by Carl K. Savich
Bosnia-Hercegovina has for over a millennium been a battleground where the world's major religions, civilizations, cultures, and empires have clashed and collided: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the medieval Serbian, Croatian,and Bosnian Empires, the East and the West. Bosnia-Hercegovina was the dividing line between East and West, between Catholicism and the West and Orthodoxy, Islam, and Judaism and the East. The churches, the cathedrals,the mosques, and the synagogues are the remaining symbols of this battle and conflict between cultures and empires.
World War I began in Bosnia, one of the bloodiest and most horrific wars in the history of mankind, ushering in the twentieth century. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 sprang from the 1875 insurrection in Bosnia-Hercegovina. During World War II, Bosnia-Hercegovina was one of the bloodiest battlefields of the war and of the Holocaust.
The Bosnian Serbs are representatives of the Orthodox Christian Church and of the Byzantine culture and are part of the larger Serbian nation. The Bosnian Croats are representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the Austro-Hungarian culture and are part of the Croatian nation. The Bosnian Muslims are representatives of Sunni Islam and were part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire and culture. The Bosnian Jews are representatives of Judaism and are mostly descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain following the Inquisition and expulsion of the Jews.
From 1941-1945, Bosnia-Hercegovina was part of the NDH, Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, the Independent State of Croatia and was one of the bloodiest arenas of the Holocaust and battlefields of the war. With the assistance of Haj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, the Bosnian Muslim leadership undertook the systematic extermination of the Jewish and non-Muslim, non-Croat population of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Two Waffen SS Divisions and other Nazi and fascist formations were formed to advance the goals of the Third Reich and of Islam. The goal of the Muslims was to achieve autonomy and independence for Bosnia-Hercegovina under Muslim rule. The period 1941-1945 is crucial in understanding and comprehending the Bosnian civil war of 1992-1995.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
Haj Amin el Husseini fled to Europe in 1941 following the unsuccessful pro-Nazi coup which he organized in Iraq. He met Joachim von Ribbentrop and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on November 28, 1941 in Berlin. Nazi Germany established for der Grossmufti von Jerusalem a Bureau from which he organized the following: 1) radio propaganda on behalf of Nazi Germany; 2) espionage and fifth column activities in Muslim regions of Europe and the Middle East; 3) the formation of Muslim Waffen SS and Wehrmacht units in Bosnia, the Balkans, North Africa, and Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union; and, 4) the formation of schools and training centers for Muslim imams and mullahs who would accompany the Muslim SS and Wehrmacht units. As soon as he arrived in Europe,the Mufti established close contacts with Bosnian Muslim and Albanian Muslim leaders. He would spend the remainder of the war organizing and rallying Muslims in support of Nazi Germany.
Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el Husseini was born in 1893 in Jerusalem, then the capital of Palestine, which was a part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1917, during World War I, the British occupied Palestine and established the Mandate. On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour announced that Britain was committed to establishing a Jewish homeland in formerly Ottoman Palestine, which was known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Husseini devoted his entire life and career to the destruction of a proposed Jewish homeland and the prevention of Jewish immigration into Palestine. His goal was to create an Arab state of Palestine with the concomitant extermination or marginalization of the Jewish population..."
(Running through the carnage of two world wars is islam, islam, islam...who said 'you don't win wars by laying down your life for your country, you let the other fellow die for his?' Seems islam has perfected the art of setting us against each other so we do the killing for them. Read carefully):
Gavrilo Princip in prison cell in Theresienstadt
Gavrilo Princip (Serbian Cyrillic: Гаврило Принцип) (July 25, 1894 April 28, 1918) was a Bosnian Serb nationalist who killed Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, and his wife Countess Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The event, known as the assassination in Sarajevo, prompted the Austrian action against Serbia that led to World War I.
Early Life Born in Obljaj, Bosansko Grahovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Gavrilo Princip's parents, Petar and Marija Nana Mičić, had nine children, five sons and four daughters, six of whom died in infancy. His health was poor. From an early age, he suffered from tuberculosis, which was his eventual cause of death in 1918, and was also one of the reasons he let himself kill Archduke Ferdinand in the first place.
Princip attended primary school in Grahovo where he excelled in his studies, especially in romantic and historic literature. A teacher at the school gave him a collection of Serbian heroic folk poetry. At thirteen, Princip planned on a military career and went to Sarajevo to study at the Military School. After arriving, he instead chose to pursue a business career so he enrolled in the Merchant's School where he studied for three years.
Contrary to common belief, Princip was not a member of the Black Hand, but was a member of the group Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna), which he joined in 1911. The Young Bosnia Movement was a group made up of Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims, committed to achieving independence for Bosnia.