05.05.2018.
Minister Vulin: There will never be equality between victims and executioners
Today, in the “M” hotel, Ministers of Defence and Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs, Aleksandar Vulin and Zoran Đorđević, attended a gathering of the Antifascists of the Balkans titled “the Balkans – area of peace, understanding and agreement” organised by SUBNOR of Serbia.
Speaking about the importance of such event, Minister Vulin pointed out that the gathering was not a meeting of people deeply trapped in the past, who would try to use the times ahead to reconfirm or reveal some historical truth, but it was a gathering of people deeply concerned about the future of the region in which they lived.
- The equality between a victim and executioner will never be established; not in 73 years or in 700 years. Never. The truth that you witness is the truth of my people – the people that knew suffering but the people that did not know surrendering – Minister Vulin said adding that the participants of the gathering were expected to try to arrive at an answer to the question of what had happened.He stressed that the antifascists could answer the question of how it was possible that 73 years after the end of the Second World War we still had a discussion on Jasenovac.
- What did happen 73 years after the Second World War so that we hear proposals that the bones from Jasenovac pits should be excavated and counted? – inquired the minister of defence asking all the present how it was possible that only 73 years after the end of the Second World War we still had the need for antifascism.
He added that the antifascism was a value that would have to be implied and that 73 years was too short a time to forget the horrors of the Second World War, to forget who the one that had thrown children in pits was, and who had been the ones whose children ended up in the pits.
- It is too short a time to try to prove again the undeniable truth about the horrors of fascism. Only 73 years ago, the world revolted by the terrors of Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Jasenovac did not even think it possible that the questions would be raised again as to what had happened in the Second World War, who the victim had been and who had been a criminal. Unfortunately, that question is raised, and we gather to defend fundamental values of our existence – Minister Vulin said and added that when we saw that the relativisation of history was possible at the most significant speaker’s platforms of the world where from the revision of the Second World War was requested, we had to be concerned but not afraid.Minister Vulin stressed that the people he belonged to had never been afraid in the face of evil but they had always recognised the evil and confronted it.
- Today as well we will not remain quiet; we will not pretend that it is all just part of historical discussion and legitimate human right to challenge the truth. There are things that cannot be discussed, and there are things that cannot be denied. The horrors of the concentration camps, the horrors of the Holocaust, the horrors of annihilation of entire nations, Serbian people included, cannot be revised, disputed, nor a subject of someone’s intellectual or any other kind of game. That game is offensive and dangerous for too many people – Minister Vulin said thanking the antifascists from abroad who came to the capital of free Serbia; the country that had never been able nor it will ever be able to accept the truth of invaders and the country which above all appreciates freedom.
The two day long gathering organised in the “M” hotel is attended by delegations of veteran organisations of Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Republic of Srpska and representatives of International Antifascist Federation with its headquarters in Berlin and the representatives of Germany, Italy, Russia and Belgium.