No. 32

LETTER FROM THE SERBS OF JABLANICA TO THE GESTAPO IN SARAJEVO ON JANUARY 19, 1942, IN WHICH THEY SEEK PROTECTION AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE PROCLAMATION BY THE USTASHA MILITIA AT KONJIC ON THE COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SERBS FOR ANY ATTACK BY THE INSURGENTS.^[1]

Ustasha terror^[2]

Transcript.

Jablanica n/N.^[3], January 19, 1942

For

Gestapo

Sarajevo.^[4]

On the occasion of the well-known events in Jablanica on August 3, 1941, only thanks to Your^[5] intervention, hundreds of innocent children, women and men, who were to be killed in a horrible way for no reason, were saved at the last moment. However, their murderous intentions were thwarted and prevented. The memory of these days, the speed of Your action, energy and sacrifice on that occasion remain in the indelible memory of all these innocent people, and us, too, because this gesture of Yours is truly unique in the history of humaneness.

Immediately after that, when you left our town, you gave us some advice and instructions on how to proceed. In the first place, this was aimed at fulfilling all our obligations peacefully, to obey the existing laws, to remain loyal and not to leave our homes. In that case – we were told – we can still count on Your protection and contact You at any time.

After Your departure, the situation returned to normal. Everyone – who is aware of today’s difficult circumstances – did their job, everyone obeyed the authorities and their instructions, and there was not a single case of any Greek-Easterns coming into conflict with the law, let alone that a single one of them from these parts, went into the woods and joined the Chetniks or Communists.

The feeling of security and Your protection quickly restored our faith that similar punishments and unfounded reprisals would no longer happen and that they would not apply to us – the Greek-Easterns.

A few days ago, however, the command of the Ustasha Militia^[6] in Konjic (December 24, 1941) issued a call, aimed at the Greek-Eastern population of the Konjic District, in which Serbs were warned that for whatever happened in the Konjic District, regardless of the perpetrators, all Serb villages and our property will be torched and the safety of our lives will be called into question.

The issuance of such a proclamation centering only against the Serbs worried and surprised us all, all the more so because no one from our milieu went to the forests. In addition, it is a known fact that among the outlaws from our region there are 65% Muslims, 30% Croats and only 5% Serbs, of whom the latter are those who have long since defected in order to save their lives.

When both of these circumstances are taken into account, as well as the fact that – regardless of the perpetrators – reprisals will be applied only to the Greek-Eastern civilian population, it is clear and obvious that this proclamation is absolutely tendentious and has no preventive character, its goal is to cleanse and destroy the peaceful and honorable Serb population here.

We are convinced that this proclamation was issued on its own initiative by the Ustasha command in Konjic, without the approval and consent of the higher authorities. If this system of reprisals against the civilian population is necessary in order to prevent further actions of outlaws, we will respect this and submit to a higher power and reconcile with our destiny. But is it fair and humane in this case that only loyal, peaceful people without any guilt must suffer?

If one of the civilian population has to be ruined, we want everyone without difference to bear the punishment and the consequences in proportion to the guilt. We do not ask for anything other than to be equal, both before God and before state laws. If we make even the slightest mistake about the existing legal order or contribute to causing unrest, we have nothing against the most severe punishments being applied against us.

Returning to Your promise, that we may turn to You at any time and that we may count on Your protection at every opportunity, we use this precious promise of Yours and ask You to take us under your protection in this matter, to hear our righteous plea and to find an opportunity to prevent the implementation of this proclamation, for which we will be infinitely grateful.

With great respect:

Confirming the accuracy of the transcript:

Marschal

Office clerk.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 79. See documents nos. 33 and 62 in this book.

^[2] Handwritten note.

^[3] On the Neretva river.

^[4] The Sarajevo Gestapo was part of the Operational Command of the Security Police and the Security Service (Einsatzkommando Sipo-SD), headed by SS Major (Sturmbannführer) Alfred Heinrich. This command was not subordinated to the German police in the Independent State of Croatia, i.e. to the Operational Police Command (EC Sipo-SD) in Zagreb, which was superseded in January 1942 by the institution of Police Attaché Hans Helm. The command in Sarajevo was directly subordinated to the Police Operational Group (EG Sipo-SD) in Serbia, i.e. from January 1942, to the institution of the Police Commander (BdS).

^[5] Unlike the English practice, in the Serbian, Croatian and German languages, capital letter is used when addressing another person formally and/or with respect; hence the forms ’You’, ’Your’ and ’Yours’. – Subeditor’s note.

^[6] Ustaška vojnica, Ustasha army.

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.