Today is the 10th anniversary of what is usually described as the worst massacre of civilians in Europe since World War II. There is no point in my adding to the worldwide condemnations of the killing of at least 7,000 men and boys in cold blood by Serb forces. But what is worth noting is that a very large number of Serbs have yet to own up to this horrible crime that was carried out in their name. For example, a declaration in the Belgrade-based parliament condemning the massacre recently failed to pass. What are we to make of this?

To some extent, it reflects the refusal of many Serbs to acknowledge that the massacre actually took place, although the recent broadcast of a video on nationwide television showing several Bosnian Muslims being shot in cold blood seems to have had a dramatic impact on at least some Serbs who viewed it. Nevertheless, many Serbs continue to play the role that Holocaust-deniers have long played in regards to the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis. A variation on this theme is the statement, often heard by journalists working in Serbia, that there were atrocities on both sides and the Serbs should not be singled out--even though there is no evidence of a massacre on this scale being carried out by Bosnians or Croatians, despite their admittedly unclean hands during the Balkan wars.

Yet I think the most important lesson is that genocide, and the Fascistic thinking that accompanies it, was not an activity restricted to the Nazis--they just did it better than anyone else ever has, before or since. In the events leading up to and including World War II, tens of millions of Europeans harbored overt anti-semitic sentiments, and millions participated directly in the persecution of Jews. At the time, those participants obviously felt entirely justified in what they did, and perhaps only regretted it when their side lost the war--or maybe not even then. The great American journalist William Shirer, in his tour of Germany after the war, found few people ready to apologize for what their nation had done. Their sons and daughters were more willing to do so after Germany's "rehabilitation."

Many are opposed to the notion of collective responsibility, and reasonably so. Yet the Nazis were enormously popular in Germany and many other places as well, especially Austria, and until a new generation began to acknowledge what their parents had done collective responsibility was impossible to escape. The same goes for the Serbs today: Will they let their children take the rap, or admit what their nation has done?