"In fiction, the principles are given, to find the facts: in history, the facts are given, to find the principles; and the writer who does not explain the phenomena as well as state them performs only one half of his office."
Thomas Babington Macaulay, "History," Edinburgh Review, 1828
After the war, the Czechoslovak government decided to rebuild the village, which has also become a memorial and a center for peace and reconciliation. The massacre has been commemorated in the philatelic and numismatic realm. In particular, for example, the government issued special stamps on the major anniversaries of the tragedy. Here are commemorative covers from the fifth and fifteenth anniversaries.
Fifth anniversary, 1942-1947
The cachet at left combines local and national motifs: the miner's lamp, representing the occupation of many of the residents, illuminates both the village at left and the Czech patriotic symbol of the linden leaf, at right with the message, "Lidice Shall Live." The stamp is one of three, in different denominations, issued for the occasion. The first two, identical in design except for the denomination, represent a weeping mother. This one, the highest denomination, signifies hope and rebuilding. The special cancellation echoes one of the iconic memorials, with its wreath of barbed wire (like a crown of thorns) on a cross symbolizing both death and resurrection--but here with the addition of the national linden leaves.
Fifteenth anniversary, 1957
Since 1955, when British group, "Lidice Shall Live," realized the dream of creating a Garden of Peace and Friendship, the rose has been a special symbol for Lidice.
I've been posting a lot lately about the anniversary of the assassination of Nazi Security Office head and Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers. But I haven't mentioned how they got from England to their homeland. They were dropped by a Handley Page Halifax (1 , 2) of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)--the British clandestine warfare group equivalent to the American OSS--piloted by Flight Lieutenant Ron Hockey.
The same issue of the Illustrated London News that reported briefly on the assassination contained a three-page feature on the manufacturing of the Halifax, one of the RAF's two heavy bombers at the time, which entered service in late 1940. It explains with pride, "This notable aircraft carries a heavier bomb-load over a greater distance than any other aeroplane in the world on active service to-day."
The emphasis, though, is on the innovative design and production technique. That the machine was constructed of 24 major components simplified manufacture ("more people on each stage of the job") as well as "transport and repair ." The latter point was a crucial one.
in the field, as well. Hockey called the Halifax "a sturdy aircraft with enough redundant structure to keep it flying if damaged in action . . . also good for servicing repair, with the structure subdivided for component replacement." He contrasted this with the American Liberator (the most widely produced bomber of the war), which it resembled, but which was made in a single unit and therefore had to be disassembled rivet by rivet.
The robustness of the Halifax proved crucial to the SOE missions carried out by Special Duties Squadron 138. At first, the RAF was understandably focused on its strategic role of heavy bombing and thus reluctant to give the unit top-of-the-line aircraft. Initial runs over Poland and Czechoslovakia involved two-engine Whitleys, with limited range and payload; airmen denounced them as "flying coffins." Hockey called Czechoslovakia "Undoubtedly the most difficult country in which we operated . . . a long flight, all over enemy territory, much high ground . . . flights only in the winter to benefit from the long nights, so terrain was often snowbound, and no reception facilities." In October 1941, the RAF finally gave Special Duties Squadrom 138 three Mark I and II Halifaxes, though they had to be modified for paratroop use through the addition of a hatch in the floor. They first saw use at the end of December when Hockey's plane, the NF-V L9613, delivered three Czechoslovak jump teams to Bohemia. The flight was plagued by problems, and because heavy snow made it impossible to spot the intended landmarks, the two assassins were simply dropped east of Plzeň, after which they were on their own.
Ron C. Hockey was the only member of the aircraft's crew to survive the war. He was one of a number of distinguished RAF veterans to sign this commemorative large-format bookplate for copies of Keith A. Merrick's 1990 book on the Halifax at the Royal Air Force Museum.
In Czechoslovakia, the memory of the crime became a regular part of national rituals and identity. Over on the Tumblr, I posted a few of the numismatic and philatelic commemorations.
This medal, depicting some of the victims--echoing a monument to the murdered children at the site--is the first installment. Just click on to the subsequent posts (or look for Lidice using the search bar at the upper left of the page) for the rest.
I'm willing to bet that few of my readers are aware of the presence of a plaque in the Massachusetts State House honoring our Armenian community. (It dates from the Bicentennial year of 1976).
But most--especially this year--are probably aware of one of the historical situations described on it:
who reached these shores, having escaped from the tyrannical rulers of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. For centuries, the Armenians were subjected to political, social, and religious abuses, and the most degrading indignities of man's inhumanity to man, including mass genocide.
By tradition, the Turkish arrests of Armenian leaders in Constantinople on the night of April 24, 1915 have been taken to mark the beginning of a series of persecutions, atrocities, and massacres that have collectively become known as the Armenian Genocide: which, through the deaths of perhaps 1.5 million civilians, and the persecution and driving out of hundreds of thousands of others, eliminated the physical and cultural presence of this people in its historical homelands of Armenia and western Asia Minor.
The acknowledgement of this crime, which, committed in the context of an unprecedented murderous war, set the tone for further mass murders and ethnic cleansing in the subsequent hundred years of European history, has long been controversial in Turkey. The government of the modern state has not only rejected the terminology of genocide, but also claimed that whatever losses occurred were the result of either the general hardships of war or an open conflict between peoples for which the Armenians themselves bear some blame. (In one case, Turkey even pressured a Canadian local school board to drop the subject from the curriculum.) The current Islamist regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has been particularly vehement in its responses as the centennial loomed--witness the lengthy press release on "The Armenian Allegation of Genocide: The issue and the facts" (the title is revealing) from the Foreign Ministry.
It came as an increasing number of states and public figures not only marked the anniversary, but also made a point of speaking explicitly of genocide. The first to gain widespread attention for this step was Pope Francis, who called the atrocities "the first genocide of the twentieth century." Turkey called the statement "far from historic and legal truths" and "unacceptable." Denouncing the "unfounded claims," it recalled its ambassador. Davutoğlu accused the Vatican of “joining the conspiracy” of an “evil front.”
When the European Union spoke out on the genocide, Turkey called the resolution a "preposterous" repetition of "the anti-Turkish clichés of the Armenian propaganda" "mutilating history and law," and ascribed characterization of the events as genocide to "religious & cultural fanaticism." Other states have this spring earned similar rebukes and diplomatic retaliations.
Some nations, groups, and leaders were more circumspect.
A Genocide By Any Other Name?
Admittedly, defining genocide on the level of history and international law can be more complex than it seems at first sight to the layperson. The Süddeutsche Zeitung (in my opinion, still the best German newspaper, despite certain marked flaws and idiosyncrasies when it comes to foreign affairs) correctly points out that, legally, this was a matter of intentions and other factors beyond mere numbers (or else Chairman Mao, whose policies killed millions, would appear in the list). The resultant infographic may appear confusing.
The reprehensible but isolated murders of some 762 to 3500 Palestinians at Sabra and Shatilla carried out by Lebanese militias in the context of a civil war during the Israeli invasion in 1981 appear as a "genocide" because some UN body asserted they were such, and yet this puts them on a par with the systematic murder of 1.5 million Armenians and ethnic cleansing of this population from its ancestral lands simply because both have thus (in some sense) been declared to be genocides while neither has been the subject of a formal trial. Meanwhile, the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims has not been officially declared a genocide or prosecuted; thus only the massacre at Srebrenica is listed. The Khmer Rouge butchery in Cambodia is likewise not classified as a genocide, though it has been prosecuted.
The Süddeutsche further argues that the intention of the killers is difficult to determine in the case of Armenia. Some scholars share this view, not necessarily denying the extent of losses, but arguing that the overall picture is too complex to justify the designation. Others see a growing consensus that the crimes were indeed part of a deliberate and systematic policy and thus did constitute a genocide: a recent review of three new books in The Financial Times is a case in point. Middle East Forum has just published a very useful backgrounder, providing an overview of the issue and links to articles representing the full range of viewpoints.
The Economist, in a piece similar to that in the Süddeutsche, observes:
The
“g-word” has considerable power. If mass slaughter is recognised as
genocide when it is happening, it is harder for outside forces to sit
idly by. When it is over, official recognition that it was genocide can
give the survivors some grim satisfaction. But when that recognition is
withheld, whether because of a technicality or political expediency, it
can feel like the final insult. And some human-rights activists and
legal scholars feel that genocide’s status as the “crime of crimes”
sometimes overshadows the horror of other crimes against humanity.
Part of the problem, then, is that the subject involves legal, historical, moral, and emotional issues at once.
A case in point has been Israel's reluctance to use the "g-word." It is ironic in some ways. Jews were among the first to call attention to and commemorate the slaughter. It was the US Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau, Sr. who reported on the massacres and confronted the Turkish government. Franz Werfel produced the first great literary representation of the suffering of the Armenians in his novel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933; English, 1934; a reference to an Armenian stronghold in 1915). And it was Polish Holocaust refugee Raphael Lemkin who coined the term "genocide" and explicitly cited the Armenian example.
This is sometimes said to derive from the concern that doing so might dilute the significance of the Holocaust, but it is not the real reason and is in any case a groundless fear. Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust remembrance authority, refers to the Armenian genocide in honoring Armenian Holocaust rescuers and likewise speaks of genocides in Rwanda and Darfur and includes survivors of those murders in its educational programs. The real issue has been geopolitics, pure and simple: specifically, a reluctance to harm relations with Israel's erstwhile regional ally Turkey, and now, new regional ally Azerbaijan. (Raphael Ahren provides perhaps the best and most nuanced overview.) The centennial has sparked a welcome new debate, with echoes in the worldwide Jewish community. (1, 2, 3).
The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations was even more equivocal. "[C]oncerned about alienating a key ally, Turkey, through one-sided declarations," it noted:
we share the pain suffered by Armenians during this period. We also believe that any acknowledgment by religious or political leaders of the tragedy that befell Armenians should be balanced, constructive and must also recognize Turkish and Muslim suffering.
In this respect, characterizing the events of 1915 as genocide without proper investigation of these events by independent historians will not only jeopardize the establishment of a just memory pertaining to these events, but will also damage the efforts aimed at achieving reconciliation between Turks and Armenians.
Calling for further investigation by historians has, of course, always been the preferred delaying tactic and escape strategy for those unwilling to call the killings a genocide. (Rule of thumb: outsiders defer to historians only when there is an ulterior motive; we don't get much respect otherwise.)
Those Who Have Power Yet Do Not Speak Truth
Although the stance of the Israeli government strikes many as problematic or even morally indefensible, it is at the least understandable in the world of Realpolitik and the struggle for survival. One struggles in vain to find an explanation for the behavior of those who are more powerful and can act with impunity.
the secretary-general firmly believes that the commemoration and continuing cooperation between Armenians and Turks “with a view to establishing the facts about what happened should strengthen our collective determination to prevent similar atrocity crimes from ever happening in the future."
The United Nations, founded in the wake of the worst genocide in history, unanimously approved the Genocide Convention in 1948, and is supposed to be the leader in moral issues, not a splitter and trimmer.
Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term 'genocide' to describe Turkey's slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. … as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.
Now no one who has reached the age of reason should be surprised that candidates make promises that they cannot (or perhaps do not even intend to) fulfill. But this was a candidate who made a point of promising something different: hope and change and an end to partisanship and politics as usual. The bigger the failed promise, the greater the disappointment. According to CNN, a presidential spokesperson addressed the issue in the clinical language of bureaucracy and diplomacy:
"We know and respect that there are some who are hoping to hear different language this year," the official said. "We understand their perspective, even as we believe that the approach we have taken in previous years remains the right one -- both for acknowledging the past, and for our ability to work with regional partners to save lives in the present."
Representative Adam Schiff (D-California) said:
"How long must the victims and their families wait before our nation has the courage to confront Turkey with the truth about the murderous past of the Ottoman Empire?" "If not this President, who spoke so eloquently and passionately about recognition in the past, whom? If not after one hundred years, when?"
Unfortunately, it is part of a consistent pattern on the part of a president whose foreign policy has been an almost complete disaster (1, 2). (full disclosure: I voted for him twice, eyes wide open). In a region in chaos, he declined to support the Iranian "green revolution" or the real democrats of the "Arab Spring" and instead perversely chose to throw in his lot with the anti-democratic, obscurantist Islamists: Morsi in Egypt and the Erdoğan-Davutoğlu regime in Turkey. The former is out of power, but the President naively and vainly seeks to curry favor with the latter, in defiance of both historical truth and basic political judgment. The Armenians, among others, are paying the price.
Meanwhile, by contrast, quietly and outside the corridors of power, some Turks joined Armenians in marking the centenary in Turkey, and that is ultimately far more important than the words of an American president: dialogue and reconciliation on the ground, among the peoples concerned.
Today we have a chance to reaffirm our record on the Armenian genocide as Massachusetts and 42 other states have already done. I’m proud that our state continues to stand firm on this issue and educates our students about the history of the Armenian genocide in public schools through the Facing History program.
I am pleased and proud that the Town of Amherst will acknowledge this crime against humanity on the occasion of its centennial, calling upon residents to honor the dead and the survivors and to draw the appropriate lessons in the continuing struggle for human rights in our own world.
On April 30, at 5:00 p.m. in front of Town Hall, Town officials will read the proclamation, and along with other residents, speak to the historical and enduring significance of this issue. (Town Meeting and League of Women Voters member Adrienne Megerdichian Terrizzi has generously taken the lead in organizing the event.)
At 7:00 p.m. at Amherst Books, my Hampshire College colleague, Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy, will read from her provocative new book: Sacred Justice: The Voices & Legacy of the Armenian Operation Nemesis. This work combines narrative, memoir, and primary sources to tell the story of a group of Armenian men
who undertook a covert operation created to
assassinate the Turkish architects of the Genocide.
Haaretz today ran an article, "A dozen reasons why Israel should do away with Holocaust Remembrance Day." It was no doubt supposed to be provocative, but even if some of the individual points were valid or worth discussing, the whole was less than the sum of its parts. Above all, in condemning the holiday "because it has become a tool in the hands of ultranationalist ideologues," the piece simply substitutes one political agenda for another. It's one of those ideas that, as the saying goes (not in fact Orwell's, but close to his thinking) is so absurd that only an intellectual could believe it.
One might as well say that we should end Fourth of July celebrations because American patriotism sometimes degenerates into triumphalist jingoism. The solution is not to do away with the holiday, and rather, to infuse it with new and deeper meaning. The founding of a revolutionary democracy or the commission of genocide are worth commemorating, and far too important to discard on the whims of a self-important op-ed writer.
At the very least, the simple and non-political rituals of commemoration should seem unobjectionable. The traditional ritual of mourning on the anniversary of death involves lighting a candle that burns for a full day.
I have taken to placing mine on top of this immense old candlestick, of hammered iron in the Arts & Crafts or Werkbund style, circa the beginning of the twentieth century.
The dealer I bought it from acquired it from a scrap metal dealer in Dortmund, so it's precise origin is unknown, Clearly, though, given its striking size (77 cm. tall, or just over 30 inches), it came from institutional setting rather than a private home. In fact, it is identical in appearance to a brass one sold at auction over a decade ago. That one came from the destroyed Leipzig synagogue in the Gottschedstraße, destroyed in Kristallnacht. It seems more than likely, then, that what I have here is another relic from the pogrom that began the Holocaust, and as such it seems especially fitting to call it into service for this use.
Many have remarked on the challenge of representing the genocide through conventional monuments. Some do, however, succeed in being both original and powerful.
Still, to me, the most powerful "monument" is actually a ritual used in Israel: On the morning of Holocaust Memorial day, an air raid siren sounds, and the entire country literally comes to a halt for two minutes. People stop where they stand on the sidewalk, cars and buses pull over to the side of the road, and drivers and passengers get out and stand respectfully in silence. Then life resumes. It is the most eerie and moving ritual I have ever seen.
It is evanescent, yet eternal: lasting only two minutes yet repeated every year. It is a monument in time, of time. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. . . . Jewish ritual may be characterized as the art of significant forms in time, as architecture of time.”
And because this ritual so abruptly interrupts daily time itself, it conveys almost better than anything the tear in the fabric of the world and civilization that the Holocaust represented.
Footnote:
I have often thought that the United States should adopt something similar for Memorial Day. I still recall how, as children, we stood and observed a moment of silence at 11:11 a.m. on November 11, in tribute to Veterans' Day's origins as Armistice Day. We have lost that sense of an entire nation united in mourning the tragic costs of war.
Last year, the European Union decreed 11 July, the anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians in 1995, a day of commemoration and reflection. This year, 50,000 people, including major political leaders, attended the burial of the newly identified remains of 775 of the victims.
The Spiegel's coverage, citing a range of major newspapers, stressed two things: the abject failure of governments and the UN at the time, and the continuing failure to resolve essential questions of the mystery. The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung asked "whether there was a standing agreement between the western powers, the Bosnian Muslims and the Serbians to exchange Srebrenica for a suburb near Sarajevo." And more simply, the conservative Die Welt asked why the fate of Serbian General Ratko Mladić, the architect of the massacre, remains unknown: "In a time when the whereabouts of every mobile phone can be traced using global positioning satellites, when satellites can take pictures of the tip of a match and when Google records every street lamp on its maps, this sort of disappearing act is incomprehensible. Serbia obviously still lacks the will to accept the past. How long will they need before they find Mladic?"
The reflexive moral commentary would point to the guilt of the outside world along with the killers, to the well-known failure of the UN and even NATO. The left-wing TAZ, however, also raised the big and uncomfortable question about the failures of intellectuals and "progressives," as well:
"We should remember this though. At the height of the war in Bosnia, well known peace researchers thought it best to simply let the conflict 'bleed out' naturally. Representatives of the left wing of the Green party even opposed the protection of humanitarian aid sent there to help the starving populace of central Bosnia. And some in the leftist scene in Berlin even took the side of war criminals Karadzic and Mladic."
"A culture that remembers the past is distinguished by the lessons it draws from history, for its present and for the future. That means admitting to one's own failings too. Many protagonists involved in this discussion however, prefer to throw a cloak of secrecy over the things that happened in Bosnia back then."
• Update (15 July)Peter Lippman, "Srebrenica, fifteen years on": "The dignified commemorations of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in July 2005 retain their integrity and human core, even as the leaders of a divided Bosnia seek to channel the grief into political pageantry. Peter Lippman, in eastern Bosnia, reports. . . ." (read the rest)
According to the Auschwitz administration and Reuters, Polish authorities are offering a reward of 115,000 PLN (about $ 39,000) "for information leading to the return of the metal sign" that hung over the gate to the camp and was stolen this week.
I am shocked and outraged by the theft of a recognizable symbol of Nazi cynicism and cruelty," President Lech Kaczynski said in a statement.
"Everything must be done to find and punish the offenders... and I appeal to all my compatriots who can help the law-enforcement authorities."
Authorities now believe that the motive was not antisemtism on the part of neo-Nazis or similar groups, and instead, a simple theft, though the specific motives behind the latter remain unclear.
The press office of the historic site and memorial announced that the infamous sign over the gate of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp disappeared in the middle of the night. According to a more detailed report from Haaretz and AP:
Polish police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said local authorities believed the sign was stolen between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m., when museum guards noticed that it was missing and alerted the police.
Padlo added that the iron sign, which spanned a gate at the main entrance to the former Nazi death camp, was removed by being unscrewed on one side and pulled off on the other.
The daily Gazeta Wyborcza said on its website that the museum authorities had already installed a replica sign over the gate that had been used briefly a few years ago when the original was being repaired.
"This [theft] is very saddening," Gazeta Wyborcza quoted Jaroslaw Mensfelt, the museum's spokesman, as saying.
"The thieves either didn't know where they were or -- what's even worse -- they did know but that didn't prevent them from stealing."
the gate, through which visitors now enter the site:
1.1 million in 2008, when this photo was taken
Even without vandalism, the preservation of the historic resources of the site has posed a great challenge, for both the facilities and the thousands of artifacts—3,800 suitcases and 12,000 pots and pans, [accidentally omitted: and two tons of human hair,] for example—are in urgent need of conservation. At the start of the year, the Polish government, which has maintained the camp on its own, announced ambitious plans to create a foundation with an endowment of 120 million Euros, the interest of which could perpetually finance these tasks. Just this week, Germany committed to contributing half that amount .
Updates on this story and the overall struggle to preserve the site will follow.
Although the United Nations, in the course of the Yugoslav Civil War, declared the Bosnian town of Srebrenica a UN safe area under its protection (the first such in history, it should be noted), the small force of UNPROFOR troops shamefully took no measures to protect the residents when Serb forces captured the area. The Serbs proceeded to deport some 25,000 women, old men, and young boys, slaughtering the over 8,000 remaining males.
The military and moral failure of the United Nations and world community on this occasion was stunning.
The standard designation of the event is: the worst massacre or war crime in Europe since the end of World War II (or words to that effect). We pronounce the phrase with clinical accuracy, yet scarcely bother to ponder the chilling meaning of those words—above all, the very fact that "massacres" and "war crimes" took place at all in the late twentieth century, and especially in a continent that should have learned its lessons.
Fourteen years after the traumatic events, much of the world shows little interest in the slaughter of those innocent Muslim civilians. The New York Times (our "newspaper of record"), which found plenty of space for Michael Jackson, had no time for Srebrenica, except in a passing mention in a piece about the trial of Serb leader Radovan Karadžić.
To be sure, newspapers focus more on current news than historical anniversaries, but in this case, the two coincided:
In January, the European Parliament declared July 11 a time for commemoration throughout the EU, as "a symbol of the impotence of the international community to intervene in the conflict and protect the civilian population."
On this anniversary, some 30,000 people gathered to witness the reburial of some of the dead. Some news outlets, such as AP (on which so many others rely), world newspapers, and various television networks, found time and space for the story.
Almost as tragic as the massacre itself are the consequences. The lesson of "the impotence of the international community" remains unlearned, or misunderstood with a vengeance: managing to combine overgeneralization from the principle (so that protection of civilians overrides all other values, even to the exclusion of legitimate military action) with application in a manner that betrays inconsistency, a short attention span, or both.
The tragedy in Darfur has generated considerable attention, though far less action. Even those who do not accept all of Mahmoud Mandani's provocative analyses of western human-rights perspectives on Darfur and mass violence in Africa will agree that the abysmal ignorance of or indifference to the carnage in the Congo is shocking: intrinsically (5.4 million from 1998-2008, and 45,000 every month even after the nominal end of the conflict), and in comparison with the treatment of other cases. And, most recently, we have seen how the world virtually ignored wholesale slaughter in South Asia.
This spring, as many greeted the victory of the Sri Lankan government over the Tamil Tiger rebellion with a sigh of relief, the Times of London reported that the civilian death toll in the final months of the campaign alone exceeded 20,000 (in part because, as Robert Kaplan reports, the Tigers used thousands of human shields, which the government did not scruple to kill). Although this figure was three times higher than the previous official figure, some anonymous UN sources said that the actual total was instead far higher. The New York Times coverage (and only in a blog, at that) focused on denial of the figures by the Sri Lankan government and other journalists but did in passing (its favorite mode) cite UN officials as calling the civilian toll "unacceptably high."
Once again, we await United Nations action. Perhaps one day someone will get tired of waiting.
On this day in 1942, paratroopers sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the ruler of the Nazi-occupied "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia." Heydrich was not only the "Reichsprotektor," but also the architect of the SS security apparatus and a driving force behind the extermination of European Jewry.
The attack mortally wounded Heydrich, who died on 4 June. The reprisals that followed are, if possible, even better known than the assassination itself. In particular, the massacre or deportation of the innocent villagers of Lidice became a synonym for the state terror and collective punishment under Nazi occupation. (That such terms are nowadays cavalierly applied in vastly different and incommensurate contexts is a sad irony worth noting, even though we cannot discuss it in detail here.)
The motivations and calculations behind the assassination were complex, and in part because of the ferocity of the Nazi response, details remained murky long afterward.
Reflecting on the difficult choices and consequences some three decades later, former Chief of Czechoslovak Intelligence František Moravec concluded:
Perhaps 5,000 Czechs paid with their lives for the death of a single Nazi maniac. The cost and the worth of the killing of Heydrich has been the subject of much controversy. It is certainly true that the price paid for Heydrich was much higher than the figures indicate, for the Nazis executed systematically the very best of the nation. On the other hand, it is quite clear that had Heydrich lived he would have done no less. The eradication of the Czechoslovak nation and its amalgamation into the Reich, including the systematic murder of its leaders, was the assignment with which he came to Prague.
In my opinion, the problem of cost can be reduced to a simple principle, so well understood by the parachutists Kubis and Gabcik: freedom and, above all, liberation from slavery have to be fought for, and this means losses in human lives.
The ethical and strategic dilemmas remain as relevant today as they were then. Among other things, it is bracing to be reminded of an age in which leaders calmly and resolutely--though not at all lightly--made such calculations involving both political principles and human lives. Our otherwise commendable modern desire to avoid loss of human life "at all costs" may blind us to the equal or greater costs of inaction.
Because I was for the first time present in the Czech Republic on the occasion of these anniversaries, I'll return to these topics in a more systematic way in the near future.
In my elation at the news that Radovan Karadzic had been captured and would soon be brought to justice, my immediate reaction was to ask how he had managed to escape that justice for so long.
When I learned that he had been living in Belgrade, though under an assumed name, and as a practitioner of "alternative medicine," I was sorely tempted to make some comment about the implicit connections between the facts of Karadzic's "political" career and subsequent existence, but I refrained.
I am therefore delighted that the admirable and irrepressible physicist Bob Park (one of my favorite scientists and internet commentators) took the words from my mouth:
Friday, August 1, 2008
5. METAMORPHOSIS: INFAMOUS SERBIAN FUGITIVE ARRESTED. Thirteen years
after his indictment in connection with the Srebrenica massacre and the deadly siege of Sarajevo, Radovan Karadzic was found with a beard and a new identity living openly in Belgrade. How could a mass murderer support himself for 13 years without drawing on his past? No problem. He practiced alternative medicine, which requires little more than a lack of scruples. He was fully qualified.
Good news, in the sense of better late than never!
Few details yet, aside from the fact that former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic--on the run since 1997--was arrested in Serbia.
The deeper question, of course, is why it took so long. As several reports point out, the arrest comes on the eve of negotiations involving Serbia's progress on entry into the EU, one precondition for which is the arrest of war criminals. (See this BBC report from 2004 on earlier difficulties in the pursuit of the criminals.)
Among the crimes he is charged with in the indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague are complicity in the shooting of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo and the infamous massacre of 8000 Muslims at Srebrenica.
Two general lessons: (1) It is essential to pursue war criminals relentlessly for both principled and practical reasons (they live in the constant awareness that they are never out of danger--small discomfort compared to what they forced their victims to endure, but nonetheless a form of poetic interim justice; and under pressure, they may make crucial mistakes); (2) In the course of that pursuit, it is worth remembering that naked self-interest can at times trump ideology and personal loyalty. At the least, one begins to wear down and tempt all but their most fanatical protectors. By this time, Karadzic was clearly a liability rather than an asset to the Serbian government.
