No. 145

ATTACHMENT TO THE OVERVIEW OF THE REPORTS ON THE USTASHA MASS KILLINGS OF THE SERB POPULATION ON THE BANK OF THE DRINA RIVER, ACCORDING TO THE REPORTS OF THE MEMBERS OF THE 714^TH INFANTRY DIVISION FROM APRIL 19, 1942.^[1]

Attachment to the overview of atrocities in Croatia

submitted by 714. J. D.^[2] on 19. 4. 42.

Transcript.

Report on the killings of the Serb population by the Croatian army
in the Drina sector.

On April 9, First Class Sergeant Klaus Buhr, together with a Serbian captain of the border police, was in a patrol drive in the direction of Rogačica. A clash between Croats and Chetniks took place near Bjelovac, because the Croats tried to prevent the crossing of the Serb refugees. At the same time, several projectiles were fired with mortars and artillery onto the Serbian territory. The First Class Sergeant ran to the bank of the Drina without being shot at and saw the following there:

“Serb women, shouting loudly, and one part with very small children in their arms, ran along the bank of the Drina. At that time, the Croats had already rushed at them and cut the necks of 4 women and several children, and then threw the corpses into the Drina. In this way, a total of 13 women and children were killed in this one place.”

On 10. 4. Second Class Lieutenant Hanf returned with several people from the control patrol from Zvornik and stopped near Culine in order to supervise and inspect the refugees because the stream of refugees was especially thick at this place. A few minutes after he stopped, the following happened:

“The Croats, with a force of 30 men, came running to the place where the refugees were. Second Class Lieutenant Hanf told his interpreter to shout at them to move away and not to shoot. The German army is here. At this they moved about 200 m away, behind a fence they took up a position and opened fire. At this, Second Class Lieutenant Hanf issued an order to return fire with rifles and light machine guns.”

Thereby, Second Class Lieutenant Hanf saw the following:

“When the Croats withdrew from there at our request, they were met by 2 women with five children from one house, who had once again ran into the house to pick up the most necessary things. The Croats immediately, rushed at them and killed these 2 women and five children.”

From the refugees, who were transferred about 30 minutes before, Second Class Lieutenant Hanf learned the following: “Across the river from Culine, at a distance of about 250 m from the Drina, there lie 35 corpses, only women and children, all terribly mutilated. The Croats slaughtered them and left them lying there on the spot.”

Signed Hanf

Second Class Lieutenant.

For accuracy:

Signed

Major.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 510.

^[2] 714th Infantry Division, 714. Infanteriedivision.

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.