Letter: Long memory

During the week of the Nazi Gold Conference, where the Vatican was accused of having laundered gold looted from the 28,000 Gypsy victims of Croatia's Ustashe Nazi puppet regime, you report on a heated academic debate concerning a tragedy that occurred 82 years ago in Turkey ("Israelis torn over Armenian 'holocaust'", 7 December). Victims have long memories - and rightly so.

As for the Ustashe's Second World War victims, these also included Jews but the vast majority were Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia. So you can imagine the dismay of the Krajina Serbs when in 1991 they were accused by most outside observers of paranoia for not wanting to be incorporated into a Tudjman-led Croatia which was unrepentant about its genocidal Ustashe predecessor. Today the Krajina Serbs languish in refugee camps in Serbia, the forgotten victims of "benign" ethnic cleansing, and Croatia's new- found near ethnic purity goes unremarked.

Mike Finch

Teddington

Middlesex