Liberty2168

Do We Look More And More Like Jews?

By Nikola Maric

In so many ways I wish we did look like people who wandered for forty years before settling down in a desert. Some of my Jewish friends are joking about that and lamenting how these old Jews could not find a land below which there were some oil fields, a commodity that is still serving well their Arab neighbors. Oil is still being used for a variety of purposes, fuel being the most important one.

To state that the Nazi dictator Hitler did not like the Jews would be an understatement. Some of his disdain for the Jews was based on the fact that they owned most of the financial institutions, big businesses and the like. What many people did not know is the fact that Jewish people were not allowed to own land in Germany, so they had to make living some other way.

Our Serbs always owned land, worked their farms, grew cattle, sheep and pigs and were more or less satisfied with the simple style of life. Had they been left alone the majority of Serbs would still stay where they were and live the way their ancestors used to live. However, they were always in the way of bigger and mightier people, Romans, Turks, for example, and forced to move on. When the mighty medieval Serbian State fell apart and succumbed to the Ottoman Empire Serbian people were on a constant move from one place to another. The alternative would have been abandoning their Serbian Orthodox faith and converting to Islam, which some Serbs actually did in order to survive.

The two big wars in the twentieth century cost our people dearly, only to be delivered to the ungodly communist rule after the Second World War. After that war many Serbs chose not to return home but started a new life in foreign lands.

The last conflict toward the end of the last century was another blow to a great number of Serbian people as they once again packed their belongings and left their homesteads in Croatia and Bosnia.

Watching the RTS programs for diaspora last Saturday and Sunday we met many people in Vienna, Austria, where Zikina Sarenica featured our big Serbian diaspora, and down under, In Australia, a popular Serbian performer by the name of Ana Bekuta took a ride in a horse drawn carriage thru the streets of Melbourne.

Somewhere here in the United States I am sure our Serbian diaspora found a reason or an excuse to celebrate something, just to be with our people, sing our songs and eat our delicious Serbian food. Every time one tunes in one of these Serbian programs there are some well-organized and trained Serbian folklore dancing groups showing their skills to other Serbs, or to the “foreigners”.  If you care to listen carefully you will notice that our young people here in America speak English with each other, those in Austria use German as a way of communicating with each other, and so on. This is not a criticism but simply a statement of fact, a reality check.

During our biggest and most celebrated holidays, such as Christmas and the St. Sava Day, we enjoy listening to our youngest recite our Serbian poems, we reward them with a long and sustained applause, but as soon as those little boys and girls leave the stage and join their peers the English language takes over.

For a long, long time, the Jews did not have country, but at their gatherings they always greeted each other with the greeting:

- Next year in Jerusalem !

The late President of the Serbian National Defense Council of America, Mr. Slavko Panovic, used to conclude his speeches with a similar greeting:-

- Next year at Gazimestan!

Modern Jews have their state today and are determined to defend it to the last drop of their blood.

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Full article in printed Liberty

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