AMERICAN SERBS PERISH,
EMERGE AS HEROES
Saint Sava’s Relics Buried in Manhattan Rubble
NEW YORK, NY [A Srbobran Exclusive] -- “I was in my apartment next to the Church at about a quarter to 9 AM when I heard a very loud, low flying airplane,” reports Fr. Djokan Majstorovic of the St. Sava Serbian Cathedral in New York City, “I thought: this guy’s lost, but I didn’t think much more about it. Soon after, the messages about what was going on starting arriving by email, and I saw the world trade center go down on television. It was awful.”
Our Serbian Cathedral in Manhattan is about 100 yards from Broadway (between Broadway and 6th Street) and at least a couple of miles away from what was the world trade center. September 11, 2001, was the holy day of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist on the Orthodox Christian calendar. A holy day liturgy was served in the Cathedral. Special prayers were added for the departed and the living.
“I know of a few of our Serbs who work in the WTC who survived,” says Fr. Djokan, “Milenko Djurasovic of the Holy Ascension Parish (New Gracanica) in Paterson, New Jersey, was on the 91st floor, and he got out. Many Serbs work in the buildings around the center, people like Milan Prastalo and Vera Bujovic, both of whom got out.”
“At this point, I have no information about missing or deceased Serbs, “ he reports, “I can’t get through to the priests in New Jersey.”
V. Rev. Toma Popovic, the parish priest of the New Gracanica parish in New York, could not be reached for additional comment.
Zora Cvijic, a paralegel who works across the street from the World Trade Center (but was on jury duty in Brooklyn on the fateful day in question) reports that a friend of her family, a young Serbian girl from New Jersey who worked on the 106th floor of the WTC, cannot be located. To date, this friend is not on her company’s dead or missing list, so there is still hope. Please keep her and her family in your prayers.
Zora also reports that most of the Serbs she knows who worked in the WTC were on the 80th floor or below, and they got out. She is grateful to God because, as she puts it, “so many Serbs I know were unharmed even though they were in the towers”.
Protinica Andjelka Veselinovic of the St. George Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey reports that so far all parishioners are accounted for. Regrettably, she also notes that a young Serbian fellow from the nearby St. John the Baptist Church in Paterson, New Jersey is missing in the wake of the New York explosions. “No one knows where he is. The Church had a parastos on September 14, 2001, and prayers were said for him too. We don’t know . . .”
It is ironic that a young Serb from a parish named in honor of the holy Baptist is missing as a result of a surprise attack on the day commemorating that saint’s martyrdom. All American and Canadian Serbs are requested to offer intensified prayers on behalf of this young Serbian and his family.
Fr. Toma Stojsich, who lives in Brooklyn but serves the Paterson parish could not be reached. Very Rev. Predrag Micic of the nearby New Gracanica parish (Elizabeth, NJ) is currently in Serbia and likewise could not be reached.
On Friday, September 14, 2001 the St. Sava Cathedral responded to President Bush’s call to churches across America by holding a memorial service for the deceased and a prayer service for the wounded. Fr. Djokan, parishioners and non-Serbian visitors who strayed into the Cathedral banded together and also prayed for an increase in love and a decrease in hostilities. These prayers were repeated following Divine Liturgy on Sunday, September 16, 2001.
Many Serbs in New Jersey and New York have contracting businesses and a few of our sources indicate that a number of our people stood shoulder to shoulder with the rescue and other volunteer workers still making their way through the rubble in search of life. May the Good Lord reward their concern and their efforts.
According to SSF President Milka Chuk, Alexander Filipov, a Serb born in Windsor, Ont., was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the WTC. This electric engineer lived in Concord, Massachusetts and was 70 years old. All American and Canadian Serbs are asked to please light a candle and to say a prayer in his memory.
According to the information service of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, located about 500 feet from ground zero, was demolished by the falling rubble of the WTC. Mercifully, Fr. John Romas, parish priest, was not present at the time. Vassilios Torazanos, 50, the only parishioner in the Church on the morning of September 11, rushed out of the building moments after the first jet crashed into the south tower. He survived.
Fr. Romas is attempting to locate a site in the area to hold church services and plans to ask permission from city officials to allow him to retrieve the church's holy relics: those of St. Nicholas, St. Katherine and St. Sava. They were kept in an ossuary on what had been the top floor of the four-story building.
Among the church's unique characteristics were its small size and icons, a gift from the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II. Listed among the parish’s first members were the parents of television star Telly Savalas.
Parishioners plan to rebuild the St. Nicholas Church and have established an account for anyone who would like to donate. (St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, Atlantic Bank, account number 09062602, 8010 5th Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11209).
According to the September 17, 2001 edition of USA Today, Army Specialist Michael Petrovich, 32, was in the affected area of the Pentagon at the time of the terrorist attack. He threw a desktop computer through a window, then followed it to safety, but not before resucing Dalisay Olaes, and leading her to an open window (source: American Forces Information Services, September 13, 2001).
The American Srbobran has not confirmed Spc. Petrovich’s hometown or ethnic origin. Any American or Canadian Serb with information to this effect is asked to please notify this newspaper.
According to the information service of the Orthodox Church in America, the Very Rev. John Stefero, an Orthodox US Air Force Chaplain, was also in the Pentagon when the plane sliced through the side of the massive building. Father Stefero immediately assisted in relief efforts.
Washington, D.C.-based SNF Representative Milan Visnick has informed us that, to date, there is no indication of any Serbs being harmed as a result of the attack on the nation’s capital.
PARASTOS AT PENNSYLVANIA CRASH SITE
Rev. Stevan Rocknage of the St. Sava Parish, McKeesport, Penna., is the President of the Orthodox Clergy Association of Greater Pittsburgh. This association is planning to hold a 40-day memorial parastos at the crash site near Somerset, Penna. About 50 Orthodox parishes are in the vicinity of Somerset. The tentative date for the parastos is October 24, 2001. For more information please contact Fr. Stevo at (412) 672-1872.
PLEASE LET US KNOW
All readers are asked to please notify the American Srbobran of any additional information that you may have about Serbs affected by the September 11 tragedy. Information can be emailed to Sradoja@msn.com, or mailed to SNF, One Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15222.
Readers who are interested in learning how to speak to their children in a Christian context about these tragic events are invited to log on to the web site of the Orthodox Church in America, which has a link about this subject.
ALBANIANS AGAINST AMERICA
According to Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, “U.S. intelligence officials are investigating ties between the terrorists who carried out [the] suicide airliner attacks and associates of Osama bin Laden based in Albania. The connections were described as support for the terrorist operation to hijack U.S. commercial jetliners and crash them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, according to U.S. intelligence officials. No further details of the support could be learned.”
BIN LADEN AGAINST THE SERBS
Also according to Gertz, “Since the mid-1990s, bin Laden associates have been based in Tirana, Albania's capital, as well as in at least two other towns . . . Islamic radicals, including supporters of bin Laden, have been supporting Albanian rebels fighting in the region, including members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Intelligence officials have said there are reports that KLA members have been trained at bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan.”
"Bin Laden's group has a network in Albania," confirmed former CIA counter-terrorism official Vince Cannistraro.
WRACKING HAVOC ALL OVER THE BALKANS
"Bin Laden's organization has two bases in Bosnia-Hercegovina, two in Kosovo, and is also present in Albania," Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihailovic was quoted by the independent Beta news agency as saying. In addition, the Saudi radical has followers among the Albanians in Macedonia.
Press reports in Albania suggest border police have been given a list of 12 suspects wanted by Interpol following the attacks in the United States.
A spokesman for the Bosnian government denied allegations in that “country's” media that bin Laden holds a Bosnian passport. Four hundred nationals of Islamic countries carry Bosnian passports, but a spokesman for Sarajevo, Amer Kapetanovic, said categorically that "Ossama bin Laden does not."
According to Alix Kroeger of the BBC World Service,
“Over the past few years
Bosnia-Hercegovina has become one of the principal routes for the trafficking
of illegal immigrants into Western Europe. . . . According to the UN mission in
Bosnia last year alone there were an estimated 40 to 50 thousand who passed
through . . . And in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington, there
is a new concern that Islamic militants could be using Bosnia as their route
into the West.”
UNCLE SAM, WE ARE WITH YOU
Today, American Serbs stand by their nation, and Canadian Serbs stand by their neighbor, as they always have in the past.
Proportionally, American Serbs have provided Uncle Sam with the highest number of Congressional Medal of Honor Winners of any ethnic group in the United States.
After WWI President Woodrow Wilson, as a token of gratitude for the valor and friendship of the Serbs, ordered that the Serbian flag fly over the U.S. Capital and White House. Only one other foreign flag has ever flown over Washington. At President’s Wilson’s urging, church bells peeled out across this country in tribute to America’s freedom loving friends, the Serbs.
Serbians are responsible for the largest rescue of Americans ever in the history of this great land – the Halyard Rescue Mission of World War Two -- which led to President Truman awarding the American Legion of Merit to General Draza Mihailovich.
During WWII, the SNF donated two bombers to the war effort.
Serbs have always been number one Americans.
Regrettably, in the last decade of the twentieth century, radical Moslems in Bosnia and Kosovo, labeled terrorists by the US government itself, succeeding in wresting support from some segments of the US government and media. These radicals, bent on the destruction of Yugoslavia and Serbia, hired public relations firms that registered themselves under the FARA Act (“Foreign Agents Registration Act”) and concocted false claims of wrongdoing purportedly committed by the Serbs, much like the shrill, false, and radical Islamic claims now circulated against America.
Sadly, this led to the arming of the Albanian Moslems and Bosnian Moslems (just like when the State Department blindly armed the Afghans, Iranians and other radicals) and ultimately to the bombing of Serbia in 1999.
The Serbians, however, are tried and true friends of America and everything it stands for. Violence was not the Serbian response. Prayer vigils, meetings with elected officials, demonstrations, and editorials – participation in the process of good citizenship – was the response of the Christian Serbs. The Serbian plea was simple: “Please do not arm these radical Moslems. They are not telling you the truth. Eventually, helping them will come back to haunt America”. At that time, the Serbs were in one respect very much like St. John the Baptist. They were voices crying in the wilderness. Very few were willing to listen. Much like the Baptist himself, the Serbs paid the ultimate price for the truth that they shared.
It is now with great humility that the Serbs once again turn to God with prayers that this land, the greatest on earth, successfully uproots every cell of Islamic radical terrorism throughout the world, and that this finally means that the federal government cuts off its support for freedom’s adversaries, the terror-based KLA in Kosovo, and for the radical, anti-Christian elements in the Bosnian-Croat Federation. America’s future depends on it. So does the future of humanity and civilization as we know it.
We Serbs love this great land and have always stood by her. Today, we stand with her yet again. The American flag is flying high in each of our minds and hearts, and a vigil burns on each of our mantles. May God bless America. May God help President Bush. May the American victory be swift, sure and abiding.
As this piece goes to press, we are saddened by some of the commentary emanating from the liberal left. In a tortured attempt to find proof that Islam itself is not America’s enemy, and that Moslems suffer too, one pundit was recently seen on PBS dredging up the myth of “genocide” in Srebrenica, claiming that in 1995 it was the Moslems who were the victims and the Serbs who were the culprits.
He did not bother to reveal to his audience that the Bosnian Serbian army was doing in its country exactly what every good American now wants done in the United States: uprooting the radical fighters trained in the spirit and tactics of terror, so that its homeland may be free of these plights.
A colleague of his from Harvard was eager to point out that America is pluralistic, and that it was constitutionally wrong for the U.S. to ever consider itself Christian or even Judeo-Christian, in the first place. We are pluralistic, she said, “Islam is us, and we are Islam.” To think otherwise, she chided, is sheer ignorance.
Sticking to the same old public relations fiction about the Serbs, and abandoning Judeo-Christianity as the foundation of this nation, can only lead to the same thing that arming bin Laden in the 1980s has brought us today: disaster. Let us hope that the American people show more wisdom, resolve, and influence over their elected officials that these self-appointed pundits drawing from the dust heap of discredited ideas that were the bedrock of the Clinton/Albright era.
One way or the other, Serbs will stay true to this land. God controls the outcome, not the pundits. We have patience. We have trust in the Lord. We believe in America.
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