The Serbian-Jerusalem slogan first circulated under Serbia’s chief Nazi collaborator

Evidence

As noted earlier, the Serbian government portrayed Kosovo as the “holy land of the Serbs” to justify the territorial acquisitions in the First Balkan War of 1912. Apparently, Drasˇkovic´ was not even the first Serb nationalist leader who published the phrase “Serbian Jerusalem” in reference to Kosovo. As quoted by Belgrade anthropologist Ivan Cˇ olovic´ (2016, 317) in his recent study about the Kosovo myth, General Milan Nedic´, the chief Nazi collaborator in occupied Serbia during World War II, used the phrase “Serbian Jerusalem” in reference to Kosovo. Thus, on the occasion of the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in June 1939, Nedic´ wrote in a Belgrade newspaper: “Serbs are again seeking spiritual renewal and new energy by returning to Kosovo – Serbian Jerusalem” (quoted in Cˇ olovic´ 2016, 317). Nedic´ regularly spoke of the heroic spirit of Kosovo as he led Serbia’s collaboration with the Nazis that resulted in massive crimes including the Serb contribution to the Holocaust by which the Nedic´ regime had cleansed Serbia of its Jewish population by August 1942. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1513

Categorization

• QUESTION: A nationalist symbol of Christian victimhood was coined by a Nazi collaborator and used to justify Holocaust participation — worth chasing the full genealogy.
• SEED: Could fuel an essay on how victimhood rhetorics are inherited wholesale from prior oppressors by later nationalisms.
• XREF: connects to: The Serbian-Jerusalem discourse is a product of 1980s Serb nationalism, not ancient tradition — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1498