No. 84

A REFUGEE’S STATEMENT ABOUT THE CRIMES OF THE USTASHAS AGAINST SERBS IN THE DVOR NA UNI DISTRICT AND THE LOOTING OF THEIR PROPERTY. THEY FLED TO SERBIA ON FEBRUARY 6, 1942.^[1]

One refugee states:

At the beginning of May 1941, the Ustashas began to imprison prominent Serbs from the Dvor District. At that time, they killed Mrkobrad Vaso, a retired municipal official, Durman Mladen, a postman, a gendarme and a financial clerk, whose names are unknown to me, all from Dvor na Uni. 10 days later, they killed a forest ranger from Rujevac, named Smoljanović, and Kosijer Dragan from Divuša.

At the end of May 1941, the Ustashas arrested Tomić Mlad.[en] from Bosansko Bodočevo, Bosanski Novi District. They took him to Divuša and imprisoned him there. Before his death, they treated him to sausage and wine. The Ustasha lieutenant Pudić killed him with his own hand. He killed both Durman and Mrkobrad with his own hand.

On April 20, 1941, the Ustashas killed a 17-year-old boy named Bunjc^[2] from the village of Bujina in the village of Kuljani, Divuša Municipality. He was on his way to the market with his mother. On the road, they were met by the Ustashas. Despite his mother’s begging to kill her – his mother, they killed the boy in front of the mother.

On July 30 and August 5, 1941, the Ustashas came to Dobrlin,^[3] Bosanski Novi District. This place is located near Dvor na Uni. The Ustashas came under the command of the Ustasha officer Bednjanac, born in Zagreb. 10 to 20 Serbs were killed in Dobrlin.^[4] They further gathered 60 Serbs who were all killed in the village of Voljin. In this very village, they gathered 27 Serbs – peasants and 5 Serbian railroad workers, killed them all and buried them in a common pit. Serbian houses were all set on fire.

On August 1, 1941, a peasant, Kukavica Milan, Serb from Dobrlin,^[5] guided an old Catholic priest to Divuša. The priest assured him that no harm would be done to him. When Kukavica returned to Divuša, he was met by the Ustashas, who first abused him in the most horrible way and then beat him to death. At the same time, the Ustashas killed Kovačević Milan and Miljković Milojko, peasants from Šakanlija, Divuša Municipality. The fates of Gvozdić Dragan from Kozibrod and Nenadić from Bujina, as well as Brajinović Nikola from Šakanlije, Divuša Municipality, are still unknown.

In December 1941, 16 Serbs and women were killed in the village of Rogulje, Zrinj Municipality, Dvor na Uni Municipality. The bodies of the living from Rogulje were cut with saws, the women’s legs were cut off to the knees and then they were forced to ride. Some women, on the other hand, had to stand in the Zrinjski River all night, so they died of cold. Those who were still alive from this village fled to the forest.

On January 30, 1942, the Ustashas completely looted the villages of Draškovac and Šegestin. In the village of Šegestin, 56 Serbs from the village of Oraovica were killed. From Šegestin, they took 30 teams of cattle and 20 sledges of various foodstuffs.

On February 1, 1942, the Ustashas returned from Zrinj via the villages of Oraovica and Divuša to Dvor. On their way, they set fire to the village of Oraovica, and before that they had looted several houses. They drove 60 heads of cattle, 50 sheep, 30 pigs and 20 sledges of various foodstuffs through Divuša. The Ustashas were in a drunken state. 6 Serbs from Oraovica drove these looted cattle farther. Behind the school building, these Serbs had to strip naked and then they were killed.

On February 2, the Ustashas again passed through the villages of Divuša and Oraovica, loading 50-60 harnessed sledges full of food. That same day we left our house and our village. We do not know what happened next.

Among the Ustashas, who stood out with their atrocities, killings and robberies, these should be mentioned:

From Petrinja, a certain Filković, Krpan Lujo, driver, Kudelić, worker, the Šubić brothers, certain Sigur, peasant from the village of Župić, Gora Municipality. Among these criminals were peasants from Kratečko near Sisak, from Strašnik, the Municipality of Gora, etc.

Among the local Ustashas, the following stood out: Jukić and Vuković from Umčani, Knežić Dragan and Ivanović from Divuša, the Gavranović brothers, Obućina with his 2 sons from the village of Kuljani, Divuša Municipality.

The commander of the camp in Dvor, Đurić Anton, a Catholic priest, treated the Serbs very correctly and took them under his protection, but his intervention was in vain. Ustasha officers Bednjanac and Pudić also stood out in particular regarding these atrocities.

With a pass, issued to us by the Catholic priest Đurić, we set off on February 2, 1942. We came to Zemun on February 4, where we stayed until February 6, and then we came to Belgrade.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 297-298.

^[2] Bujinac.

^[3] Dobrljin.

^[4] Same as previous.

^[5] Same as previous.

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.