No. 77

LETTER FROM THE DISTRICT AUTHORITIES IN TUZLA TO ALL MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATIONS ON MARCH 27, 1942, ABOUT THE RECRUITMENT OF SERBS AND THEIR SENDING TO WORK IN GERMAN AIRCRAFT FACTORIES, WHOSE FAMILIES WERE GUARANTEED SECURITY BY THE MILITARY COMMANDER KVATERNIK.^[1]

Ind.[ependent] St.[ate] Cr.[oatia]

Dist.[rict] area Tuzla

No. Secret 253/42

Call to reservists^[2] to work in Germany

4. 42.

Tuzla^[3]

Tuzla, March 27, 1942

To all municipal governments in the District

To all officials of this area.–

County^[4] of Usora and Soli under No. 447 / sec.[ret] of 24 / III. of th.[is] y.[ear] Complementary to the informaton from the Min.[istry] of the Cr.[oat] Home Guard II Department No. 940 / sec.[ret] from 17. III of th.[is] y.[ear] communication has been delivered which reads verbatim:

“In agreement with the Plenipotentiary of the State Ministry of Aviation of the Ger.[man] State, the Military Commander has decided that the reservists of the Greek-Eastern faith should be called for an additional active Home Guard service for an indefinite term, and as such sent to work in the Air Force Factories in the German State.”

So far, the population in the areas of the Home Guard Ranks-Expansion Commands – Požega, Osijek, and especially the Cr.[oatian] Mitrovica^[5] – has responded in rather large numbers to this call, which is why the Military Commander, after the report of the Signatory, sent to the Home Guard Ranks-Expansion Command in Cr.[oatian] Mitrovica a telegram with the following content:

With acknowledgment, I took note that the summoned citizens of the Greek-Eastern faith responded in full to my call to go to work in Germany, which is valid as a completed exercise in the Home Guard. Let everyone know that their families are under my protection and take care of them personally.

Military Commander Kvaternik.

As can be seen from this telegram, the military leader determined that the work of these reservists in Germany should be counted as a service of the Home Guard exercise, and that the families of these reservists of the Greek-Eastern faith should be under his personal protection.

As the turn will gradually come for each of the Home Guard Ranks-
Expansion Commands to gradually recruit their reservists for the purpose of sending them to work in Germany, this circular letter is issued preventively upon an o.[rder], for information and preparation of the said call-up orders.

For this purpose the years of birth 1887 to 1912. are engaged. –

The Ranks-Expansion Commands have to ask the municipalities for a list of families of the reservists sent to work in Germany with the following columns:

Name and surname, year of birth of the reservist, number of children, number of other family members, and size of the peasant estate.

I would like to inform you by this circular letter, stating that the Military Commander had ordered the people of the Greek-East.[ern] faith to be informed in a convenient manner that these reservists would be working in Ger.[man] aircraft factories, yet in disciplinary^[6] regard they would be subordinated to the Croatian Home Guard Administration, but paid for their [work] like all contract workers of the Ger.[man] state, that they would be protected by workers’ insurance institutions, and that they would be able to send from their salaries about 3000 Kuna per month.

In particular, however, in this statement, the inhabitants of the Greek-East.[ern] faith need to be warned that the Military Commander has taken the families of the reservists under his protection.

The above is dispatched with an order along that the people of the Greek- East.[ern] faith are in a most convenient way informed in accordance with this letter, and you should present to them the useful aspects of sending them to work and the possibility to thus ensure supplies for themselves and their families.

For homeland – ready

M.P.

District Chief

Note: Their families will be guarded by

The Legion of M. Hadžiefendić; ! and the fields^[7]

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 373-374, original in Croatian. Handwritten transcript; АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 370-372, copy translated into German.

^[2] The (Croat) term pričuvnici is used to designate military reservists.

^[3] Two words illegible.

^[4] In original: Vel.[ika] Župa.

^[5] Sremska Mitrovica.

^[6] In the original: u stegovnom pogledu.

^[7] The remark is written in the same handwriting as the transcript of the document. It is certainly ironic, because its meaning is that the families of the recruits will be “guarded” by the units (the Legion) of Muhamed Hadžiefendić, which committed mass crimes against the Serb population, as evidenced by some documents in this collection.

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.