24.10.2017.
Patriarch Irinej visits the booth of Odbrana Media Centre
Patriarch Irinej of Serbia has visited today the booth of the Ministry of Defence and Odbrana Media Centre at this year's International Book Fair. Recognizing the new editions of the Odbrana MC and expressing a special interest in some of them, speaking with the employees, the Patriarch exchanged information on the topics addressed in these works. His Holiness greeted also male and female cadets of the Military Academy and the Military High School, reminding them of the famous ancestors and telling female cadets to be brave and strong as Milunka Savić.
The second day of the Fair at the premises of Odbrana MC was marked by stories from military life, from memory of the former JNA, to the notes from the everyday life of peace-keeping missions. Six episodes of the "When I was a soldier" series of the "Zastava Film" Military Center was screened. The series was once very popular in the former SFRY, because of its humorous approach to military life. The role of Staff Sergeant was interpreted by the bard of Serbian and Yugoslav theatre Stole Arandjelović.In the "Borislav Pekić" hall, a book by Colonel Milivoje Pajović "African notebooks and other human notes" was presented. Pointing out that his vision of Africa today is the view of a great organism, Pajović emphasized that the book refers to the period 2014 - - 2015, when the Serbian peace-keeping mission in Bangui was established in the heart of the African continent. Everything is recorded from sandstorm to tropical rains, the first shots in Bangi, to the loss of a member of the mission due to malaria. "I would say that this is a description of paving the way for a serious military operation of the home state. We went there for nothing, and we came back leaving something", Colonel Pajović said.
Dr Dragan Hamović emphasized that it is a valuable military-documentary work with great personal and lyrical depth, and that it can be compared with similar books from deep Serbian literary history - "Janissary's memorials" by Konstantin Mihajlović, "Memoirs" by Simeon Piščević, a Serbian warrior and Russian officer whose records served as the basis for Crnjanski for "Seobe".
What followed as the closing of the day at Odbrana MC booth was based on the excellent book by Colonel Pajović - this is about the public discussion dubbed “Peace'keeping missions - peacekeeper's notes”, whose participants were Colonel Nikola Dejanović, Deputy Chief of the Peace Operations Center, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Goran Milojković from the Niš Military Hospital, and Slobodan Bjelica, a veteran of Sinai, who returned all the present half a century to the past, emphasizing that only one thing has not changed, and that is the need for establishing and maintaining peace.The public discussion has been symbolically held today, on 24th October, on the United Nations Day, under whose flag, for more than half a century, peace-keeping forces, as one of its most recognizable symbols, are conducted in the world.
