No. 95

STATEMENT OF A REFUGEE FROM BOSANSKA KRUPA, ABOUT DEPORTATION TO THE GOSPIĆ CAMP AND MASS ELIMINATION OF THE SERBS IN BOSANSKA KRUPA AND ITS SURROUNDINGS, BY USTASHAS AND MUSLIM CIVILIANS IN JULY AND AUGUST 1941.^[1]

15/4^[2]

One refugee states:

As long as the German and Italian armed forces were in Bosanska Krupa and Otoka, complete peace reigned everywhere. The German armed forces confiscated weapons from everyone, unsparingly. Everyone’s personal property was made safe. The German armed forces remained in these parts for 3 weeks, whereafter they were replaced by the Italian armed forces. After the departure of the Italians, the Muslims of the Bosanska Krupa District took up arms. The gathering of all prominent Serbs began, and they were taken to Gospić – allegedly for forced labor. The following citizens were taken from Otoka to Gospić: Dražić Simo, merchant, and Gajić Dušan, also a merchant. From the village of Bušević: Škorić Mirko, merchant, Karan Stevo, Tumić Nikola and Marijan Obrad. From the village of Ljusina: Nikolić Mile, pensioner, Marjanović Milan and Ilić Pajo, pensioner. From the village of Glodina: Rašeta Rade, Tatić Vaso, merchant and Dakić Nikola. I don’t know the names of the others. There were a total of 150 Serbs, whose fate is unknown.

On July 26, the Ustashas also gathered the Serbs from the surrounding villages, took them to Otoka where they were all killed, and their bodies were thrown into the Una River. These massacres in the District of Bosanska Krupa lasted uninterruptedly from July 26 to August 4 of this year.

July 27 of this year – it was Monday – a market day in Bosanska Krupa, the Ustashas gathered all the Serbs and took them to the place Kraljevi Dom, where they were all killed. Pits had already been dug for their bodies. On the same day, the following persons were expelled from Otoka to Bosanska Krupa and killed there: Škorić Aleksa, merchant, Nikolić Tešo and Pavle, Zec Ilija, Prauljac Nikola, and many others whose names we cannot remember. I know that on the same day, 1,000 Serbs were taken to Kraljevi Dom and killed there. On the same day, 3 more trucks full of Serbs were brought to Crno Jezero, they were killed there, and their bodies were thrown into the lake.

From July 26 to August 4, the Ustashas killed all they could get their hands on in Serbian villages. In my estimation, more than half of the Serbs were killed in the Bosanska Krupa District.

The following Serbs were also killed in the village of Otoka at that time: Bursać Petar, innkeeper, Radošević Mićo, railway worker, Semzović Đorđe, Knežević Nićifor, merchant, Marmut Nikola, innkeeper, Gajić Mirko, merchant, Kantar Luka, pensioner, Borojević Ljuban, Ćulibrk Miladin, Repija Đukan, Santrač Luka, baker and his wife Savka, Mikić Staka, innkeeper, Stapar Marko, innkeeper and his granddaughter Nada, 17 years old, Đulibrk^[3] Milan, Mirko and Dušan and many others whose names I do not know. According to the lists kept by the Ustashas, 500 Serbs were killed in those days. In my opinion, many more Serbs were killed, not all cases of murders were recorded in the list. There are no more Serbs in Otoka. A lot of young girls were raped and then killed. After all these murders, looting of movable property followed. All the food they found, they carried with them; then they set fire to houses and churches. Churches were destroyed in the villages of Ivanska, Banjani and Bušević. The Sokoli Hall in Bušević also fell victim.

These massacres, robberies and arsons were carried out by the Muslims from the villages of Otoka, Jezersko, Bužim, Bušević and Pištalina. Among the Ustashas, the following stood out: Omerčehajić Husnija, barber from Otoka, Bešić Ibrahim, baker, Ramić Đemo, Bratić Mustafa, Bešić Kasim, Mujagić Kušim, Bešić Ethem, Bratić Muhamed, Suljić Husein, student, Komić Avdaga, butcher, all from Otoka. Kerkez Pero, a former forest ranger, a Serb, had immediately joined the Ustashas, converted to the Catholic faith and killed the Serbs together with Muslims. He is now in Belgrade as a coachman.^[4]

Tajić Slavko and Stanko, innkeepers, Biršl Josip, road supervisor, Lončarić Joško and his mother Marija, landowner, all Croats, interceded strongly for the Serbs. The Croats from Otoka did not participate in these atrocities at all, but Muslims only.

I saved my life by hiding with a Croatian family.

At the end of August of this year I came to Belgrade.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 321-322.

^[2] Handwritten date and initials.

^[3] Ćulibrk.

^[4] Underlined in translation, and then with a red pen.

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.