No. 99

STATEMENT OF A REFUGEE FROM THE VILLAGE OF UTOLICA ABOUT THE USTASHA KILLINGS OF THE SERBS FROM UTOLICA, RAUSOVAC, KRČEVO AND OTHER VILLAGES AROUND KOSTAJNICA IN JULY AND AUGUST 1941.^[1]

15/4^[2]

One refugee states:

On July 30 or 31 – I cannot remember the exact date – 10 armed Ustashas came to the village of Utolica, namely: 8 from Kostajnica and 2 from Utolica, namely Kajić Jure and Alar Petar. Both of the latter drew the attention of the Ustashas to the fact that Serbs should be arrested and killed.

On the same day, 15 Serb peasants were arrested in Utolica, taken to Kostajnica, killed on the bridge over the Una, and their bodies were then thrown into the Una River. They are these Serbs: Ličanin Mile, his son Jovo, his grandson Pero, Ličanin Stevo, Vrabac Janko and his son, Kosjer Janko, Rak Ostoja, Kokanović Ilija, Kokanović Rade, Ličanin Milan, Bajić Boško, Podunavac Stevo and Kurilj Andrija.

The very next day, the Ustashas came to my village Rauševac,^[3] but they did not find me at home. My wife and brothers were ordered that I, along with 5 other respectable peasants from my village, have to come to the municipality offices of Majur, in order to guarantee there that my village would remain peaceful. The next day, 5 peasants went to the municipality offices of Majur, namely: Batnožić Cvijo and Batnožić Đuro, Rakić Pavle, Mecić Mirko and Bunjevac Stojan. Đuro Batnožić was the village headman. I did not go to Majur, because I had learned that Drakulić Pero^[4] from Donji Hrastovac, Majur Municipality, was to be lured and then killed in the same way; Drakulić managed to escape at the last moment. The above-mentioned 5 peasants were killed by the Ustashas on the same day and thrown into a well.

On the same day, another 80 Ustashas came to my village, surrounded it, arrested 28 villagers, took them to the “Bajića Jama” forest and killed them all there after horrible abuses. These were the following peasants: Batnožić Janko, Tomašević Jovo, Petrinjac Ljuban, Ćorić Milan and his 3 sons Miloš, Nikola and Ljuban, Bunjevac Dušan, Radojčić Janko, Sanković Miljko and Dušan, Mecić Petar, Batnožić Mirko, Nikola and Stojan, Batnožić Nikola and Đuro and their nephew Boško, student, Vender Janko, Rakić Mirko, Pavlović Gligo, Batnožić Petar, Mirko, Đuro, Batnožić Đuro, Sr., Batnožić Mirko, son of Simo, Pavlović Ostoja and Damjan.

16 Serbs were killed in the nearby villages of Rastouc^[5] and 6 in Krčevo.

On August 2 of this year, the Ustashas arrived in the villages of Ćukur^[6] and Panjani, Majur Municipality, Kostajnica District, and ordered people to come to Kostajnica where they would be given weapons. When they came to Kostajnica, the Ustashas killed all the Serbs, and took the women and children to the concentration camp, where they are still today. Their movable property was looted, so that both villages stand completely deserted and empty.

As early as July 29 of this year I went to the forest, and I would come home only when the Ustashas were not in the village. I was in the woods until August 12 of this year, and using someone else’s pass, for which I paid 2,000 dinars, I came to Belgrade.

Before all this, I had been arrested and imprisoned in Bosanska Kostajnica with other prominent Serbs. I suffered the most horrible abuse in the dungeon, so I have to undergo treatment by a doctor. Dr. Stipančić Branko, a doctor from Kostajnica, gave the Ustashas directives on how to abuse me. The following were abused in the dungeon: Dr. A. Tadić Gliša, lawyer from Kostajnica, Dr. Stepanović, physician from Bosanska Kostajnica and many other Serbs.

In committing these atrocities and murders, the following Ustashas stood out in particular: Dr. Stipančić Branko, a physician from Kostajnica, his 14-year-old son, Pečenjak Ivo, a merchant from Kostajnica and his 14-year-old son, Cvetnić Đuro, a merchant and his minor son, Katinčić Pavao, the District Chief who personally committed the murders, Šugić Pajo, Toplak Dragan, Kolar Franjo, Pavičić Pero, Pavičić Braco, driver, Golubić Niko, all from Kostajnica, Lazić Pero, Jagodić Pero, Jamić Nikola and Marko, Jagodić Zvonko and Marić Nikola, all from Majur, Jagić Mato, Ivezić Mato and Stevo, Govorčinović Pajo and Kostić Stevo, all from Selište, Majur Municipality. The Ustasha Bunjevac from the village of Maćaj,^[7] Municipality of Majur, and Karanović Milan from Grabostan, Municipality of Majur, stood out in particular.

^[1] AВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 327-328.

^[2] Handwritten date and initials.

^[3] Rausovac.

^[4] See: P. Drakulić, Korak do smrti, Zagreb: Srpsko narodno vijeće, 2014.

^[5] Rausovac.

^[6] Čukur.

^[7] Mračaj.

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.