in jail in 2005. The Serafinowicz investigation was the last of its kind, which meant that only one Holocaust perpetrator who had entered Britain illegally was convicted and punished, clearly a terribly dismal result, which the authors very cogently explain could have been far better. They do, however, leave us with a silver lining, as they assert that the tremendous efforts invested in passing the War Crimes Act and trying to implement it helped:
Saved by Alzheimer’s. Due to a delay in court proceedings and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, Szymon Serafinowicz (center) – who is seen here escorted by policemen from the Epsom magistrates court after he was charged with the murder of four Jews in the years 1941 and 1942 in Nazi occupied Byelorussia – escaped conviction and punishment. (Photo: JOHNNY EGGITT/AFP via Getty Image)
“change the status of the Holocaust in British culture and society…and helped to mark the dawn of the institutionalization of the Holocaust; a process aligned to the formation of cultural memory, and one which climax a decade later by Holocaust Memorial Day and other events.”
SAFE HAVEN: The United Kingdom’s Investigations into Nazi Collaborators and the Failure of Justice Jon Silverman and Robert Sherwood Oxford University Press, 2023 336 pages; £43.8
About the writer:
Dr. Efraim Zuroff. Director, Simon Wiesenthal Center – Israel office and Eastern European Affairs. Coordinator, SWC Nazi war crimes research worldwide 1 Mendele Street Jerusalem, Israel 92147 Tel: 972.2.563.1273/4/5 Fax: 972.2.563.1276 www.swcjerusalem.org <http://www.swcjerusalem.org>
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
The 2-minute siren is always shocking; this year it felt worse being7 months since the Hamas massacre of October 7
By Jonathan Feldstein
I didn’t expect today would be such an emotional roller coaster, nor to take time writing about it. For decades, Israel and the Jewish people have observed Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), in solemn remembrance of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. In recent years it’s become much more common for Christians to join these commemorations, either with Jewish communities where they live, on their own, or by through Israel’s nationwide observance.
In no year since the Holocaust have the Jewish people felt so hopeless and, in many cases, standing alone. In no year since the Holocaust has Israel been at war with an existential enemy rooted in extremist Islam, while observing this solemn day. In no year since the Holocaust have the Jewish people felt so physically threatened around the world, and on campuses of what used to be elite academic institutions that have now become incubators of Jew-hatred.
Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel is marked by dozens of public ceremonies broadcast nationally. There are thousands of memorial events in schools, community centers, synagogues, and private homes. TV and radio programming pivots almost entirely about the stories of Holocaust survivors. At 10:00 am, a siren is sounded for two minutes, all over the country. People stop what they are doing, even get out of cars and buses, standing in silent attention and prayer. This is what it looks and sounds like in the Judean mountains south of Jerusalem. In cities it’s even more vivid.
The day is not over and yet it’s been an emotional roller coaster. I know that dozens of my relatives were murdered, some of whose pictures we have and stories we know. It’s personal. Never in their abruptly shortened lives could they have imagined that several decades since they were shot or gassed that their relatives would be living in the reborn State of Israel, where Jewish sovereignty has been restored after nearly 2000 years of exile.
It was surreal that while watching the emotional story of one of Israel’s retired Supreme Court justices recounting his survival, he was interrupted by the Breaking News of three soldiers who were killed when terrorists in Gaza, attacked the main “Kerem Shalom” crossing into Gaza through which hundreds of truckloads of humanitarian supplies enter Gaza daily. The soldiers killed were guarding the crossing and the humanitarian convoys so Gazans could have food, medical supplies, and more. A fourth soldier succumbed to his wounds the next day.
It is true that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust because the world was largely indifferent, and we did not have a state or army to protect ourselves. It’s still true that evil Islamic terrorists want to ‘complete the job of the Nazis’ and kill the rest of us. Today however we have an army to defend ourselves, but the price is high.
Sights and Sounds of Sorrow. Israeli President Isaac Herzog captured the complex emotions of his people when addressing the opening ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, when he said: “….Throughout the decades that have passed since the Holocaust, we assured time after time: “Never again”, and we swore that the Jewish people would never again stand defenseless and unprotected. And yet, despite all that, the horrors of the Holocaust shook us all during the October massacres, echoing in all our hearts.” (Photo: GPO/Kobi Gideon)
The world doesn’t seem to care so much about dead Jews whether gassed in Poland, incinerated in Israel, or guarding humanitarian supplies, as long as we keep sending humanitarian aid to the Gazans no matter the cost, or how it emboldens our enemies. Dead Jews are only breaking news in Israel where they are our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, neighbors, co-workers, and teachers.
Even if we’re sitting anticipating it, the two-minute siren is always piercing. Shocking. Most years, I have stood silently, thinking of my great grandparents and their children, grandchildren, and extended families and entire communities which were purged and where today not a living Jew remains. I try to imagine how helpless they were, younger then than I am now, and unable to protect their family. I try to imagine myself in their shoes. The very thought is painful.
But this year, it was “easier” to imagine what they must have felt in August 1942. It’s been seven months since the inhuman Hamas massacre in which 1200 were murdered, raped, beheaded, incinerated alive, with 133 hostages still in captivity by Hamas in Gaza, with dozens of rockets and drones being fired at us daily by Hezbollah, with Iran launching an unprecedented attack on Israel just weeks ago, with western cities and campuses literally and figuratively in flames, and Jews threatened in more places by more people than any time since 1945. Some 270 soldiers have been killed, thousands injured, and countless families whose loved ones have been killed, are hostages, or are recovering from injury, both physical and psychological. The trauma is real and deep, and marking a time and the victims of when we had no allies, when we were helpless, the trauma today is exacerbated.
No, we’re not helpless. We have a State and an army, and we do have allies, if not always reliable countries that stand with us morally and unconditionally. We at least have tens of millions of Christians across the globe who do. Despite the recent horrors, grief, trauma, and more, we remain resilient. Unlike our enemies who want to destroy us, we are still building the country whose 76th year of independence we will celebrate next week.
Down but not Out. Israel took a blow on October 7 but the people behind it are taking a bigger blow. Israel’s “People’s Army”, which is both a reflection of the society and the glue that binds the people together will ensure there will never be another Holocaust.
A friend attended one of the Holocaust Memorial Day official state ceremonies and shared how she did so with trepidation. She was afraid it would just add to the trauma compounded since October 7. But instead reported that she left encouraged, strengthened. One of the survivors who spoke said “Don’t despair, never give up hope.” One survivor went on to serve in the IDF, then was captured and taken prisoner by the Syrians. Yet there he was, surviving a genocide and captivity by an Arab enemy.
Honestly, it’s easy to get lost in the loss, in the grief, in the trauma, praying for hostages to be released, and for the war to end and our enemies defeated. But even on a day like today, we have abundant reasons for hope, for believing in a better tomorrow.
About the writer:
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
With so little said yet so much understood, the power of a 1960 Shabbat in Greece permeated and prevailed
By Lennie Lurie
The massacre that Gaza inflicted upon Israel on October 7, 2023, reminded me of the fragility of Jewish existence; how the life of a community – a Jewish community – can be so vulnerable and so suddenly shattered. All these months after October 7, I reflect back in time to an earlier date when I was unexpectedly exposed to the aftermath of such a Jewish community – not in Israel but in Greece.
In April 1960, I was honorably discharged from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), having completed my 15 months military service as a South African volunteer.
Right ‘Frame’ of Mind. The writer then a young South African and proud graduate of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in 1960.
Together with my good South African friend and fellow IDF paratrooper, the late Ernie Saks, we bought tickets to sail from Haifa to Istanbul, Turkey, and so commence our hitch-hiking adventure across Western Europe. We arrived in Istanbul in May, 1960, to be caught in the middle of a military coup being carried out against the incumbent government, which resulted in the execution of its Prime Minister, Adrian Menderes and two of his ministers.
None of this was instantly apparent shortly after our arrival in Istanbul, where, although we found ourselves in a large public square filled with armed soldiers, we genuinely believed we were about to witness some military celebration. Suddenly shots were fired, soldiers fell and we realized we were caught in the middle of a bloody insurrection! Without hesitation, Ernie and I fled for our lives, making for the main road leading out of the capital to its western neighbor, Greece.
Jumped at the Opportunity. The writer in 1960 as a volunteer in the IDF after a parachute jump in southern Israel.
Arriving at the Turkish – Greek border with our backpacks – my backpack was covered with a prominent Israeli flag which accompanied me throughout my travels – we thus commenced our hitch-hiking journey. The first vehicle that stopped for us had room for only one passenger and Ernie insisted that I get in. Very reluctantly I got into the car, never realizing that I would be meeting up with Ernie some six months later in London!
One short lift after another, I finally arrived in the center of Thessaloniki also commonly known as Salonika, the main town in northern Greece. As I entered and gazed at the ancient buildings, my mind too journeyed, remembering this city’s Jewish history that could be traced back 2000 years. Is it any wonder that I would discover that it was nicknamed la madre de Israel (mother of Israel) to its Spanish Jewish inhabitants as it was the only known example of a city of this size in the Jewish diaspora that retained a Jewish majority for centuries. To non-Jews, it was known as the ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans’.
Decked Out. The writer and friend Ernie Saks (later Mayor of Sandton, South Africa) on the deck of a steamer from Haifa bound for Istanbul.
But that would all come crashing down on the 6 April 1941, when Germany invaded Greece, and three days later occupied Salonika. At the time of the German invasion, about 77,000 Jews lived in Greece with Salonika enjoying the largest Jewish community with a population of about 56,000 Jews.
Humiliated in the Heat. In June 11, 1942, the male Jewish population of Salonica from 18-45 were ordered to assemble at Platia Eleftheria (Freedom Square) where surrounded by Germans, they were forbidden to leave, were deprived of food and water and exposed to humiliating bodily exercises in the scorching heat of the Greek midsummer. Any disobedience was met by a pounding of batons.
In February 1943, the Jews of Thessaloniki were given less than a month to move into a ghetto and almost all their property was confiscated. Deportations began in March, and by August, almost all had been deported to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Odessey. Leaving Turkey in the midst of an insurrection where later the prime minister was executed, the writer with backpack hitchikes to the Greek border.
More than 90% of Thessaloniki’s Jews were murdered in the Holocaust!
Some quarter of a century later, it was a clear and moonlit Thursday night in 1960 when I was dropped off in Salonika. Realizing that no youth hostel would take in visitors at that late hour, I walked around and found myself in a large public and deserted park. Having little choice about sleeping accommodation – my daily budget of US$ 7 did not enable me to stay in any hotel – I spread out my sleeping bag on a narrow pathway deep in the park, and was soon sound asleep. Suddenly, I was woken up when something kicked me. I peeked out of my sleeping bag and saw a well-dressed man staring at me in bewilderment. I crawled out of the sleeping bag, being fully dressed but shoeless. The man was staring at the Israeli flag on my backpack placed alongside the sleeping bag and then pointing at me, he asked in broken English:
“You Jew?”
Standing up, I replied slowly:
“Yes; I am from Israel”.
His next question did not surprise me:
“What you do here?”
Again, in basic and slow English I explained to him that I arrived in the town late that night and that the local youth hostel was closed.
He seemed to understand the situation and said:
“Me Jew. Come, sleep my house!”
What an amazing coincidence, meeting a fellow Jew late at night in a public park! I instinctively felt the bond of kinship and said the only word that I knew in Greek;
“Efcharisto!” (Thank you!) The man smiled broadly and again pointing at himself said, “Me Josef!”
Greece’s Jewish Gem. Long before the writer arrived in Thessaloniki in 1960, this city was known as ‘The Mother of Israel’ due to its large Jewish population.
I hurriedly put on my shoes, folded my sleeping bag which I placed in the backpack and followed Josef, walking out of the park. We crossed some main road with hardly any traffic and walked a short distance, turning into a narrow side street with terraced blocks of flats. Josef’s flat was on the ground floor and consisted of three bedrooms occupied by Josef and his wife Sofia, their 14-year-old son Theodore and his aged mother whose name I cannot remember. Sofia was awake when we entered the flat and Josef (so I assumed) quickly explained to her in Greek who I was and the background to my presence. Sofia smiled pleasantly at me and putting a finger to her lips – indicating that I had to be quiet – opened Theo’s bedroom door and pointed at a second bed alongside that of the sleeping Theo, indicated that I could sleep there. I found myself again repeating “efcharisto”. I had a quick wash up and silently entered the bedroom, with Josef and Sofia saying to me in Greek (I guess), “Good night!”
It was a strange experience lying in a comfortable bed with clean sheets and I had no problem in falling asleep – probably with a smile on my face!
I woke up late the following morning with sunshine streaming through the windows. Josef had gone to work and Theo to school; only Sofia and the aged grandmother were in the house. I had a refreshing shower and found a tasty breakfast of salads, cheeses and warm bread awaiting me. Over cups of tea, Sofia and I had an interesting chat with much hand gesticulation to complement Sophia’s very basic English. The grandmother hardly said a word, just the occasional brief question to her daughter-in-law in Greek concerning myself, I guess.
From our chat, I gathered that the family members were totally assimilated Jews though they expressed much interest in learning about Israel. Josef held a senior clerk position in the local municipality and that the second bed in Theo’s room was for his best school friend who frequently slept over. I never asked what Josef was doing in the park that late hour and simply assumed that he had gone for a stroll. Indicating the photos of people placed in large frames around the open space dining room and lounge, Sofia informed me that they were of her and Josef’s parents and relatives – most of whom, and including Josef’s father, were murdered by the Germans during the occupation of Salonika in World War II. I noticed that the old grandmother was dabbing at her eyes when Sofia pointed to the photos. No doubt, she still retained clear memories of those tragic times.
A Jewish family of Salonika in 1917.
I decided to pass the rest of day by walking around the town, declining politely Sofia’s request that I return later for lunch. I informed her that I had had a very filling breakfast and did not want to be tied down while exploring the town. She nodded her understanding and I waved to the grandmother when exiting the house. I spent a long time just walking around the town which had its share of modern and old sections. I was looking forward to continuing my travels south to Athens and decided to depart in two days, giving me another day’s rest with my kind Salonika hosts. Shortly after my return “home” in the late afternoon, I had a pleasant chat with Josef and Theo. I told them about my family in Cape Town and my experiences as a soldier in the IDF.
The elderly grandmother entered the room and said something to Josef which found him shaking his head, obviously disagreeing with what his mother had told him. She did not back down and again, speaking more assertively, she repeated her demand. This time, nodding obediently, Josef got up and left the room. He soon returned carrying something wrapped in an old linen bag. He placed it on the dining room table, almost opposite to where I was seated. Slowly he unwrapped the bag and withdrew some articles tied up in a white cloth. The cloth was untied and he withdrew two silver candlesticks which I immediately recognized as the traditional candelabra for the Shabbat, as well as a silver wine glass. Those silver items were very faded and lacked any shine. They had obviously not been used for a very long time. The grandmother then gave Josef further instructions which found him again leaving the room, taking with him the two candelabra and the silver wine glass.
In the meanwhile, Sofia began to set the table for the evening meal. Suddenly it struck me that it was Friday evening and that the old lady was preparing a traditional Shabbat table with the two-silver candelabra and the silver wine glass for the Kiddush. It was obvious to me the Shabbat Kiddush ceremony had not been held in this house since the elderly mother and her son had somehow survived the Holocaust, some 15 years earlier!
Jewish Life Ends. The infamous mass action at the Plateia Square in the center of Thessaloniki, July 11, 1942. 54,000 out of 56,000 Jews living in Thessaloniki before the war were murdered in the Holocaust.
My thoughts were interrupted when Josef returned with the two candelabra and the silver wine glass, all shining brightly. Endearingly he placed the two candle sticks at the end of the table and the silver wine goblet at the other end. Sofia had completed setting the table with five place settings and I could almost feel the rising emotions within the elderly members of the family as they gazed in wonder and reverence at the Shabbat eve table setting which had not blessed this household for generations. I firmly believed that the presence of an “Israeli” in their midst, had reawakened in that indomitable old lady, nostalgic and almost lost memories of Yiddishkeit – the joyous Jewish way of life – its customs and practices, of happier times when the Shabbat Kiddush was a traditional aspect in their proud Jewish home.
After we all had washed and changed into clean clothes, we took our positions around the table with Josef at the head of the table, Sofia and his mother at his left and Theo and I at his right. I immediately noticed that candles had been inserted into the candlesticks. Josef proffered to his wife a box of matches and indicated to her that she had to light the candles. She seemed unsure of herself but undertook this assignment. The lit candles cast a warm glow in the room, with the setting sun.
Josef had placed a bottle of wine on the table. Admittedly, I was very unsure of myself when I indicated to Josef if I could pour the wine into the wine glass but he agreed instantly, nodding his head a few times. Having filled the wine glass, I raised it and sang the Shabbat Kiddush in my usual confident and faultless manner. Tears flowed unashamedly from the eyes of Josef and his mother! Sofia and Theo gazed at me with open mouths, realizing that something very unique and meaningful was happening that evening in their house, which had some strong connection to an earlier time when being Jewish was not a source of shame and concealment.
At the conclusion of the Kiddush, Josef and his mother, clasping hands tightly, could barely utter that final and responsive word which had not been said in a very long time:
“Amen!”
As if it had all been rehearsed, Theo stood up and fell into his father’s arms while Sophia embraced her husband. The dear old lady could only stare at me with a whimsical smile of silent gratitude, deep pride and obvious pleasure.
A very tasty meal followed but it was the unique beauty and veneration of the Sabbath eve ceremony which will be long treasured by all those who participated in that memorable occasion when Jewish Sabbath prayers again returned to be said in that kind, hospitable and welcoming home.
The Shabbat was a rest day for all the family and besides a short walk around the neighborhood, we spent it indoors, talking – as best we could.
I had informed Josef and Sophia that I planned to leave the house early the following morning and try to get lifts to Athens and hopefully reach my destination later that day.
So, at about 7:30 on Sunday morning, I faced my hosts and said a final “efcharisto” and “shalom”. I took their extended hands in both my hands, trying to convey my deep appreciation for their very kind hospitality. The old grandmother also stood at the door to say farewell but she did something which will remain forever in my memory:
Placing her hands on my head she mumbled something which at first was totally incomprehensible to me. Not knowing any Greek, this would seem quite natural. However, suddenly I caught a few words and they were in Hebrew, albeit in the Sephardic enunciation! And then the heavens opened up and I fully understood what was being said:
“May the LORD bless you and keep you; May the LORD shine his face upon you and be gracious to you; May the LORD lift up his face upon you and give you peace”.
I was given the Priestly Blessing taken from the Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 16, verse 20.
When she had finished, I gently took her hands from my head, looked her in the eyes, conveying to her my full understanding of what she had said, and kissed them.
Too filled with emotion and sadness to say another word, I picked up my backpack, inserting my arm through the strap and placed it on my back. Not looking back, I took my final leave from this kind family and walked in the direction to the nearby bus stop which Josef had told me that the bus would take me to the southern exit of Salonika, in the direction of Athens.
My biggest and only regret was not writing down the full family name of Josef and their Salonika address.
While little remains from the 2000-year enriching presence of Thessaloniki’s Jewish community, what remains for me is an unforgettable enriching shabbat.
About the writer:
A B.Sc. graduate in Economics and Geology from the University of Cape Town (UCT), Lennie may be the only volunteer from abroad who was granted permission to leave his group on kibbutz during the 1967 Six Day War to rejoin his paratroop brigade that he had served with years before following his matriculation in Cape Town. In Israel, Lennie has worked as an Export Manager for some of the country’s major food manufacturers and chemical companies as well as an independent consultant in Export Marketing guiding many small Israeli businesses to sell their products and services in the world-wide market. As a result of a work accident in 1995, Lennie made a career change and became an independent English teacher working mainly with hi-tech companies and associated with universities and colleges in the north of Israel.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
As a people who suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis and their Croatian Ustasha collaborators during World War II, Serbs feel a strong kinship with the Jewish people and the State of Israel
In the wake of the horrendous terror rampage committed by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, many of the most important countries in North America and Western Europe were quick to denounce the Hamas crimes and declare their unequivocal support for Israel and our right to defend ourselves against the perpetrators of the shocking crimes committed by the Palestinian terrorists.
To their credit, the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany even traveled to Israel personally, to express their solidarity and support. At home, cultural and political iconic buildings in these and other countries were illuminated with Israeli flags.
In the eastern parts of Europe, however, expressions of support were much slower in coming. Only 12 days after the slaughter of over 1,400 mostly Israeli civilians in the most bestial manner, including infants, young children, and the elderly, did the European Parliament pass a vote which denounced the crimes unequivocally and supported Israel’s right to defend itself by an unprecedented margin of 500 votes in favor, 21 opposed, and 24 abstentions.
Serbian Support. A solidarity walk in support of Israel takes place through the center of Belgrade. The banner reads: ‘The people of Israel are in our hearts.’(photo credit: Haver Serbia)
There is, however, one eastern European country that has taken exceptional concrete measures to demonstrate its support for Israel, and especially for the soldiers of the IDF during these last two terrible weeks. Shortly after the news of the slaughter of so many innocent Israelis reached Belgrade, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic immediately denounced the horrific crimes committed by Hamas and tied them to the painful history of the Jewish people throughout their history, especially during the Holocaust.
Needless to say, Vucic supported Israel’s right to defend itself. As the Serbian president who has done the most to commemorate the Holocaust in Serbia, and as the grandson of a victim of the Croatian Ustasha Nazi collaborators, he is well aware of the mutual suffering of Jews and Serbs (and of the Romani people) during World War II. In that respect, the history of World War II continues to resonate very strongly in Serbia, the only country in Europe in which anti-Nazi partisans (among them many Jews), by far outnumbered local Nazi collaborators.
On a more practical level, at a time when practically all the airlines from national carriers to charters and low-cost suspended their flights to and from Ben-Gurion Airport, Air Serbia, the national airline, not only continued its scheduled flights, but added special additional flights.
All four weekly flights were filled to capacity, but most important they brought home IDF soldiers living abroad, who were summoned for active service from all over Europe and North America. Air Serbia flights from New York, Chicago, and various European destinations enabled numerous soldiers to arrive “home” to join their units in a timely manner when no other options were available.
Unshakable Bond. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic whose grandfather was a victim of the Croatian Ustasha Nazi collaborators during WWII, immediately denounced the horrific crimes committed by Hamas and tied them to the painful history of the Jewish people throughout their history, especially during the Holocaust. President Vucic is seen here shaking hands with Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen at Israel’s embassy in Belgrade in July 2023.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
In addition, the newly appointed Serbian ambassador to Israel, Miroljub Petrovic, is arriving with his wife to assume his post here in the coming week, despite the rocket attacks and the other dangers, instead of waiting for an end to the hostilities. This is another gesture of solidarity, and deep friendship from Serbia, at a time when such support is needed and much appreciated.
As a people who suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis and their Croatian Ustasha collaborators during World War II, Serbs feel a strong kinship with the Jewish people and the State of Israel and have responded with empathy and understanding to our plight. Hvala (thank you) Belgrade!
About the writers
Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs.
Aleksandar Nikolic is the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Serbia in Israel.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
