No. 98

STATEMENT OF A REFUGEE FROM THE VILLAGE OF BABINA RIJEKA NEAR KOSTAJNICA, ABOUT THE KILLING AND LOOTING BY USTASHA NEIGHBORS AND THE INTERNMENT OF SERB WOMEN IN AUGUST 1941.^[1]

15/4^[2]

One refugee states:

In our village Babina Rijeka there are 76 Serb and 19 Croat homes.

In the second half of August of this year the Croats from our village were given rifles from the main Ustasha barracks in Kostajnica, while the Serbs had to surrender their weapons immediately after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia. The Serbs were even deprived of kitchen knives. The Croats, since they now came into possession of weapons, tried in every way to provoke the Serbs to some act. Thus, for example, they let the cattle graze in their fields. On August 20 of this year the Ustasha Jurić Stjepan, a landowner in our village, house number 32, was walking through the village. He fired his rifle and shouted at the top of his voice: “You Serbs, how are you going to celebrate your slavas^[3] – the slavas you’ll have to forget about now”, and he further cursed the “Serbian mother” and other things.

All Croats from our village are Ustashas. Their leaders are Milinković Lovro, a forest ranger and his deputy Nikola, I don’t know his last name, both from Lika, and Jurić Joso, a farmer also from our village.

On August 27 of this year the three Ustashas mentioned above walked through the village. Along the way, they arrested the Serbs Marko Pajagić, house No. 50, Živanović Petar, blacksmith, house No. 25 and Latinin Đuro, house No. 72, and locked them all up in the basement of Milinković Lovro’s house. The basement was guarded by the Ustashas Jurić Petar, house No. 53 and Jurić Stjepan, house number 55. Furthermore, the latter two arrested Tarbuk Petar, a volunteer, Radulović Nikola, Bujinac Milan, Đukić Đuro, Radulović Milan and several women and took them all to the above-mentioned basement. Radulović Nikola fled, but was wounded by Milinković Lovro and Jurić Joso with one bullet from a rifle. Ustasha Nikola aimed his rifle at Tarbuk Petar and severely wounded him. Both wounded men remained lying on the spot, while the other Serbs ran away in all directions.

The next morning, on August 28, of this year, the Ustashas Milinković, his deputy Nikola and Jurić Joso with 10 other friends came to the houses of both severely wounded Serbs. They dragged the severely wounded Radulović Nikola from the house, threw him on the garbage dump, which was located next to the house, and abused him until he died. At first, they wanted to bury him in the garbage dump, but at the request of other villagers, he was buried in the cemetery. The severely wounded Tarbuk Petar was also dragged in front of the house, and abused until he died. His wife Jelica was ordered to bury her husband. She then dragged her husband into the garden, covered him and fled the house out of fear.

The following were arrested: Radulović Ulinka,^[4] 18 years, Radulović Danica, 14 years, daughters of Mihailo and Janja, Tarbuk Ivan, 73 years, Budić Petar, 68 years, Budić Matija, 74 years, Budić Julka, 57 years, Ognjenović Petar, 67 years, Šestić Đura, 65 years, Pajagić Mihajlo, 59 years, Tarbuk Nikola, 53 years, Pajagić Marko, 47 years and his wife Marija, 40 years, Latina Đuro, 57 years, his wife Marta, 55 years, Pajagić Draginja, 24 years, Marjanović Mihailo, 60 years, Živanović Laza, 60 years, Živanović Stana, 40 years, Živanović Petar 50 years, Karavidić Petar, 72 years and his wife Sofija, 70 years, Pajagić Draginja, 34 years, Ognjenović Kata 44 years, in total 24 people.

All of the above were also imprisoned in the basement of Milinković, the forest ranger. Radulović Ilinka and Danica were raped collectively by the Ustashas in the basement. They organized a whole feast, eating roast pork and drinking brandy, while the Serbs had to dance kolo and entertain the Ustashas by singing.

After this revelry, they took all the arrested Serbs to the Karavidić stream and killed them all there. Pajagić Nikola, house No. 28, Marjanović Ljuban, house No. 31 and Janko Karavidić, house No. 67, all from the village of Babina Rijeka, had to bury the bodies of these unfortunates.

On August 29 of this year, the Ustashas undertook arrests again; men were taken by car to Bosanska Kostajnica, where they were all killed immediately, while women were taken to the camp in the village of Crkveni Bok, where they remain to this day. Thus, on that day, 100 people were taken from the village of Babina Rijeka. Only from the house of Pajagić Mihajlo, house No. 18, 7 persons were taken away, 4 adults and 3 children. Further, they took Tarbuk Milja and her 3 grandchildren; Živanović Stana and Pajagić Draginja, however, were killed in their homes. Many of these peasants left their homes. Ustasha Babić Petar persuaded the peasants that they could return home, that no harm would happen to them. As soon as the peasants came home, they were abused by the Ustashas.

On August 28, 29 and 30 of this year, the Ustashas looted all the cattle there were in the villages. They also took grain, lard and other foodstuffs. After completely looting the village, they set fire to 40 houses.

I fled my village on August 28 of this year and hid in the vicinity until September 10 of this year, whereafter I left for Belgrade and arrived there on September 11, of this year.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 325-326.

^[2] Handwritten date and initials.

^[3] Slava is a family patron’s day when the Serbian families celebrate the day, usually the feast day of a saint, on which their ancestors were Christianized. – Subeditor’s note.

^[4] Ilinka.

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.