No. 92

STATEMENT OF A REFUGEE FROM PRIJEDOR ABOUT THE USTASHA MASS KILLINGS AND LOOTING OF THE SERBS IN PRIJEDOR AND ITS SURROUNDINGS, AND THE CONVERSION OF THE REMAINING POPULATION TO CATHOLICISM.^[1]

15/4 42^[2]

One refugee states:

On July 31 and August 1 this year – Thursday and Friday – the Ustashas gathered Serbs in Prijedor and killed them. They took these from their homes and imprisoned in the primary school and in the police prison, from where they took these people to the sites of “Crnića Kuruze” and “Urije”, which are located near Prijedor, and killed them there. Many Serbs met sudden death in their homes and in prisons. 40 corpses were loaded on a truck and buried in a field called “Urije”. The following people were killed in Prijedor: Despot Simo, carpenter, his sons Nikola and Ljupko; the latter was shot by his school colleague Bilješković Drago. Next, Đanić Lazo, worker, Đikić Mirko, worker, Topić Novak, Kotorman Joso, Jovanović Đuro and his son Dušan, Marijanović Mane, merchant, Grebeljanović Dušan, merchant and his relative Stojanović Ljubo, merchant, Damjanovć Rade, innkeeper, Damjanović Dako, merchant, Vujasinović Mile, miller, Radetić Pero, merchant and his half-deaf son Milovan, Rađenović Pero, merchant, Kos Lazo, railroad worker, Baškot Branko, railroad worker, Crnogorac Dušan, railroad worker, Vujasinović Simo, pensioner, Brdar Mile, timber merchant, Ban Braco, carpenter, Čanak Mile and Drago, innkeepers, Karan brothers, Majkić Ostoja, bricklayer, Medić Mića, blacksmith. On July 31 and August 1, 800 Serbs were killed in Prijedor alone, and 4,000 Serbs were killed in the nearby villages. At the same time, all Serbian houses were looted and everything that fell into their [Ustasha’s – Subeditor’s note] hands, that is, money, gold items, bedding, Gypsies and Muslims even extracted gold teeth from the corpses.

These killings, robberies and arsons were carried out by the Ustashas in the Serbian villages of Crna Dolina, Palančiste, Jelovac, Svodna, Dragotinja and Brežičani. The school and the church were set on fire in the village of Palančište. The girls were raped.

On September 9, 7,000 Ustashas came to Prijedor. On September 10, at half past six in the evening, 35 Serbs from the nearby villages were loaded into a truck, and my husband was among them, they were taken to the “Urije” field and everyone was slaughtered there.

Of the Serbs, only 3 railway workers remained in Prijedor, those who converted to the Catholic faith.

Of the local Ustashas, the following stood out: Zaidić Suljo, Ustasha-Muslim, Huso, Gipsy, Biber, Gipsy, Latić Zvonko, student of the 5th grade of high school, Bilješković, Roman Catholic priest, Kurtagić Amid, Dekić Safet, Cici, Gipsy.

I would like to add that Despot Darinka identified the coat of her murdered son Nikica on an Ustasha-Gypsy.

On September 12 this year, I traveled to Belgrade, where I arrived on September 13.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 316.

^[2] Handwritten date and initials.

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.