times.” Another article asserts: “This time, a horrified worldrncommunity responded. Led by the United States, Western nationsrnissued a stark warning to the Serbs.” While there are referencesrnto all sides committing atrocities, over and over againrnthere are assertions that the Serbs were the main culprits.rnThere are repetitions of the charge that 200,000 persons hadrnbeen killed and that two million people were driven from theirrnhomes, suggesting that it was the Serbs who did it.rnAt the end of the Teachers’ Edition are three exercises forrnstudents. One is a “Pop Quiz” which seeks to determine if thernstudents had grasped the anti-Serb allegations. Another is arn”Puzzle Page” with a crossword puzzle where several of thernwords to be filled in identifv Serbs as the guilty party. Finally,rnthere are six questions to respond to, one being “Write a briefrnnote to one of the teenagers in which you describe your reactionrnto their experience in Bosnia.”rnWith respect to the figures on fatalities listed above, evenrnPatrick Buchanan, no friend of the Serbs, has pointed out thernlogical absurdity of the claim that 200,000 were killed, by calculatingrnhow many would have been killed per day since thernwar began. And George Kenney, who in 1992 resigned fromrnthe State Department to protest American policy in Yugosku’ia,rnwrote in the New York Times Magazine of April 23,rn1995, that those figures were phony, that the more correctrnnumber of fatalities—from all sides—was between 25,000 andrn60,000. But media reports pay no attention and continue repeatingrnthe inflated figures.rnAn example of anti-Serb actions at the neighborhood levelrnwas the circulation in Naperville, Illinois, of a petition by studentsrnof Central High School, which urged people to write tornPresident Clinton, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ChairmanrnClaiborne Pell, and to Illinois Senators Paul Simon andrnCarol Moseley-Braun. The texts of the suggested letters urgedrnthe lifting “of the Arms Fmbargo against the government ofrnBosnia immediately to enable them to defend themselves.rnNothing short of this will halt the Serbian offensive, massacrernof innocent children and rape of women.” These petitionsrnwere circulated as a class assignment! At least one of the studentsrncirculating the petitions was a Muslim.rnAs a consequence of these actions, Americans of Serbianrnbackground, especially vulnerable young ones, who oncernprided themselves as descendants of the heroic Serbs whornfought as our allies in two worid wars, have been driven to denyrntheir Serbian ancestry. Some are cowed, not unlike Jews in arnnumber of countries where the sins of society were laid at theirrnfeet. Americans of Serbian descent who once prided themselvesrnas Orthodox Christians have been silenced b’ the mediarnportrayal of their religious beliefs as backward and even barbaric.rnMoreover, these Americans wonder why certain Americanrnpoliticians (some openly and others tacitly) support Muslims inrnopposition to the Christian Serbs. Many of these Americansrnwho once pointed with pride to their contributions to Americarnnow a’oid mentioning their ancestry. Among these are inventorsrnsuch as Nikola ‘Icsla and Michael Pupin; sculptors such asrnDavid Brein; business tycoons such as William Salatich,rnWilliam Jovanovich, Milan Puskar, and Milan Panic; politiciansrnsuch as Governor George Voinovich (Ohio), Rose Ann Vuichrn(first woman state senator in California), and CongresswomanrnHelen Delich Bcntley (Maryland); Pulitzer prizewinnersrnCharles Simic (poetry) and Walter Bogdanich (journalism);rnartists such as Stephen Stcpanchev (poet), Karl Maiden (actor),rnand Steven Tesich (screenwriter); as well as scientists, educators,rnand community leaders, too numerous to mention.rnFrom another viewpoint, there is nothing about Americansrnof Serbian background that any one of them needs to bernashamed of; there are no crime syndicates associated with Serbianrnnames. Serbs who came to these shores and their offspringrnhave an excellent record as law-abiding citizens. The onlyrntime when some of them were guilty of breaking the law wasrnduring Prohibition, but in that respect they had a lot of companyrnwith Americans of other ancestries.rnAmericans of Serbian background have been especiallyrnproud of their service in the American Armed Forces, and particularlyrnof those among them who were decorated with CongressionalrnMedals of Honor, such as Mitchell Page (Pajich) andrnAlex (Jake) Mandusich in Worid War I; Louis Cukcla (Djukelich),rnthe only person in American history to win two CongressionalrnMedals (World War I and World War II and recommendedrnfor a third); and Lance Sijan (posthumously) in thernVietnam War. And there arc a large number of Purple Heartrnrecipients. Now, Americans of Serbian background are madernto feel shame to such an extent that they suffer in silence whenrnthey think of the accomplishments of their ethnic kin whornserved this country.rnAmericans of Serbian background have been proud, not onlyrnof the fact that Serbia fought on the side of the Allies in therntwo world wars, but also of the Serbs’ heroic battles against thernOttoman Turks for the resurrection of their homeland. Andrnthey were most proud of the fact that by the beginning of thern20th century, the Serbs had established a democratic parliamentaryrnpolitical system. This was at a time when battlers forrndemocracy in Germany and Austria-Hungary were having littlernsuccess, and those in Russia and other Eastern European countriesrncould only dream.rnAmerican Serbs were also proud that in World War I, littlernSerbia was able to hold off the vastly superior forces of the Austro-rnHungarian Empire for over a year, making a significant contributionrnto the victory of her Western Allies. In Worid War II,rnwhen most of Europe was under the Nazi heel, Serbian generalsrnin the Yugoslav army in March 1941 said “No” to Hitler atrnthe height of his power. The Axis, however, soon crushed thernYugoslav forces, and Croats set up a pro-German state, whichrndeclared war on the Allied powers. Moreover, Germany’s Croatrnminions massacred hundreds of thousands of Serbs, as wellrnas thousands of Jews and Gypsies in their realm. They werernjoined in many of these massacres by the Muslims of Bosnia-rnHerzegovina, which was made part of the Groat satellite state.rnThese Muslims, under the leadership of the Grand Mufti ofrnJerusalem, also formed military divisions to fight on the side ofrnthe Axis.rnBut the Serbs were not cowed, and in July 1941 they raisedrnthe first flag of underground resistance in Europe, under therncommand of a litrie-known colonel, Draza Mihailovic (subsequentlyrnpromoted to general by the Yugoslav government-inexilc).rnImmediately, he and his brave Chetniks were hailed asrnheroes, and Mihailovic was on the cover of Time magazine onrnMay 25,1942. American Serbs were elated. Within two years,rnhowever, British prime minister Winston Churchill made whatrnhe later admitted was his worst mistake of the war, abandoningrnMihailovic and throwing the West’s support to the Yugoslavrncommunists, who had launched a separate resistance movementrnknown as the Partisans. Later it became evident that therncommunists were primarily interested in seizing power in Yu-rnFEBRUARY 1996/23rnrnrn