Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary

APPENDIX

U.N. Provisions for the

Legal Protection of Minorities

"In those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, and to use their own language."

(Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, Art. 27, adapted by the U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 16, 1966).

"The States Parties to this Convention agree that . . . C. It is essential to recognize the right of members of national minorities to carry on their own educational activities, including the maintenance of schools and, depending on the educational policy of each State, the use or the teaching of their own language."

(Art. 5, part 1, UNESCO Convention Against Discrimination in Education, Dec. 14, 1960.)

THE FACTS OF GENOCIDE

1. "The systematic destruction of historical or religious monuments or their diversion to alien uses. Destruction or dispersion of historical, artistic, or religious values and objects." (U.N. Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, 1948.)

Introduction

This book contains many references to accusations leveled at the governments of historic Hungary for conducting "a policy of assimilation" against her nationalities. It was mostly due to these accusations that the Kingdom of Hungary was dismembered and her severed territories given to three ethnically mosaic states (Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia) in 1920, each of which was to have severe minority problems of her own. This is also the case with the Soviet Union, which incorporated another chunk of Hungarian territory (Carpatho Ruthenia) after World War II.

Since then many decades have gone by, time enough to appraise the records of the successor states in the handling of their nationalities, including about four millions of Hungarians. Did the new masters behave better or worse than the Magyars on this account? Chapters 30, 31 and 32 of this book have answered this question in general without elaborating on them in particular.

The following pages offer an elaborate answer regarding the record of a single country, Rumania, in treating the Hungarian minority in Transylvania since the end of World War II. It may serve as an object-lesson on the fate of Magyar minorities in other successor states as well, especially in Czechoslovakia, where Slovak nationalists are imitating Rumanian methods of forceful assimilation.

Thus, the Hungarians in these countries must exist in a spiritual vacuum, unless they surrender their national identity to the "master race" that rules. But such an "ethnic suicide" is contrary to the Hungarian character. The Magyars have survived life or death struggles for eleven centuries. However mercilessly the winds of history may blow, the flame of the Hungarian spirit continues to glow. - Their resistance against forced assimilation - as shown on the following pages - is a manifestation of their will to survive.

The Main Tool of Forced Assimilation is Schooling.

Both in Rumania and Slovakia (and recently in Serb dominated Voivodina) it is considered nationalist incitement if parents are encouraged to send their children to whatever Hungarian schools that still exist.

Those who graduate from Rumanian or Slovakian schools can no longer express themselves in Hungarian on a high intellectual level. Even the textbooks used in Hungarian schools distort the history of the Magyar nation. They aim to inculcate Hungarian children with a feeling of collective guilt as members of their nation, whose ancestors are cast as "barbarian hordes of intruders to the Carpathian Basin."

Due to such indoctrination, the unfortunate Magyar students suffer inner conflict, often developing to identity crisis or inferiority complex. The family can scarcely counterbalance such an indoctrination. In fact, hook publishing is strictly controlled by the states that in general do not permit the publication of books which are in disagreement with the policy of assimilation. As a result, there are few books which Hungarian children could use to absorb the true history and culture of their mother country. Meanwhile the import of Hungarian language books has become insignificant due to prohibitive restrictions. Travelers are also forbidden to bring Hungarian books, newspapers and periodicals to Transylvania and Slovakia. (Although the situation in this regard has improved since 1989, nationalist forces are still at work to continue forced assimilation of Hungarians through elimination of their still existing schools.)

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RUMANIA

"The Government of the Socialist Republic of Romania and its regional and local authorities pursue a policy of denationalization toward the Hungarians and people of other nationalities in Transylvania by measures approximating ethnocide." (From a Resolution of the U.S. Congress in 1987)

Ethnocide in Practice

Object lesson on this subject was provided by the Rumanian authorities in Transylvania. The technique of ethnocide could be unravelled from S.O.S. calls sent from Transylvania, and from reports collected by Western observers:

1. Hungarian districts, Hungarian cities, townships and villages were denied self-administration.

2. Hungarian schools were eliminated step by step.

3. The public use of the Hungarian language was forbidden.

4. The publications of Hungarian literary and professional books, journals and periodicals were severely restricted.

5. The Hungarian churches were under constant harassment. Archives, libraries and museums were confiscated.

6. Hungarian children were brutally beaten and punished for speaking their own language on the school grounds. Hungarian teachers were intimidated, arrested, tortured and even beaten to death.

7. Hungarian cemeteries were desecrated, torn up, tombstones removed, and turned into new Rumanian cemeteries in order to eradicate every trace of a Hungarian past.

8. Hungarians were discriminated against in the fields of education. job, housing, welfare, and every other aspect of human existence.

9. Hungarians in Transylvania lived under constant harassment and gross intimidation from teachers, officials, administrators, police and military personnel, with the purpose of forcing them to change their names, and declare themselves Rumanians.

10. Relatives and friends of Hungarians, visiting from the West, were under daily harassments by Rumanian authorities, and after their departure those whom they visited were often taken to the police station for lengthy interrogations and abuses.

11. Hungarians were allowed to participate in sports only if they changed their names, and declared themselves Rumanians.

12. Those students who graduated from one of the very few schools left where the language of instruction was still Hungarian, were denied entrance into universities.

* * *

The historic act which set the foundation of modern-day Rumania in terms of positive international law, and which brought about the unity of the nation, was the December 1. 1918 resolution of the assembly at Gyulafehérvár (Alba Julia). The first paragraph under Point III of that resolution states:

"Complete national freedom for all co-inhabiting nationalities. Each nationality will study in its own language, will administer itself in its own language and will conduct the administration of justice in its own language, through individuals taken from its own community, and each nationality will have the right to legislative representation and participation in the governing of the Country, in proportion to the size of its population."

The fourth paragraph of this same point states:

"Total freedom of the press, assembly and association, for the free propagation of every human thought."

Rumania Under Fire in the U.S. Congress

The following excerpts are quoted from the Congressional Record.

"The repression of the 2.5 million Hungarian nationals in Romania, who constitute more than 10 percent of the country's population, continues unabated... Ample evidence was presented at these hearings to demonstrate that Romania is pursuing a systematic effort to destroy the very fabric of Hungarian cultural life in Romania by eliminating Hungarian schools, classes, and other institutions...

Since 1975, when the United States granted most-favored-nation status to Romania, it has become increasingly clear that the goal of the Romanian Government is to destroy the very fabric of the cultural and religious life of its Hungarian citizens..."

(Rep. A. Green, New York. Congressional Record April 30, 1987, p. 2866)

"...In granting MFN status to Romania, we chose to overlook the bulldozing of churches and synagogues. We overlooked the despicable action of the Romanian Government in converting a gift of American Bibles into toilet paper.

We have overlooked the sophisticated police-state conditions which have terrorized the population for 40 years... Not since the darkest days of Stalin's KKVD, has a European country been subjected to the fear of the knock on the door at midnight from the secret police. In Romania, it is an everyday occurrence,.."

(Senator David Durenberger, Minnesota, Congressional Record July 15, 1987, p. S 9988)

"The network of omnipresent police agents and informants would put to shame Stalin's GPU.

The country's religious and ethnic minorities are singled out for particularly harsh treatment. Religious believers have been imprisoned and beaten up for the peaceful exercise of their faith or the distribution of Bibles. Places of worship have been bulldozed. A Hungarian Catholic priest was beaten to death by the police for a sermon in which he called for making Christmas a holiday for this largely Christian nation.

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Ethnic minorities, among them about 2.5 million Hungarians, are increasingly deprived or the opportunity to use their own language, enjoy and develop their own distinct culture and traditions. Their school systems where children can learn in their mother tongue have largely been destroyed. We should be mindful that all this happens with one of the most important multiethnic cradles of European culture, Transylvania, where political loyalties and potentates often changed through history but where networks of autonomous cultural and religious institutions have coexisted for Hungarians,. Romanians, and German Saxons, unhindered for centuries.

One particularly repugnant abuse has a special relevance to me and to this body. In the late seventies 20,000 Protestant Bibles, printed in the West in the Hungarian language were delivered to Romania for distribution to the churches of that minority. This was done after lengthy, patient negotiations by a former colleague of ours. My predecessor, Senator Abe Ribicoff, at the time chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on International Trade.

It was Senator Ribicoff who negotiated and worked to see to it that those 20,000 Bibles could be delivered. He spent countless weeks and months on that negotiation.

Not one church received one of those Bibles, they disappeared in Romania but they reappeared. Some time later, packs of toiletpaper turned up in Romania with remnants of printed text, clearly visible on the surface...

The Romanian Government pulped the Bibles we sent and turned them into toiletpaper. This is not an unconfirmed anecdote, incredible as it sounds. I have seen one of these Bibles and a sample of the toiletpaper and the essence of this incident was independently confirmed..."

(Senator Christopher J. Dodd, D., Connecticut Congressional Record June 26, 1987, p. 8793)

"COUNTERPOINTS"

(Transylvanian Magyars Fight Back)

In September 1982 the editors of the samizdat periodical Ellenpontok (COUNTERPOINTS) sent a MEMORANDUM to the participants of the Madrid Conference held to review adherence to the provisions of the Helsinki Final Act. The Memorandum basically reiterated the grievances of Transylvanian Hungarians about the ethnocidal policy of the Ceausescu regime. Attached to the Memorandum was a ten point Program Proposal with each point containing a demand.

PROGRAM PROPOSAL

The main points of the Program Proposal attached to this memorandum were:

I. We demand that we be considered an inseparable part of the entire Hungarian people,. and that as such. and as citizens of Rumania, we be permitted to maintain unhindered contacts with the Hungarian People's Republic, on both the institutional and the individual levels.

II. We demand that cultural autonomy and institutionalized forms of self-protection be guaranteed to the Hungarians of Rumania, as an ethnic community.

III. For regions inhabited predominantly by Hungarians, we demand self-administration and an equitable share in the country's government.

IV. We demand an immediate end to measures aimed at artificially altering the ethnic composition of Transylvania (including historic Transylvania, the territories west of it, and the Bánát region).

V. We demand the opportunity for Hungarians in Rumania to develop and cultivate their identity.

VI. We demand that in all areas of greater Transylvania inhabited by Hungarians, the Hungarian language be treated as equal to the Rumanian language in official as well as everyday use.

VII. We demand the same career opportunities for the Hungarians of Rumania as the Rumanians have.

VIII. We demand the preservation of the environment which reflects our historic and cultural past.

IX. We demand that the Hungarian-speaking natives of Moldavia, the Csángós -whom official statistics have declared to be Rumanians, without exception - be permitted to declare themselves Hungarians again, and to participate in Hungarian cultural life.

X. We demand that an impartial international commission (whose members would also include Hungarians and Rumanians) examine our situation and make decisions in the issues which bear upon our fate.

UPROAR IN THE WORLD PRESS

Over Ceausescu's Village Razing Plan

"Romania's Reign of Terror"

The lines below are quoted from the February, 1989, issue of READER'S DIGEST. The article offered a dozen excerpts culled from the European press. Some of these are excerpted here along with others compiled from the U.S. and the world press.

"Transylvania is a fertile, verdantly beautiful region bordering Hungary and the Soviet Union. Originally part of Hungary, it was annexed by Rumania after World War I. Until recently, the people of this agriculturally rich land prospered. Now. this region faces destruction. The reason: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu wants to turn the whole country into the communist's dream of a perfectly planned society...

His latest mad scheme, called "territorial systematization," will literally bulldoze half of the country's 13,000 villages. many of them centuries old, and replace them with "agro industrial" complexes... On top of this, Ceausescu has virtually declared war on Romania's ethnic minorities, notably the two million Hungarians and several hundred thousand Germans, most of whom live in the ancient land of Transylvania. They are to be ruthlessly "Romanianized" through the eradication of their language and culture..."

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From an article titled "Ethnics we must help" published in the London Times, July 27, 1988:

"It must be miserable enough to be a Romanian in Romania. To be a Hungarian in Romania is desolation and deprivation even by communist standards. Now has come President Ceausescu's latest draconian proposal: to demolish some 7000 Transylvanian villages...

The villages which are to be bulldozed are inhabited only by Hungarians... The aim is to destroy what's left of Hungarian culture and identity and subordinate them to Romanian... What is being done to the Hungarians in Romania would excite world-wide protest if it were being done to blacks in South Africa... The US and Britain should table a resolution at the United Nations. After all, it was we who handed Hungary and the other East European countries over to Stalin after the war and that should forever be on our conscience."

* * *

From the article "Romania: A Modern Horror Story," The Washington Post, August 9, 1988:

"...Geography and ethnic ties compel Hungarians to take a direct interest in the forced march toward the Middle Ages that Romania has started.

The rest of Europe and both superpowers watch the unfolding of this modern tragedy with varying degrees of indifference and impotence. Their policy toward Romania has become an unspoken wish for the country's feudalistic ruler, Nicolae Ceausescu, to step aside or to die..."

* * *

Un "Khmer Rouge" ŕ Bucarest" - from Le Monde, Paris, 4 October, 1988; by Prof. Joseph Rovan, Sorbonne University:

"Europe exists no more. If it would, how could she tolerate the destruction of a European people with its historical foundation by a madman heading a gang of criminals. The silence which covers up and buries the events in Romania while the Conducator is carrying out his ridiculous and odious plan, is equivalent with complicity...

In the world press, the arbitrary arrests, internments and murders are reported but sporadically although they happen every day...

The demolition of villages with their churches and cemeteries is nothing but an insane absurdity...

Together with the villages condemned to die, Ceausescu wants to sweep away the Hungarian and German minorities who with their own past, religion and superior culture are obstacles on the road leading to the fulfillment of his scheme...

The Magyars... numbering almost three million still represent majorities in the regions they inhabit. Hungary cannot abandon them... Transylvania cannot be left to its fate; the Magyars arrived much earlier to this region than those, who now call themselves Romanians..." (Author's remark: The very name "Romania" was coined only in the 19th century by Count Gyula Andrássy, Foreign Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy).

* * *

From an article titled "Romania accused of plot to wipe out Hungarians" The Guardian, Great Britain, April 21, 1988:

"According to Hungarian speaking visitors recently returned from Romania, many of the villages destroyed seem to be in Hungarian minority areas. Local inhabitants are ordered to resettle in predominantly Romanian areas - such as Moldavia, near the Soviet frontier - or rehoused in flats near the vacated spaces.

Hungarian officials have described the village eradication programme as "drastic" and an attempt to eliminate Hungarian and other minority cultures.

Observers have said chaingangs of convicts are clearing most of the sites and that conscripts in the Romanian army are engaged in the rebuilding. Important community buildings and buildings of historical interest are being razed to the ground and replaced by badly made structures without amenities."

* * *

"Hungarian officials say that since 1981, almost 50,000 Rumanian citizens, mostly of ethnic Hungarian background, have come. But the trickle has turned into a flood, and since January, 6000 to 8000 arrived. The Rev. Gábor Tamás, a reformist pastor estimated that the figure may be twice that, since many hide out of fear.

"They are afraid of everything and everybody," he said. "They come from a world where you are not able to trust your brother, your sister or your neighbor"

Word seeping back into Rumania of the Hungarian Government's policy of accepting refugees has evidently swelled the ranks of those daring to leave..."

The New York Times, April 4, 1988

* * *

Erik v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn in National Review, April 1, 1988:

"...Millions of Hungarians live in Rumania, where they are treated by Ceausescu's regime as an alien body whose ethnic character must be destroyed... The ideal is a country of one race, one language, one faith, one class, one type of education, one ideology - all centralized under the rule of one party, one leader.

The German National Socialists under Hitler wanted to destroy the tribal and historical traditions of the Reich, and they systematically exterminated all those who belonged to other "racial" groups. On the same rationale, Ceausescu relentlessly seeks to deprive minority groups of their leadership, their traditions, their languages, with its principal victims being the Hungarians. The situation is particularly bad in Transylvania, which was once the vital center of Hungarian patriotism and culture."

* * *

Janet Fleischman, a program coordinator of Helsinki Watch, a New York-based human rights organization,. in the August 17, 1988, issue of The Christian Science Monitor:

"Hungarians in Romania are insulted as bozgors - strangers. people without a homeland...

Restrictions limiting the use of the Hungarian language and

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threatening the existence of Hungarian schools, churches, theaters, books, and broadcasting have the effect of robbing ethnic Hungarians of their cultural identity. Regulations in Romania ban the use of Hungarian names for towns In Transylvania and require all newborn children to be registered with names that can be translated into Rumanian... The international community should pressure the Rumanian government to cease the war it is waging on its own citizens."

* * *

If Ceausescu's Victims Were Black

"Imagine the uproar if the Botha Government decreed that no newborn Zulu or Xhosa child could have its name registered unless it had an Afrikaans equivalent that could be used in public, if kindergarden minders faced reprisals merely for addressing their Zulu charges in Zulu and if, even in the heart of the Zulu homeland, Zulu literature, archives, institutions and cultural expressions were either obliterated or progressively and forcibly absorbed into an Afrikaner stereotype.

You'd never hear the end of it. Yet the mirror image of this, and much, much worse, has been going on in Transylvania for years under Ceausescu's fervor to create a new identikit Rumanian...

Imagine a system where the presence of even three Rumanian children precludes Hungarian language classes at school unless at least 25 Hungarian students are present (primary) or 36 (secondary); where Hungarian folk ensembles have either been abolished or instructed to perform only Rumanian dances and songs before Hungarian audiences; where importation of Hungarian-language books, newspapers, bibles or prayer books is banned; where local libraries, archives and church birth registers have been confiscated; and history is falsified to portray Hungarians as barbaric invaders.

(We have) governments which swell with moral outrage whenever a whip is lifted in Soweto, yet which are perfectly happy to entertain tyrants such as Ceausescu, and which publicly remain pathetically silent when less visible tragedies, such as that of Transylvania, unfold."

Michael Barnard in THE AGE, an Australian newspaper, 18 October, 1988.

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD

SPEECH OF

HON. TOM LANTOS

OF CALIFORNIA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, April 30, 1987

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Chairman, I welcome the amendment that the House is now considering to suspend most-favored-nation treatment to Romania for its failure to assure essential human rights to its citizens. I intend to vote for this amendment and I urge my colleagues to do so as well.

This year, as we commemorate the 200th anniversary of our Constitution, it is essential that we reaffirm our commitment to fundamental human rights. These are the basis of our system of government, and the basis of our foreign policy as well.

Mr., Chairman, Romania has agreed to observe certain fundamental human rights in solemn international agreements, including the Helsinki Final Act and the International Declaration of Human Rights under the United Nations. Unfortunately, however, those obligations have not been met.

The Government of Romania has violated the nationality rights of its ethnically Hungarian citizens, it has violated the religious freedom of its citizens of all nationalities, it has restricted the right of its citizens to emigrate, and it has followed a policy of discrimination and persecution against all those of its subjects who have courageously stood up for these rights.

It is with deepest regret Mr. Chairman, that I have concluded that we must suspend most-favored-nation treatment for Romanian exports to the United States, Our country's relationship with Romania has long been beneficial to both our countries. Human rights, however, are so fundamental an element of our own foreign policy that we must take this action. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting for this amendment.

Nicolae Ceausescu alias Caligula I

In the Bucharest Historical Museum there has been an exhibition for two years which - in ten large halls renders "Honor to President Ceausescu." Among the objects exhibited there is a huge picture made up of several million real pearls, portraying the president and his wife, and an aquarelle painted by a blind man who has regained his vision by "strongly thinking our president's invincible will which is even able to remove the Carpathians". - -

Books could be filled with the mad stories about Ceausescu. He loves poetry very much. Day by day Rumanian publications go into raptures over Ceausescu. "You are the First Spirit who created everything. You even force the light to follow you" - writes a poet in 1981, who besides is the employee of the Rumanian Ministry for Internal Affairs.

In 1980, in the paper of the Rumanian unions this line was found: "Today the whole world trembles from the love of the Great and Glorious Ceausescu." In 1979 a women poet, member of the Academy of the Fine Arts wrote: "The marble, the treebranches and the birds trembling salute your birthday"

Excerpts from France-Soir,

September 2, 1982.

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THE CROATIAN GOLGOTHA

Pan-Serbianism under Scrutiny

In the last paragraphs of the subchapter "The Croatian Golgotha" mention was made of a massacre with tens of thousands of Croatian victims. The Spirit of Hungary dealt with it in its first edition in 1983, at a time when this "Super-Katyn" was practically unknown to the world. (See p.206.)

No more. Shocking discoveries of mass graves in the spring of 1990 seem to have verified decades-long Croatian claims that such massacres committed by Serbian communist did really occur in 1945.

The world media, including the New York Times published gruesome revelations in this regard.

By CHUCK SUDETIC

Special to the New York Times

KOCEVSKI ROG, Yugoslavia, July 8

- After the discovery of masses of human bones in secret graves in caves here and nearby over the last two weeks, a series of witnesses have come forward to report seeing large-scale shootings 45 years ago, painting a grisly picture of mass murder by the Communist Partisans led by Marshal Tito.

Several Killing Sites Known

The Sosice cave is just one of several known sites where Communist Partisans settled accounts with members of the Ustasi, who themselves were responsible for mass killings of Serbs, Jews and gypsies during the war.

But historians and witnesses say most of the Partisans' victims in 1945 were Croats, Slovenes and Serbs drafted into armies allied with the Axis occupation forces and members of the Cetnik movement In addition to combat personnel, nurses, nuns and children were killed.

Since the news of the Sosice cave broke in Croatia last week, people from throughout Yugoslavia have been telephoning Vjesnik to report mass graves and massacre sites, said Silvije Tomasevic, a Vjesnik editor.

Historians have estimated that the Partisans shot from 70,000 to 100,000 people without trial within weeks of the war's end.

Both Croatian and Slovene Officials and journalists have expressed concern that the disclosure of the mass graves might worsen the already tense national relations within Yugoslavia, especially between Croats and Serbs,

Requiem Mass Near Caves

Today in a clearing in Kocevski Rog, in a mountain region about 45 miles south of Ljubljana, Archbishop Alojzij Sustar, President Milan Kucan of Slovenia and 30,000 Slovenes took part in a requiem Mass and reconciliation ceremony. Two nearby caves contain the remains of as many as 16,000 Slovenes and Croats. Croats conducted similar rites in Sosice.

New York Times, 9 July, 1990

* * *

The most revealing insight into Serbian mentality was offered in a monumental book published in Vienna in 1918, Die Südslavische Frage (The Southern Slav Problem) whose author Ivo Pilar, a Croat, sought to hide his identity from potential avengers through the pseudonym L.. V. Sadland. Ten years later, however, Balkanic thugs succeeded in finding and killing him in Zagreb. Pilar's book was doomed right after its publication, because the Allied Armistice Commission in Vienna, through Serbian intervention, ordered its confiscation and pulping. Only a very small number of copies remained and found their way into libraries, almost forgotten. Slavic experts who can read German, regard it a uniquely precious source of knowledge of Serbian history, and, for many years, the book was also listed in the Encyclopedia Britannia, although Pilar's work has never been translated into English. A four-page summary was published in Exiled Europe Quarterly in its 1955 Summer issue.

The gist of Pilar's book was that Catholicism and Byzantine Orthodoxy separated primarily for political, not religious reasons. The orthodox church within an orthodox state is like a union of the soul and body, a situation that does not exist with Catholicism. Therefore, the orthodox state is politically more active, vigorous and enduring than a Catholic state. Thus, the orthodox religion itself is the strongest incentive in the expansion of the orthodox states.

This expansionist spirit has its roots in the Eastern Roman Empire led by the Greeks, who in the twilight of their national existence, reached for power and domination over the more vigorous, though unorganized young Slav peoples. It is not by accident that two thirds of the Slavs embraced orthodoxy, imbibing Byzantine zeal for political expansion. This Byzantine synthesis of religion and political power has, since the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire, created strong, compact and extremely resistant states, driving for expansion and conquest mainly against Catholicism and Islam. Looking back to the history of the Balkan peninsula, it can be stated that the Serbs have become the nationalized embodiment of orthodox expansionism, adopting the spirit and political methods of their ancient masters. As such, they regard themselves as depositories of orthodox traditions. This has enabled them to survive Turk-Islamic occupations for four hundred years, followed by a long period of domination by the Western Christian Austro-Hungarian Empire. In fact, the Serbia's ambition to bring down the Monarchy was the cause of the First World War.

The Serbs, even in our time, assume a behavior noted in 1918 by the Croatian author, Ivo Pilar:

"They are always ready to play the role of a battering ram. Their tactic is to take as much as they can from the challenger as well as from the challenged. It is a fact that all the masters who were rendered services by the Serbs so far, had to pay very high price for it." (p.591.)

And so, the Serbs' present campaign to expand their rule over weaker neighbors with Serb minorities is not only territorial, but also a quest to destroy Catholic churches and Moslem mosques to make room for orthodoxy in the spirit of Pan-Serbianism.

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