No. 29

STATEMENT OF JULKA ŠKARA FROM TOPUSKO, GIVEN ON JANUARY 5, 1942 AT THE COMMISSARIAT FOR REFUGEES, ABOUT THE CRIMES OF THE USTASHA AUTHORITIES.^[1]

MINUTES

of January 5, 1942.

Composed at the Commissariat for Relocation and Protection
of Refugees in Belgrade.

Mrs. ŠKARA JULKA, an innkeeper from Topusko, Vrginmost District, widow of the late STANKO ŠKARA, 42 years old, mother of two children, now in Belgrade – Ulica kralja Ferdinanda no. 19, stated the following:

With my late husband Stanko Škara, I ran a restaurant in Topusko called “Janje”.

On May 23, 1941, my husband, along with 10 other citizens in Topusko, was arrested by the Ustashas. These were: Dr. Vurdelja Branko doctor, Vorkapić Jovo restaurant owner, Vujošević Milutin merchant, Bijelić Nikola innkeeper, Popović Pero farmer, Škara Nikola baker, Obradović Matija innkeeper, Vorkapić Stoja farmer and merchant, Bastajić Pajo retired professor and Mamuzić Ilija farmer.

In addition to the above, another 25 prominent Serbs from the Topusko area were arrested. On the same day, all 36 arrested Serbs were taken by truck to Vrginmost. Here they were kept in prison for 3 days and then taken to Sisak where they remained for 11 days. They were taken from Sisak to Petrinja, where they remained in prison for 9 days. They were abused in the Petrinja police prison and were also beaten by Ustasha children (aged 8-10). The children alternated in these evildoings. They spent the whole 9 days in Petrinja. One day at night, they were taken from Petrinja in the direction of Sisak, from where all trace of them is lost. From the Ustasha Krpan Dujo, who worked as a driver, I learned that from Petrinja they were all taken by car to the “Brezovića” forest, near Sisak and then killed.

After the death of my husband, I ran my own restaurant in Topusko. Every day, 6 Ustashas would come to my restaurant and I had to feed them for free. Apart from them, there were other Ustashas whom I also had to feed.

All these Ustashas, fed by me for free all the time, came from the area of Topusko and from Topusko itself. Among them was Longer Đuro, a farmer from a Croatian village near Topusko. I know the others only by their appearance, their names are unknown to me, the only thing I remember is that two of these Ustashas came from Vranovina and the other two from the Staro Selo near Topusko. Londer^[2] Đuro took away 4,000 dinars of cash, 3 pieces of gold rings, 1 pair of gold earrings and one gold chain for a watch. I begged him to compensate me for taking away the valuables, to which he boldly replied that I should thank God that my head remained on my shoulders.

During this time, the Ustasha Zvinščak from Zagreb came to my inn several times. His baptismal name is unknown to me. He brought other Ustashas to my inn, whom I had to feed for free. As he entered the inn, he came up to me with a bayonet attached to his rifle and led me from one thing to another that I had to hand over to him. The mentioned Zvinščak was one of the most bloodthirsty. One of the most horrific acts he committed, among others, was to put mothers and children in a line and then kill them all with a single bullet.

In that way, his victims were Joka Roknić with her two children and one of her relatives with one child. He took these victims to a nearby forest called “Kose”, and shot them all there. When Joka Roknić saw that he wanted to shoot her, she begged him to shoot her two small children as well, so that they would not be left to their own fate, to which he replied that he would not comply with her request. He said that these children must live only in order to be exposed to torture and suffering. The father of these children had previously been killed in the Serbian church in Glina.

On July 2 or 3, 1941, the Ustashas arrested all Serbs living in Topusko. I was present among those arrested. We were all imprisoned in the Serbian church. I was locked up in the parish house. At the same time, the Ustashas arrested peasant women and peasants from the surrounding Serb villages, and they were all imprisoned together with us in Topusko. Houses and homes were all devastated, furniture and livestock taken away. We stayed imprisoned there for 3 days. At night, young women and girls were gathered in the parson’s barn and raped there by the Ustashas. Thus, every night, Miss Branka, the daughter of the previously murdered Dr. Vurdelja, was taken away and raped. She might have been 17 years old. She was raped by the Ustasha officer Karlić Đorđe. He was allegedly an officer of the former Yugoslav army and thus came to Zagreb. In addition to the above, many other young women and girls were raped. I know for sure that girls were raped then, with the surname Batalo, whose baptismal names I do not know. All these girls are from Topusko.

That same night, the Serbs were taken to the Orthodox church and killed there. In the church in Topusko, the following were killed by the Ustashas: Škundrić Ilija, a merchant from Topusko, Prentović Miloš, a gendarmerie non-commissioned officer from Topusko, Kordić Milutin, a farmer from Topusko, and both of his sons, whose names I do not know. A non-commissioned officer named Nikola, a native of Bosnia, who wanted to travel to Bosnia via Topusko, was also killed in the church in Topusko. The farmer Nikola Kordić from Topusko, aged 78, died the same way. Due to his advanced age, he could not come to the church on his own, which is why he was brought in a cart. In addition to these, the Ustashas slaughtered another 15-16 boys aged 14-18 in the church. For example, Zlokas Dušan, son of Simo from Topusko, 14 years old. I can’t name the others, but I knew all the boys by sight. We, who were imprisoned in a farm house, witnessed the terrible cries that could be heard from the church.

After this horrific murder, the Ustashas completely destroyed the Serbian church in Topusko. The church was destroyed by the wall painter Malinac Mato from Topusko, who received a reward of 30,000 dinars for this; he transported the material from the devastated church to his house.

We, the remaining 68 people, were taken from Topusko to Petrinja and there we were placed in the warehouse of the Tenzer joinery factory, where we stayed for only 2 months. In Petrinja, the Ustasha officer GRGEC put the wind up us. He showed us every day the place where we would be killed and buried. He showed that to our children as well. He assured us that we would all be killed by a blow to the head with a mallet, because it would be a waste to spend bullets on us.

After 2 months, I was released, but only on the condition that I never settle in Topusko again, but in the nearby villages. Under the same condition, several other people from Topusko were released with me. After that, I found an apartment in the village of Gređani near Topusko. After some time, I moved to Topusko with my cousin Marija Gregorić, who is a Croat and of the Roman Catholic faith. I was with her until December 31, of l.[ast] y.[ear], after which I traveled to Belgrade via Petrinja and Zagreb. I decided to move to Serbia through persuasion of Kapac Luka, an innkeeper, Ivo Babić, an innkeeper and his brother Stevo Kunić, the manager of the Topusko Spa. They are all Croats, but they are well-disposed to the Serbs and they protected me.

Kapac Luka told me, among other things, that the Ustasha first class lieutenant Grgec had received an order from the Supreme Leader Pavelić that all Serbs in Kordun, given that order could not be established in Bosnia, must be killed. In this way, Kordun would be cleansed. This order is being executed by Nikica Vidaković, the Ustasha commissioner from Glina. He is the commissioner for Glina and the whole surrounding, and above all he takes care that this order is carried out.

Kocman Anton, teacher in Topusko, Briješki Ilija, baker in Topusko, Malinac, wall painter from Topusko, Sanički Đuro, farmer from Hrvatsko Selo near Topusko, Mato, baker from Hrvatsko Selo near Topusko and his brother Đuro (his name is unknown to me) , Putrić Tomo, son of the president of the municipality from Topusko, Briješki Tomo, carpenter from Topusko, Prus Stevo carpenter from Topusko and his brother Slavko, Prus Ivo, tinsmith from Topusko, Longer Đuro farmer from Hrvatsko Selo, Zvinščak Ustasha from Zagreb, Dr . Klimer, a doctor from Topusko, all these people killed the Serbs in Topusko and its vicinity, robbed them and torched their homes. They also raped women and girls.

In the end, I declare that all Serbs from Topusko and the surrounding area had to convert to the Catholic faith under the terrible terror of the Ustasha authorities. Young Serbian women, who were forced to convert to the Catholic faith, had to join the Ustasha ranks and sing Ustasha songs with them, even though all of their homes were looted and even though their fathers and brothers had been killed.

The above minutes have been read to me, and I acknowledge these as my own, which I confirm with my signature.

Interviewed and certified by: Minute taker: Signature:

Đuro J. Rodić, Stana Tepavac, Julka Škara,

place for the stamp place for the stamp place for the stamp

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 66-68, translation from Serbian.

^[2] Longer.

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.