http://www.apisgroup.org/article.html?id=1330
'We just hate Serbs'
Julia Pascal
I take my actors to the Sibenik International Children's Theatre
Festival. 0n the idyllic Croatian coast, we pass burned-out Serbian
villages. This is a clear message to any Serbs planning return. We are
to perform The Golem. This Yiddish Frankenstein story comes from
medieval Prague and, in my version, the monster created to defend
ghettoised Jews from Catholics, is a metaphor for the conflict between
self-defence and violence. Most importantly, it is about minority
culture. The contradiction between what we are presenting and what we
are seeing soon becomes apparent. "U" signs are common graffiti. This
is the "U" of the fascist Ustashe, the puppet Nazi state of the second
world war which still has underground support.
We give theatre workshops to teenagers. War talk is taboo at home but
with us, they feel safe enough to reveal childhood memories of bombings
and tanks. Our workshop leader asks, "What is the ‘U’ painted on the
walls here?" The next day I am hauled into the theatre programmer's
office and ordered to keep politics out of the festival. "Parents have
been complaining," she says. "You mustn't talk about war and certainly
never mention Ustashe in the theatre." Another theatre board member
proclaims that my troupe are "not English, they're Jews". Before our
performance, we give a synopsis of The Golem in Croatian for
non-English speakers. The translation is scrupulously checked to ensure
it contains no Serbian or international vocabulary. Language, as well
as people, must be ethnically cleansed. Minorities have got the
message. The few remaining Serbs and Bosnians here are fast changing
their names and converting to Catholicism .
I meet a 40-year-old Serb married to a Croatian. He was drafted by the
Croatian army to fight Serbs in l99l. His reward was being thrown out
of his flat for being a Serb. I meet "J", a 76-year-old Croatian who,
at 15, ran to the partisans. This war heroine fought Ustashe, Italians
and Germans and still has a body full of shrapnel fragments. President
Franjo Tudjman withdrew the partisans' pensions for six months during
the 199l war and her husband, once Tito's bodyguard, starved to death.
0thers committed suicide at the humiliation of being transformed from
heroes to pariahs.
Today, "J's" pension has been cut in half, the stolen 50% going to the
Ustashe fascists who attacked her in the 40s. I tell her joining the EU
will rebalance this injustice, but I might as well be talking about
flying saucers. All around I find suspicion of European solutions.
Croatia is isolated and traumatised. "J" cries at the death of Tito's
dream of a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. "I am a Yugoslav," she insists. "I
spent my whole life fighting nationalism. And it was all for nothing."
Back in the Solaris Hotel I talk to a Croatian waiter, a former
gastarbeiter in Germany. We discuss Berlin. "Sheisse," he spits.
"Berlin is sheisse. Too many Turks. Just like the Bosnians. I hate
Muslims, I want to go to Iraq and fight Muslims." On the last night of
the festival, our driver, who is the son of a theatre secretary, is to
return us to Solaris. His drinking mate, a six-foot giant, sandwiches
me in. I am crushed between the two drunks who scream with laughter and
hardly look at the road. "Calm down," I tell the driver who ignores me.
When our Croatian actor/translator intervenes, he yells at her, "Fuck
off, you. And your Jews."
It is our last day and we chill out. One of the actors starts a jamming
session on the beach. The Hotel Solaris Animation Team join us. These
local musicians are paid to entertain the mainly German guests. Tonight
is a Caribbean evening. The singers are wearing rasta wigs and have
blacked up. I tell them, "You know this would be seen as offensive in
Britain." "Look," they say in surprise, "we are not racist. We don't
even dislike black people. We just hate Serbs."
NOTA: This artcile was published at The Guardian (July 14, 2003). Julia
Pascal's last play Crossing Jerusalem is published by Oberon Books. She
can be tuched at pascal7038@...
'We just hate Serbs'
Julia Pascal
I take my actors to the Sibenik International Children's Theatre
Festival. 0n the idyllic Croatian coast, we pass burned-out Serbian
villages. This is a clear message to any Serbs planning return. We are
to perform The Golem. This Yiddish Frankenstein story comes from
medieval Prague and, in my version, the monster created to defend
ghettoised Jews from Catholics, is a metaphor for the conflict between
self-defence and violence. Most importantly, it is about minority
culture. The contradiction between what we are presenting and what we
are seeing soon becomes apparent. "U" signs are common graffiti. This
is the "U" of the fascist Ustashe, the puppet Nazi state of the second
world war which still has underground support.
We give theatre workshops to teenagers. War talk is taboo at home but
with us, they feel safe enough to reveal childhood memories of bombings
and tanks. Our workshop leader asks, "What is the ‘U’ painted on the
walls here?" The next day I am hauled into the theatre programmer's
office and ordered to keep politics out of the festival. "Parents have
been complaining," she says. "You mustn't talk about war and certainly
never mention Ustashe in the theatre." Another theatre board member
proclaims that my troupe are "not English, they're Jews". Before our
performance, we give a synopsis of The Golem in Croatian for
non-English speakers. The translation is scrupulously checked to ensure
it contains no Serbian or international vocabulary. Language, as well
as people, must be ethnically cleansed. Minorities have got the
message. The few remaining Serbs and Bosnians here are fast changing
their names and converting to Catholicism .
I meet a 40-year-old Serb married to a Croatian. He was drafted by the
Croatian army to fight Serbs in l99l. His reward was being thrown out
of his flat for being a Serb. I meet "J", a 76-year-old Croatian who,
at 15, ran to the partisans. This war heroine fought Ustashe, Italians
and Germans and still has a body full of shrapnel fragments. President
Franjo Tudjman withdrew the partisans' pensions for six months during
the 199l war and her husband, once Tito's bodyguard, starved to death.
0thers committed suicide at the humiliation of being transformed from
heroes to pariahs.
Today, "J's" pension has been cut in half, the stolen 50% going to the
Ustashe fascists who attacked her in the 40s. I tell her joining the EU
will rebalance this injustice, but I might as well be talking about
flying saucers. All around I find suspicion of European solutions.
Croatia is isolated and traumatised. "J" cries at the death of Tito's
dream of a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. "I am a Yugoslav," she insists. "I
spent my whole life fighting nationalism. And it was all for nothing."
Back in the Solaris Hotel I talk to a Croatian waiter, a former
gastarbeiter in Germany. We discuss Berlin. "Sheisse," he spits.
"Berlin is sheisse. Too many Turks. Just like the Bosnians. I hate
Muslims, I want to go to Iraq and fight Muslims." On the last night of
the festival, our driver, who is the son of a theatre secretary, is to
return us to Solaris. His drinking mate, a six-foot giant, sandwiches
me in. I am crushed between the two drunks who scream with laughter and
hardly look at the road. "Calm down," I tell the driver who ignores me.
When our Croatian actor/translator intervenes, he yells at her, "Fuck
off, you. And your Jews."
It is our last day and we chill out. One of the actors starts a jamming
session on the beach. The Hotel Solaris Animation Team join us. These
local musicians are paid to entertain the mainly German guests. Tonight
is a Caribbean evening. The singers are wearing rasta wigs and have
blacked up. I tell them, "You know this would be seen as offensive in
Britain." "Look," they say in surprise, "we are not racist. We don't
even dislike black people. We just hate Serbs."
NOTA: This artcile was published at The Guardian (July 14, 2003). Julia
Pascal's last play Crossing Jerusalem is published by Oberon Books. She
can be tuched at pascal7038@...