Veljun massacre
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The Blagaj massacre was the mass killing of around 400 Serb civilians by the
Croatian nationalist Croatian nationalism is nationalism that asserts the nationality of Croats and promotes the cultural unity of Croats. Modern Croatian nationalism first arose in the 19th century after Budapest exerted increasing pressure for Magyarization of Cro ...
Ustaše The Ustaše (), also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croats, Croatian Fascism, fascist and ultranationalism, ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaš ...
movement on 9 May 1941, 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 opposin ...
. The massacre occurred shortly after the German-led Axis
invasion of Yugoslavia The invasion of Yugoslavia, also known as the April War or Operation 25, or ''Projekt 25'' was a German-led attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II. The order for the invasion was p ...
and the establishment of the Ustaše-led Axis puppet state known as the
Independent State of Croatia The Independent State of Croatia ( sh, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH; german: Unabhängiger Staat Kroatien; it, Stato indipendente di Croazia) was a World War II-era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Fascist It ...
(NDH). It was the second act of mass murder committed by the Ustaše upon coming to power and was part of a wider campaign of genocide against Serbs in the NDH that would last until the end of the war. The victims were drawn from the village of Veljun and its surroundings, ostensibly for their involvement in the robbery and murder of a local Croat Catholic miller, Joso Mravunac, and his family. The Ustaše claimed that the murders were ethnically motivated and signalled the start of a regional Serb uprising. Following their arrests, the prisoners were detained in a
Blagaj Blagaj is a village in the south-eastern region of the Mostar basin, in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It stands at the edge of Bišće plain and is one of the most valuable mixed urban and rural built environments in ...
school, where many were beaten and tortured. The Ustaše intended to organize a mass trial of the men under the auspices of a "people's court". These plans fell apart after Mravunac's surviving daughter was unable to identify perpetrators from a police lineup and prosecutors declined to launch proceedings against any individual without evidence of their guilt. Dissatisfied,
Vjekoslav Luburić Vjekoslav Luburić (6 March 1914 – 20 April 1969) was a Croatian Ustaše official who headed the system of concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during much of World War II. Luburić also personally oversaw and spe ...
, a senior Ustaše official, arranged for the creation of a new "special court" and appointed a prosecutor that was unwilling to let the lack of evidence hinder a conviction. The following day, the surviving Mravunac daughter allegedly identified one of the prisoners from a
police lineup A police lineup (in American English) or identity parade (in British English) is a process by which a crime victim or witness's putative identification of a suspect is confirmed to a level that can count as evidence (law), evidence at trial. T ...
as being one of the perpetrators of the crime. This constituted sufficient reason to have 32 or 36 of the prisoners sentenced to death. The Ustaše went further and executed all of the men in their custody in a pit behind the Blagaj school, burying their bodies in a mass grave, which was subsequently covered with crops. Following the massacre, the female relatives of the victims visited Blagaj carrying baskets of food for the prisoners, but were told the men had been sent away to Germany. After three months, a local Ustaše official captured by the Partisans admitted that the prisoners had in fact been killed. Memories of the massacre fostered animosity between the residents of Blagaj and Veljun that have lasted for decades. During the 1991–1995 war in Croatia, fought amid the
breakup of Yugoslavia The breakup of Yugoslavia occurred as a result of a series of political upheavals and conflicts during the early 1990s. After a period of political and economic crisis in the 1980s, constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yu ...
, the residents of the two communities destroyed and plundered each other's villages, and forcibly displaced one another. The inhabitants of the two villages began returning to the region after the war, but tensions persisted, and an attempt to commemorate the massacre in May 1999 resulted in the socialist-era monument to the victims being desecrated. Annual commemorations have since resumed.


Background


Inter-war period

The
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes Kingdom commonly refers to: * A monarchy ruled by a king or queen * Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy Kingdom may also refer to: Arts and media Television * ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama s ...
was formed in the immediate aftermath of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. It was composed of six million
Serbs The Serbs ( sr-Cyr, Срби, Srbi, ) are the most numerous South Slavic ethnic group native to the Balkans in Southeastern Europe, who share a common Serbian ancestry, culture, history and language. The majority of Serbs live in their na ...
, 3.5 million
Croats The Croats (; hr, Hrvati ) are a South Slavic ethnic group who share a common Croatian ancestry, culture, history and language. They are also a recognized minority in a number of neighboring countries, namely Austria, the Czech Republic, G ...
and one million
Slovenes The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians ( sl, Slovenci ), are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Slovenia, and adjacent regions in Italy, Austria and Hungary. Slovenes share a common ancestry, culture, history and speak Slovene as their n ...
, among others. Being the largest ethnic group, the Serbs favoured a centralized state. Croats, Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims did not. The so-called Vidovdan Constitution, approved on 28 June 1921 and based on the Serbian constitution of 1903, established the Kingdom as a parliamentary monarchy under the Serbian
Karađorđević dynasty The Karađorđević dynasty ( sr-Cyrl, Динасија Карађорђевић, Dinasija Karađorđević, Карађорђевићи / Karađorđevići, ) or House of Karađorđević ( sr-Cyrl, Кућа Карађорђевић, Kuća Karađ ...
.
Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...
was chosen as the capital of the new state, assuring Serb and
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political dominance. In 1928, the prominent Croatian politician
Stjepan Radić Stjepan Radić (11 June 1871 – 8 August 1928) was a Croat politician and founder of the Croatian People's Peasant Party (HPSS), active in Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He is credited with galvanizing Cro ...
was shot and mortally wounded on the floor of the country's parliament by a Serb deputy. The following year, King Alexander instated a royal dictatorship and renamed the country Yugoslavia to deemphasize its ethnic makeup. It was divided into nine administrative units called banates ( sh, banovine), six of which had ethnic Serb majorities. In 1931, Alexander issued a decree which allowed the Yugoslav Parliament to reconvene on the condition that only pro-Yugoslav parties be represented in it. Marginalized, far-right and far-left parties thrived. The
Ustaše The Ustaše (), also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croats, Croatian Fascism, fascist and ultranationalism, ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaš ...
, a Croatian
fascist Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...
movement, emerged as the most extreme of these. The Ustaše were driven by a profound hatred of Serbs. In 1932, they launched the
Velebit uprising The Velebit uprising or Lika uprising ( hr, Velebitski ustanak; Lički ustanak) was a minor action carried out by Ustaše militias against a Yugoslav gendarmerie station on 6 and 7 September 1932. Preparation In the area near Gospić, the Ustaš ...
, attacking a police station in
Lika Lika () is a traditional region of Croatia proper, roughly bound by the Velebit mountain from the southwest and the Plješevica mountain from the northeast. On the north-west end Lika is bounded by Ogulin-Plaški basin, and on the south-east by ...
. The police responded harshly to the attack and harassed the local population, leading to further animosity between Croats and Serbs. In 1934, an Ustaše-trained assassin killed Alexander while he was on a
state visit A state visit is a formal visit by a head of state to a foreign country, at the invitation of the head of state of that foreign country, with the latter also acting as the official host for the duration of the state visit. Speaking for the host ...
to France. Alexander's cousin, Prince Paul, became
regent A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...
and took up the king's responsibilities until Alexander's son Peter turned 18. Following the 1938 ''
Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...
'' between
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and
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
, Yugoslavia came to share its northwestern border with the Third Reich and fell under increasing pressure as her neighbours aligned themselves with the
Axis powers The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...
. In April 1939, Italy opened a second frontier with Yugoslavia when it
invaded An invasion is a military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter territory owned by another such entity, generally with the objective of either: conquering; liberating or re-establishing con ...
and occupied neighbouring
Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...
. At the outbreak of World War II, the Yugoslav government declared its neutrality. Between September and November 1940,
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
and
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
joined the
Tripartite Pact The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, was an agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940 by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano and Saburō Kurusu. It was a defensive military ...
, aligning themselves with the Axis, and Italy invaded Greece. From that time, Yugoslavia was almost completely surrounded by the Axis powers and their satellites, and her neutral stance toward the war became strained. In late February 1941,
Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...
joined the Pact. The following day, German troops entered Bulgaria from Romania, closing the ring around Yugoslavia. Intending to secure his southern flank for the impending attack on the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
,
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
began placing heavy pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Axis. On 25 March 1941, after some delay, the Yugoslav government conditionally signed the Pact. Two days later, a group of pro-Western, Serbian nationalist
Royal Yugoslav Air Force The Royal Yugoslav Air Force ( sh-Latn, Jugoslovensko kraljevsko ratno vazduhoplovstvo, JKRV; sh-Cyrl, Југословенско краљевско ратно ваздухопловство, ЈКРВ; ( sl, Jugoslovansko kraljevo vojno letalstv ...
officers deposed the country's
regent A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...
, Prince Paul, in a bloodless
coup d'état A coup d'état (; French for 'stroke of state'), also known as a coup or overthrow, is a seizure and removal of a government and its powers. Typically, it is an illegal seizure of power by a political faction, politician, cult, rebel group, m ...
, placed his teenaged nephew Peter on the throne, and brought to power a "government of national unity" led by General Dušan Simović. The coup enraged Hitler, who immediately ordered the country's
invasion An invasion is a military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter territory owned by another such entity, generally with the objective of either: conquering; liberating or re-establishing con ...
, which commenced on 6 April 1941.


Creation of the NDH

The Royal Yugoslav Army (''Vojska Kraljevine Jugoslavije'', VKJ) was quickly overwhelmed by the combined German, Italian and Hungarian assault. Much of its equipment was obsolete, its military strategy was outdated and its soldiers were ill-disciplined and poorly trained. To make matters worse, many of the VKJ's non-Serb personnel, especially Croats, were reluctant to fight against the Germans, whom they considered liberators from decades of Serb oppression. On 10 April, senior Ustaše leader
Slavko Kvaternik Slavko Kvaternik (25 August 1878 – 7 June 1947) was a Croatian Ustaše military general and politician who was one of the founders of the Ustaše movement. Kvaternik was military commander and Minister of '' Domobranstvo'' (''Armed Forces''). O ...
proclaimed the establishment of the
Independent State of Croatia The Independent State of Croatia ( sh, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH; german: Unabhängiger Staat Kroatien; it, Stato indipendente di Croazia) was a World War II-era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Fascist It ...
(''Nezavisna Država Hrvatska'', NDH). The declaration came exactly one week before the VKJ's unconditional surrender to the Axis powers. The leader of the Ustaše, Ante Pavelić, was in Rome at the time and made arrangements to travel to
Karlovac Karlovac () is a city in central Croatia. According to the 2011 census, its population was 55,705. Karlovac is the administrative centre of Karlovac County. The city is located on the Zagreb- Rijeka highway and railway line, south-west of Zagre ...
, just west of Zagreb. He arrived in Karlovac on 13 April, accompanied by several hundred of his followers. On 15 April, Pavelić reached Zagreb, having granted territorial cessions to Italy at Croatia's expense and promised the Germans that he had no intention of pursuing a foreign policy independent of Berlin. That same day, Germany and Italy extended diplomatic recognition to the NDH. Pavelić declared himself the ''
Poglavnik () was the title used by Ante Pavelić, leader of the World War II Croatian movement Ustaše and of the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. Etymology and usage The word was first recorded in a 16th-century dictionary compiled ...
'' ("leader") of the Ustaše-led Croatian state, which was to include much of present-day
Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...
, all of present-day
Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and H ...
and parts of present-day
Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...
. On 17 April, the Yugoslav Supreme Command capitulated to the Axis powers. The country was subsequently dismembered, and occupied by Germany and its allies. Pavelić and his followers intended to create an "ethnically pure" Croatia through the mass murder and deportation of Serbs, Jews and other non-Croats. At the time, Croats only made up about 50 percent of the NDH's population of 6.5 million. Nearly two million Serbs, about one-third of the NDH's total population, now found themselves within the borders of the newly formed state. Serb-majority areas also covered between 60 and 70 percent of the NDH's total landmass. "The Croatian state cannot exist if 1.8 million Serbs are living in it and if we have a powerful Serbian state at our backs," Croatia's future
Foreign Minister A foreign affairs minister or minister of foreign affairs (less commonly minister for foreign affairs) is generally a cabinet minister in charge of a state's foreign policy and relations. The formal title of the top official varies between cou ...
Mladen Lorković Mladen Lorković (1 March 1909 – April 1945) was a Croatian politician and lawyer who became a senior member of the Ustaše and served as the Foreign Minister and Minister of Interior of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World ...
explained. "Therefore, we are trying to make the Serbs disappear from our regions." On 28 April, the Ustaše
massacred A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...
nearly 200 Serb civilians in the village of
Gudovac Gudovac is a village in Croatia. It lies near to Bjelovar and about east of the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Gudovac was first settled during the Middle Ages and had an ethnically mixed population through much of its history. In 1931, Gudovac ha ...
, their first act of mass murder upon coming to power.


Prelude

Blagaj Blagaj is a village in the south-eastern region of the Mostar basin, in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It stands at the edge of Bišće plain and is one of the most valuable mixed urban and rural built environments in ...
is a village in the Kordun region, about south of Karlovac. It is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Croats. On the evening of 5 May 1941, two unidentified men forced their way into the home of a local miller, a Catholic Croat named Joso Mravunac. They first robbed the family and then killed Mravunac, his wife, his mother and two of his children. Mravunac's 12-year-old daughter Milka escaped by jumping into a nearby river. The following day, investigative judge Nikola Lasić and county commissioner Eduard Lenčeric filed a report describing the incident as a "murder-robbery by unknown perpetrators". Local Ustaše officials dismissed these findings and suggested that the deaths could be attributed to "
Chetniks The Chetniks ( sh-Cyrl-Latn, Четници, Četnici, ; sl, Četniki), formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland and the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationa ...
" from the nearby village of
Veljun Veljun is a village in Croatia, under the Slunj township, in Karlovac County Karlovac County ( hr, Karlovačka županija) is a county in central Croatia, with the administrative center in Karlovac. The city of Karlovac is a fort from the times ...
, whose population was predominantly Serb.
Dido Kvaternik Eugen Dido Kvaternik (29 March 1910 – 10 March 1962) was a Croatian Ustaše General-Lieutenant and the Chief of the Internal Security Service in the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet state during World War II. Life Eugen Dido Kvate ...
, a senior Ustaše official, believed that the murders signalled the start of a Serb revolt. He immediately dispatched his subordinates Ivica Šarić and
Vjekoslav Luburić Vjekoslav Luburić (6 March 1914 – 20 April 1969) was a Croatian Ustaše official who headed the system of concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during much of World War II. Luburić also personally oversaw and spe ...
to Blagaj. Šarić and Luburić led a contingent of about 50 Ustaše fighters, mostly returnees from Italy, into the village and its surroundings. Under Šarić and Luburić's supervision, the Ustaše rounded up nearly 400 Serbs. On 6 May, NDH Justice Minister Mirko Puk requested that Vladimir Židovec, the secretary of the Karlovac Ustaše Council, select local lawyers deemed "certified good Croats" to prosecute Serbs suspected of involvement in the Mravunac murders. The arrested individuals were to be tried by a so-called "people's court" in Blagaj. That evening, Puk dispatched messengers from the Karlovac Ustaše Council, telling the lawyers he had selected that they should be ready to depart for Blagaj by 05:00 the following morning. Those selected included Mirko Mikac, president of the county courthouse, as president of the Special People's Court; Ivan Betlehem, the assessor of the county court, and Zdravko Berković, an Ustaša Council representative, as members of the Special People's Court; Milan Stilinović, district court clerk, as the deputy judge; Ivan Gromes, the secretary of the district court, as the state prosecutor; and Berislav Lukinić, a local attorney, as the public defender for the accused. All those appointed, with the exception of Stilinović and Lukinić, were either Ustaše collaborators or known sympathizers of Pavelić's regime. Early on the morning of 7 May, Puk confirmed the appointments by decree of the Ministry of Justice while the members of the "people's court" were still at the crime scene. According to the subsequent corroborating statements of Betlehem, Stilinović and Lukinić, the members of the "people's court" encountered a large group of prisoners at the Blagaj school, many of whom had visibly been beaten or otherwise tortured. According to surviving detainees, the prisoners had been tortured by Ustaše émigrés under Luburić's supervision. Ustaše from local "readiness units", numbering about 50 armed peasants, also participated. Infuriated by the Mravunac murders, many Croats from Blagaj and neighbouring
Pavlovac Pavlovac can refer to several places: ;In Bosnia and Herzegovina * Pavlovac, Banja Luka * Pavlovac, Pale *Pavlovac (fortress) The Pavlovac Castle ( sr-cyrl, Павловац) was a noble court and one of the largest and most important fortified ...
apprehended their Serb neighbours and brought them to the Blagaj school for "questioning". Lasić repeated before the court that there was no evidence suggesting the perpetrators were Serbs or that there was a political motive behind the murders. He stood by his initial findings and reiterated that the crime was a "murder-robbery by unknown perpetrators". He noted that Mravunac's surviving daughter was unable to identify any of the perpetrators from a
police lineup A police lineup (in American English) or identity parade (in British English) is a process by which a crime victim or witness's putative identification of a suspect is confirmed to a level that can count as evidence (law), evidence at trial. T ...
. Šarić promised the court that he would prepare a detailed report with proof that Serb rebels were to blame. The court reconvened at the Blagaj school, stated that there was no evidence to justify a trial and reached a unanimous decision that suspects would only be tried once sufficient evidence had been gathered. By the evening of 7 May, the judges had returned to Karlovac.


Massacre

Luburić was dissatisfied with the court's "relatively lenient" decision, contending that it was not reached in accordance with "Ustaše regulations". Kvaternik also voiced his displeasure. That same day, he arranged for
Vlado Singer Vlado Singer (21 October 1908 – October 1943) was a Kingdom of Yugoslavia politician and a prominent member of the Croatian Ustaše movement. Biography Singer was born in Virovitica on 21 October 1908 to a Croatian Jewish family.Davor Kovačić ...
, an old friend from Kvaternik's émigré days, to form a new "people's court" that would oversee legal proceedings and "try cases in the Ustaše way". On the morning of 8 May, Puk approved the creation of the new court, which convened at the Blagaj school later that day. Joso Rukavina was appointed president of the court, Josip Majić and Jakov Jurag were named members, Josip Raspudić and Grga Ereš were installed as deputy judges, and Vladimir Vranković was assigned the role of state prosecutor. All were staunch pre-war Ustaše, and on this occasion, no public defender was appointed. The surviving Mravunac daughter was again asked to identify suspects from a police lineup. This time, according to Ereš, she identified a Serb detainee as one of the assailants. The Ustaše interrogated several dozen prominent Serbs: a priest, an interwar mayor, suspected Chetniks and known communists. According to Ustaše records, the following afternoon, 32 individuals were sentenced to
death by firing squad Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are us ...
for "an attempted Chetnik uprising against the Independent State of Croatia and the murder of the Croatian family Mravunac". After the war, Dušan Nikšić, the only survivor from this group, stated that 36 people were convicted and immediately taken to the execution site, a pit behind the Blagaj school. The court concluded that there was "insufficient evidence" to convict the others that had been arrested. "I later found out that Luburić killed all of the remaining detainees," Ereš said during his post-war interrogation by Yugoslav war crimes investigators. The massacre in Blagaj was the second committed by the Ustaše upon coming to power. Croatian sources tend to understate the number of victims, suggesting as little as 150 killed, while Serbian sources tend to exaggerate, offering figures as high as 600 killed. Most historians agree that the Ustaše massacred around 400 prisoners. Several accounts suggest that the men brought along by Luburić and Šarić participated more extensively in the torture and killing of civilians while local Ustaše activists only assisted and stood guard. Following the war, two local Ustaše admitted their extensive participation in the killings. One Croat woman from Blagaj stated that her husband's participation in the massacre, though limited to guarding the prisoners, left him feeling ill and unable to eat or sleep for several days. The testimonies of survivors indicated that they believed local Croats were equally, if not more, responsible for the killings. The inhabitants of Blagaj recalled hearing gunshots and screams on the night of the murders. One woman recalled seeing Luburić "pouring water from a well by the bucket" so as to wash the blood from his hands and sleeves. Following the massacre, the inhabitants of Blagaj looted the homes of the murdered inhabitants of Veljun, stealing their valuables and livestock. The victims of the massacre were buried in mass graves, which were subsequently planted over with crops. Prior to burial, their bodies had been covered in quicklime to speed up decomposition.


Aftermath

On 10 May, the women of Veljun stopped by the Blagaj school carrying baskets of food for the prisoners. Šarić told them that the men had been sent to work in Germany, and since the women of Blagaj were unwilling to tell them what had actually occurred, they believed him. As months passed and none of the men were heard from, the women began to fear the worst. "The entire village knew what had happened that night behind their school," the
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
scholar Slavko Goldstein writes, "and they participated in a conspiracy of silence that lasted three full months." In August 1941, the Partisans captured Ivan Šajfar, the Ustaše commissioner of Veljun. They demanded to know the prisoners' whereabouts. He told them that they been killed in the pit behind the Blagaj school on the night of 9 May. Shortly thereafter, he was executed. In September 1942, two battalions of the First Primorsko-Goranski Partisan unit and the First Proletarian Battalion attacked Blagaj. Members of the local Home Guard garrison, consisting of about 120 men, mostly fled or surrendered after sporadic resistance. About 30 defended their homes almost to the last bullet. Some of them were able to escape, several killed themselves rather than be captured, while the rest were captured by the Partisans and summarily executed. Once Blagaj was in Partisan hands, Serb widows from Veljun ransacked and then set fire to more than two dozen of the village's Croat-inhabited homes. "They would have torched all the houses in the village had the Partisans not stopped them," Goldstein writes. The women claimed to have only set fire to the houses in which they had found their property, which the Blagaj Ustaše had stolen in the lead-up to the massacre. After the war, which ended with the destruction of the NDH and re-establishment of Yugoslavia as a socialist state, the inhabitants of Veljun denied that any locals had taken part in the killings. Rumours persisted that the Mravunac family had been killed by a local Ustaše fighter so as to justify a massacre. Ustaše killings of Serbs continued throughout the war, and dozens of concentration camps were established to detain Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, anti-fascist Croats and others opposed to Pavelić's regime. Contemporary German accounts place the number of Serbs killed by the Ustaše at about 350,000. According to the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...
, between 320,000 and 340,000 Serbs were killed by the Ustaše over the course of the war. Most modern historians agree that the Ustaše killed over 300,000 Serbs, about 17 percent of all Serbs living in the NDH. At the
Nuremberg trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...
, these killings were judged to have constituted
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
. Pavelić fled to Argentina, survived an assassination attempt by Yugoslav government agents in
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
in 1957, and died of his wounds in
Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
two years later, aged 70. Kvaternik survived the war and the destruction of the NDH, fled to Argentina with his family and was killed in a car accident in 1962. Following the war, Luburić emigrated to Spain, where he was assassinated by a Yugoslav agent in August 1969.


Legacy

A memorial tomb was constructed behind the Blagaj school after the war. The remains of the victims were later transferred to Veljun, where a mausoleum was erected. The monument, erected by Yugoslavia's socialist government, evasively described the perpetrators as "fascists" rather than explicitly calling them Ustaše, part of an attempt at fostering cooperation and reconciliation among the country's ethnic groups. Until 1990, commemorations were held annually every May, with the mandatory attendance of schoolchildren. "Children from Veljun would hear how, in this place, their grandfathers had been killed and the Blagaj Ustaše were the ones who killed them," Goldstein writes. "Children from Blagaj would hear how their grandfathers had been killers, how with no reason they had murdered the grandfathers of the children from Veljun, with whom they went to the same school." In private, the residents of Blagaj blamed Chetniks from Veljun, Poloj and other Serbian villages for initiating an uprising against the NDH and killing the Mravunac family, for which no more than 150 were tried and executed in accordance with the law. The historians Philip Cook and Ben Shepherd note that the atrocities that took place in April and May 1941, such as those at
Gudovac Gudovac is a village in Croatia. It lies near to Bjelovar and about east of the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Gudovac was first settled during the Middle Ages and had an ethnically mixed population through much of its history. In 1931, Gudovac ha ...
, Blagaj and Glina, occurred before any organized uprising by either the Partisans or Chetniks. For the Serbs of Kordun, the killings came to epitomize the brutality of Ustaše rule, and were commemorated in Serbian folk poetry. Tensions between the residents of Blagaj and Veljun persisted long after the war. By 1991, Blagaj and Pavlovac had been reduced to 200 residents, from a pre-war population of 708, while Veljun and the neighbouring villages of Lapovac and Točak had been reduced to 700 from a pre-war population of 1,297. That same year, all the remaining residents of Blagaj and Pavlovac were forced from their homes by Croatian Serb rebels, amid inter-ethnic warfare sparked by the
breakup of Yugoslavia The breakup of Yugoslavia occurred as a result of a series of political upheavals and conflicts during the early 1990s. After a period of political and economic crisis in the 1980s, constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yu ...
. Most of their houses were pillaged and destroyed. In August 1995, the Croatian Army recaptured all the rebel-held areas in central Croatia, forcing the residents of Veljun and surrounding Serb villages to flee. Their homes too were pillaged and destroyed, and several elderly residents that stayed behind were killed. In 1996, the displaced residents of Blagaj and Pavlovac began returning to their homes, and several years later, some of the pre-war residents of Veljun also returned. On 6 May 1999, they attempted to organize a commemorative ceremony at the Veljun mausoleum, but were prevented from doing so by a crowd of around 100 Croatian nationalists. More numerous and vocal, they forced the residents of Veljun to retreat from the site. A woman then emerged from the crowd and urinated on the ossuary, which was met with laughter and approval. Annual commemorations have resumed since then, though tensions persist, owing primarily to disputes over the number of victims and disagreement over who killed the Mravunac family.


See also

*
List of massacres in the Independent State of Croatia The following is a list of massacres and mass executions that occurred in Yugoslavia during World War II. Areas once part of Yugoslavia that are now parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, and Montenegr ...


References


Endnotes


Citations


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{coord, 45, 21, N, 15, 54, E, display=title, region:HR_type:city_source:GNS-enwiki 1941 in Yugoslavia May 1941 events Massacres in 1941 History of the Serbs of Croatia Mass murder in 1941 Massacres in the Independent State of Croatia Massacres of men Massacres of Serbs Violence against men in Europe