No. 102

STATEMENT OF THE REFUGEE DUŠAN EREMIĆ FROM VOJNIĆ ABOUT THE USTASHA KILLINGS AND LOOTING OF THE SERBS IN VOJNIĆ AND THE SURROUNDING VILLAGES, AT THE END OF JULY AND IN AUGUST 1941.^[1]

15/4 42^[2]

EREMIĆ DUŠAN, refugee, private-business clerk from Vojnić, 24 years old, unmarried, states the following:

On July 29 this year, at 10 a.m. – it was one Tuesday – uniformed Ustashas from Vrginmost arrived in Vojnić on 3 trucks. All of them were led by the head of the Ustasha police from Zagreb, Cerovski Božidar.^[3] They first visited the village of Vojišnica, which is 2 km away from Vojnić. Every Serb they met on the way was called to get on the trucks.

In the village of Vojišnica, they took the following people: Novaković Rade, Arlov Jovan, Kljukovnica Stanko was killed on the spot, Ćorda Stanko, Hajdin Miloš, Knežević Petar, Košarić Mihail, Kosić Đuro and Trbojević Mićo. They were all taken to Vojnić.

The following people in Vojnić: Ninković Petar, priest, Živković Mihajlo, clerk, Gušić Marko, clerk, Bendić Mihajlo, clerk, Vrgo^[4] Jovan, municipal treasurer, Mihajlović Simo, farmer, Gvozdić Đuro, Rašković Stanko, peasants, Basara Miloš, retired financial clerk, Korać Mihajlo, peasant, and many others, whose names I do not know. The Ustashas also wanted to arrest me, but my brother-in-law, Vujnović Vladimir, a Croat, otherwise a private clerk, saved me from their hands. He helped many other Serbs to escape, that is, he was of help to them.

Bosnić Stanko, a farmer from Vojnić, drove a car full of wood to the Vojnić train station, which was 9 km away, on the mentioned day. The Ustashas met him on the road, took him off the car, hit him in the head with a mallet, threw him on a truck and took him away with other Serbs. Kekić Milan, a 22-year-old butcher’s assistant from Vojnić, was ordered to slaughter the cattle they had stolen, whereafter he was killed in the garden of Mihailović Petar from Vojnić. Maćešić Milka, 16 years old, who was grazing her cattle, was killed by the Ustashas on the spot. The above-mentioned Serbs were taken by the Ustashas from Vojnić via Tušilović in the direction of Krnjak and Brezova Glava, hit with a mallet and buried.

On August 2 of this year, the Ustashas came again, this time with 7 empty motor vehicles. This time, Cerović^[5] was not present. In the early morning hours, they gathered the Serbs in the neighboring villages, namely: Hajdin Nikola and Gliša, Jurić Dragan, Novaković Dušan, Marinković Cvijan, municipal clerk, Bukva Mihajlo, Rašković Đuro, Rašković Dušan and his son Miloš, Korać Jovo and his son Mile, Crnković Pavle and his 15-year-old son Mile, Kljukovnica Nikola and his son Veljko, 28 years old, Lisić Stanko and many others. On that day, they arrested 62 Serbs from Vojnić. On the same day, at 11 a.m., all of them were taken to the Orthodox church in Vojnić. They were abused in the church and whoever the Ustashas could get their hands on was beaten. The next morning they were released.

Kljukovnica Veljko was abused so hard that his internal organs were injured and he spat blood. Hajdin Nikola died in the church from abuse. Hajdin Glišo died of severe injuries after 3 days. Hajdin Nikola (Capan) had a severely injured hindgut. On the same day, Hajdin “Vitez” and Hajdin Ninko were killed on the spot at home. All the found property and valuables, money, watches and rings were transferred to Glina. The next day, the Ustashas completely looted and robbed the villages of Kuplensko, Miholjska and Krstinja. Many Serbs were killed. I don’t know any Ustashas except Cerovski Božidar, but I know exactly that those Ustashas came from Petrinja and Glina.

On the night of August 10, the Ustashas gathered 33 Serbs, took them all to Vojnić, and on the meadow of Blažević Gnjatije from Vojnić, they were thrown half dead into the canal and then buried. On September 3, I left Vojnić, and on September 4, I arrived in Belgrade.

^[1] AВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 333.

^[2] Handwritten date and initials

^[3] Tko je tko u NDH, 67-68 (G. A. Blažeković i Z. Dizdar).

^[4] Vrga.

^[5] Cerovski.

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.