No. 57

REPORT OF FEBRUARY 1942, ON THE CRIMES OF THE USTASHAS IN BANJA LUKA AND ITS SURROUNDINGS, IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 1942, AS WELL AS ON THE CRIMES OF THE USTASHAS IN SOME OTHER PARTS OF BOSNIA AND CROATIA IN 1941.^[1]

The month of February^[2]

Report

about the events in the vicinity of Banja Luka (former Vrbas Province)
in Croatia.

As already reported, the miners from the Lauš coal mine near Banja Luka were killed with sledgehammers and picks on February 7, 1942. This bloodshed was carried out under the leadership of a Roman Catholic priest – Jesuit^[3] from the Petričevac^[4] monastery, near Banja Luka. The number of victims was 47 miners, Serbs.

During Serbian Christmas, the Ustashas invaded the Serbian village of (Ć)Čelinac. In the houses, where they found Christmas candles burning, the entire population was killed, and the houses were burned.

In mid-February 1942, the Supreme Leader’s Body Guard came to Banja Luka. The villages of Motike, Drakulići^[5] and Pavlovac^[6] from the Banja Luka District were surrounded and all Serbs without exception, whether men or women, old or young, were slaughtered. The corpses were left unburied, so that dogs and pigs ate them.

Just as an example of the details of the manner in which the Serbs were tortured in Croatia, the following is stated:

Vasa Stanišević, a municipal notary from Turjak, Bosanska Gradiška District, was arrested on June 27, 1941 and handed over to the Ustashas. In a mill on Mount Kozara, he was first tied up, and then his hands and feet were broken, his nose and tongue were cut off; then his eyes were plucked out of his eye sockets. After that, he was castrated and then his meat was cut off piece by piece from his still living body. The report comes from the Croatian gendarme Alois Pintar from Turjak. Nežić Stevo from Romanovac, Bosanska Gradiška District, was killed in a similar way. The Ustashas lit a fire on his chest.

The murder of the protopresbyter Dušan Subotić from Banja Luka (former member of the Parliament) has already been reported on. It should be added that he was first beaten and spat at in the convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Bosanska Gradiška. He was then further beaten and tortured in the Catholic chapel in Stara Gradiška. He was later taken to a prison in Banja Luka, where both his arms and left leg were broken, and among many other sufferings from torture, a fire was lit on his chest.

The inhabitants of Bosanska Gradiška could see about 20 corpses in the water (sometimes even more) floating on the Sava River every day for seven weeks in the summer of 1941. The corpses were tied to each other with wire and often carried tablets with the inscription: “Free ride to Belgrade”^[7]. The bookstore owner Jovo Vranić from Bosanska Gradiška noticed an impaled corpse on a stake in July 1941. The victim was roasted on fire. He further saw countless mutilated corpses. Among them were those with severed heads, and many naked priests’ corpses with only red priestly ribbons.

Another one saw a family, nailed to the front door of the house, consisting of a father, mother and a little girl, floating along the Sava River.

At the end of January 1942, about 250 Serbs from the villages of Nožičko (Prnjavor District, Municipality of Svinjar), Romanovci, Elezić^[8] and Rogonja^[9], were taken to Stara Gradiška, to the frozen Sava river, and were slaughtered there. Shouts for help of these poor people were heard at night in Bosanska Gradiška.

SOME MORE EXAMPLES OF THE BRUTALITIES OF
THE CROATIAN USTASHAS IN BOSNIA.

1/ At the beginning of September 1941, in the village of Dugo Polje, Gradačac District, the Ustashas killed the merchant Ilija Krekić, his mother Mara (90 years old) and beat dead their dog. The corpse of the killed dog was placed on the corpse of the old woman.

2/ In the village of Majevac, Gradačac District, at the end of August 1941, Croats set fire to a Serbian church, during the fire, the arsonists danced kolo around the church.

3/ In the village of Podnovlje, Gradačac District, the Ustashas demolished the Serbian church. The Serbs were forced to defecate in the altar space.

4/ In the villages of the Ključ District, at the end of July and the beginning of August 1941, the Serbs were massacred. Women and children were locked in houses and these houses were set on fire.

5/ On September 6, 1941, in the Serb village of Semizovac near Sarajevo, the Ustashas drove the entire population into houses and then the houses were set on fire, so that they all died in flames.

6/ At the end of June 1941, the Ustashas in the village of Rakovica near Ilidža – Sarajevo, torched the population together with their houses.

7/ In September 1941, the Ustashas cruised through all the villages around Mrkonjić Grad; groups of 30-50 men, women and children were taken to Mrkonjić Grad and slaughtered there. They were buried on the site where dead animals are buried.

8/ In the little town of Teslić and in Usora, all Serbian priests were arrested together with their families, loaded into train cars and shipped in the direction of Bosanski Brod. Throughout this journey, Croats fired rifles and machine guns into this car.

9/ In the village of Velika Kladuša, 400 Serbs were killed in the Serbian church.

10/ In the Serbian church near Topusko, the Ustashas dishonored a Serbian female teacher on the holy altar.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 165-166.

^[2] Handwritten note.

^[3] Franciscan.

^[4] Petrićevac.

^[5] Drakulić.

^[6] Šargovac.

^[7] In the original: “Slobodna vožnja do Beograda”. – Subeditor’s note.

^[8] Elezagići.

^[9] Rogolji.

Subeditor’s Note

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.