Denial and Repression of Anti-Semitism: Post-Communist Rehabilitation of the Serbian Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic

Table of Contents

table of Contents acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix 1. introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Materials used in the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2. the life of nikolaj Velimirović and His Changing public image, 1945–2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Denigration and marginalization: Velimirović’s status in post-war Yugoslavia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Apotheosis and widespread admiration: Velimirović’s status today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 3. Collective Remembering and Collective forgetting: memory of nikolaj Velimirović and the Repression of Controversy . . . . . . 77 The discursive dynamic of social forgetting: Repression as replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Velimirović in Dachau: “Martyrdom” as a replacement myth . . . 89 The martyrdom myth in context: The narrative of Velimirović’s suffering and the rise of Serbian nationalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Remembering in order to forget: The martyrdom myth and repression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 The dynamic of everyday forgetting: Continuity and the “routinization” of repression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 4. from Repression to Denial: Responses of the serbian orthodox Church to accusations of antisemitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Discourse, moral accountability, and the denial of prejudice . . . . . . 119 “Serbs have never hated the Jews”: Literal denial of antisemitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 vi Table of Contents “Parrots,” “idiots,” and “the mummies of reason”: Denial and offensive rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Comparing Serbs and Croats and the rhetoric of “competitive martyrdom”: Comparative denial of antisemitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 National self-glorification in a historical context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Denial of antisemitism and the distancing from “extremism” . . . . . 141 “We are not antisemites, but…”: Denial and the rhetoric of disclaimers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 5. “He was merely quoting the Bible!”: Denial of Velimirović’s antisemitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Rising above the criticisms: Refusal to engage in controversy as a form of denial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 “Tiny mosquitoes” and the mighty “eagle”: Who has the right to remember Nikolaj Velimirović? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 The letter from “a Jewish woman”: Bishop Nikolaj as the savior of Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 The two kinds of antisemitism: The rhetoric of interpretative denial… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Repeating the word of God: Authority of the Gospels and the reification of antisemitic discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 “Then we are all antisemities!”: “Anti-Judaism” and Orthodox Christian identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Questionable boundaries between anti-Judaism and antisemitism 188 Deicidal justification of Jewish suffering: The Holocaust as divine retribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 6. antisemitism as prophecy: social Construction of Velimirović’s sanctity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 The first stage of the campaign for canonization: The making of a religious “cult” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Canonization in the Orthodox Church and the need for divine confirmation of sanctity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Finding the “right” miracle: Incorruptibility of remains and miraculous icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 The bishop who came “face to face with the living God”: Velimirović and the miracle of epiphany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 vii Table of Contents Velimirović as a “prophet”: The construction of the “Serbian Jeremiah” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 7. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 ...