No. 90

STATEMENT OF A REFUGEE FROM VRGINMOST ABOUT THE USTASHA MASS KILLINGS OF THE SERBS IN VRGINMOST AND THE SURROUNDING VILLAGES, AND ABOUT THE KILLING IN THE GLINA CHURCH.^[1]

15/4 42^[2]

One refugee from Vrginmost states:

On May 6 of this year, an Ustasha named Marko came to Vrginmost from Lika or Dalmatia with 10-15 other armed Ustashas from Topusko, and arrested 11 prominent Serbs from Vrginmost, who were taken to the concentration camp in Koprivnica. The following were arrested: Košutić Stojan, innkeeper from Vojnić – railway station, Zorić Đuro, retired forest ranger from Slavsko Polje, Vrga Stevan, cooper, Malobabić Vaso, butcher, Dragojević Rade, retired forest ranger, Vrga Pero, landowner from Podgorje, Crevar Pero and Dušan, merchants, Nastašić Nikola, butcher, Ajdinović Mile, landowner and Polimac Milan, landowner from Vrginmost. All of the above were first taken to Koprivnica and then to Gospić. We know nothing about their further fate.

On May 11, the Italian army came to Vrginmost and remained there until July 29 of this year. During this time, there was total peace in Vrginmost and the surrounding villages.

On July 27 of this year, near Topusko, Briješki Pero, a peasant from Topusko, was killed. He was allegedly killed by another Ustasha. The Serbs were blamed for this case, which resulted in the Ustashas invading the Serbian village of Ponikvari – Poljani on July 28. In this village, the Ustashas killed everything they could get their hands on, that is, men, women and children, and the houses were set on fire.

On July 29, when the Italian army left Vrginmost, the Ustashas came in several trucks. These were Ustashas from Glina, Topusko, Petrinja, Zagreb and Osijek, 50-60 of them. They arrested a lot of Serbs, 50 of them, took them to a forest, where they were all killed. Their corpses remained unburied in the forest for several weeks. The following Serbs were also killed: Tepšić Jovan and Stanko, Jerosimić Đuro and his son Rade, Jerosimić Mile, Rodić Stevo and Vojislav, Tepšić Nikola and his son Rade, Tepšić Pavao and his grandson, Korkut Ljubomir and his son Miloš, theologian, Janjanin Petar, retired gendarme, Jarčov Milan, baker, Marković Dušan, sales assistant, Vladić Stojan, butcher, Pavlović Gojko, baker, Romčević Branko, innkeeper, Malobabić Janko, municipal treasurer, Ivković Marko, railway clerk, Obradović Mile, railway worker – all from Vrginmost. Lapčević Pavao, Vrga Nikola, Linta Petar, J.[unior] Bulat Marko, Linta Maksim, Bulat Miloš – all from Podgorje. The remaining Serbs escaped by fleeing into the woods.

A group of Ustashas came to the village of Perna. When the villagers saw the Ustashas, all the church bells started ringing. Such fear seized the Ustashas because of the bells that they immediately returned to Vrginmost.

On July 31 of this year the Ustashas came again. Whoever could escape was hidden in the surrounding forest. As the Ustashas did not find anyone, they started firing rifles. Thereby, they killed Pavlović Rade, who tried to run away from his house.

On 1, 2 and 3 August of this year, local Ustashas Klemenčić Joco, butcher from Vrginmost and Šprajc Anton, forest ranger also from there, went around the villages. They announced to the Serb peasants that they should not leave their homes, but report to the Ustasha commander and that they should convert to the Catholic faith. By order of the Ustasha commander, all Serbs should appear at the Sokoli Hall^[3] on August 3 at 7 a.m., where preparations would be made for their conversion to the Catholic faith. As ordered, 1,700 Serbs gathered. The Serbs were even greeted with music. Živčić Josip, a Croat, brought the largest number of Serbs. They were left to wait in the Sokoli Hall until 2 o’clock in the afternoon, because they were told that the great prefect from Petrinja would give a speech at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Nothing happened and the Serbs were thus repeatedly deceived until the next day and told that they would be taken to Glina to take the oath. During the night, the Serbs were guarded, and on August 4, they were all loaded onto trucks and taken to Glina. There, they were literally massacred in the Orthodox church. They were: Crevar Simo, Jerosimić Nikola, Vukmirović Ilija, Tepšić Stevan, Rodić Dragan, all from Vrginmost. I do not remember the names of the others. The following men were taken from Podgorje to Glina and killed there: Vrga Stanko, Lapčević Nenad, Nikola and Pane (brothers), Lapčević Pavao and Sava, Ajdinović Janko and Petar, Vrga Matija, Polojac Vujo and Rade, Linta Teodor and Miloš (brothers), Linta Janko and Petar, Linta Miloš and Stojan, Pova Milan, etc.

After these horrific murders, the people hid again in the woods and fields. The killings, which continued in the Vrginmost District, lasted from July 28 to September 20. Most murders took place on September 16, 17 and 18 of this year. In those days, the Ustashas were divided into 3 groups. One group went to the villages of Perna and Malička, another group to the villages of Crni Potok and Pecka and the third group to the village of Blatuša. In the said villages, they killed whoever they could get their hands on. They also took Gypsies with them, who helped them set houses on fire.

In the village of Malička, my relatives were killed and then their house was set on fire. Their bodies were thrown into the blazing fire. Pajić Ljubica and her daughter Ružica, as well as her other relatives, were killed in the neighborhood.

I know that 30 people were killed from the house of Vojnović Rade in Crni Potok alone. All these persons were burned alive. They took all movable property as well as cattle with them to Topusko. Most of the robberies took place in the villages of Blatuša and Pecka. The village of Perna was completely torched, so that not a single building remained. In the Serb village of Staro Selo, too, everyone lost their lives. Only 4 people survived. The Orthodox churches in Perna, Bović, Topusko, Čemernica and Slavsko Polje also fell victim to fire. In the village of Blatuša, the church was looted, but not burned. At the time of these horrifying murders, the Ustashas also raped a great many women and girls. The gendarmerie sergeant Pavlović from Vrginmost brought women to the Ustashas. The wife of the blacksmith Vrga Pavle resisted these abuses, which is why she was taken to the forest and killed there. During these atrocities, big drunken parties were organized. 5-6000 Serbs were killed in the Vrginmost District. The District Chief in Vrginmost, Čidić Andrija, took the Serbs under his protection, and Ustashas were not satisfied with this.

Of the local Ustashas, the following stood out: Klemenčić Joso, butcher and Šprajc Antun, forest ranger, both from Vrginmost, and the gendarmerie sergeant Pavlović.

Until September 25, I hid in the forests and the nearby villages, and on September 26, I arrived in Belgrade.

^[1] AВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 312-313.

^[2] Handwritten date and initials.

^[3] Sokoli (‘Falcons’) were athletes, members of the pan-Slavic Soko(l) Movement (founded in Prague, in 1862) as an all-age gymnastics organization, following the principle of “a strong mind in a sound body”; their sports halls/gymnasiums (sokolski domovi) were built in numerous towns, especially in the Slav-settled lands of Austro-Hungary. – Subeditor’s note.

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.