What do you think about the destruction of the monument to Ramiz and Boro, commemorating Albanian and Serbian "Brotherhood and Unity" during ww2 against occupying forces?

Posted by Kobajadojaja@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 50 comments

https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/landovica

Background: Yugoslav and Albanian governments elected two monuments in Kosovo, commemorating the strugle of Balkan peoples against fascists in Kosovo during ww2. It was elected where Ramiz, an Albanian and Boro, a Serb were tortured to death by the Italians for being members of Partisan forces.

The monuments were destroyed in 99' by KLA and in place of the bigger one Kosovo government elected a monument to KLA fighters.

Do you think the original monument should be brought back up at the same place or at least to another nearby spot? Or should this "brotherhood and unity" part of Balkan history be forgotten?

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Barbak86@reddit

The same Yugoslav authorities, destroyed our Autonomy, fired people from their jobs and later started burning villages and towns, killed indiscriminately people in order to maybe get a 5 person cell of KLA thet made an ambush, hid bodies over publicly owned land in Serbia.

Sorry if we don't give a shit about Brotherhood and Unity anymore. It was a cool idea, but it failed from the beginning since we were never equal, and by the end of the 80' and onwards it was a disaster.

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Fred_Neecheh@reddit

So I am sure you will apply the same high motal standard to Nazi collaborators, one of whose house is being renovated in Mitrovica, or to war criminals among the KLA in the last war?

Or is this the part you pretend your tribe is good, and my tribe is evil?

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Barbak86@reddit

That's a house that even the communists didn't destroy. Should we let it rot like it used to, or renovate so it looks better overall? It's not like there is going to be a museum of Xhaferr Deva inside or something of that sort.

War criminals of KLA should go to Jail. Saying this, KLA was a group made of individuals that were ready to take up arms and they worked in cells as small as 5. Serbia was a state that used state institutions to perpetrate war Crimes. You can't compare the war crimes of Partisans with those of the NDH or Germany. It's a different level.

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Fred_Neecheh@reddit

You dont see a problem with destroying antifasciat monuments while renovating Nazi collaborationist houses? Ok then.

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MartinBP@reddit

Why did you keep the house then when it was under Serbian jurisdiction?

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Fred_Neecheh@reddit

I didnt mate, if it had been up to me I would have levelled it and salted the ground. Same as with any other Albanian, Serbian or Bulgarian or Croatian or Han Chinese collaborator. They need to be forgotten. Heroes of any nation should be remembered.

Or better, made it into a kindergarten or something useful. Certainly not turned it into a bloody museum of the guy.

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Barbak86@reddit

Response to your Edit. If they were expelled, it's most likely because they were part of the colonization effort, they were settlers that settled after 1920. Autochthonous Serbs were not expelled from Kosovo. Only the new arrivals were. It was a policy that even the Communists endorsed, since they were against colonialism.

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Fred_Neecheh@reddit

Ah I am glad you are the expert on my family and why it was expelled. My grandma was born in Ferizaj/Uroševac actually. We have a house close to it that she had never seen again, as to not upset post WW2 Albanian authorities in Kosovo.

Land reform in Yugoslavia was a good thing, breaking up giant estates of ottoman era absentee landlords and giving them to peasants was actually good. What was bad was giving it to Serbs and not to Albanians in a deliberate attempt to change the composition in Kosovo. That changed after ww2, like you said.

I am so tired of all this pretending like 80 years of Yugoslavia was some kind of an unrelenting hell for Kosovo Albanians. Or that victims have only one ethnicity, Albanian.

And no, destroying Partizan monuments is not ok.

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Shqiptar89@reddit

Hopefully every partizan monument is not only destroyed but pissed on.

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Barbak86@reddit

Well while you are at it burn all the schools and the university of Prishtina. Those partisans built them.

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Shqiptar89@reddit

Nashta ma mir. Me hjek krejt fliqhanet e kommunistave. Kta je tu i perkrah aa?

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Barbak86@reddit

Veç pse jom kundër katunarllëkut tond, s'do me thonë që jom me dikon tjetër. Ka edhe pozicion të tretë.

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Shqiptar89@reddit

Hahahahahahhaha ani ani. Pozit tretë. Nuk ta kan pre ty familjen per me hanger mut qeshtu.

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Barbak86@reddit

Jo, partizant s'ma kanë pre familjen. Jom ty dyshu që ta kanë pre ty familjen gjithashtu, se s'ishe konë gjallë ktu me shkretu nëse osht bash qashtu qysh po thu.

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Barbak86@reddit

Brother, settlers had children in Kosovo. Some might in theory even had grandchildren because they had enough time for that. So was her family a post 1920 Serb family, or were they even during ottoman times down here? Because as I said, the Serbs targeted to be expelled by the "Albanian Kingdom" (the Italian puppet state) were settlers. That was an official event, not sporadic.

I am far away from the group who pretends that all 80 years of Yugoslavia were shit. I am also tired of the same people. Nor do I pretend our people didn't kill innocents. It's just that I like to put into perspective that it's not the same. A war crime perpetrated by a State is not the same as some asshole shooting a Serb villager just for the love of the game. Both are shit, but even among shit there is difference.

Destroying Partisan monuments is not ok, but it was expected. My Grandfather was a Prvoborac, and I'm proud of being his descendant. The problem is that the taste you get in the last bite, is what you remember the most, and we got from Yugoslavia a very, very bitter taste.

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Stverghame@reddit

Who is exactly surprised by this?

West and it's allies do rewrite history. If you demolish Serbian or Russian monuments related to WW2, you're doing a good thing in the eyes of westerners. They tolerate nazi agendas these days, why wouldn't they tolerate this behaviour as well?

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MartinBP@reddit

I'm looking forward to seeing when Serbia will correct its monuments then to correctly state that it was the Bulgarian and Soviet armies which drove the Germans out of Macedonia, Kosovo and everything up to Belgrade, not your imaginary partisan fairytale? 35,000 Bulgarian tropps died chasing out the Germans from Yugoslavia all the way to Vienna and NOT A SINGLE MONUMENT in ex-Yugoslavia mentions them.

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RebootAndPray@reddit

Everyone's contribution to the liberation, even small, should be recognized. That being said you can't spend most of the war on the Axis side, occupy large parts of Yugoslavia, and then wonder why there aren't monuments everywhere across south Serbia and Macedonia celebrating your army because it switched sides in the last year of the war.

And calling the partisans an "imaginary fairytale" is just pathetic. If your argument depends on pretending others' contribution didn't exist, then maybe your argument isn't very strong to begin with.

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Stverghame@reddit

That's not going to happen, given the fact that Bulgarians massively killed Serbs in that exact period. My grandpa was persecuted from southern Serbia thanks to our Bulgarian "liberators" lol.

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WAU1936@reddit

The revisionism regarding WW2 in Europe is in full swing for decades now, we're a few years away from most politicians outright saying "we should have allied with Germany ", their actions already indicate this

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deviendrais@reddit

A couple of months ago r/europe bemoaned the bombing of Talinn by Russians which took place during WW2. For some reason they didn't mention that the city was occupied by Nazi Germany. How dare those evil Ruskis not want Nazis to occupy a city 300km away from St. Petersburg?

It's also not lost on me that It's always "Russians" when the USSR did something bad but "Soviets" when they did something good

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WAU1936@reddit

European liberals, the overwhelming majority of the European sub, are very easily swayed towards Nazi apologia, especially when it comes to the USSR.

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Fine-Ear-8103@reddit

It was communist propaganda that put that up in the first place while we were being oppressed by Rankovic simultaneously, why are y’all shocked it was destroyed?

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Shqiptar89@reddit

Hahaha fuck it. Ramiz was a piece of shit.

Brotherhood and unity? Bold of you to think that is a thing. But your people was spared from genocide and rape camps...

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Magistar_Idrisi@reddit

Why would you consider Ramiz Sadiku a piece of shit?

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Shqiptar89@reddit

Because he worked for commies. Fuck him and all of the rest.

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Salt-Wolverine-6367@reddit

What brotherhood and unity lol? Did serbs and albanians ever in history have brotherhood and unity? Maybe in the 12th century

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Top-Turnip-415@reddit

It is a marker of occupation and repression of Albanians in Kosovo by Yugoslavia for decades to come so I don’t care. Let the downvotes commence, that’s the fact.

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Unable-Stay-6478@reddit

Because we all knew Balli Kombetar threw parties for Serbs. Albanian nationalist and collaborationist groups were generally stronger and more numerous than Partisans.

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molindevent@reddit

Do you know who the Muhaxhir are? The Muslim refugees who fled from parts of the expanding Serbian state

Estimates vary but the 1876-1878 war period is widely described in the literature as involving mass killing and displacement of Muslims in areas taken by Serbian forces with figures often cited in the tens of thousands (roughly 50k-130k)

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Unable-Stay-6478@reddit

Yes, and?

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Top-Turnip-415@reddit

Does history start in 1945? Because SOMEHOW there was no reason at ALL why the Albanians under Yugoslav jurisdiction would harbour any ill will towards the state murdering them, expelling them, and occupying them for decades prior!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_colonization_of_Kosovo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Albanians_(1877–1878)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Albanians_in_the_Balkan_Wars

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True-Blacksmith4235@reddit

What am i supposed to think, the same as for hundreds of churches and monasteries burned, i suppose.

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Barbak86@reddit

That tends to happen when you kill people and hide their bodies on publicly owned land in Serbia.

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True-Blacksmith4235@reddit

Yet nothing happened to Albanians living in my family’s house, after they were forced out.

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Barbak86@reddit

Yeah that shit tends to happen also when you burn homes. People break in your home when you leave for an extended vacation.

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True-Blacksmith4235@reddit

They didn’t leave for an extended vacation, they left so they wouldn’t get murdered.

You live in Serbian properties, you burnt the only cultural and historical heritage Kosovo ever had (because don’t have any of your own), you have the “country” others handed you over, and yet you still can’t shut up.

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molindevent@reddit

"Cultural and historical heritage"

Basically the same logic people used for Confederate statues erected during the Reconstruction era lol

The majority of Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries people usually point to today fall into two broad categories

A genuinely medieval core (mainly 13th–15th century sites like Dečani, Gračanica, Peć Patriarchate etc.) and a much larger wave of construction and reconstruction tied to modern state formation and administrative expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries

The medieval layer is relatively small in number compared to the total religious building stock that exists today. Some of these later churches are also clearly politically symbolic in placement or timing

Like Saborna crkva Svete Trojice in Ðakovica, a church built in a town where Serbs were just 2% of the population before the Balkan Wars. Or Saborna crkva Svetog cara Uroša in Ferizaj, built in the same courtyard as a functioning mosque

Not to mention Hram Hrista Spasa whose construction began at the height of the war on the grounds of the University of Prishtina campus. An act of unambiguous political and institutional aggression against the Albanians

Unsurprisingly both of these churches were later targeted in the 2000s. It’s not hard to see why that happened

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Barbak86@reddit

Why would they think they would be murdered? Is it maybe because they saw what was happening to their neighbors and knew that retaliation is imminent? Or was it because they participated themselves in the shit storm?

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Top-Turnip-415@reddit

These same people bemoaning Serbs leaving Kosovo have no qualms with the exact same fate happening to Danube Swabians following the partisan takeover they celebrate.

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Barbak86@reddit

Exactly. War is sad, but when it happens, shit tends to happen afterwards and more often than not, hits innocent people who were part of the silent majority when shit was being done in their name and who didn't complain for having a privileged life.

It is what it is, and it was expected to happen by everyone, that's why the vast majority left together with their army and didn't even wait for NATO troops or KLA to fill the vacuum.

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Top-Turnip-415@reddit

And just to affirm— I do NOT support collective punishment, but you can’t compare state sanctioned violence and oppression with a few rogue actors. Everyone is entitled to basic human rights and dignity, and when the state/occupier breaches that you are well within your right to resist. Peaceful student protests in Kosovo did not work, so the next resort had to be violence, there was no other choice.

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bleta_punetore@reddit

You have literally a whole airport runway in Tivat, built over the bodies of hundreds of massacred Albanians without guns, at the death of WW2 by Yugoslav partisans and you care for one symbol of unity? History is history and ofc should be treasured, espe6the positive one. And although you point out to victims from both side, let's not kid ourselves there's a huge distance when it comes to numbers from one side to the other. All this while one side has always fought for survival while the other for domination. If you really wanna preserve interethnic unity, start by a big Mea Culpa. Albanians as much as vindictive as they might seem, are quite the forgiving kind if you show due respect. Cheers.

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molindevent@reddit

I don't really have a problem with the Landovica monument being replaced by a KLA memorial

What I do find a bit sad is what happened to the monument in Priština. Removing Boro's bust while leaving Ramiz's behind feels like a betrayal of the two men themselves. Separating them in memory is the exact opposite of what they died for

The "Brotherhood and Unity" ideology they were later turned into symbols of was bullshit. For many Kosovo Albanians it felt less like genuine equality and more like a way of legitimizing Yugoslav rule

But still, what could have been

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_Negativity_@reddit

'Brotherly' Yugoslav partisans betrayed Albanian partisans that joined them to fight against fascist forces. After which, they lured thousands of Kosovar Albanian partisans to Bar, Montenegro, and slaughtered them to avoid any resistance.

And how can we forget the "brotherhood and unity" while Serbia was rampaging through it's neighbors.

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