DEFENDING THE TRUTH ABOUT JASENOVAC CONCENTRATION CAMP IN THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA
(Letter No. 10)
This letter is written and addressed to you by three Jewish survivors of the death camp Jasenovac in the Nazi Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War who still alive in Serbia:
Cadik Danon,
the architect, who escaped from the Jasenovac concentration camp in 1942
Bozo Svarc
the retired colonel of the Yugoslav Army, who escaped from the Jasenovac concentration camp in the same year
and
Josif Erlih
the retired major of the Yugoslav Army, who was held in Jasenovac to the very bitter end and participated in the break out on 22 of April 1945 when the Croat fascist guards started slaughtering all remaining prisoners
OPEN LETTER TO JOSEPH FRIENDLY
Hi Joe Friendly,
In the letter sent around in your name on 17 of May, it is easy to discover the words and style of Barry Lituchy. There is a libel against a leading Belgrade law firm with accusations of fraud, without proving anything and even without the slightest effort to argue the case. Long on abuse but short on reasoning, this is unmistakenly Barry Lituchy.
We deplore seeing you manipulated. The allegation put now into your mouth differs completely from what you wrote to us through our Belgrade lawyers on 20 of April. Now you supposedly called our offer for the exchange of permission to publish a „fraud“, and two weeks after we made it, you applauded it. You agreed with us on permitting two books on the Jasenovac conference, which would be achieved by our permission to Lituchy to publish our testimonies in his announced book in exchange for the permission of the plaintiffs Mosic and Miletic to let Wanda Schindley to use their short presentations in her Proceedings book, now under injunction because of their individual complaints for copyright infringement.
Two weeks after our offer was made, you were the only one of the four plaintifs to answer it in a positive way in the letter to Mrs Golubovic and Mrs Gacic of the Belgrade lawyer firm Zivkovic and Samardzic:
20/04/06
Dear Ksenija Golubovic Filipovic and Marina Gacic, attorneys at law, and clients: Cadik Danon, Bozo Svarc, and Josif Erlih,
I applaud you and your clients' efforts to resolve the matters peacefully and share with you the vision of the 2 books on shelves together and all the litigation stopped...
…Memory Film (which I represent) supports your position. What remains is for all the other parties to make that choice, Wanda Schindley and Barry Lituchy, in particular. I think if Wanda would go along with it, I have some confidence that Barry would. But I just don't know about Mosic and Miletic. As they get attacked repeatedly they might be inclined to continue fighting. Hopefully, if everyone else goes along with ending the litigation they may also see the wisdom of stopping the legal battle and being included in both books….….I have been trying to reach Wanda Schindley to determine if there can be a mutual agreement to end the litigation by both sides. I welcome help in this regard by other interested parties.Joe Friendly”
We restricted the time for the offer which you applauded in your quoted letter to our lawyers. We wanted to avoid any misuse of it before the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Federation of the Jewish Communities of Serbia and Monte Negro, which put on its agenda the resumption of the case of Aleksandar Mosic at our request. We stated through our lawyers that our offer of 4th of April should be answered by 4th of May in writing, that by 8th of May those who approved it should submit signed and notarized statements, and that from 9th of May the offer would be off the table.
Lituchy and Miletic rejected our offer by ignoring it. Mosic wrote to our lawyers on 4 of May that he does not accept it, while you, Friendly, were again the exception. You did not communicate your approval to our lawyers, but sent to our friend Jasa Almuli, also a Holocaust survivor, a well-intentioned letter in which you stated:
3.5.2006.
Dear Jasa,
Sorry to take so long to respond to your first offer, but I was trying to learn of the prospects of Barry, JRI, Mosic and Miletic going along with the idea of dropping the suit against Wanda's book, and so far, I have learned nothing new. I don't know what resulted from my urgings in that direction. Your wanting my permission to publish my letters to you suggests that you would not without my permission. Is that true? What I would like to see published is that I agree with you that the litigations should be stopped by both sides and Wanda should be free to resume publication of her book so both books would be available to the public, presumably side by side on bookshelves. You could also publish that I appeal to all Barry, Mosic, Miletic, and JRI to accept the settlement offer preferably by May 4th….
Joe Friendly”
As everybody can see, you, Joseph Friendly, never considered our offer a fraud. On the contrary, you tried to achieve its acceptance by Lituchy, Mosic and Miletic.
Now Barry Lituchy turned everything upside down. He was faced with the need to respond in some way to the decision of the Jewish Federation in Serbia to dismiss his Belgrade aid Mosic from functions because he harmed the cause of spreading the truth about Jasenovac by his law suit. In the lack of any plausible response, Lituchy decided to launch an abusive attack by inventing that our offer was “ exposed to be a fraud”. Exposed when, by whom, and exposed how? These questions were not answered. Lituchy’s allegation put into your mouth remained futile.
It is not easy to understand why you, Joe, continue letting Barry Lituchy manipulate you. The misuse of your name could bring you grave calamities. He libelled a prestigious Belgrade law firm using your name. Please, think about the possible consequences of it.
Lituchy manipulated a willing Mosic, and now Mosic’s position in the Jewish community lays shattered and his reputation in the Serbian public opinion seriously damaged. The only help Lituchy could now give him was a declaration that the dismissal of Mosic was “a tragedy”. You could draw some conclusions from it. The same could be done by Mr. Milo Jelisijevic, the editor of Lituchy’s reportedly promised book on the Conference. If he publishes in with testimonies of people whose permission he has not obtained, he may also experience grave calamities.
