No. 132

DR REUTER’S NOTES FROM APRIL 21, 1942, ABOUT THE MOOD AFTER DANGIĆ’S ARREST, ABOUT THE USTASHA MASS KILLING OF SERBS IN BJELOVAC, AND DISSATISFACTION WITH THE ATTITUDE OF THE GERMANS TOWARDS THE SERBS.^[1]

Ustasha atrocities^[2]

Transcript

Chief Medical Corps Officer with the

Commanding General and Military Commander in Serbia

O.U., April 21, 1942

A record on the situation on the Drina.

(Personal records by Assistant Psysician Dr. Reuter)

The leader of Ljotić’s^[3] group in Bajina Bašta, Miloš Lautner,^[4] told me on April 17, 1942:

The group has been in action for 7 months now, but no one cares about it. In the last 8 weeks, it received seven pairs of shoes for 350 people, otherwise nothing. In contrast, the Russian Protection Corps received the best footwear and good Yugoslav uniforms, although the Russians do nothing and are almost unusable militarily, for they are all too old.

After Dangić’s arrest^[5], Ljotić’s people became insecure, because, given that they were Dangić’s sympathizers, they fear that a stand against them in some form will be taken.

Dangić’s people should be expected to cross over to the Partisans in large numbers from now on, in order to protect their back from the Ustashas and the Germans. Dangić’s arrest could have far-reaching consequences for the insurgent movement throughout Bosnia and Sandžak.

It cannot be understood in Serbian circles that the Germans are watching the Ustasha attrocities so calmly and that they still expect the Serbs to be on their side.

The driving force behind the Ustasha killings is the Roman Catholic Church. Priests incite Ustashas to kill. They give them brandy and bless them before their marauding attacks. They tell them that with this mission they will perform a God-pleasing deed when they ruthlessly eradicate the heretical Orthodox men together with women and children. Priests from Croatia want to make a stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church and a bastion against all future anti-Catholic efforts.

In the afternoon of April 17, 1942, I visited the village of Bijelovac^[6] on the other side of the Drina, 6 km away from Ljubovija. Six days ago, the Ustashas came here in seven trucks, killed women and children for one and a half to two hours, and then left again. Most of the corpses were immediately dumped in the Drina, and the rest were later buried by the Serbs.

In front of the village, there was a large open space, where traces of murders, scattered pieces of clothing, dried ponds of blood, broken furniture, etc. could be found all around.

In one place lay what was left of a female corpse and a corpse of a small child, which they had dogs devour (Attachment, Fig. 1).

There were a lot of clothes for women and children in one place. The ground was soaked with blood. (Fig. 2)

An inverted cradle hung in a bush, and beds and a children’s shirt lay next to it. (Fig. 3)

On the bank of the Drina, I saw a dog devouring a woman’s corpse, of which only the skull, pelvis and womb remained. The intestine lay like a long rope pulled between the rocks on the shore. (Fig. 4)

At a distance of about 3 km from the Drina, there was a fresh grave of a corpse found only a few days later. I had it opened. It was a woman who had severe stab wounds and multiple fractures, as well as large hemorrhages, which must have been caused by blows to the forehead and right temple. There were stab wounds on the neck and wide cuts on the chest and body. The right ear was cut in half and torn (Figures 5 and 6).

It is stated everywhere that the Ustashas were drunk during this attack. Among them were several who did not wear a “U” on their hats, yet they had the Soviet five-pointed star. These Partisans did everything that the Ustashas ordered, so it is obvious that the latter had command.

After the withdrawal of the Ustashas, this territory was occupied by Dangić’s men. They are slowly pushing the Ustashas northward and westward, but they lack weapons and ammunition. They buy ammunition from Serbia, one bullet for 5 Dinars.

The commander of Dangić’s men there is the former active court captain Voja Kordonski from Belgrade. In a conversation with him, when Dangić’s brother^[7] was present, among others, the commander stated that he hated the Germans and after the issue of Partisans and Ustashas was resolved, he was waiting to go against the Germans. He, like all Serbs, would gladly maintain a sincere friendship with Germany, because they admire that country and in fact do not have any really conflicting interests with it. However, he does not see any possibility for an agreement, considering that Germany’s attitude, and especially lately, was such that it cannot expect Serbs to be its friends.

In the Balkans, Germany pursues one policy towards different parties. It promises a lot and doesn’t stick to anything. The former trust in German assurances no longer exists.

Germany must take a clear position if it wants to live in friendship with the Serbian people. It must first take an undoubtedly friendly attitude towards all Serbs, even towards those on the other side of the new border. Instead, Germany is friendly towards the Serbs within the new borders, but supports or tolerates all efforts directed against the Serbs outside these borders. It doesn’t want to see what is really going on. The main blame for that lies with Berlin, which has no idea about the real situation in the Balkans and rejects it as a marginal one, without seeing clearly its great role, which it still has today, and which it will have in the future in the war events.

Signed

Dr. Reuter

Assistant Physician

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 394-397. See Figs. 17-20 and documents nos. 140 and 158 in this book.

^[2] Handwritten note.

^[3] Dimitrije Ljotić.

^[4] Lieutenant Miloš Lautner (Miloš Vojinović, Bogoljub Lautner), Commander of the 10th Regiment of the Serbian Volunteer Corps, the armed formations of the Zbor organization in occupied Serbia; See: M. Stefanović, Zbor Dimitrija Ljotića, 182-184; S. C. Ćirković, Ko je ko u Nedićevoj Srbiji, 107.

^[5] Dangić was arrested on April 12, 1942.

^[6] Bjelovac.

^[7] Vojin Dangić.

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.