The Association of Anti-Fascists and Fighters of the People’s Liberation War (SABNOR) of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) yesterday gathered anti-fascists from BiH, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia in the Valley of Heroes at Tjentiste to mark the 82nd anniversary of the Battle of Sutjeska, one of the largest wartime episodes of the People’s Liberation War.
It was the decisive battle of the Fifth Enemy Offensive, fought in the summer of 1943 from May 15th to June 15th, which aimed to destroy the main part of the partisan units located in that area. However, through heroic fighting that lasted almost a month, the partisan units managed to break through the encirclement and preserve their military potential for the continuation of the war.
This came at a cost: more than 7.500 partisans and anti-fascists – over one-third of the forces that entered the battle – were killed at Sutjeska. Most of them were members of Dalmatian partisan detachments.
Yesterday, anti-fascists kept alive the memory of Sutjeska as one of the important chapters of shared history, which they were proud of from Vardar to Triglav.
“We must preserve that part of our shared history because it should not be appropriated by those to whom it does not belong. This was a war of liberation, we won that war in the end, and we must preserve all of it,” said Olga Budusek from the Association of Anti-Fascists of Slovenia.
Those who uphold the idea of anti-fascism and who gathered yesterday at Sutjeska to pay respects to fallen heroes are well aware of the moment they live in, as well as of the efforts of certain ruling structures in the countries of the region to turn former fascist collaborators into heroes and anti-fascists into occupiers.
“That revisionism is present, and we see it. But it has no historical basis, and that’s why we are ready, determined, and persistent in Montenegro to fight for the truth about the anti-fascists, and not for the lies they are trying to serve us,” said Vukasin Markovic, president of the Association of Anti-Fascists of the city of Budva.
The importance of such gatherings was also emphasized by SABNOR BiH. Especially due to the resurgence of fascism throughout the world and in Europe, which, by all indications, reacts very mildly to such occurrences.
“Europe needs to be reminded that it was occupied in that war, they had resistance movements. But we had a revolution then, free territories we liberated, we governed those areas and ultimately created a country that was an ideal for some unfree peoples,” said Sead Djulic, president of SABNOR BiH.
Yesterday, anti-fascist associations laid wreaths of flowers at the memorial ossuary for the killed partisans, with a message that history remembers their universal ideas of freedom and justice.
A historical fact is that around 127.000 German, Italian, Bulgarian soldiers and Ustase, supported by 300 airplanes, encircled 22.000 partisans in an attempt at total destruction. The First Proletarian Division broke through the enemy encirclement at Sutjeska on June 10th, 1943, and the battle ended on June 15th, 1943, with the breakthrough of the main Yugoslav National Liberation Army (NOVJ) forces into BiH, Klix.ba writes.
