THE UNTOLD STORY UNKNOWN TO THE WEST (3)

The Origins of Ethnic Cleansing

in the Balkans

by 

Zhivko B. Damyanovich

World War II, the Interim Occupation, and afterwards (to the present)

After Yugoslavia’s capitulation on April 21, 1941, and the Kosovo-Metohia region’s occupation by Bulgarian and Italian forces, the Albanians - many of whom gladly collaborated with the Axis and served as auxiliaries (“balilas”) in the police and the army - were given a free hand in establishing a full-fledged reign of terror including the intimidation, jailing and eviction of all Serbs and Montenegrins with little or no notice. This was a full -scale campaign of ethnic cleansing, carefully hidden and covered up afterwards by the postwar government of Josip Broz Tito in the name of “Communist Brotherhood and Unity.” The larger public was never allowed to find out the truth about what happened there during 1941-45. There were no foreign reporters to photograph the wretched Christian refugees (including old, crippled and sick people, nursing mothers, and pregnant women), to chronicle their sufferings, or to record the tales of beating, torture, and starvation at the hands of the Albanians. Serbia had to take in most of those who were lucky enough to reach her, despite the severe war shortages of all goods and the great influx of other refugees who barely escaped with their lives from Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. 

THE UNTOLD STORY UNKNOWN TO THE WEST (2)

The Origins of Ethnic Cleansing

in the Balkans

by 

Zhivko B. Damyanovich

Serbian Resistance to Turkish Rule

Apparently the Albanians were content to submit to the Turks and Islam after the defeat at Kosovo; the Serbs, on the other hand, although Turkish vassals as well, nevertheless continued to exist as a state for another seventy years (1389-1459). They were able to keep their cultural identity, helped by their traditions, their nationalist Serbian Orthodox Church, and their past embodied in their uniquely epic poetry which surprised Europe and enchanted Goethe. 

THE UNTOLD STORY UNKNOWN TO THE WEST

The Origins of Ethnic Cleansing

in the Balkans

by 

Zhivko B. Damyanovich

About the Author 

Zhivko Bogdan Damyanovich
1916 - 2012

Mr. Zhivko Bogdan Damyanovich was born in Rušanj (now a suburb of Belgrade) on March 23, 1916. [At that time, his father and three of his paternal uncles were serving on the Salonika front (with the Allies).] After getting a Bachelor of Science (majoring in agriculture) in 1939 and joining the General Union of Farm Coöperatives in 1941, he served as a pilot with the Yugoslav Air Force during the war (1941 and 1944-45). Upon being demobilized at the end of World War II (1945), he was sent to the Ministry of Agriculture of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY), being in charge of farm wages and product prices. On account of his vigorous opposition to compulsory requisitions of farm products at inappropriately low prices, arbitrary taxation of farm holdings, and enforced collectivization of agriculture, he was expelled from the state-run trade unions and dismissed from the Ministry (1952). Due to the failure of the Peasant Workers’ Cooperatives to improve agricultural production as well as to the consequently drastic changes in farm policies undertaken, he was reinstated and sent to the Economics Institute of FPRY (1953); when the Institute was abolished (1958) as too “liberal”, he was moved to the Federal Planning Commission.

In 1960, Mr. Damyanovich was able to use an invitation to specialize in land economics to move to Canada, where he graduated from the University of Toronto with a Master of Science (1962). He then had several jobs with the Ontario Agricultural College, the Manitoba Department of Agriculture and Conservation, and the Federal Trade and Commerce Department of Canada before moving in 1965 to Rome (Italy) to work for the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. He retired in 1978 and passed away on 21 March, 2012., in Eugena, Ontario, Canada.

Throughout his career, Mr. Damyanovich wrote close to one-hundred expert-level reports, most of which were published (in Yugoslavia and for intra-governmental use only). His Master’s thesis “Labour Productivity in World Agriculture” won the Agricultural Economics Society of Canada’s award as the best submission in Land Economics at Canadian Universities in 1962; however, he was never allowed to defend his major work, the study “Resources in World Agriculture and their Use, 1947-78" which was submitted as his PhD dissertation at the University of Belgrade, due to political interference.