No. 54

STATEMENT OF A REFUGEE FROM BANJA LUKA ON THE CRIMES OF THE USTASHA AUTHORITY AGAINST THE SERBS AND THE SERBIAN CLERGY.^[1]

15/4^[2]

One female refugee states:

I was a teacher at the elementary school in Šiprag,^[3] the District and the City of Kotor.^[4] Since I did not want to take the oath to Dr. Pavelić, I left this service. I stayed in Šiprage until June 21, last year and I went to Banja Luka, where my parents live. The town of Šiprage is mostly inhabited by Muslims, the Serbs are represented there by 10% less. The whole area is Serbian. During my stay in Šiprage, the Serbs were not persecuted. In my opinion, this is owing to District Chief PETRIČEVIĆ MATKO, who is a cousin of Dr. Gutić Viktor, Ustasha commander for the former Vrbas Province.

In June 1941, by order of Dr. Gutić Viktor, the Orthodox churches in Kotor Varoš, Čelince^[5] and Moslavara^[6] were destroyed.

In the night of July 1941, the Ustashas broke into the private apartment of the Bishop of Banja Luka PLATON, imprisoned him in the CRNA KULA^[7] prison, where the parish priest SUBOTIĆ from Bosanska Gradiška had already been kept, and took them both to the village of Vrbanja,^[8] 3 km away from Banja Luka, where they were killed and their bodies thrown into the Vrbanja River. These murders were committed after a drinking spree, which was organized by Dr. Gutić and the executioner Dželić.

In July 1941, the following persons were taken to the camp in Gospić, namely: Tešanović Đorđe, carpenter, Koščica, former District Chief in Kotor and another large number of Serbs whose names I do not know. Their fate is completely unknown to us. Mass arrests took place in surrounding Serb villages. They were imprisoned in the “Kastel” prison in the Banja Luka, where they were killed and then thrown into the Vrbas River. One female witness saw 30-40 human corpses floating down the Vrbas River.

During the Serbian Christmas of 1942, the Ustashas came to the Serbian village of Čelinac near Banja Luka. According to the old custom, Christmas candles were lit in Serbian houses. When the Ustashas saw this, they killed all the inhabitants of the houses one by one, and set the houses on fire.

In December 1941, 3,500 Ustashas from Pavelić’s so-called body guard came to Banja Luka from Zagreb.

On February 8, 1942,^[9] a group of these Ustashas, led by a Franciscan from the Petričevac monastery, came to the Serbian village of Rakovica-Rudnik near Banja Luka. Serbs, Muslims and Catholics worked in the mines in this village. The Serb workers were beaten to death with picks on the spot in the mine. There were 30-40 Serbs. After this murder, the same Ustashas went to the village of Drakulići,^[10] where the families of the killed miners were. Women and children were killed in a row here – there were 1500 of them. Only one woman with her five children somehow escaped, but later this woman went insane.

On February 9, Ustashas continued to kill in the villages of Motike, Pavlovac,^[11] and Hankoli,^[12] bringing the number of Serbs killed to 2,700 in two days. A Muslim leader from Banja Luka, Bešlagić,^[13] told Pavelić that he could no longer allow the killings of Serbs in Banja Luka because the Muslims were preparing an uprising. Thanks to this intervention, Serbs were spared further killing in Banja Luka, but were forced to convert to the Catholic faith.

Many Serb residents from Banja Luka were transferred to Serbia by the Croatian authorities last summer, but their apartments were totally looted by the Ustashas. The most expensive furniture and valuables fell into the hands of the relatives of Dr. Gutić. MANDROVIĆ, a relative of Dr. Gutić, got the house and furniture of the merchant Božić Kosta. In this way, his daughter Mira came into possession of valuable winter coats and other pieces of clothing.

Last summer, 2 churches in Banja Luka were destroyed. These demolitions had to be carried out upon the orders of the Ustashas by the Serbs and Jews who were imprisoned.

The instigator of these killings of Serbs and persecution was Dr. GUTIĆ, and there also stood out: Dželić, Gutić Blaž, brother of Dr. Gutić, Butorac Vilko, his secretary, Kan, head of Gutić’s office, a former Yugoslav volunteer and some other Ustasha officers, whose names I do not know. These were all Ustashas from Pavelić’s body guard.

On February 25, 1942, I was transferred to Serbia. Until March 4, I was in Sremska Mitrovica and Zemun, wherefrom I came to Belgrade with a border pass.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 117-118.

^[2] Handwritten note with initials.

^[3] Šiprage.

^[4] Kotor Varoš.

^[5] Čelinac.

^[6] Maslovare.

^[7] „Crna kuća” (‘Dark House’).

^[8] For more on these murders, see: J. Mirković, Stradanje Srpske pravoslavne crkve u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj. Fotomonografija, Beograd: Svet knjige, 2016, 377-379, 385.

^[9] The crime was committed on February 7, 1942; D. Lukač, Banja Luka i okolica u ratu i revoluciji 1941-1945, Banja Luka: SUBNOR Banja Luka, 1968, passim; L. Lukajić, Ustaše i fratri kolju, passim.

^[10] Drakulić.

^[11] Šargovac.

^[12] Han Kolo (today: Kolo).

^[13] Hilmija Bešlagic was the Minister of Transport and Public Works at that time; Tko je tko u NDH, 36 (Z. Dizdar).

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.