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14. A Communist Regime
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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7A 139 14 A COMMUNIST REGIME I was very pleased to be a member of a ighting force dedicated to the defeat of my mortal enemies, the Nazis and the Ustashe. But as the animal hospital was situated in the rugged hills of the Kordun region, at a distance from the main combat zones, for the irst few months I was not directly involved in the ighting. I went about my business as Vlado’s assistant, while my uncles Robert and Julius lived in a farmhouse nearby, slowly bartering away their personal belongings in exchange for food. When I irst joined the Partisans, I was enthusiastic about what I knew of Communist ideals. The prospect of a society in which equality and justice were guaranteed to all and where discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or religion was proscribed was very appealing to me. Within a short time, however, my starry-eyed zeal turned to bitter disappointment , as I came up against the realities of a Communist regime, in particular the ideological tyranny imposed by the Communist Party on our ranks. Examples ranged from the brutally ruthless to the utterly idiotic. As a rule, there was an atmosphere of servile adulation of anything Soviet, accompanied by suspicion bordering on outright hostility to anything emanating from the Western Allies—even when those prejudices were glaringly contradicted by facts on the ground. A typical example of the relentless Communist propaganda efort was the manipulative treatment given to supplies from the West. During the last few months of the war, the Western Allies provided us with regular (if insuicient) supplies of arms and ammunition. Our superiors thought it politically inconvenient, however, that we rank-and-ile Partisans should know we were being aided by the contemptible Western capitalists rather than by the infallible Soviets. We were therefore told as a fact that all this aid actually came from Soviet Russia. American planes were bringing in 81118 001-226.pdf_out 6/17/114:15 PM K 139 FI 140 14 A COMMUNIST REGIME the supplies? Oh yes, the Americans are just supplying the transportation because their bases are in nearby southern Italy. The lour is packed in bags marked “Product of Canada”? Oh yes, the Canadians are providing the bags, but the lour itself is Russian. Among the items we received were tins of ham labelled in Russian; for the beneit of those who could read, the tins were clearly marked “Made in USA”—albeit in Russian Cyrillic characters (which are almost identical to their Serb equivalents). Perhaps these supplies had been packaged in the United States for delivery to the Soviets, and then in part been rerouted to us. Despite the labelling, we were told in no uncertain terms that the ham itself was of Russian origin—and it would have been very unhealthy to express any doubts. In my everyday experience, all middle- and high-ranking Partisan oicers were members of the Communist Party. Party members also had absolute preference when it came to manning posts that required speciic professional knowledge, such as communications and administration. Whether a Partisan was professionally competent or even intellectually qualiied for a particular position was always a secondary consideration. By favouring party members so ruthlessly and systematically, the party succeeded in attracting ambitious people into its ranks, ofering them promotion in exchange for devotion. Belief in Communism, let alone familiarity with the writings of Marx and Engels, rarely had anything to do with it; the objective was to guarantee strict obedience. To my amazement, I discovered that I still had to reckon with antiSemitism ; in fact, my personal identity placed me in triple jeopardy. First, as a Jew: centuries of religious indoctrination that the Jews were the “killers of Christ” had left their mark on the villagers and peasants who made up Partisan ranks; although they knew we shared a common enemy,manyofthem—includingsomeinleadingpositions—wereblatant anti-Semites. Second, I was of German mother tongue and education: those same villagers and peasants could not always fully appreciate the diference between a German-speaking Jew and a Nazi. Third, my irst name is Imre, a typically Hungarian one: at the time the Hungarians were allies of the Germans and therefore thoroughly detested by the Partisans. I concluded that I needed to invent a more secure identity for myself, to be used whenever I sensed danger. I therefore “Slavicized” my name from Imre Rochlitz to Mirko Rohlić and claimed, when asked, that 81118 001-226.pdf_out 6/17/114...