Petar "Pero" Brzica (born ca. 1917) was a Croatian Franciscan of the "

Order of Friars Minor The Order of Friars Minor (also called the Franciscans, the Franciscan Order, or the Seraphic Order; postnominal abbreviation OFM) is a mendicant Catholic religious order, founded in 1209 by Francis of Assisi. The order adheres to the teachi ...

" who became a mass murderer during the Ustaše regime. He committed his atrocities at the

Jasenovac concentration camp Jasenovac () was a concentration and extermination camp established in the village of the same name by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. The concentration camp, one of the ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Background

Before the war, Brzica was a scholarship student at the Franciscan college of

Široki Brijeg , , nickname = , motto = , image_map = BiH municipality location Široki Brijeg.svg , map_alt = , map_caption = Location o ...

in Herzegovina and a member of The Great Brotherhood of Crusaders, an organization part of the Croatian Catholic movement. He spent some time studying law in

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital and largest city of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb stands near the international border between Croatia and Slov ...

where he became a

Ustaše Youth The Ustaše Youth (, hr, Ustaška mladež) was the youth wing of the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organization active during the interwar period and World War II. The Ustaše governed a German-Italian puppet state called the ...

member, later becoming a member of the fascist Ustaša government (1941–45) and one of the guards in the

. As a member of Ustaša, he held the rank of Lieutenant. He won a contest in which he used a curve-bladed knife, also called a srbosjek ("Serb-cutter"), to kill newly arrived concentration camp prisoners. Brzica boasted of winning the contest by killing the largest number of prisoners – 1,360 people. Other sources set Brzica's "record" at a lower number, between 670 and 1,100.C.I. Christian, "Nedjelja", Zagreb, 19 October 1942, referenced in ''Sângeroasa destrămare: Iugoslavia'' by C.I. Christian, Editura Sylvi (1994), p. 170 (, )

References

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brzica, Petar 1910s births Catholicism and far-right politics Croatian nationalists Fugitives Holocaust perpetrators in Yugoslavia Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia perpetrators People of the Independent State of Croatia Possibly living people Ustaše Ustaše concentration camp personnel Year of death unknown Croatian mass murderers

Background

See also

References

Sources