No. 153

SECOND CLASS LIEUTENANT STÖLBEN’S REPORT, MAY 3, 1942, ON CROATIAN TROOPS KILLING AND LOOTING SERB CIVILIANS ON THE BANK OF THE DRINA RIVER NEAR MILOŠEVIĆI.^[1]

Transcript!

Report of Second Class Lieutenant Stoelben^[2] from

the 8th / Infantry Regiment 737^[3] Resnik, May 3, 42

In the evening, on May 1, 1942, at around 6:30 p.m., Croatian units emerged from the wooded areas near Barimo and Mioševići^[4] from the slopes down toward the left bank of the Drina. All of that was accompanied by fierce gunfire. The units moved toward the river in irregular groups, driving civilians in front of them. Immediately behind the first groups rode a German second class lieutenant and introduced himself to me from one river bank to the other as a liaison officer. Approximately 100 m behind him there was an Italian officer, followed by a crowd, an estimated 200-300 people. I immediately headed for the right wing of my platoon directly in front of Zagrada.^[5] There, a German officer called me from the other bank: “We have left all on the left bank. It is all full of Communists!”

As an observer, I have the following to report on the events themselves:

Behind the head, a large group followed, which pushed one man to the ground and kicked him several times. However, the man quickly came to his senses, whereafter he was pushed backwards into the Drina. However, the man managed to get out of the water and, kneeling on his knees, prayed for his life. After that, they picked him up and shot him 50 m away.

I saw several female corpses lying on the bank that had not been there shortly before. Then most of the Croats got to the property of the civilians and took away everything that could be clearly seen, parts of the clothes, etc. What they did not take for themselves, even the things thrown away, they set on fire.

I think that the civilians, who had been camping on the other bank for several days, were refugees, because a few days ago Mr. Second Class Lieutenant Kroll with the 10th / Infantry Regiment 737 and Lieutenant Laub with 20 men from the 5th / Infantry Regiment 737 had combed the left the bank of the Drina upstream, and had not undertaken anything against the civilians.

Witnesses to these events are: Sergeant Flessl and NCO Hiller, both of the 8th/Infantry Regiment 737, who were with me.

Then I went to my heavy machine gun, which lay in a position about 1 km northwest of Resnik, and there Corporal Schild and Private Reiterhofer, both of the 8th / 737th Infantry Regiment, reported the following:

“Behind the front on which the liaison officers were, a mass followed which pushed into the water two times 5 women. The first 5 women escaped, the next 5 stood in the water up to their stomachs and were shot with a machine gun. Another woman drowned herself, after she had previously drowned her child. Then they forced 2 more women into the water, shot them and then, kicking, pushed them into the water. Then they shot 3 men and threw them into the water, among whom, as could be discerned by his clothes, was a Mohammedan.”

The above events were also noticed with Gr.W.^[6] positions near Resnik / Corporal Schneider, Corporal Grieser, Private Stadler and Private Wunera, all from the 8th / Infantry Regiment 737.

For accuracy:

signed

Lieutenant

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 542.

^[2] Stölben.

^[3] On the operations of the 737th Infantry Regiment of the 704th Infantry Division See: Zbornik NOR, Book XII, Vol. 2, 329, 350.

^[4] Miloševići.

^[5] Unidentified site.

^[6] Abbreviated for: Grenzwache, Border Guard.

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.