A Withered Rose

At dawn of the 22nd of February, 1943 the executioners of the Nazi regime beheaded the Munich students Hans and Sophia Scholl and Christopher Probst. Four days earlier they were caught distributing the leaflets on the University grounds. Hitler's dictatorship was severely condemned in the text on the leaflets. Three youngsters were members of the secret association "The White Rose."

Fifty years later a group of people has proved how deranged their moral compass is by plagiarizing the name of the group of Munich students. They founded a Serbian nationalist troupe, called the Association for Truth and Justice "White Rose", headed by Radomir Smiljanic, who has written several books. This Association has not put its mettle on fighting the regime, but is, together with the Society for the Orthodox Unity "The New Byzantine", competing in providing immortal support to the regime of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). It has organized the so-called blockade of the already blocked Danube close to the ait of Lido in Zemun.

In the first part of the blockade, the Serbian "White Rose" and "The New Byzantine" will stop the ships (which have been granted permission to sail by the international authorities for control of the Danube blockade), check (!) their passes, distribute posters with an appeal of the organizers and let them sail on. If the first part fails, then, a total blockade of the river will allegedly be staged, making the navigation of foreign ships impossible, until the sanctions have been lifted.

The entire campaign has been organized as a tourist attraction, with exhibition football and water-polo games in the vicinity of the spot where the blockade is being ''carried out", besides folklore dances and chess matches. Jovica Vlahovic, who once distinguished himself by rallying and fighting against the "anti-Serbian" authorities of the former Yugoslavia explained the motives behind the show, entitled "The Blockade", "The goals of the western countries are clear - they want to destroy the Orthodox shipping companies so that the West could take control of the Danube and the Rhein-Mein-Danube Channel." It goes without saying that the fight against "the unjust and undeserved sanctions", as Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic would put it, is their primary motive.

The summer show of the self-styled controllers of the Danube is illegal, as no one, apart from the state authorities, has a right to intercept ships and "check" their papers. The fact that the authorities have not reacted and remained silent testifies to the fact that there is a sort of tacit agreement. But, when one considers whose name the Serbian "White Rose" usurped, then the show is cynical and immoral, to say the least.

The German students whose heads were severed did not found their activities on the feeling of empathy with the Germans nor did they ask the world to show understanding for their suffering. Brother and sister Scholl were aware that they were sacrificing their lives in their attempt to awaken the consciousness of their own people and warn them about the atrocities which their power-holder and dictator Adolf Hitler was carrying out on the war-fronts of Europe in their name.

The Serbian plagiators have reduced the Munchen "White Rose" to being an "anti-Hitler and anti-racist" association, but "The White Rose" also stood up against the racial ideology, the war, and the dictatorship, as well as against the rule of the powerful, but stupid small party leaders and the servile silence of the intellectuals who served the national-chauvinism.

The fact that a group of the Serbian citizens, which appropriated the name of "The White Rose", is organizing a public performance, entitled "The Blockade of the Danube" is not only cynical but also insulting for the three students killed in 1943. The members of the German "White Rose" were decapitated, while the members of the Serbian the so-called "White Rose" were honored with the front page of the Belgrade daily "Politika Ekspress". All self-styled "White Roses" after February of 1943 are foul-smelling, withered flowers.