A few years ago, I reliably established that Saint Vukašin Mandrapa — the Jasenovac and Herzegovinian martyr — is in fact a fictional, or more precisely, a constructed figure. This is a saintly figure known to nearly every Orthodox Serb over the past 30 years. The official version holds that Vukašin Mandrapa was born in the village of Klepci in Herzegovina and that, following the establishment of the Nazi puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia, he was deported to the Jasenovac death camp, where he died a martyr’s death — calmly, looking his killer in the eye, and saying: “Just do your job, child.”

I discovered, with strong certainty, that the residents of the village of Klepci had never known anyone by the name Vukašin Mandrapa, a fact confirmed to me by a late friend whose mother was born in that very village. I also determined that the story of the pious old man is not a fabrication — but it did not occur in Jasenovac. It happened in the small Herzegovinian town of Ljubuški. The true name of this ‘Vukašin’ was Vasilije Vitković, president of the Serbian Orthodox parish council — a devout man. The words “Just do your job, children” were addressed to the Ustaše (Croatian Nazis) who, before his very eyes and on the threshold of his home, murdered his entire family. We learn about Vasilije Vitković through documentation and testimonies from the post-war trials of local Ustaše war criminals in Mostar.

It is also true that a devout Orthodox Christian with the surname Mandrapa was killed in Jasenovac — but his name was not Vukašin, it was Spasoje. He was a shoemaker from Sarajevo who, on Sundays, sang in the choir at the Old Orthodox Church in Sarajevo. His memory was preserved by Đuro Pucar “Stari,” a later communist official of Bosnia and Herzegovina and once Spasoje’s apprentice, as well as by the theologian Žarko Vidović, who remembered him for continuously chanting to the victims of the Ustaše massacres within the Jasenovac camp: “With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the souls of Your servants, where there is no pain, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting.” Precisely because of this, he was ultimately beaten to death in one of the camp barracks. Indeed, Spasoje Mandrapa of Sarajevo — not the fictitious Vukašin — is listed in the official register of Jasenovac victims.

Why am I writing about this in the introduction to a text whose central subject is the war criminal and Nazi collaborator Pavle Đurišić? Because of the growing tendency within the episcopate of the Serbian Orthodox Church to accept simplified and distorted versions of reality — whether out of carelessness and haste, or due to ideological and/or personal motivations.

This tendency might not be so troubling (though it is still inexcusably unserious) if it merely involved, for example, collapsing two real-life martyrs into a single figure — as when the fictionalized newspaper tale of “Vukašin” from the late 1980s is mistaken for a historical account and merged with a factual story of martyrdom.

But when the Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral Joanikije Mićević — successor to the ancient episcopal throne of Zeta, founded by Saint Rastko Nemanjić, and whose every word should be weighed with utmost care — publicly declares that Chetnik commander Pavle Đurišić bears resemblance to Pavle Orlović, the mythical hero of the Kosovo cycle, then we are stepping onto very, very dark ground.  For Joanikije also said the following:

“Thousands of people fled from the communist blade and from the criminals who, from as early as 1941 through to 1945, made their murderous intent known by waging a revolution during wartime in Montenegro, all in the name of promoting the communist idea. They had little wisdom to offer the people — at least that’s how it was here in Montenegro — but they were full of malice. And so they filled the pits of Montenegro, and indeed Herzegovina as well.”

According to Joanikije’s attempt at crafting an oral hagiography of Pavle Đurišić, the latter appears as a brave, almost ascetic warrior, leading a tormented people under siege by godless communists in 1945. The truth, however, is somewhat different. The civil war between the royalist Chetniks — who had entered into collaboration with the fascist Italian army and the Wehrmacht — and the Yugoslav communist Partisans, during which both sides undoubtedly committed acts of retribution and war crimes, ended in 1945 with the complete collapse of the Chetnik movement in Montenegro. Subsequently, in coordination with the remnants of the Axis forces, the Chetniks retreated through the Bosnian territories of the Nazi puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia — in agreement with that state’s military leadership.

Credible historical sources — whether from the archives of Draža Mihailović’s Ravna Gora Movement, the fascist Zbor of Dimitrije Ljotić, the collaborationist government of Milan Nedić in Belgrade, the Yugoslav Partisans, or from German and Italian records — are unanimous on one point: Pavle Đurišić was, above all, a war criminal who committed atrocities against Muslim civilian populations — helpless elderly men, women, and children. And these crimes did not take place in regions where they might be construed as retaliation for crimes committed by Muslim militias or Albanian Ballists against the Serbian population, but in the districts of Pljevlja and Priboj, where the poorly armed Muslim communities had committed no crimes whatsoever against local Serbs. This is how Đurišić reported on this actions from February 1943 to the Supreme Commander of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, Draža Mihailović:

“All Muslim villages in the three aforementioned districts were completely burned down, with not a single house left intact. All property was destroyed, except for livestock, grain, and hay.

During the operations, a policy of total extermination of the Muslim population was carried out, regardless of age or gender.

Casualties — Our total losses amounted to 22 dead (of which 2 were accidental) and 32 wounded. Among the Muslims, there were around 1,200 armed fighters killed and up to 8,000 other victims: women, the elderly, and children.

At the beginning of the operations, the Muslims attempted to flee towards Metaljka, Čajniče, and the Drina River. A small portion of the population found refuge at Metaljka. It is estimated that up to 2,000 refugees reached Čajniče, and a portion managed to escape across the Drina before certain units were able to cut off possible escape routes in that sector. The rest of the population was exterminated.”

Secondly, Đurišić was not only a collaborator with the occupying forces of his own country — the Axis powers — but also with other collaborators who held explicitly fascist ideological convictions: Milan Nedić, Dimitrije Ljotić, the government of the Independent State of Croatia, and, to complete the absurdity, the antiserb Montenegrin fascist and one of the progenitors of the Duklja nationalist ideology — Sekula Drljević. For his loyal service to the German occupiers, which involved brutal repression of all Partisan fighters and sympathizers of the People’s Liberation Struggle, he was even awarded the Iron Cross by the Führer himself.

However, in the version of reality offered by Metropolitan Joanikije Mićević, Đurišić is presented as a Christ-like, martyred figure persecuted by godless enemies — despite the fact that, true to his shameless opportunism, he aligned himself with those who, at the Petrovdanski Assembly on July 12, 1941, adopted the constitution of the Italian protectorate of Montenegro. That constitution not only introduced an official “Montenegrin language” but also, by non-canonical decree, proclaimed the establishment of an autocephalous Montenegrin Orthodox Church.

Even more absurd is the Metropolitan’s claim regarding the role of his namesake, Joanikije Lipovac, also Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral in the Serbian Orthodox Church during World War II. In the Metropolitan’s interpretation, Lipovac is portrayed as a saintly figure who accompanied Pavle Đurišić’s army until the moment he was deceived by Montenegrin fascist Sekula Drljević, who arranged for his internment in the Jasenovac concentration camp after taking control of his forces. In reality, however, Metropolitan Lipovac himself took part in the treasonous Petrovdanska Assembly of 1941, where he endorsed the creation of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church — an act that constituted a fatal canonical violation against the very Serbian Church of which he was a hierarch.

In the Metropolitan’s version of history, Đurišić appears solely as a rebel against this short-lived “state,” which, admittedly, he was at the beginning. But what moral character can be ascribed to a man who so eagerly submits to the monstrous construct he initially opposed? Judas Iscariot, too, was once a disciple of Christ — but for the very reason that his betrayal followed such proximity to truth, we do not depict him as a saint on our icons.

Metropolitan Joanikije Mićević has thus not only declared Pavle Orlović — the mythical symbol of freedom — a collaborator with the Ottoman Empire and a torturer of his own people by comparing him to Pavle Đurišić, but has gone even further. He has proclaimed everything the Serbian people in Montenegro currently struggle against — the war criminals of the 1990s, converts to the racist Dukljanist ideology, and the para-ecclesiastical operations undermining the Church — as the brightest legacies of that very people.

If Đurišić — who, in his own handwriting, describes the destruction of “Turkish” women and children, even to the extent of cutting off their escape routes to prevent them from fleeing — is now a sacred figure, does that imply that all his collaborators are misunderstood saints and martyrs as well? From Nedić and Ljotić, to Drljević, and even Hitler himself — who honored him with the Iron Cross?

Does the sanctification of such individuals have anything to do with the Gospel, or are we witnessing the sanctification of collaborationism itself — the glorification at the altar of kneeling before occupiers, masked as strategic wisdom and Christian virtue?

Yes, perhaps Đurišić did suffer, in the sense that he was ultimately betrayed — not by anti-fascists, but by fellow collaborators, his comrades and business partners in the cursed enterprise of betrayal. But what does that tell us about the fate of nations and societies where such twisted logic is not only entertained, but publicly justified?

Given the gravity of Metropolitan Joanikije Mićević’s statements, these are not merely rhetorical questions. The responsibility to respond does not rest solely with him, but with the entire episcopate of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Especially given the fact that the Serbian Orthodox Church itself is one of the greatest victims of fascism in all of Europe, and that it was with its blessing in 1941 that the government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia — which had signed the shameful pact of alliance with the Axis Powers — was overthrown. This, in turn, led to the German-Italian partitioning of Yugoslavia and the genocide committed against the Serbian people. “Hitler wants to exterminate the Jews at all costs. Our Jews, until recently, were in a dire situation. Even though they are our citizens — and marched alongside us in the wars for liberation and unification, for which they received the highest honors — they, too, are now in danger. Their representatives appealed to the Serbian Church, asking us to protect them. I fulfilled my duty before the Royal Regency and openly declared that our citizens must not be terrorized by Hitler. This is truly a scandal. It is a tyranny reminiscent of the barbarism of the Middle Ages. All religions should have raised their voices in protest against this lawlessness. That no one thought to do so is truly shameful,” thundered the Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo Dožić in March 1941 — a man who would himself later end up in a Nazi concentration camp.

It is precisely for this reason that the Serbian episcopate owes clear answers to the Orthodox faithful. If for no one else, then for the sake of Vasilije Vitković and Spasoje Mandrapa.

When the issue of “Vukašin’s” identity is finally — and I hope soon — resolved, these two true holy martyrs and sufferers for the Orthodox faith must not be absorbed into pseudohagiographies that extol the alleged heroism of figures like Đurišić. For the carelessness that once obscured their identities will seem negligible compared to the desecration of linking them with sadistic butchers and monsters — utterly akin to those who murdered them.

The post Serbian Orthodox Church and the Historical Revisionism of the Second World War in Montenegro appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.