Post by Tamrin on Aug 28, 2008 13:23:25 GMT 10
Belgrade's Anti-Masonic Exhibition of 1941-42
University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
(Excerpt)
University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
(Excerpt)
Nazi Germany occupied most of Yugoslavia by April 1941. After a Serbian uprising of July 1941, Gen. Hermann Bohme, was given emergency powers to govern the country. SS - Gruppenfuhrer Harold Turner and SS Untersturmfuhrer Fritz Stracke handled the administration of Serbia. Milan Nedic was the "nomial" local ruler, comparable to the collaborationist regime of Quisling in Norway.
Under the Nedic regime a heavily anti-semitic "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition" opened in occupied Belgrade on 22nd October 1941 and ended January 19, 1942. It was funded apparently by the German occupiers and supported by Nedic to intensify hatred against the Jews, although the title of the exhibit suggested the Masons (Masonic Orders had been closed in Germany). While Nedic was a supporter of the German plan for extermination of the Jews, Serbian partisan groups often tried to save Jews from victimization. The history of this period is complex, filled with mutual accusations regarding the role of perpetrators and rescuers.
The central theme was an alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic plot for world domination, similar to propaganda once put out by the Tsarist secret police before the Russian revolution in the well-known forgeries The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Besides the exhibits at the exhibition, an enormous amount of propaganda material was prepared: over 200 thousand various brochures, 60 thousand posters, 100 thousand flyers, 108 thousand of samples of 9 different types of envelopes, 176 propaganda movie clips, four different postage stamps etc. Organizers advertised that "This concept of exhibition will be unique not only in Serbia and the Balkans, not only in southeastern Europe and Europe, but in the world."
Under the Nedic regime a heavily anti-semitic "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition" opened in occupied Belgrade on 22nd October 1941 and ended January 19, 1942. It was funded apparently by the German occupiers and supported by Nedic to intensify hatred against the Jews, although the title of the exhibit suggested the Masons (Masonic Orders had been closed in Germany). While Nedic was a supporter of the German plan for extermination of the Jews, Serbian partisan groups often tried to save Jews from victimization. The history of this period is complex, filled with mutual accusations regarding the role of perpetrators and rescuers.
The central theme was an alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic plot for world domination, similar to propaganda once put out by the Tsarist secret police before the Russian revolution in the well-known forgeries The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Besides the exhibits at the exhibition, an enormous amount of propaganda material was prepared: over 200 thousand various brochures, 60 thousand posters, 100 thousand flyers, 108 thousand of samples of 9 different types of envelopes, 176 propaganda movie clips, four different postage stamps etc. Organizers advertised that "This concept of exhibition will be unique not only in Serbia and the Balkans, not only in southeastern Europe and Europe, but in the world."
Anti-Masonic stamps, Serbia 1941