Friday December 31, 2021
Because of pro-Serb activities
Historian Greif doesn’t get a Cross of Merit
The Federal Foreign Office proposes the historian Gideon Greif for the Federal Cross of Merit. However, because of his studies on the Srebrenica massacre, the researcher has come under fire – and the Federal Foreign Office withdraws his proposal.
The Israeli historian Gideon Greif does not receive the Federal Cross of Merit after all. The originally planned honor of the scientist, who was controversial for his pro-Serbian activities, had caused irritation – especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Office of the Federal President announced at the end of October that the decision would be reviewed in coordination with the Federal Foreign Office. It did not comment on the issue on Friday.
In Israel and the United States, Greif primarily conducts research on the Holocaust, but has also distinguished himself as a denier of the Srebrenica genocide. The 70-year-old headed an international commission of historians, which in June 2021 denied the genocidal nature of the massacre in a more than 1000-page report.
In Srebenica, Bosnian-Serb troops murdered more than 8,000 Muslims during the Bosnian War in 1995. Independent historians do not attach any scientific value to the report. The commission was set up by the leading politician of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Milorad Dodik. Dodik operates the separation of the Serbian Republic from the Bosnian state association.
Greif has also been active in Serbia for many years. He also published work exaggerating the number of Serbian casualties in World War II. Several judgments by the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague classify the massacre as genocide. The high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Valentin Inzko, who was in office until the end of July, made the denial of the Srebrenica genocide – but also of other war crimes in the Bosnian War (1992-1995) – a criminal offense.
The Bosnian news portal “klix.ba” first reported on the decision not to give Greif the Federal Cross of Merit. It published a facsimile of a reply from the Foreign Office to a university professor of Bosnian origin, Esnaf Begic, who was teaching in Osnabrück. It says: “The Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs has withdrawn his proposal to award Professor Greif the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.” The letter is dated December 7th.