Then there came ...

"Then there came along some Yids, and when they saw the fire, came up to the children and asked them what they were doing there and whether there was anyone with them, and when the children had told them what and how, the Yids told them to go along with them, saying that they would have a fine time at their house. The children agreed and went with the Yids, and the Yids took them to their house. They didn't have anyone else at home, only their mother, and when they came home, they shut the boy up to get fat and made the girl a servant to their mother. One day, when the boy had been well fed and was fat, the Yids went out on some errand and told their mother to roast him, and then when they came home in the evening from their work, they would eat him..." 

We hear this story from Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic in "Civuti", Srpske narodne pripovjetke, ("Yids" in "Serbian folk tales") 1853.

From "O jevrejskom pitanju u Srbiji" ("The Jewish question in Serbia") which Nikola Jovanovic wrote back in August 1878 we hear:   "...Europe has forced the Hebrews on us for us to grant them in our country all the rights that we have acquired and enjoy. But that the Jews or any non-Serb elements should have the same right as those native to Serbia, we challenge and deny."  Ten to twelve percent of the population of the territory of Serbia were Croats, who, in other words, as non-Serbian elements, along with Jews and Roma and Vlaks and whoever else was there, were to have no rights according to this fellow.

At the opening of the twentieth century, Milan Obradovic, a Serb journalist in Bjelovar wrote a pamphlet entitled: "How the Jews have for forty years deceived the wretched and ignorant Croats, that they are Croats of the Mosaic faith and thus have enslaved them, frustrated them politically, sucked them dry materially, cramming all the Croatian money into their own tills and pockets." 

Bjelovar.  This fellow lived in Bjelovar which is in Croatia and yet he writes: "wretched and ignorant Croats?"  Uh huh.  Jup, that's what what he wrote.  Just a dumb question - if I'm a non-Serbian element not worth of rights in Serbia, what is this Serbian fellow doing in MY HOME, in the region of my ancestors? Explain to me this, please.  I'm not angry about him being there, but please explain to me  this.  I don't understand.

What does this have to do with the music of Croatia?  It has a lot to do with our music.  Where is the music today from our "Mosaic Croatian brothers"?  Where is it?  Can I hear this music to make up my own mind do I like it or not?  Play this music please.  I wish to hear it just to know how it sounds.  Why do I not have this freedom to hear this poetry and this music played and sung by my "Mosiac Croatian brothers."  Who took this freedom away from me?  I thought I was free, but, maybe not.  Not yet. 

The Englishman on BBC during the Homeland War said something along the lines of 'They bomb our graveyards, they bomb our churches, they bomb our orphanages, they bomb our libraries as if to erase any knowledge that we ever existed.'  If I don't have it word for word exactly as he said it, please don't raise a fuss, you know it was words very much like those and the facts were very much like those words.  At every holiday and every memorial day we run around yelling and writing "Ne zaboravite!"  (No forget).  

No forget. Don't forget.  But we have already forgotten.

It's like someone has chopped off your arm with an axe.  Then they swing the axe at your head but they don't succeed in chopping off your head.  So then, you go around saying "I will never forget!, Ne zaboravite. Nikada" when you talk about the strike aimed at your head, but you don't miss your arm. You've already forgotten all about your arm.   

We have have forgotten.  

As long as we have forgotten, the men who declared that we Croats, as "non-Serb elements" should have no rights,  as long as we have forgotten, the men who called us "wretched and ignorant", have won.  They have won and we do not have our country back.  As long as we have forgotten, we are not yet free.  Worse, as long as we have forgotten, they are right, we are wretched and ignorant.

We must remember.  We cannot to forget.  We must not to forget.  

Sviraj, moj brat, sviraj.  kad  čujem vaša glazba svira, ja ću biti slobodan.

Ne zaboravite. Nikada!

Play, my brother, play.  When I hear your music playing, I will be free.

Don't forget.  Never!

do sljedeći put, blagoslov - until next time, blessings,

Canovals a.k.a. Slavonac

19 Rujan 2011