Holocaust in Shadow of Holocaust

Grave next to grave in Slovenia, who buried who there?

In the past months we heard, watched and read about underground probing that disclosed that southern Slovenia was a mass grave of epochal proportions. After the “sudden” revelation, historians, priests and the occasional less leisurely politician stepped forward, wholeheartedly assessing that something horrific had happened in the post-war period and that, along the well-known and recognised holocaust, Europe suffered another mass massacre that is being defiantly kept quiet. Perhaps because the “truth about the truth” does not suit either the East or the West. Truth be told, let us again steer it towards the light, keeping nothing under the carpet and pointing to the fact that the executors of the bloody act were only executors and that their guilt is equal to the guilt of renowned global strategists who “very rationally and well plannedly” ordered the end to millions and millions of lives.

Conference on Yalta

With the well-known distribution of power that defined the post-war world and designed the historic division to this and that block, talks took place as part of the Yalta conference on March 31, 1945 that was kept out of the public eye successfully for more than 50 years per Orwell’s recipe for 1984. Perhaps now, more than half a century later, it is time that high school students read in their textbooks that have been revised and re-edited thousands of times a word or two about facts that do not allow any shadow of doubt while telling of the day when Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt finalised their secret deal and decided on the fate of millions.

The key (secret) act, the direct consequence of which are graves in southern Slovenia, was the decision of British and American allies to return to the “Alliance” all Soviet citizens found west of the freshly drawn border. The deal primarily pertained to freed POWs. But after the talks between the three men it was expanded to include literally millions of refugees that fled the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe. Long lines of quislings, collaborationists, Nazi sympathisers… or simply, civilians, were delivered to Austria where they awaited further deportation to the “benevolent arms” of Stalin for whom “the death of one man is a tragedy and the death of millions a statistic”.

Operation Keelhaul 

American allies dubbed their role in the “secret holocaust” “Operation Keelhaul”, which is a term whose meaning was divulged by Julius Epstein in his book of the same name in 1973. He explained that at one time pirates enjoyed a very cruel and unusual torture when they would throw a tied man overboard, dragging him underneath the keel from one side to the other, until he died. Epstein commented on the choice of the name:

-That our Armed Forces should have adopted this term as its code name for deporting by brutal force to concentration camp, firing squad, or hangman's noose millions who were already in the lands of freedom, shows how little the high brass thought of their longing to be free.

Indeed, how much did the “high brass” think about what they were doing? They thought about it very well and the role of each and every leader was completely clearly defined. On the one hand, Stalin and the rest of the newly discovered starlets were given the unique opportunity to execute all those who could present a danger to them in the future. On the other hand, it was up to Roosevelt and Churchill to only assemble anticommunists and collaborationists and subsequently transfer them to the other side of the block where certain execution awaited them.

How many people did his British and American friends turn over to Stalin (and Tito)?  More humble estimates cite two million souls, while more courageous researchers do not refrain from mentioning five million deported that were summarily executed or sent to Siberian gulags to meet their slow deaths. Judging by the number of grave sites in Slovenia, the latter estimates are terrifying in their reality. Then Bleiburg was only a drop in the sea of (Croatian) blood.

National security and “holocaust of the Allies” 

After more than fifty years British and American governments still conceal the documents of the “holocaust of the Allies”, but witness testimonies are equally persistent and equally relentless. After the turn of the century it became increasingly clear that British and American troops did not only have the role of observer. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Allies took active part in the mass slaughter of millions and millions of people. Ultimately, witnesses say that the British beat refugees unconscious, after which they would load them onto trucks that would subsequently take them to their execution sites. Testimonies speak of people being killed without discrimination: children, women, soldiers, civilians…

With or without insight into “secret documents that threaten national security”, one thing is for certain: the American and British governments share direct, undisputable culpability for the deaths of millions of people. The American and British governments completely wilfully committed a crime equal to the one that was processed in Nurnberg. Did they deliver or execute? The line between the two is not clear, but guilt is without doubt universal. Grave next to grave in Slovenia, who buried who there?