From Journey to Orthodoxy:

Posted by Fr. John on November 19, 2011

More and More People in Czechia and Slovakia Are Giving Preference to the Orthodox Church

An interview with Metropolitan Christopher, Archbishop of Prague and Metropolitan of the Czech and Slovakian lands.

Archbishop Christopher of Prague, Metropolitan of the Czech and Slovakian lands talks about the history and modern condition of the Orthodox Church in Czechia and Slovakia. The talk was recorded in June of 2011.

—Your Beatitude, you chose the path of a clergyman of the Orthodox Church during the time in Czechoslovakia after the famous events of 1968 (“Prague Spring”), and for a number of reasons thousands of parishioners were leaving the Orthodox Church. To be Orthodox at that time was at the least, not considered prestigious. What moved you to go against the current?

—Yes, that was when my fate was decided: I chose the Orthodox theological seminary. I have to admit that it was not my cherished dream to become a priest. I wanted to become a forest ranger, and I also wanted very much to paint icons. I studied iconography with Fr. Andrei (Kolomatsky), a very gifted Russian priest, architect, artist, and tireless man of prayer. At times I would try to paint, wanting my icons to be like his—alive. But it didn’t come out like that. I would complain to Fr. Andrei, and he would answer, “Are you praying?” He himself prayed without ceasing, and that was the most important thing I learned from him. I began my spiritual path with him, and I came to know the mighty power of prayer, the strength of Orthodoxy, which enables a man, hoping in God’s help, to overcome what would seem to be insurmountable. I came to know God’s mercy, how the Lord works miracles. Perhaps it was then that I first had the desire to become a priest, albeit not fully consciously.

I went to the seminary only because no other school of higher education would have accepted me. At the time, in order to be accepted at an institute, one had to fill in an application line about one’s agreement to enter the armed forces of the Warsaw convention on my country’s territory. I was not in agreement with violence. Never. When I heard that in the application for admission to the seminary at the Orthodox theological department of Charles University had no such requirement (but there is, as they told me, a more complicated question—on Holy Scripture), I applied there. This is how, by God’s will, I began my path as a clergyman.

—The Church of Czechoslovakia is currently preparing for the sixty-year anniversary of its autocephaly. Why did the Church of Czechoslovakia receive its autocephaly from the Russian Orthodox Church?

—The first contacts, which became the basis of the friendship between our Churches, go back to antiquity, in the tenth–eleventh centuries, when the recluse Procopius, like St. Sergius of Radonezh, founded a monastery in the forest wilderness not far from the Sázava river, which later became a large, famous monastery. During the time that the Sázava Monastery was active, the monks would go to Kiev, and the monks from Kievan Russia would visit the Sázava Monastery. Each time they would bring gifts of icons and manuscripts to each other… These gifts from the Sázava Monastery are still treasured in Kiev. The Kiev monks in their turn brought a piece of the relics of Sts. Boris and Gleb to the Sázava Monastery, where they were honored with great reverence. One of the monastery’s side altars was dedicated to these saints.

In the eighteenth century, the Russian Orthodox Church also aided our country’s renewal of our Church. For nearly three centuries, Czechia did not have its own government, and was subject to the Austrian Hapsburg Empire. The people were Germanized, and had no rights. No one in the West wanted or was able to help us. Russia was a light, hope, and refuge for the Czechs at that time. Russian Slavophiles supported the Czech and Slovak patriot-renewers both ideologically and materially. With their help, in 1848 the first Slavic conference was conducted in Prague, which placed a beginning of the renewal in Czechia of Slavic culture and language. In 1867, the Slavic conference took place in Moscow, and on the streets of Prague people were singing, “God save the Tsar!”

Russians helped the Czechs afterward, also. They sent money for the construction of Orthodox Churches, and Orthodox priests. One of these was, for example, the martyr for Orthodoxy and faithfulness to Slavicism Archpriest Nicholai Ryzhkov. The people of Czechia honor that man’s memory. The Czechs also received Russian refugees (during the years of the civil war in Russia and subsequent persecutions) as their own brothers. They helped them to establish themselves, to receive education… The young Czech government spent billions on that.

The first head of the Czechoslovakian government formed in 1918, Karel Kramář, was Orthodox. Together with his wife, Nadezhda Kramář Khludova (a Russian aristocrat), he organized the construction of a remarkable church dedicated to the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Olšany Cemetery, which became a haven for Orthodox Russians, and then during the war years, for Orthodox Czechs, who were earlier under the omophorion of the Holy Hieromartyr Gorazd, the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Czechoslovakia who was executed by the Nazis. The Russian priests, primarily Fr. Andrei (Kolomatsky) and Bishop Sergius of Prague, helped their Czech brothers and sisters in Christ, spiritually cared for them, risking their own lives…

The Russian Orthodox Church did much for the Orthodox in Czechia also after the war. During those years, on the territory of the Czech and Slovak lands their existed four jurisdictions. It was necessary to do away with this atomism of the Orthodox Church and place our reliance in the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Church. In 1946, the Czech Orthodox Church was accepted into the Moscow Patriarchate. The Russian Orthodox Church sent a talented organizer and missionary to Prague, a most honorable man who suffered much, Bishop Eleutherius. He had a gift of preaching from God, and drew to Orthodox tens, later hundreds of thousands of parishioners.

In 1950 the Church of Czechoslovakia already had a sufficient number of the faithful and bishops to receive independence. It even had a theology school. The Church could support and maintain itself, and needed no support from other sources. On November 23, 1951, a statement was signed in the Moscow Patriarchate granting autocephaly to the Czechoslovakian Orthodox Church. From December 18, 1951, after the notification of the heads of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of Czechoslovakia, the Orthodox Church exists as an autocephaly.

—During the 1950′s, the Russian Orthodox Church endured a new round of persecutions (the Khrushchev era). In Czechoslovakia, upper echelons of the Communist Party aided the Orthodox Church in a victory over the Uniates. Is it true that this act of the Communists aided Orthodoxy in Czechia and Slovakia?

—The Communists, both yours (Russian) and ours were always enemies of the Church. That the Czechoslovakian party members supposedly helped the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia was only their cunning maneuver: to get rid of the Uniates as quickly as possible with the help of the Orthodox. In fact, the Communist only injured the work of Orthodoxy. They shouted about the victory over the Uniates. In fact, there was no victory, only liquidation. You see, the Unia was introduced into the Slavic lands during the seventeenth century, also by force. Therefore, a large part of the faithful in the Uniate churches, under the influence of Bishop Eleutherius’ sermons, joyfully returned to the bosom of the Church of their ancestors, to Orthodoxy. Undoubtedly, all the rest would have followed their example, with perhaps rare exceptions. But during the process of voluntary departure of parishioners from the Unia—it could be said, at its final stage—the Communist bosses inserted themselves, demanded speedy and total liquidation of the Unia. Their methods are well known: prison, exile…

Then, to the Northern Czech border were sent hundreds of Uniate families. Scores of Uniate priests who did not accept Orthodoxy were defrocked. The Uniate leaders, for example, Bishop Goidich, were held in prison cells, and then sent to a concentration camp designated for particularly dangerous criminals. There Goidich died. Of course, all of this had a negative effect on Orthodoxy. We Orthodox know that no such force is a victory. Goidich became a holy martyr for the Uniates, their standard. Unfortunately, we still have not been victorious over the Unia. They call people to their churches through deception. Those who come to them see Orthodox icons, and thinking that they are being baptized into Orthodoxy, they end up in the Unia…

—What was the real reason for the mass exit of parishioners from the Orthodox Church after the events of 1968?

—The aforementioned was the reason, in any case, the main reason, for the mass exit of parishioners from the Orthodox Church. The arrival of Soviet tanks on our streets completed this process. Orthodoxy was always associated with Russia. And those who invaded our country in tanks spoke Russian. As a sign of protest, our people “forgot” the Russian language. It cost the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Czechoslovakia, Vladyka Doretheus, an enormous effort to save the Church from total disintegration…

—Is it true that at the present time, only the Orthodox Church of the Czech lands and Slovakia is increasing in the number of parishioners, while all other confessions are decreasing? What is the reason for this, in your opinion?

—Yes, this is true. The number of Orthodox in Czechia is growing. Many people have come to us from the former Soviet Union. They want to live here. And they bring their homeland with them—the Orthodox Church. But Czechs are also coming to be baptized into Orthodoxy. Our Church attracts people by the absence of negative phenomena in its history—that is, the inquisition and persecution of those of different convictions. To the contrary, the Orthodox Church is a refuge for all the persecuted. That there are many more Orthodox can be seen: all the Orthodox churches are full. On feast days we even have to serve outdoors, next to the church. Meanwhile, the many Catholic churches are empty; at best, concerts are given in them. The Uniate churches are also not at all full. Less than a tenth of the original number of parishioners (in the 1920′s there were 900,000!) are left in the Hussite Church. Around three million parishioners have left the Catholic Church.

—Why is this happening? Why is Czechia the most atheistic country in Europe?

—People ask me about this often. I then answer by telling the history of my much-suffering country, which joyfully received Baptism from the saintly brothers Cyril and Methodius, but later, after many centuries, suffered persecution from the aggressive (at that time) Roman popes and cardinals… Catholicism was instituted by force, by almost the same methods as fascists or communists used. For disobedience—requisition of property and land, exile from the country, and even execution… “Let every father, mother, and child who does not receive Catholicism in fourteen years be exiled from the country!” Such were the orders from the Pope of Rome after the Catholic League’s victory over the Czechs.

At that time, nearly half of the population of Czechia was exiled. Out of 150,000 families, there remained only 30,000. It is apparently understandable, why Czechs did not like Catholicism. Therefore, as soon as Czechoslovakia became an independent country, nearly a million people left the Catholic Church and created the Czechoslovakian Orthodox Church. And our country would have been Orthodox then, had not, as the Russians say, a mess occurred. Essentially, a tragedy: When the Primate of the newly created Orthodox Church, Holy Hieromartry Gorazd, went to America in order to obtain some needed financial means with the help of wealthy Czechs, another pretender to the bishopric, the talented orator Karel Farsky led nearly all the parishioners into his modernist Church, where Jesus Christ was honored not as the Son of God, but as the First Saint, born of marital union. And people believed him… I think that the name of this modernist Church, called Hussite, worked on people’s psychology. Although, Jan Hus himself was not a modernist, but rather went to be burned at the stake for the sake of Original Church of Christ. As years passed, people have figured everything out. That is the answer to why people leave not only the Catholic Church, but also the Hussite Church.

—Czechia is considered to be the most atheist country. It would seem that without faith, all the vices of society should appear. But in fact Czechia is a peaceful country, people are well-wishing, without aggression. One can be out on the streets without fear at any time of the day or night. Everything in Czechia—the construction of houses, the public transportation, the stores, and other places—is designed to be of maximum convenience for people. I remember how amazed I was at the transfer system of the trains… Everywhere, you feel that in everything having to do with relationships to people there is cordiality, warmth, and kind wisdom… Does this mean that it is possible to do without religion, without faith? What is your opinion on this?

—Yes, our citizens’ peace-loving nature and absence, or more precisely, near absence of aggression, you have correctly noticed. That the majority of the population does not number itself amongst any one of the religious confessions is also true. However, the main mass of our people, the Czechs, cannot be called godless. Take, for example, the Church holidays: Christmas, Christ’s Resurrection, and other great feasts. People try to observe the traditions that have taken root in Czechia since long ago, and which were passed down from generation to generation…

Yes, it is very unfortunate that the majority of our citizens do not attend Church services. But does that mean that we can do without the Church entirely? No, of course not. It is precisely thanks to the Church that our people had the happiness of receiving Christianity originally from the very Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius; in place of barbaric cruelty, they began to cultivate such qualities as love of neighbor, gentleness, and readiness to forgive offenses; loyalty and dedication to family and Fatherland, honor of parents, and all the other virtues. It is precisely thanks to the Church, to our great patriots, such as the first president of Czechoslovakia Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, such as the historian and Russophile František Palacký, who were deeply religious men, that our people acquired Christian morals, a Christian view of life. One could say that this very culture instilled by the Church became the Czechs’ second nature. This can also be seen in the mass pilgrimages to holy places and in part through the reverence for Orthodox saints—Martyr Liudmila, Princess of Czechia, and the Holy Passion-Bearer Prince Václav (Wenceslaus).

Thus, in answer to your question, I would again like to repeat that it is precisely due to the Christian religion, the Church, which was Orthodox in our country from the beginning, our people have the traditions of their fathers, and became the people you know, and the whole world knows—hard working and peace-loving, with God in their hearts. And, of course, the Czechs need the Church.

More and more people in Czechia and Slovakia are giving preference to the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, it is not our task to increase the number of parishioners from for example, former Catholics. Right now it is necessary to unite our efforts to morally strengthen the people, first of all the young people, in order to teach them how to oppose evil, so that, as they say, the sheep would not become goats.

—Will Czechia and Slovakia return to the faith of their fathers, that is, to Orthodoxy? How do you see the future of your Church in the country?

—Return to the original Church of St. Methodius? It is possible. Theoretically. But I don’t normally talk aloud about it. Although I dream of it and pray. I also believe that I am not alone. With the Lord all is possible, and we need to work. After all, the majority of the population is not in the Church. We need to work with them in particular. Our efforts need to be directed against abortions, same sex marriages (although we are against any persecution of such people). We need to explain what the Lord said to us in His commandments: about life, love, friendship, help of neighbor, and about everything good. We need to struggle against evil and violence, against the deception of people…

I am for the one Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Then it will be possible to restore moral values, and raise the peoples’ spirituality. And in this was, is, and always will be the strength of the people and the nation.

—Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague died a martyr’s death for Christ’s truth. Their memory lives on not only in Czechia. Your Beatitude, why have they not been canonized as saints?

—Czechs began to venerate Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague as saints immediately after they were burned at the stake. Jerome of Prague was the first to call Jan Hus a saint—at the very Council of Constance, which condemned Jan Hus and which awaited a “statement of repentance” and condemnation from Jerome of Jan Hus. They were venerated for two hundred years. However, after the defeat by the Catholic Leagues at the fatal battle on White Hill in 1620 and the forced Catholicization of the Czech people, the names of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague were basically outlawed. In 1918, when Czechoslovakia became an independent state, the modernist Church took the name of Jan Hus. The communists called him something of a revolutionary. In fact, he never called for modernism in his sermons, but spoke only about the undistorted, original teaching of Jesus Christ, which was in fact Orthodoxy.

—Does that mean that Jan Hus’s and Jerome’s martyric deaths could be considered martyrdom for Orthodoxy?

—It was precisely of Orthodoxy that they were accused. This was one of the points of accusation of their heresy. However, they considered themselves Catholics and officially were so. Only at the end of the twentieth century did the Primate of the Roman Catholic Church, John Paul II, express his deep regret over their burning at the stake. But he did not go beyond regret. And they both, Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, died for the undistorted faith, for the pure faith of Christ—that is, for Orthodoxy. Therefore we are completely justified in canonizing them as saints. This has already been confirmed by the Church of Cyprus and the Greek Church. Other Orthodox Churches also support us.

—Your Beatitude, what are the greatest problems facing your Church right now?

—The greatest problem is the lack of space. Did you see what is going on in the Churches? People can barely squeeze in. Many stand outside. We have nowhere to gather, nowhere to receive pilgrims—and they would come to us. Many people would come from Russia, to the relics of St. Liudmila and St. Wenceslaus; they would come to the place where the first Slavic desert dweller, St. John of Czechia, lived.

—It seems you also had a problem with the Sunday school, and with your office? Were you able to resolve them?

—Yes, there were problems. Big ones. We have a very good Sunday school for children. It is attended by several tens of students. But do you know what the children, parents, and we experienced? The owners of the building (the Czech military offices) refused to extend the lease of the building the school occupied. This is after we, the clergy, and the children’s parents had spent so much time and energy fixing up a building that was given to us in a far from optimal condition. We had even set up a house church for the children, which was beautiful, and the children loved it. They didn’t even let us finish the school year…

We had to finish the Sunday school sessions in the Metropolitan’s office. And it is not so easy to get there…

—Is that your office, Vladyka?

—Yes, it was once, and not only mine. Since 1950 this building served as the Metropolitan’s office of all of my predecessors, the Primates of the our Orthodox Church. However, soon after the refusal to extend the lease of the Sunday school, the owner of the building where the Metropolitan’s office is located also refused to extend the lease. The two refusals coincided like that… So during the new school year, the children had to go from place to place. In part, they used the building of a pre-school.

—And you yourself remained, as they say, without a roof?

—Yes. It was a difficult situation. I am grateful to the Russian Orthodox Church, and in part to His Holiness, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, and also to Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department of External Church Relations, and the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church here, Archpriest Nicholai Lischeniuk—they helped us very much. Our Sunday school received a non-terminating lease of the building that housed an exhibition complex. True, only part of it; the rest will come in two years. But the Sunday school is already active there. And do you know what is remarkable? The Sunday school is, by God’s will, very near the new Metropolitan’s office.

—So, that means that the problem with your office was also resolved? Are you also renting?

—We received it as our own property. We purchased it. Again I thank the Russian Orthodox Church, and Patriarch Kirill for his material assistance and support.

—Your Beatitude, how is it going with the parcel of land that the government of Prague promised to give you for the construction of such a needed Orthodox Church of the Czech lands and Slovakia, and a Cathedral church?

—They have been promising for a long time now, ten years. They are always on the verge of placing the last dot. We have already prepared the blueprints for the building. The last time, they asked us to wait for the elections. The mayor’s election has passed… But nothing went forward. They are completely silent. They don’t even promise, but they don’t refuse. We will make it happen. It is a pity—because of insufficient space we are losing potential parishioners. Especially young people, who often out of their ignorance end up in sects. Our space is overfilled, while they (the sectarians) have all they need. So the young, inexperienced people think that God is there, in the sect. But have only an appearance, only talk. Sects in Czechia are strong right now. They have money, buildings…

—Tell us, please, about your prospects for the future. About the most important thing.

—Our prospects are the young people—they are what is most important. Look at the children in the Sunday school, what bright faces they have. What will they become? Engineers, doctors, teachers, and perhaps priests? We do not know. But undoubtedly they will be people who are able to tell right from wrong, to become citizens who live according to the laws of God. And that is the most important thing.

—Finally, one last question concerning the interdependence of Czechs and Russians. You, Your Beatitude, well know what true friendship there was between our peoples. Czechs and Russians have considered each other brothers for many centuries. We loved each other. You also know the reasons for the abrupt cooling, even phobia of the Czechs toward Russians, which, alas, still go on. I know that you for your part try very hard to renew the former friendship. Tell us, please, what specifically do you do in this regard, and what, in your opinion, do Russians need to do in order to make this renewal happen?

—Yes, truly, the friendship between Czechs and Russians continued many centuries. [One testimony of this are the huge number of Liudmilas and Viacheslavs (Wenceslaus) found in Russia. —OC.] The events of August 1968 were especially a blow—the Russian invasion in tanks was taken as a crude disregard for our country’s independence. Czechs are particularly sensitive to that.

A friends’ betrayal is the bitterest betrayal there can be. Czechs were dumbfounded, and “forgot” the Russian language. I remember myself at that time, and I was only fifteen. It was very bitter to recognize that our very best friends, the Russians, had betrayed us.

In August, 1968, on vacation in Hungary, I was arrested for the first time: I had written in Hungarian, “Long live Dubček”. The young Hungarians who told me how to write it in Hungarian gave me away. They were strict about that. They held me and then released me, saying that had I been an adult and Hungarian, I would be sitting in prison for twenty-five years.

—Your Beatitude, you said, “the first time.” Was there a second?

—There was a second time, and a third… The second time was in 1969, after a hockey match between Czechs and Russians, that is the Czechoslovakian team and the Soviet Union’s team. We won, and our boyish heads were spinning. I don’t remember what we did, but we found ourselves in a prison cell. We were again released because we were underage. The third time was when I was twenty-seven. I was getting ready to go to Greece for study. They arrested me due to slander that I wanted to flee the country! In those days, they gave five years for that. Vladyka Dorotheus saved me from prison; he quickly collected the documents and sent me to a monastery in Greece… There I learned Greek and graduated from the university. The slander, of course, was unfair—I never wanted to leave, for I love my country very much…

Well, and as for the “Russian occupation”, I quickly understood that the Russians had nothing to do with it. They did not send Russians to us in tanks, but Soviet Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Uzbeks… And there were also Germans, Hungarians, Poles… Some Russians, too. But I saw the faces of those Russian boys, “invaders”, and they looked the most miserable. From that time on I always said, and still say that the Russians are just like us—sufferers, and Russia, like Czechia, was under oppression, enslaved…

Now many understand this and relations with Russians have changed for the better. I and the Orthodox priests never tire of repeating that the Russians were and are our brothers. I have been consecrating more and more Russian (Ukrainian)-Czech marriages and baptizing the offspring of these unions—infants born from these bonds of love, and bearing within themselves love for both of our peoples and nations.

Source

Translation by OrthoChristian.com

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• Never Knew that the Church was Orthodox

From Modern Tokyo Times

By Vojin Joksimovich, Ph.D.

On August 23 German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Belgrade. The first leg of her trip was Zagreb where she met with Croatian leaders. In Belgrade she met with Serbian leaders including a one-on-one session with President Tadic. The upshot was her blunt dictate that Serbia must meet the following demands in order to qualify for consideration of EU membership: progress in the Belgrade-Pristina dialog, normalization of relations including abandonment of parallel structures in Kosovo; administrative and legal reforms, and satisfying the 1995 Copenhagen criteria. Merkel pointed out that Germany would like to see Serbia into the EU, but Germany has recognized Kosovo and Serbia has not. She recognized that resolution of the Kosovo issue is a lengthy process but it should be done now rather than later. It appears President Tadic was naively hopeful that arrests and deliveries of General Mladic and Goran Hadzic to the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) were sufficient to obtain the EU candidate status by the year end and even the date for opening the EU membership negotiations. It has been apparent for years that Serbia cannot win and that even after numerous humiliations new ones are in store. Nonetheless President Tadic and his government continue with their EU membership quest since according to them Serbia has “no alternative.”

Continuation of German Serbophobia

Chancellor Merkel has inherited German Serbophobia and has now become a loyal practitioner. Her ultimatum is abundantly clear: recognize Kosovo on EU terms and then we can talk. It is nothing new. Last August during a visit to Belgrade, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, lectured the Serbian government that the Southeast Europe map was cast in concrete and that Serbia should come to terms with its amputation. On September 12, 2010, I published an article titled Serbia Capitulates: Address was UN, not EU. As a result of his visit President Tadic yielded to the EU/US pressure to redefine the Serbian UN Kosovo resolution scheduled for a debate at the UN General Assembly. The EU was concerned that the original resolution might be voted in. As usual President Tadic capitulated. The resolution was redefined and became a joint resolution with the 27 EU countries. As such it was accepted by the UN General Assembly without a vote.

In the same article I provided a short overview of the German involvement in the Balkans. Germany went to war against Serbia three times in the previous century: WWI (1914-1918), WWII (1941-1945), and as participant in the 1999 NATO incessant 78-day bombing of Serbia. In WWI and WWII close to 2 million Serbs died. In WWII Germany created the Independent State of Croatia, in which the largest WWII genocide per unit of territory took place over the Serbs, Jews and Roma. One should also add that Germany played a pivotal part in dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1991 with recognition of secessionist republics of Slovenia and Croatia. As a result the Serb-Croat war erupted, which was characterized as the Genscher’s war (after the German foreign minister) by Cyrus Vance, former US Secretary of State and then UN envoy, who brokered the ceasefire in January 1992. As discussed in my book Kosovo is Serbia, in 1997-1999 Germany had supported the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a terrorist group initially supported by Osama bin Laden, which led their insurrection into Kosovo from Albania.

Serbs killed in WW1 in Krusevac

Every ethnicity in Yugoslavia had a right of self-determination other than the Serbs. The Versailles Treaty which ended the WWI was a thorn in the eye not only to Adolf Hitler but also to the reunified Germany. Hans Dietrich Genscher in his memoirs wrote that by the end of the wars in Former Yugoslavia, the Germans have repaired the deeds or consequences of WWI: the foundation of Yugoslavia and the end of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The US Balkan policies, including siding with the Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians, have helped Germany repair the consequences of WWII. The amputation of Kosovo from Serbia is probably not the end of dismemberment of Serbia. Vojvodina and Sandzak are also candidates until Serbia is reduced to either its 1878 Berlin Congress size or the Hitler’s 1941 version. Abolishment of Republika Srpska in Bosnia is probably on the cards in order to satisfy the ambitions of the Bosnian Muslims who also want inclusion of Sandzak into their Islamic Republic.

Chancellor Merkel is obviously continuing with these Serbophobic policies of Germany as a Balkans predator. Given that she wasn’t the chancellor at the time, I had some illusions that she might show some compassion for the destiny of the Kosovo Serbs, who have been victimized by US/NATO Kosovo policies. Abandonment of so called parallel structures would in all likelihood lead to yet another ethnic cleansing of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo after the ethnic cleansing in Croatia (1995), Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999) respectively.

While in Zagreb, Chancellor Merkel has provided a boost to Croatia’s ambition to be the leader of so called Western Balkans. Germany pushed the EU to grant Croatia EU membership as of July 1, 2013. In no time the Croatian PM Kosor went to Pristina to tell Kosovo PM Hashim Thaci: “You can have in Croatia the best friend in southeast Europe and you can count on that.” She also said that Croatia “fully supports the approach of Chancellor Merkel towards Serbia by saying it has to extinguish its parallel structures in Kosovo and cannot acquire EU candidate status before solving its problems with Kosovo.”

Kosovo Serbs: Victims on UN/NATO Watch

On UN/NATO watch, with significant participation of the German KFOR contingent, 2,500 Serbs and Roma were murdered, while 230,000 were ethnically cleansed. Iseult Henry, Mary Walsh in real life, an Irish lady who was a member of the international mission in Kosovo, wrote a book Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity. She provided an account of twelve true stories illustrating shooting, beheading, burning, bomb attack, maiming, rape, abduction, torture, desecration, theft, mutilation, and harassment. The book is an indictment of her fellow internationals that saw what was happening and have looked the other way or even abetted ethnic cleansing. She characterized Kosovo as prison without walls.

On March 17, 2004, there was a pogrom named by some as the Kosovo Kristallnacht. A 60,000 strong Albanian mob drove 4,500 Serbs from their homes, 550 houses were burned, and 35 Serbian churches and monasteries demolished. The toll in Prizren included nine damaged or destroyed Serbian churches encompassing four medieval shrines. The German troops, more than 3,000 in Kosovo, evacuated the monks but abandoned the entire compound. The German Der Spiegel reported: “The Bundeswehr played a sad, perhaps even very shameful role in restraining the violence. The German soldiers, hiding like rabbits in their barracks, emerged again with armored vehicles only once the Albanian crowd had calmed down and having completed its work of destruction. Human Rights Watch condemned KFOR/UNMIK for “failing catastrophically in their mandate.”

In my August 2 article titled Kosovo Serbs Defend Their Existence, Christianity & UN Resolution, I described the July 25 incident. Hashim Thaci, accused by the Council of Europe of running a “mafia state” and alleged to have committed unspeakable atrocities including organ harvesting, who masquerades as the Kosovo PM, sent his special police units to seize two crossing posts on the administrative line between the Republic of Serbia and Kosovo. His objective was to ban trade with Serbia, seeking to pressure the Kosovo Serbs into recognizing his custom stamps. His units were transported by KFOR commanded by Erhard Buhler, a German general. It is outside the scope of this article to further discuss this incident. However, it should be said that a retired American diplomat, Gerald Gallucci who repeatedly warned against the military takeover of Northern Kosovo, wrote: “KFOR under the command of German General Buhler has clearly stepped outside its UN Security Council mandate in deciding to enforce the requirements of the institutions in Pristina. Buhler should be removed.” Not only that Buhler was not removed but it was discovered that his Albanian girlfriend of three years was born in Pristina. He met her in Kosovo in 2001.

The UN Security Council has scheduled a session to discuss the crisis in Northern Kosovo. Mayors of the Serbian cities of Leposavic, Kosovska Mitrovica, Zubin Potok and Zvecan representing 80,000 inhabitants have submitted their letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon explaining their position. This time around the Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremic will be allowed to represent his country. Nine out of 15 Security Council members have not recognized Kosovo.

Chancellor Merkel’s Audacity

Despite all of the above, which is nothing more than a snapshot of atrocities and injustices committed by so called international community, Madam Merkel had audacity to come to Belgrade and tell the Serbian leadership that the parallel institutions in Northern Kosovo should be dismantled. This means de facto that the Kosovo Serbs should be subjugated to Hashim Thaci and his fellow narco-terrorists, who have committed genocide and ethnic cleansing over them. It appears that Chancellor Merkel is shameless. Former Russian president and now PM Vladimir Putin, in response to a Kosovo question from a German journalist he said it best: “Europe, you should be ashamed, Kosovo is Serbia.”

To his credit, President Tadic told Chancellor Merkel that it was unacceptable to Serbia to abandon its Kosovo citizens. It would result in a political and existential vacuum. On the other hand he stated that Serbia will not abandon its quest to join the EU. If by that he meant that Serbia would only freeze its efforts until the future EU leadership develops a human face, this writer would go along. Of course freezing the accession efforts doesn’t mean abandoning various EU dictated reforms, which are in Serbia’s interest anyway nor does it mean that Serbia should not be trading with various EU countries, such as Italy or even Germany, as it does now. Meanwhile President Tadic might learn something from the Czech President Vaclav Klaus as well as from the Turkish EU membership accession experience. He should also take time to understand that there are viable alternatives.

Czech President: EU “Foreign Empire”

In response to a question at the European Forum held in Alpbach Austria, about whether he regretted the fact that his country had joined the EU, Czech president Vaclav Klaus said that he considered the EU a foreign power and compared it to several empires that oppressed his country for centuries. “First Vienna ruled over us for three centuries, and then Berlin did it for a few years. Then the four decades of Moscow followed, and then ten years of freedom. Now we have Brussels…After the Velvet Resolution of 1989, here were graffiti on the walls reading, ‘Back to Europe,’ and in that situation, it went without saying that we belonged to Europe. That was before Maastricht, that was the time of the European Community.” Klaus went on to say that the Europeans should cooperate and live together, but that should be taking place through bilateral cooperation between governments, rather than through “supernationalism.”

Turkey’s EU Accession

Turkey first applied for associate membership in the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1959. In 1963 it signed an association agreement, known as the Ankara Agreement. In 1987, Turkey submitted its application for formal membership in the EEC. In 1989, the European Commission (EC) confirmed eventual membership but deferred the matter to “more favorable times.” This position was confirmed in 1997. The next step was the December 2002 Copenhagen European Council. According to it, the EU would open negotiations “without delay” in 2004. The EC recommended that the negotiations should begin in 2005. Turkey’s accession has been stalled since. The earliest date that Turkey could enter EU is now 2013 (EU’s six-year budget comes into force), but Brussels has refused to back the 2013 deadline. The EC president Barroso said that the accession process will take at least until 2021.

Needless to say, Turkey has all but lost interest in the EU and has looked to their rich Islamic Persian Gulf brothers for investments. With the help from them plus a number of successful regional initiatives, Turkey has developed its economy and currently enjoys economic prosperity.

Serbian Alternatives

Like the Czech Republic, Serbia in its history was oppressed by several empires: Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Nazi Germany, Communist, and US/NATO. It doesn’t need to be oppressed by the current German dominated EU empire.

The Tadic administration has been driven by EU pre-membership donations amounting to 2.68 billion Euros between 2000 and 2011, which are 1,600 times greater than donations from Russia and China. However, Russia and China didn’t bomb Serbia nor did they amputate the country. Germany and most other EU countries – NATO members had caused an economic damage in excess of 100 billion Euros plus numerous human sufferings. The 1999 aggression plus the 1992 UN sanctions have contributed to the present economic misery in Serbia: GDP 75% of that in 1990, industrial production 43% of that in 1990, over 20% unemployed, 700,000 living below the poverty line, etc. Besides, the accession process may last until 2021 suggesting that further donations would be much reduced as the EU budgets will shrink in all likelihood.

On a number of occasions I have advocated that Serbia should attempt to establish an association with the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). In the decade that ended in 2010, the BRICs added $8 trillion to global GDP. The BRICs will probably add $12 trillion over the coming decade, double the US and eurozone combined. South Africa has joined the BRICs.

Another alternative for Serbia is to join the Russian-led Customs Union (Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia) which became fully operational on July 1. Yet another is to wait for a likely breakup of the eurozone predicted by many distinguished economists including Alan Greenspan, former US Federal Reserve chief. Martin Sandbu, in the Financial Times article Europe need not wait for Germany, has advocated that the solution of the eurozone fiscal crisis is to leave Berlin behind. Eleven eurozone countries can create a 3.5 trillion eurobond market on their own. Currently Chancellor Merkel considers eurobonds as the very last resort. There is no question that Germany benefitted most from the eurozone but now doesn’t want to be a part of a “transfer union” to profligate countries like Greece. The idea that Serbia could become a member of this new European entity is of course far-fetched but anything can happen before 2021.

Vojin Joksimovich is the author of three books and over 100 articles on the Balkans

The Revenge of the Prophet by Dr. Vojin Joksimovich is another classic book which gives great insight and knowledge about the Balkans, radical Islam, US foreign policy and other important areas.

Dr. Vojin Joksimovich wrote an in depth book called Kosovo is Serbia and please check this at http://www.gmbooks.com/product/Kosovo-GM.html – it is a must read if you want deep knowledge about this complex topic.

http://moderntokyotimes.com

If you want to understand the Balkans, you need to know about this dark chapter in our history that has been very effectively covered up. Few people in the West are aware of the mass slaughter of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and others in Nazi Croatia and other Axis-occupied territories in the Balkans, even though an abundance of evidence exists.

No, this is NOT a general indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. It IS an indictment of the Third Reich.

Jasenovac – The cruelest death camp of all time

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“There Are Only Muslims and Communists”

Originally posted on Gates of Vienna. Reprinted with permission.

Below is Gemini’s introduction:

Islam is the enemy, the Czech presidential candidate reminded the world

In recent days the Czech mainstream media have brought to light statements from Miloš Zeman, a prominent leftist politician, regarding Islam. This former prime minister of the Czech Republic (1998 – 2002), also at one time a presidential candidate, is well-known for his open statements and uncompromising humour. Most of these statements were taken from his report presented at the international conference entitled “Europe united and free?”, held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and country’s Defence Ministry. The rest come from a subsequent press release. These statements have already led to charges against the aforementioned politician.

The original sources, including a few more short commentaries, may be found here and here, while this article concentrates mostly on Zeman’s statements.

His condensed translation:

“NATO has declared itself as a defensive alliance without questioning what is it defending against. But it all begins with defining the enemy,” Zeman stated. He then continued: “The enemy is the anti-civilization spreading from northern Africa all the way to Indonesia. Inhabited by two billions of people and financed partly by gasoline sales, partly by drug sales,” speaking about the world of Muslims.

With his mention of drugs, he was mostly referring to Afghanistan and Kosovo. With the former NATO became mired in an endless war, while the latter got help from the alliance to secede from Serbia. This involvement he regards as a failure.

“I don’t believe there are Muslims and radical Muslims. Just as I don’t believe there are moderate and radical communists. There are only Muslims and communists,” Zeman addressed the conference participants.

He believes that one of the mistakes the West has been making is its willingness to negotiate and its responsiveness towards Muslim countries.

“Just remember the appeasement politics during the ‘30s. The victims were thrown directly into enemy’s guts, and (see) where it ended. The 21st century is not going to be Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’, but Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’,” predicted the retired Zeman.

If NATO should expand in the future, it must be Israel that is adopted, according to Zeman. “Not the state whose president regards Stalin and Beria his main heroes,” he declared, referring to Georgia as governed by Mikhail Saakashvili. However, this could not be so easily done without changing the political climate in the NATO countries. And this is exactly what the politicians are afraid of, Zeman believes.

Nor was the EU spared. “The EU reminds me of an overweight kid who is starting to throw up,” summed up Zeman about the union of states, some of which have already asked for huge financial support.

“Even if one might agree that women should not be allowed to drive a car, in every other aspect the Islamic anti-civilisation makes women into a subjugated and second-class minority,” he added in a separate press release.

“There is no doubt that Islam’s ideological basis is the Koran. A Muslim can be identified as an adherent of Koran, just as Nazi is an adherent of racial supremacy and anti-Semitism, or a Communist an adherent of class struggle and proletarian dictatorship,” he further elaborated in his press release.

“Islam is incomparably more aggressive and intolerant that today’s Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism and other world religions,” added the former presidential candidate, referring to Koran.

Prague Daily Monitor: Former Czech PM sued over statements on Islam

8 July 2011

Prague, July 7 (ČTK) – Retired politician Milos Zeman, Czech prime minister in 1998-2002, faces a criminal complaint over the statements on Islam he made in June at an international conference on Europe.

“The enemy is the anti-civilisation spreading from North Africa to Indonesia. Two billion people live in it and it is financed partly from oil sales and partly from drug sales,” Czech news servers quoted Zeman as saying about Islam at the recent conference.

Zeman said Thursday Muslims believe in the Koran like Nazis believed in racial supremacy and anti-semitism and communists in class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat.

He said Islam is far more aggressive and intolerant than present Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism and other world religions.

He added that the Koran includes passages calling for the subjugation, enslavement and even elimination of non-believers.
[…]
Read it all.

By CzechRebel

I recently received these words of wisdom by email:

This guy cuts to the chase….sad part is I’m not sure the “fools” can get it.

Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do.

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.

From Maggie’s Farm.

The American citizen and taxpayer is being raped. It’s as simple as that. It’s Chicago-style political thuggery writ large. Once this parasite takes hold of any part of the economy or the body politic, it uses every stratagem to bleed its host until nothing is left. Even if someone, somehow, manages to stop the “euthanasiator” from forcing through this particular round of national socialist “health care” legislation, it will keep coming back around again and again and again, because the system is broken.

What to do? The options are capitulation to tyranny (unacceptable to me), violence (counterproductive, in that it gives the tyrants more excuses for repressive measures), and departure from the totalitarian state.

Departure en masse means secession. True, it was thwarted – temporarily - in the US in the 1860s, but much more recently it succeeded, without bloodshed, with the “Velvet Divorce” in Czechoslovakia. If sufficiently many citizens of sufficiently many states want it, it’ll happen.

Don’t let the leftists fool you! The growing demand for secession in the US has nothing to do with bringing back slavery. Quite the contrary; secession has everything to do with protecting ourselves from being enslaved to a tyrannical federal government.

I have posted some tea party, state sovereignty, and Southern regional links in the 1389 Links blogroll in the sidebar of this log. The movement has been quite active in South Carolina and elsewhere. If you have any more links, by all means, post them here and let me know. There’s still time to get involved.

Departure as an individual means expatriation. That’s a drastic measure, but if you have some marketable skills and some ability to acquire another language, there are some options. If you think you might be interested, read the articles here and here.

We will be blogging more about secession at 1389 Blog.

All-Too-Revealing Comments

Before we get started on this story, let us remind our readers of some of our policies regarding comments on 1389 Blog. We do not post ad hominem attacks. We do not post repetitive messages. If your grammar is so poor that we can hardly understand what you are trying to say, we may let it go up just for laughs, but don’t count on it. On the other hand, we may let you keep your dignity rather than post your comment for all to see.

Now, we know that we have created quite a stir at LGF because we have gotten more than a few hits off their site recently. But we are surprised to find that Charles Johnson has been unable to locate anybody capable of making a coherent reply to our blog post. It seems as though the recent Stalinesque purges at LGF seem to have caused Charles Johnson to run low on henchmen who can write in the English language. With just about all of the reasonable and intelligent people already banned from LGF, and the rest of them disappearing fast, LGF is scrambling to find someone who can try to answer us.

Charles Johnson’s Quasi-Literate Stooge

To avoid further embarrassment to this bewildered soul, we won’t mention the handle he used. Suffice it to say that he has considerable difficulty with the English language, but he certainly does love Charles Johnson. Let’s look at some of the goofiness that this individual tried to post and you will soon see why it is not displayed on the 1389 Blog.

He began by referring to our primary admin as “Mr. 1389.” 1389 has made it fairly clear, on multiple occasions, that she is a woman. But then, it’s to be expected that an individual who is such a poor writer would also be a poor reader.

Like a typical leftist, he called 1389 and the commenters various names, but he didn’t bother to bring up any evidence or logic to justify his moral posturing.

He accused me of misspelling the word “Czech.” You can check any English-language dictionary and find that the letters C-Z-E-C-H refers to a Slavic people who live mostly in central Europe. The county is now called the Czech Republic. Formerly, it was part of Czechoslovakia. (While you have your dictionary handy, you might want to see that I also know how to spell “Czechoslovakia.”)

The Czech people have made a number of contributions to the fight against totalitarianism, which includes both Nazism and Communism. (See Never Knew that the Church was Orthodox, regarding the Reinhard Heydrich assassination and its grim aftermath.) Hitler referred to Czechoslovakia as a “dagger in the heart of Germany” and infamously demanded that it be given to Germany before the outbreak of World War II.

Going Off the Deep End

The tone of LGF has been changing for months, as many have pointed out. First we saw a sudden interest in searching for cryptic signs of “racism” and “pro-Nazi” sentiments.

Finding cryptic signs of racism is all the rage these days. When I was a boy, an individual who expressed the opinion that a Confederate flag was a symbol of racism would have been deemed fit for the loony bin. It was considered a symbol of heritage and bravery. It carried the message that the federal government was going too far. It was a benign symbol of the South. Seeing a Confederate flag was like hearing “welcome home, ya’ll.” In the 1970s, some very radical elements of the civil rights movement started to express misgivings about the flag’s meaning, although this didn’t really take hold until the 1990s. (Note that the radical elements who came up with this canard all seemed to live in the North.)

Today, even some reasonably intelligent people try to associate the flag with racial tensions. But this is rooted in modern-day leftist political correctness–not in historical fact. Against such a backdrop, it is no surprise that Charles Johnson-or anyone who is equally ill-informed about a topic-might read cryptic racial messages into just about anything.

Merely owning and/or displaying a symbol does not mean that the individual doing so endorses what the symbol stands for. For example, my daughter recently inherited a belt that dates back to World War I. One of her great-grandfathers decorated the belt with medals that he had removed from the bodies of dead German soldiers. My daughter is very proud of the belt and plans to display it in her home. That does not mean that she admires the German military or endorses the policies of Kaiser Wilhelm II; it means she is proud of her family’s heritage, including three great-grandfathers who fought for the Allies during World War I.

Yet, Charles Johnson points to a photo of a man with a Celtic cross on his bookshelf and calls it “proof” of the man’s fascist leanings. Of course, Celtic crosses were around long before fascism. Many Irish people were buried under them centuries ago. Nonetheless, anyone who relates to their Celtic heritage and displays the traditional Celtic cross is a proven fascist in Charles Johnson’s mind-because he wants to see it that way. And Charles holds the same opinion of anybody who has been seen with such a “proven fascist,” or seen with any of that person’s acquaintances, and so ad infinitum. There is a ridiculously long chain of “contamination” here, which reminds us of children passing along imaginary “cooties” on a playground, along with other, much less benign, imagery.

Loyalty and the War on Censorship

We are proud to say that 1389 Blog has been in the forefront of the war against censorship of conservative and antijihadist blogs. When “censorware” firms such as SonicWALL, banned LGF and other blogs, 1389 Blog helped lead the charge to lift the ban.

What has LGF ever done for 1389 Blog? Oh, it banned 1389 without even the courtesy of giving a reason.

So, Charles Johnson can be no friend to anyone. He repays favors with stabs in the back.

LGF and Charles Johnson Refuse to Fight Real Nazis Who Preach Hate and Murder

Not long ago, 1389 Blog exposed a Croatian Nazi rock singer named “Thompson” who had been scheduled to tour the US and Canada. Too bad Little Green Footballs never bothered to publish anything about it. No doubt about this rock singer’s Nazi identity-he was, and is, an open and notorious proponent of murdering some of the very same people that Hitler had tried to exterminate sixty years ago. To put icing on the cake, just like his predecessors back in the day, this “Thompson” was all buddy-buddy with Muslims and never even hinted about doing them any harm.

Given the readership that LGF enjoys (at least until recently), Charles Johnson could have put some real obstacles in the path of this thug. But Charles Johnson and LGF sat on their hands, letting “Thompson” tour America and Canada preaching hate and violence without a word of reproach. So, don’t ever think that Charles Johnson actually feels that real, live Nazis are “repugnant.” In fact, through his silence, and even through his banning of 1389, he is enabling the nefarious efforts of those Nazis.

Links:

• Category Link: Articles by CzechRebel on 1389 Blog
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• Category Link: Articles on LGF
• Category Link: Articles on blog censorship
• Category Link: Articles on censorware
• Category Link: Articles on censorship in general

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By CzechRebel

Aftermath to One of History’s Most Important Assassinations

Growing up as a Czech-American in the shadow of the Second World War, I learned the heroic tale of the “Czechoslovakian” commandos who managed to kill one of the most dangerous Nazi leaders in the entire Third Reich. Assassination has gotten quite a bad name in recent years. We think of the JFK murder and of the subsequent changes in US foreign policy that put the tactic of assassination of any head of state-even of the most dangerous criminal-off limits, and we tend to condemn the practice out of hand.

Even so, how many lives could have been saved if someone had the foresight to have assassinated Hitler and/or Stalin? Perhaps there are others who belong in that list also, but the actions of Hitler and Stalin could have been so easily predicted. Hitler put the pen to his evil and left us a book full of his nefarious plans. Stalin was so dangerous that even Lenin, at the end of his life, warned that he should be kept out of power.

The Assassination of Hitler’s More Evil Successor?

While those two were dangerous enough, there was a third man of incredible evil on the world stage during the time of the Third Reich. He was a fiercely competent, up-and-coming Nazi leader whom many expected would someday succeed Hitler in power. That man was Reinhard Heydrich. Assigned to oversee occupied Czechoslovakia (now two separate states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia), he conducted a brutal reign of terror over the Slavic inhabitants, whom the Nazis regarded with hatred and contempt.

Were Heydrich to have become Hitler’s successor, he most likely would have continued Hitler’s evils, but with far greater efficiency.

The story of the assassination itself is relatively straightforward. Two men-Jan Kubis, a Czech, and Josef Gabcik, a Slovak-had been trained in Britain, as were many other Eastern European resistance fighters during WW II. One was to conceal a submachine gun under his raincoat and the other was to hold a hand grenade, while waiting for Heydrich’s open-top car. The grenade would be tossed into the oncoming vehicle and the machine gun would pump Heydrich’s body full of bullets.

But on the day of the assassination, May 29, 1942, the gun jammed and would not fire. The grenade was tossed under the vehicle. It produced only enough shrapnel to injure Heydrich, who rose from the explosion, drew his pistol and shot at the fleeing assassins.

Nazi Vengeance

However, something unexpected intervened. The explosion had damaged Heydrich’s spleen and had driven contaminated upholstery fragments from the car into his body. An infection set in and Heydrich was dead within a few days. On what came to be his deathbed, Heydrich had ordered extensive and brutal reprisals.

Even after the death of Heydrich, the Nazis obediently continued their reprisals against the Czech people, of which the most infamous was the destruction of the village of Lidice. All men and older boys were given shovels and told to dig what would be their graves. The women and children were whisked off to concentration camps where most of them died. The buildings of the town of Lidice were burned or otherwise destroyed, so as to leave no trace of the community.

The Czech underground resistance movement hid Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik at Saints Cyril and Methodios Church. The Nazis discovered the resistance hideout in the crypt below the church and began storming the building. The resistance fighters killed and injured many Nazis before realizing that their ammunition was in short supply. Rather than face torture and interrogation at the hands of the Nazis, the resistance fighters took their own lives in a final act of defiance.

The story was told to us many times. The most notable was a television docudrama from a series called, if I remember correctly, This Is True. The battle scene at the church is still vivid in my memory. I do remember a clergyman suffering Nazi persecution as a result, but the fact that the Church was Eastern Orthodox either slipped my memory or had been covered up completely.

The Orthodox Perspective

Jan Hus Opposed the Roman Church

The Czech Republic and Slovakia are not generally thought of as bastions of Orthodox Christianity. But for a quirk of history, it might well have been otherwise. About 100 years before the time of Martin Luther, Jan Hus was burnt at the stake for heresy. Hus died in the same way, and on the same day, as Joan of Arc. Like Luther, Hus saw the need to reform the Roman Church. Unlike Luther, he had planned to combine his movement with the Orthodox Church in Constantinople. Tragically, Constantinople fell to the Turks before those plans could come to fruition.

Had Jan Hus succeeded, there might have been no cause for a Protestant Reformation.

Saint Gorazd

On September 6, 1987, The Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia canonized Bishop Gorazd for his martyrdom as a result of his heroism in the aftermath to the Heydrich assassination.

Nazi hatred of Orthodox Christians was extreme, and it went hand in hand with their contempt toward Slavic peoples. While the Final Solution to the Jewish problem was well publicized, the Serbs, who are Orthodox Christians, were also high on the list of peoples that Hitler and company wished to exterminate. Hitler’s hatred of the Czechs was well known; he once called Czechoslovakia “a dagger in the heart of Germany.” His demand for what he called the Sudetenland-which included much of Bohemia, the largest province in Czechoslovakia-led to one of the savage Nazi land-grabs of the years before World War II. Therefore, the combination of being both Czech and Orthodox Christian would have put such an individual into two of the categories of Nazi hatred.

Hitler’s reaction to the Heydrich assassination was predictable. He always took revenge for any sign of defiance with vastly disproportionate rage and cruelty. It also appears that Hitler used the Heydrich assassination as a pretext for hunting down and killing Orthodox Christians in Czechoslovakia.

Bishop Gorazd wrote a letter to Nazis offering to surrender himself to their captivity in return for stopping their slaughter of his fellow Orthodox Christian countrymen. True to Nazi infamy, they not only arrested, tortured, and killed Bishop Gorazd, but also captured and killed over 250 other Orthodox Christians, including some priests. The Orthodox Church could no longer function until after the war, but thanks to Bishop Gorazd, many Orthodox believers survived. The Czech Orthodox Church thrives once again in the present-day Czech Republic.

The Invisible Christianity

How the Orthodox angle to this story escapes notice is truly amazing. In the last hundred years or so, most parts of the world with a significant Orthodox Christian (a/k/a “Eastern Orthodox”) population have suffered at the hands of the Nazis, the Communists or the Muslim Ottoman Turks. In many cases, two or even three of these evil forces have persecuted Orthodox Christians.

Yet, this persecution seems to go unnoticed in the Western world. During the 1999 Kosovo War, the media successfully mischaracterized the conflict as “ethnic violence.” Viewing it in those terms, the media were hard pressed to explain the “anomalies” where ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians had worked together to prepare for an invasion of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The explanation is simple enough-why wouldn’t Orthodox Christian Albanians and Orthodox Christian Serbs have cooperated to protect one another from the KLA or any other Islamic terrorist organization? President Reagan said it best when he remarked that any organization clever enough to use the word “liberation” in its name would be able to get away with murder. So it has been for the Muslim narcoterrorists of the Kosovo Liberation Army-at least for the time being.

The very fact that Hitler felt secure in taking revenge on innocent Orthodox Christians in retaliation for Heydrich’s assassination was just one more example of the invisible nature of Orthodoxy. Had the victims been Baptist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic or Methodist, there would have been an international outcry of religious persecution.

The Early Church

The people of the Orthodox Christian faith claim to be the remnant of the Early Church of the New Testament. The Roman Church claims legitimacy through Apostolic succession, and some other Christian denominations regard themselves as special sects based upon a revival of New Testament practices. But the Orthodox Christian Church is truly unique in claiming a faith unchanged since the time of the Early Church, perhaps since the actual time of the Apostles.

There is an eerie sense that the level of persecution encountered by the Orthodox Christian community in the past hundred years is likewise similar to that directed against the Early Church. In fact, the twentieth century saw more persecution of Orthodox Christians than any other. The martyrdom of Bishop Gorazd is yet another spine-tingling example, and his heroism serves as an inspiration to us all.

Links:

(Note: To page back through the archive of older articles in a category link, please scroll down and click
the ← Previous Entries link at the bottom of the page.)

• Category Link: Articles by CzechRebel on 1389 Blog
• Jan Hus, Jerome of Prague and Orthodoxy in Czechia & Slovakia
• Category Link: Balkans for Dummies Series on 1389 Blog
• Category Link: Articles about the Balkans
• Category Link: Articles about Serbia
• Category Link: Articles about Kosovo
• Category Link: Articles about Orthodox Christianity
• What Happened in 1389?
• Julia Gorin’s blog
• Serbianna News
• September 11, 2001: Eternal Memory