Poljane is a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

Dragalić Dragalić is a village and a municipality in the Brod-Posavina County, Croatia. It is located around 7 km west of Nova Gradiška. Demographics As of 2011, there were 1,361 inhabitants, in the following settlements: * Donji Bogićevci, po ...

Brod-Posavina County Brod-Posavina County () is the southern Slavonian county in Croatia. Its center is the city of Slavonski Brod and it spreads along the left bank of the Sava river, hence the name '' Posavina''. Other notable towns include Nova Gradiška. Geograp ...

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

History

There were often tensions between the residents of the village and the HV during the War in Krajina. In the summer of 1991, many had received arms. In July, an HV column arrived from Gradiška to disarm the village, announcing a disarmament over a

megaphone A megaphone, speaking trumpet, bullhorn, blowhorn, or loudhailer is usually a portable or hand-held, cone-shaped horn (acoustic), acoustic horn used to amplifier, amplify a person's voice or other sounds and direct it in a given direction. ...

and banging on doors. After a

sting operation In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person attempting to commit a crime. A typical sting will have an undercover law enforcement officer, detective, or co-operative member of the public play a rol ...

and some mistreatment, they left that day. They came back on the evening September 4th, again banging on doors, but after the residents had gone to sleep this time they raided the village, firing their weapons in threat. The elderly commanded the young to flee, while the elderly themselves slept on the fields and in the barns, returning in the morning. When they returned, they were met by soldiers demanding them to hand over their weapons and "

Chetniks The Chetniks,, ; formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland; and informally colloquially the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist m ...

". They then herded the villagers through the village with whips, questioning some at gunpoint while others continued to break down doors. A total of 150 villagers were captured, the men separated from the women, the women placed in a house and the men in a basement, each under guard. They slept on straw throughout the winter, without heating. The women would cook for both the captives and the soldiers. One of the guards, Džebo, would line the women up and shoot over their heads, but a certain Vjekoslav was regarded as the worst. Whenever fighting would break out, they led them to a different house where they had to sleep standing. But at some point, the soldiers had the men go out at 5:00 in the morning and dig trenches on the front line between SVK-held Dragalić. One time their guard was shot by the SVK, and the captives tried to save him in their coat, but the shots had disemboweled him and he died. 11 of the captives were wounded during the fighting while digging trenches; on one occasion 5 at once. Around New Year, one of the captives, Milutin Lakić, disappeared. The captives suspected he was killed, like Nikola Stojčević, who went to check on his house while he could still walk but was gunned down in front of it by an HV soldier. The survivors spent almost 7 months in captivity before

UNPROFOR The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR; also known by its French acronym FORPRONU: ''Force de Protection des Nations Unies'') was the first United Nations peacekeeping force in Croatia and in Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and ...

exchanged them for

POWs A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...

of the RSK in early March 1992. Although some houses had been burned during the captivity, most were set alight after the exchange.

Demographics

References

Populated places in Brod-Posavina County {{BrodPosavina-geo-stub