No. 60

PART OF AN ARTICLE BY THE ITALIAN JOURNALIST CORRADO ZOLI PUBLISHED IN THE ITALIAN NEWSPAPER RESTO DEL CARLINO.^[1]

^[2] Into f.[ile] Ustasha^[3]

2. 42^[4]

THE LITTLE BIRDS FROM GRAČAC

An instructive conversation with a German artillery major in a dining car between Zagreb and Ogulin.

“Resto del Carlino” Special Service

Gračac, in September

Zagreb-Ogulin railtrack. In the dining car: only four tables, set in four corners. At my table, across from me, sits a German artillery major, who greets me with kind cordiality. A tall man of his 45 years – auburn brown hair trimmed in Nazi fashion above the temples, gray eyes, with a smile on his lips. He introduces himself (“Major K.”). He tells me that he comes from Ingolstadt, that is, a Bavarian – cheerful and explosive almost as if he were Latin. He also tells me that he belongs to the ammunition supply service, that he is coming from Sarajevo and Banja Luka, where he was for 2 or 3 weeks, and that he is traveling to Rijeka, where he will board a ship. He doesn’t say in which direction, but I’m not interested in that anyway… I’m just interested in the area from which he comes, Bosnia, held by the German occupation troops. My companion agrees to tell me all about this area.

IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

A poor area – he says – and a poor people. There are no plains – several valleys – many hills. There are ravines – rocky slopes, mountain streams as much as your heart desires; a bit of green – but a lot of gray and light yellow; those are steep rocky walls. There are mountains between 1,500 and 2,000 meters, which are called “mines” (majdani), but I have not seen metal at all. As far as the number is concerned, there are not many Croats, but in general they represent a richer layer: the population, even in larger settlements, and in the villages in particular, is predominantly Serb; this is not covered up (they are partly Orthodox and partly Muslim). And what you see – landscape – people – position, they are ideal for guerrilla warfare. And the guerrillas are actually furious. Yes, even worse: civil guerrillas.

– Between who and who?

– Well: Between the Catholic Croats on the one hand and the Orthodox and Muslim Serbs on the other.

– Local Croats!

– Yes, in part; but the worst elements of the Croatian population; they are often young men under the age of 20 – savage juvenile delinquents, who, however, supply the Croats who come from other parts with weapons; the “Ustashas” who came from Zagreb, he says. I really could not swear to it; they are hard to discern – you know! It is certain – namely that this movement began shortly after the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia and that the originators were individuals who came from other parts – all in former Yugoslav uniforms with one special feature: an epaulette or cockade attached to the buttonhole or the cap. These aliens brought unrest to the local people. In several towns – in many villages – in almost all smaller towns, the local Croat population was asked: “Who are the Serbs who have caused you the most misery?”

You can only imagine what could unwind out of these demands! All hatred – all attacks – all dirty unsatisfied desires – all those miserable village envies surfaced; all unsettled debts were paid; all village revenges were coldly carried out. At the vague and indefinite denunciations of the informers, alien rebels recruited gangs of their helpers among the local population against individuals and entire families, who were blamed and dispersed due to the hatred of the Croats. And then the gloomy and bloody bottom of the Slavic soul opened (that “soul” that everyone in Europe is now gradually beginning to get to know: from the abomination of the civil war in Spain to the “Čeka”^[5] in the USSR). That bottom of the mentioned peoples has been exposed, those who are to some extent considered civilized, and who boast having adopted the Mediterranean and Roman cultures – if they do not say that they are the most direct heirs of the gods.

And then the slaughter started. There was a massacre. Whole families – men – women – the elderly – children – infants – the sick – they were killed with the most horrible Chinese methods imaginable; don’t ask me to describe this to you, for I don’t want to remember it…

– But these persecuted Serbs – sorry, maybe they are individuals – basically families who immigrated to Bosnia from the then Serbia – undesirable elements – immigrants, who sneaked into this area during the Yugoslav regime?

– By no means! replied Major K. resolutely. – I do not deny that certain individuals who have moved recently could also be found. But the predominant number were those Serbs who came there 9 or 10 centuries ago; some say AFTER the Croats, and others claim before the settlement of the Croats! In any case, they have been settled here since ancient times; they were Bosnians and they were the poorest – but the most numerous part of the Bosnian population; mostly Orthodox, but also a lot of Muslims…

In this way, things get complicated with images from religious wars. There were gangs of butchers led and incited by Catholic priests and monks. This is more than proven: in Travnik, about 100 km south of Banja Luka, in the first days of my stay, a monk was shot dead on the spot by a German occupation unit, for he was found putting a gang up [to killing] with a cross in his hand, the gang he himself led …

– So, the Middle Ages …

– Exactly! The Middle Ages … with the use of machine guns, hand grenades, gas cans, dynamite cartridges, etc.

And these weapons?

The rest of the former Yugoslav Army – of course; the collection of spoils of war, and even carried out in the most careful manner and by the most modern methods, can never be 100% successful in this region.

All these are, self-understandingly, the internal affairs of the Independent Croatian State – and it is clear that they do not concern anyone but themselves. But if you believe that German soldiers should refrain from watching such atrocities – then you are mighty wrong! …, For, the situation has worsened, because the population, threatened with ruination, has started to organize resistance, which is growing every day. They have all fled into the woods; they have united into armed troops in impassable areas; they fight bitterly against the persecutors. The Croats claim that they are communists, which may be partly true, because the war against the Bolsheviks provoked an undefined reaction against the Axis and its allies among all these Slavic peoples; the Holy Mother Russia ……. has been attacked by her most heinous enemies, the Nazis and the Fascists.

– They are also called “CHETNIKS” – which would sound like the still unforgettable Balkan “komitas” – or they are called “rebels” (outlaws). And this is true, it is a mass that has rebelled against its complete planned extermination.

ACROSS LIKA

– And how many are there?

It’s hard to tell numbers – not even approximately. In any case, there are not few of them. That is unquestionable. You know that within the borders of the future Kingdom of Croatia – in addition to 4 to 4.5 million Croats – there are one and a half million Serbs living here… It is clear that not everyone can be considered “outlaws” – but there are many of the kind. As I told you, they are divided into companies, they are richly armed and relatively well supplied with combat means. (Our excellent intelligence service claims that they also have a few light cannons!) They are scattered on the hills and fields, one can say, throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina; no doubt you will hear about them in Dalmatia as well; but I think that there might be some in Montenegro as well. It is certain that these people are ready for anything, and that it is one tricky thing; it is about saving bare lives – and at the same time the property – the field – the garden – the house are lost; it’s about not dying a martyr’s death! ……

Oštarije! Oštarije! – The railwaymen are shouting in front of the train, which stopped in front of a small village station. Of a tavern (oschtaria, according to the Italian word osteria, in Lika, a tavern or inn is called oštarija) no trace; but I have to get off here to get on the train to Lika. At the window of the train, which is slowly moving on, the major took the prescribed position for the last salute!

Corrado Zoli

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 119-120. An article entitled “The Birds of Gračac” by the Italian journalist Corrado Zoli was published in the newspaper Il Resto del Carlino in Bologna, on September 18, 1942. This and the next article by Zoli in the same newspaper and on the same topic were published in: M. Mihajlović, Jugoslavija april 1941. – septembar 1943. Italijanski izvori: Dokumenti o masakru Srba u Dalmaciji, Lici i Kninskoj Krajini, Beograd: Udruženje srpskih izdavača, 2012, 146-152. This is where the title of the article has been translated as “The Little Birds in Gračac” [„Ptičice u Gračacu”].

^[2] Initials.

^[3] Handwritten note.

^[4] Illegible word and initials.

^[5] ČK, according to the pronounciation: ČEKA, Security Police in the Soviet Union.

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.