Архив Војводине / Archives of Vojvodina

No. 156

REVIEW OF THE REPORT OF THE COMMANDER OF THE 10TH VOLUNTEER DETACHMENT, AT THE BEGINNING OF MAY 1942, ON THE USTASHA KILLING AND MOLESTING SERB CIVILIANS, THE PERMISSION GIVEN BY THE USTASHAS TO TRANSFER PART OF THE REFUGEES TO SERBIA AND ON THE TALKS WITH USTASHA COMMANDERS IN BAJINA BAŠTA.[1]

Transcript!

 

from the report of the commander of the Serbian volunteer unit in Bajina

Bašta about the behavior of the Ustashas on the Drina.

  1. About the officers, who lead the Ustashas, this has become known:

Among them is the former Yugoslav Guards Lieutenant Miloš (now Petar) Bobić, son-in-law of the Jewish doctor Dr. Lewi.[2] It has become known that Bobić is currently with the Partisans in Užice and that he is in the ranks of the Communists. This statement is given by the cavalry lieutenant in the reserve, Milan Dr. Dukić.

On May 4, 1942, he (Bobić) gave a speech to the Ustashas at the saw mill across the road from Derventa, [3] in which he forbade the burning of houses, and ordered: “All should be killed.” Obrad Golić, the commander of the guard and Junior Sergeant Petar Radojević from Džinići[4] (Derventa), heard this, among others. Apart from Bobić, there are also former Yugoslav lieutenants Pero Malić and Anton Kraljević.

II. On 4. 5. the Ustashas shot at women and children in Tijovo[5] (Derventa) and on that occasion killed one child and 4 women, and the inhabitants of the place beat one wounded Chetnik to death. On that day, they also fired onto the right bank of the Drina. On 5 May 1942, at around 10 a.m., 5 bullets were fired at the border guard near Džinić,[6] although the border guard was 150 m away from the right bank. Borisav Milutinović and Dušan Sasić were standing guard.

III.    On May 4, an Ustasha shouted at Corporal Dragomir Živanović to pull a boat out of the water and let it cross the Drina. In this Ustasha, border guard Vlada Milovanović recognized a certain grammar school student named “Aco” from Negotin, who dropped out from grammar school before the war due to his Communist activities.

IV. On the night of May 5-6, in Skelani, the Ustashas separated elderly women from younger and unmarried women, whereafter they raped them. So far, it is known that the following women were raped: “Milica Jevtić, Milica Vasić and Milana Marković from Božići, Radosava Milavamović[7] from Postolje and Milica Javistić, the girl Vidosava Jostić went insane at the moment when the Ustashas forced her to walk naked between them. These women are in the Bajina Bašta camp. So far, the following have been killed: Marija Nikolić from Pribojeviš, [8] she was holding a child in her lap who was also wounded; these were slaughtered: Novka Camić from Toplica, two children left behind, Miljuša Prodin, five children left behind, Đurđija Ran­ković, Milija Draginja Milovanović from Pribojevići says that these women were killed:

Dadisava Brenić with her six children, Mileva Brenić with five children, Anka Milovanović from Postolje with five children, then Milena Duravić from Derventa, who died in the camp in Bajina Bašta from the consequences of a stray bullet”.

Danica Novaković from Koprivna, Vlasenica District, and Julka Milo­vanović from Postolje, both in the Bajina Bašta camp, state that the Ustashas cursed Hitler and cursed their mothers, saying that they would drive the Germans and Nedić out of Serbia in a few days.

The commander of the 10th Volunteer Unit[9] in Bajina Bašta tried to obtain a permit for the transport of women, children and food, which was allowed by the commander of the Ustasha unit. On the night of the 5th and 6th, an officer of the 10th Volunteer Unit transferred 400 women and children as well as food supplies, and all those people who were found there by the Ustashas. About 200 of them are still with the Ustashas in the prison at Skelani.

The commander of the 10th Volunteer Unit tried to save these people as well. The Ustasha commander came to Bajina Bašta on the evening of the 6th of this month to get acquainted with the commander of the 10th Volunteer Unit. During the conversation, the Ustasha leader said, among other things:

He was in Sarajevo on April 6, 1941, and he cursed Hitler most openly. The man’s name is Grdić. He praises relations in the former Yugoslavia. Before the war, he was a junior sergeant in the 10th Infantry Regiment. He said, we were brothers, the Germans made us quarrel, and when they leave, we will go hand in hand again. Furthermore, he was of the opinion that the Supreme Leader called the Mohammedans “flowers” only for a month because they had to be given weapons. Grdić said that the Croatian army is not worth a bean. He and other Ustasha-Croats openly incite the people against the Mohammedans and blame these for all the slaughter, looting, rape, etc., for the Ustashas have no power over them. He said that, although the Ustasha corporal Maconja, a Mohammedan, was sitting next to him, but could not hear this, because Grdić was whispering all this about Hitler, the Croatian army and the Mohammedans in his ear.

The 2nd Ustasha is a gendarmerie sergeant, formerly the commander of the gendarmerie station in Stari Bar and during the war in Danilovgrad (Montenegro), a native of Prijepolje. He said: “He would gladly flee for Serbia and probably should not say that Yugoslavia was rotten inside, because everyone lived well. He went to the Ustashas only because the gendarmerie stations were attacked by the Chetniks. He was safer with the Ustashas, for they were larger in numbers. He said he would still see where he would be when the war ends.”

The third is a Mohammedan from Foča and his name is Maconja, a shoemaker in Foča. He is very obtuse (he is a Mohammedan). He says that Croatia and the Croats are to blame for the situation in Bosnia, they manipulated both the Serbs and the Mohammedans into killing each other.

Their superior is an ensign, a former emigrant, a man of better culture. He promised that the refugees in his sector could return and that they would not be exposed to any danger.

Conclusion:

They blame each other, express dissatisfaction with today’s relations, indirectly criticize the leadership of today’s Croatia, they all praise the conditions in Yugoslavia, they are politically inconsistent, blame Germany for the current situation, wait for things to be finally settled when the war is over, do not believe in the victory of Germany and are belittling the Croatian army. They are afraid of a German punitive expedition, they add that the Croatian Colonel Domašević, with his troop, wife and children, switched over to the Partisans near Vojnić (Hrvatski Karlovac).

In the conversation, they add that there is no chance that they could stay in this area. The Ustasha Maconja especially agreed with this.

For accuracy of the transcript:

signed

Captain

[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 544-545.

[2] It probably refers to Dr. Avram Levi Kurt from the Partisan hospital in Užice.

[3] Derventa near Vlasenica.

[4] Džindići.

[5] Unidentified village.

[6] Džindići.

[7] Milovanović.

[8] Pribojevići.

[9] Lieutenant Miloš Lautner Vojinović.

This – English – edition of the book is a translation of the one in the Serbian language, published in 2022 under the title Ustaška zverstva: Zbornik dokumenata (1941–1942). As far as the corpus of the Dossier from the personal fonds of Slavko Odić is concerned – and it makes the essential body of this book – the translation team worked from its Serbian version given in the said book and not from the German original.

The Serbian edition, with the documents translated from German, was printed in the Cyrillic alphabet, which necessitated some explanations provided by the Editor, Dr. Milan Koljanin, with regard to the linguistic traits, orthography and punctuation resorted to by the translators from German into Serbian (Tatjana Janićijević, Akademija Oxford) and the Editor. Naturally enough, numerous clarifications referring to the Serbian edition do not apply on the English one in most of the aspects of translation work. Hence the need to write this Note.

To begin with, the translators basically opted for the varieties of the American English rather than British English.

Personal names in the officially processed documents are most often written in what is today considered inverse order: family name/surname first, followed by one’s first/Christian name, without a comma in between.

Originally, the documents (letters, reports, statements etc.) were written (typed) in bureaucratic style and with a page layout practised by German offices, so these traits have been retained herein, and so have the obvious spelling and/or typing errors (personal names, toponyms); the latter have been corrected in the footnotes. The parts of text/sentences which are underlined or written with spaces between letters as means of emphasis correspond to the German original and its Serbian/Croat counterpart. The same applies to whole words or lines written in capital letters.

Punctuation has been kept almost completely, except when the meaning demanded comma (usually related to the rules of word order in an English sentence). Some marks, such as hyphens, dashes or slashes may impress the Reader as outdated or misplaced. Earlier typewriters did not have buttons with parentheses, and the slash was used instead of them.

Dates are written with differing uses or omissions of period (full stop), whereby month is written in three ways: fully in letters (20 January), in Arabic numerals (e.g. 20.1.) or Roman numerals (e.g. 20.I.). In rare cases, the slash can be found in dates (e.g. 12./X. 1941), but not as a regular separator between their constituents. Years are occasionaly written without the first digit, e.g. 942 instead of 1942, which is a frequent occurrence in oral communication.

Abbreviations, other than official identification means for offices, titles or codenames (VB, MA, RSHA etc.), have been translated (e.g. ’etc.’). The translators chose to retain the Croat/Serbian abbreviation for the name of the wartime ’state’, that is, ’NDH’ is standing for Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia) instead of the less known English name (ISC). Some words were written in a shortened form for the reason of economy of expression, and the habit has been transferred to the translation, including the Editor’s intervention in the Serbian edition: Reg.[ister], Gend.[armerie], Gor[nja] Tuzla.

Footnotes in the English edition partially differ from those in the Serbian version. Some proved to be unnecessary (those that provided original names which were transliterated into the phonetical Cyrillic alphabet). New footnotes have been added by the Subeditor in order to explain/clarify the specific, locally used, words or phrases with which the Reader may not be familiar (such as slava, din, sokolski dom), or to indicate some nuances in the meaning (student, profesor). Here and there, the Reader will find notes in brackets inserted into the main body of the text by translators or the Editor where immediate understanding was needed.

Finally, it is noteworthy that the above-mentioned bureaucratic style of the presented documents mirrors the established conventions of communication in Central Europe and the Balkans of the first half of the 20th century, particularly in state and military affairs, yet also illustrates the specific ’hierarchy’ of various authorities on the occupied territories during World War Two, accentuating the relations between the German organs/institutions in power and the various offices subordinated to the administrative and military system of the Third Reich. As to the information, facts and accounts of events recorded in these documents, they are the subject of the history science and studies related thereto.

A. Č. P.