The recent memorial service in Krnovo represents the intention for the Chetniks to get their Lazine. In Lazine, near Danilovgrad, on July 23, 1944, under the command of a Chetnik officer Jakov Jovović, 52 young men and women were shot, and the crime was stopped only after the intervention of the German occupation authorities. On the other hand, the Chetniks in Krnovo were killed in armed combat, as all available sources indicate. So any attempt to equate the two events falls flat, in the face of solid historical facts.
This was assessed for "Vijesti" by a historian and director of Antifašist Cetinje. Philip Kuzman, commenting on the recent memorial service for the Chetniks killed in battle on August 25, 1944, at the Lobanje Glave site in Krnovo, which was organized by the Association "Kosovo Peony of Nikšić", with the presence of the clergy of the Budimlje-Niksić Eparchy of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the head of parliament Andrije Mandić.
By organizing a memorial service for the Chetniks, as Kuzman assessed it, he wants to divert attention from the fact that the Chetniks were formally and essentially a fascist movement.
"Their official ideology is clearly defined in the instructions that Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic sent on December 20, 1941 to his commanders Pavlo Đurišić i Djordje Lašić"He demands from them the creation of an ethnically pure 'Greater Serbia'. This directly coincides with the Nazi and fascist projects of that period. Thus, by trying to rehabilitate the Chetnik movement, the President of the Parliament is consciously introducing fascist ideology into Montenegrin politics," said Kuzman.
DON'T MISS IT
After serving a memorial service in Krnovo on October 12, Mandić said that in 1944, "a crime against the youth of Montenegro" occurred.
"Today I attended a memorial service in Krnovo, which was served by the Metropolitan of Budimlje and Nikšić." Methods with numerous clergy and on that occasion laid a wreath in memory of over 300 beardless, mostly underage, young men of our country, who were brutally shot in a terrible war crime of fratricide in our homeland during World War II, and for which even today there is no known grave or marble. The fact that only one of them had his own offspring at the time he was killed speaks volumes about the magnitude of this crime against the youth of Montenegro," Mandić wrote on the X network.
Numerous non-governmental organizations have reacted to the new attempt at historical revisionism, warning that citizens are "being misled by manipulative techniques, distortion of facts, concealment of historical context, and misuse of religious and national symbols."
"The goal is to mythologize the Chetnik forces as 'innocent victims of crime', contrary to the historical facts that it was an armed battle and the fighters who died in it fighting on the side of the fascist and Nazi occupiers," they said in a joint statement.
DURMITOR OPERATION AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE “IRON REGIMENT”
Kuzman explained that the Battle of Krnovo took place on August 25, 1944, as part of the German Operation "Ribecal", better known as the "Durmitor Operation", when strong forces were sent against the partisans - the 7th SS Division "Prince Eugen", the 13th SS Division "Handžar", the 369th Legionary Division, the 1st Mountain Division, the 363rd Regiment of the 181st Division, the "Bendel" Combat Group, the "Krempler" Legion, the Bulgarian 24th Division, parts of the 5th Police Regiment, the 1st and 11th Ustasha and 8th and 9th Home Guard Brigades, and strong Chetnik forces from Montenegro and eastern Bosnia.
"So, the Chetniks together with the Ustashas, the Home Guard, the Handzarli, the Bulgarian fascists, and all together under the command of the Germans," Kuzman said.
Chetnik units formed the so-called Montenegrin Volunteer Corps. Pavle Đurišić, which were part of the army Milan Nedić (President of the puppet government of Serbia during the occupation), together with the Serbian Volunteer Corps Dimitrija Ljotić.
"The creation and equipping of the Montenegrin Volunteer Corps was approved by the German Command Southeast and the Reich Foreign Ministry through the envoy Nojbahera"In other words, Đurišić's Chetniks fought alongside the Nazis and Ljotić's men, and against the Partisans who were the only ones fighting for the liberation of the country," Kuzman states.
The historian emphasized that the units with which the Partisans clashed at Krnovo were not innocent youth, but formed and trained Chetnik regiments, under the command of Pavle Đurišić, in direct cooperation with the German occupiers.
"The Eighth 'Iron Regiment' was formed as an elite, 'flying' Chetnik unit, with around 1.700 soldiers, trained in Kosovo Lug near Danilovgrad. So, it was not unarmed youth, but an army under the full command of the Nazis. These were quisling units that fought side by side with the Nazis and the Ustashas, not 'innocent young men'," Kuzman pointed out.
In the "Durmitor operation," he explained, the goal was to crush the Partisan forces and prevent the evacuation of the wounded from the airport in Piva. The German-Chetnik forces were three times larger.
“Pavel Đurišić’s Chetniks directly collaborated with the Germans, attacking the positions of the 7th Montenegrin Youth Brigade ‘Budo Tomović’, trying to capture Krnovo and stop the evacuation of partisan wounded from Piva. After several days of fighting, the partisans managed to hold off the enemy and enable the evacuation of about 800 wounded to Italy. The ‘Iron Regiment’ suffered heavy losses and disintegrated in panic. The Seventh Brigade attacked and surrounded the so-called ‘Iron Regiment’ and, according to most sources, about 350 Chetniks were killed in that battle. They were not shot, as the President of the Parliament of Montenegro says, but died in battle. So, this is not a ‘massacre of innocent young men’, but a defeat of an elite Chetnik unit in open battle, side by side with the Nazis.”
After the defeat at Krnovo, the commander of the "iron regiment" Miloš Pavićević He managed to escape with a small escort. About 180 Chetniks and some officers were captured, who later joined the Partisans, which, as Kuzman explained, once again destroys the narrative of “communist revenge”.
"Pavel Đurišić's Chetniks and the Eighth Iron Regiment fought side by side with the infamous SS Division 'Prince Eugen', the same one that had committed the massacre in Velica just ten days earlier and devastated Piva the year before that. That's how we came to the conclusion that the 'bearded young men', as they want to present them to the public, were helping the SS Division to penetrate Piva again. If we assume that they did not know about the crime in Velica, because it happened ten days before the start of the operation, the Chetniks certainly knew about the Nazi atrocities committed in Piva and again accepted to fight side by side with the Nazis from the SS Division," Kuzman points out.
The right to a grave belongs to everyone.
After the memorial service in Krnovo, the Diocese announced that a "unified message was sent to erect a memorial, a temple, at the site of the massacre in Krnovo, to collect all the names of the approximately 350 killed."
This "unique message" was later clarified by Parliament Speaker Andrija Mandić in a show on RTCG, where he stated, among other things, that if the Government approved the exhumation and burial of all German soldiers from World War II in 2008 and 2009, then he does not see why they should have a different attitude towards "our young people who were killed when they surrendered" and "ended up in some sinkholes."
"If such a cemetery were created for members of the Chetnik forces, with a clear note that they were collaborationist forces from World War II, that would not be a problem. However, erecting a memorial, which is also being requested, is unacceptable," says Filip Kuzman.
At the end of 2016, within the Golubovci military base, the first war cemetery for Wehrmacht soldiers who died during World War II in Montenegro was opened.
Historian Kuzman emphasized that the right to a grave is one of the basic human rights, and that everyone, even "collaborators of the occupiers, deserve to be buried."
"German cemeteries are nothing new. In 46 countries around the world, there are over 800 German military cemeteries for those killed in World War I and World War II. Such cemeteries can even be found in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and we all know what crimes were committed there by members of the Wehrmacht. In Buchenwald, a concentration camp near Weimar, the place where camp guards who were shot by Soviet soldiers were buried is marked. But it is clearly indicated that camp guards are buried there."
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