Glina massacres | |
---|---|
Location | Glina, Banija, Independent State of Croatia |
Date | First massacre: 11/12 May 1941 Second massacre: 30 July 1941 |
Target | Serbs |
Attack type | Mass killing |
Deaths | First massacre: 260–373 Second massacre: 700–1,200 |
Perpetrators | Ustaše |
The Glina massacres were genocidal[2] massacres of Serb peasants in the Croatian town of Glina during World War II. Described by journalist Tim Judah as being amongst the most infamous of the early atrocities perpetrated by the Ustaše in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), they resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Serb civilians. The first massacre in the town occurred on 11 or 12 May 1941, when the Ustaše murdered 260–373 Serb men and boys in a Serbian Orthodox church before setting it alight. Two days later, the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, sent a letter of protest to Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić after receiving news of the massacre. However, he failed to condemn the atrocity publicly. The second massacre occurred on 30 July of that same year, when 700–1,200 Serbs were massacred by the Ustaše after being deceived into thinking they would be subjected to a mass conversion to Roman Catholicism. A man named Ljubo Jednak was the only survivor of this massacre. He went on testify against the Ustaše government's Minister of the Interior, Andrija Artuković, at his 1986 trial in Croatia.
Following the independence of Croatia from Yugoslavia, a marble plaque bearing the names of Serbs killed in the massacres was removed by Croatian authorities in the town. The local authorities then began the conversion of a memorial pavilion which was dedicated to the victims of the massacres into a cultural institution known as the "Croat House".
Background
On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the Royal Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated.[3] The country was then dismembered and the extreme Croat nationalist and fascist Ante Pavelić, who had been in exile in Benito Mussolini's Italy, was appointed Poglavnik (leader) of an Ustaše-led Croatian state – the Independent State of Croatia (often called the NDH, from the Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska). The NDH combined almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of modern-day Serbia into an "Italian-German quasi-protectorate".[4] NDH authorities, led by the Ustaše militia,[5] subsequently implemented genocidal policies against the Serb, Jewish and Roma population living within the borders of the new state.[6] Ethnic Serbs were persecuted the most because Pavelić and the Ustaše considered them "potential turncoats" in what they wanted to be an ethnically pure state composed solely of Croats.[7] Racist and antisemitic laws were passed,[8] and ethnic Serbs, representing about thirty percent of the NDH's population of 6.3 million,[9] became targets of large-scale massacres perpetrated by the Ustaše. By the middle of 1941, these killings reached degrees of brutality that shocked even some Germans.[10][11] The Cyrillic script was subsequently banned by Croatian authorities, Orthodox Christian church schools were closed, and Serbs were ordered to wear identifying armbands. Mile Budak, the Croatian Minister of Education, is reported to have said that one-third of Serbs in the NDH were to be killed, one third were to be expelled, and one-third were to be converted to Roman Catholicism.[12]
First massacre
Glina was a small market town[13] in the Banija[14] region of Croatia located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) south of Zagreb.[15] In 1931, the town had a population of 2,315 people[13] and was inhabited mostly by Serbs, Croats, and Jews.[16] In 1941, the Croatian Minister of Justice, Marko Puk, established a base in Glina.[17] On 11[15] or 12 May[2] of that year, 260[15][18] to 373 Serb males over the age of 16 were seized by the Ustaše and detained regardless of occupation or class.[2] The Ustaše then herded the group into an Orthodox Church and demanded that they be given documents proving the Serbs had all converted to Catholicism. Subsequently, two Serbs produced the required documents and were released. Those who did not possess conversion certificates were locked inside[19] and were massacred. Their bodies were then left to burn as the church was set on fire.[15] The Ustaše then waited around the church to shoot any survivors attempting to escape the flames.[20]
On 14 May, the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, sent a letter of protest to Pavelić after receiving news of the massacre. However, he failed to condemn the atrocity publicly.[15]
Second massacre
On the night of 30 July 1941, a massacre similar to the one in May again occurred in Glina.[2] That summer, the Ustaše had offered amnesty for all Serbs in the NDH who would convert from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism. Many Serbs responded positively, and one group turned up at the Serbian Orthodox church in Glina where a conversion ceremony was to take place.[21] The 700[2] to 1,200[22] The Serbs who had gathered, thinking they were to undergo a conversion ceremony, were greeted by six members of the Ustaše[21] under the direct command of Vjekoslav Luburić.[23] When all were inside, the doors to the church were sealed. The Serbs were then forced to lie on the ground as the six Ustaše struck them one by one on the head with spiked clubs. More Ustaše then appeared and the killings continued.[21] Victims were killed by having their throats cut or by having their heads smashed in with rifle butts.[2] Only one of the victims, Ljubo Jednak, survived after playing dead and later described what had happened:
They started with one huge husky peasant who began singing an old historical heroic song of the Serbs. They put his head on the table and as he continued to sing they slit his throat and then the next squad moved in to smash his skull. I was paralyzed. "This is what you are getting" an Ustaša screamed. Ustaše surrounded us. There was absolutely no escape. Then the slaughter began. One group stabbed with knives, the other followed, smashing heads to make certain everyone was dead. Within a matter of minutes we stood in a lake of blood. Screams and wails, bodies dropping right and left.[24]
The bodies were then put into trucks and were taken to a large burial pit, where they were left unattended long enough for Jednak to escape.[24] Jednak survived the war and later testified against Stepinac in 1946 and the Ustaše government's Minister of the Interior, Andrija Artuković, in a 1986 trial in Croatia.[25]
Legacy
Out of an estimated 300,000 Croatian Serbs that were murdered by the Ustaše from 1941 to 1945,[14] more than 18,000 were ethnic Serbs from Glina.[26] The two massacres that occurred in the town in 1941 have sometimes been described as pogroms.[14] Journalist Tim Judah has described them as being one of the most infamous of the early atrocities perpetrated by the Ustaše.[22] Local Serbs remained in Glina after the war, partly out of a desire to remain near the graves of their deceased family members.[27]
The poem Requiem (Serbian: Rekvijem, Реквијем) by poet Ivan V. Lalić is dedicated to the victims of the two massacres in Glina.[28] After the war, Communist authorities erected a monument and museum dedicated to the victims of the massacres on the spot where the church from the second Glina massacre had stood.[27] Following the independence of Croatia from Yugoslavia, the monument, a marble tablet bearing the names of Serbs killed in the massacres, was removed by Croatian authorities in the town.[29] The memorial museum was heavily damaged in 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence.[27] After the war, local authorities began working on the conversion of the memorial into a cultural institution known as the "Croat House".[29]
Notes
- ^ Paris 1961, p. 224.
- ^ a b c d e f Mirković 1996, p. 23.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 28.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 272.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 397–409.
- ^ Hoare 2007, pp. 20–24.
- ^ Cox 2007, p. 224.
- ^ Midlarsky 2005, p. 224.
- ^ Tanner 2001, p. 150.
- ^ Mojzes 2009, p. 159.
- ^ Israeli 2013, p. 79.
- ^ Judah 2000, p. 126.
- ^ a b Mirković 1996, p. 30.
- ^ a b c Cox 2007, p. 225.
- ^ a b c d e Tomasevich 2001, p. 398.
- ^ Judah 2000, p. 125.
- ^ Meier 1999, p. 127.
- ^ Goldstein 1999, p. 137.
- ^ Cornwell 2000, p. 252.
- ^ Singleton 1985, p. 177.
- ^ a b c Glenny 2012, p. 500.
- ^ a b Judah 2000, p. 127.
- ^ Goldstein 2007, pp. 22–24.
- ^ a b Falk 1990, p. 67.
- ^ Blic & 20 May 1997.
- ^ Rodogno 2006, p. 186.
- ^ a b c Engelberg & 6 July 1991.
- ^ Segel 2003, p. 327.
- ^ a b Ash 1999, pp. 166–167.
References
Books
- Ash, Timothy Garton (1999). History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-30753-084-4.
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(help) - Cohen, Philip J. (1996). Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-0-89096-760-7.
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(help) - Cornwell, John (2000). Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14029-627-3.
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(help) - Cox, John K. (2007). "Ante Pavelić and the Ustaša State in Croatia". In Fischer, Bernd Jürgen (ed.). Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of South Eastern Europe. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-455-2.
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(help) - Falk, Gerhard (1990). Murder: An Analysis of its Forms, Conditions, and Causes. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-89950-478-0.
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(help) - Glenny, Misha (2012). The Balkans: 1804–2012. London, United Kingdom: Granta Books. ISBN 978-1-77089-273-6.
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(help) - Goldstein, Ivo (1999). Croatia: A History. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-2017-2.
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(help) - Goldstein, Ivo (2007). "The Independent State of Croatia in 1941: On the Road to Catastrophe". In Ramet, Sabrina P. (ed.). The Independent State of Croatia 1941–45. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-44055-6.
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(help) - Hoare, Marko Attila (2007). The History of Bosnia: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day. London: Saqi. ISBN 978-0-86356-953-1.
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(help) - Israeli, Raphael (2013). The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions, 1941–1945. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-4975-3.
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(help) - Judah, Tim (2000). The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (2nd ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08507-5.
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(help) - Meier, Viktor (1999). Yugoslavia: A History of Its Demise. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-18595-5.
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(help) - Midlarsky, Manus I. (2005). The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-13944-539-9.
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(help) - Mirković, Damir (1996). "Victims and Perpetrators in the Yugoslav Genocide, 1941–1945: Some Preliminary Observations". In Locke, Hubert G.; Littell, Marcia Sachs (eds.). Holocaust and Church Struggle: Religion, Power, and the Politics of Resistance. Studies in the Shoah. Vol. XVI. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0-76180-375-1.
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(help) - Mojzes, Paul (2009). "The Genocidal Twentieth Century in the Balkans". In Jacobs, Steven L. (ed.). Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-3590-7.
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(help) - Paris, Edmond (1961). Genocide in Satellite Croatia, 1941–1945: A Record of Racial and Religious Persecutions and Massacres. Chicago: American Institute for Balkan Affairs.
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(help) - Rodogno, Davide (2006). Fascism's European Empire: Italian Occupation During the Second World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-84515-1.
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(help) - Segel, Harold B. (2003). The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-23111-404-2.
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(help) - Singleton, Frederick Bernard (1985). A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-27485-2.
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(help) - Tanner, Marcus (2001). Croatia: A Nation Forged in War. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09125-7.
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(help) - Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2.
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(help)
Newspapers
Websites
- Engelberg, Stephen (6 July 1991). "Quiet War Spills Blood Inside Croatian Borders". The New York Times.