Boričevac massacre | |
---|---|
Location | Boričevac |
Date | 2 August 1941 |
Target | Croats |
Attack type | Mass murder |
Deaths | At least 55 [1] |
Perpetrators | Serb rebels, Chetniks [2] |
The Boričevac massacre was the massacre of Croat civilians in the village of Boričevac, committed by Serb rebels on 2 August 1941, during the Srb uprising. [1]
In the weeks prior to the Srb Uprising, local Serb civilians had been the victims of Ustaše atrocities.
Throughout July 1941, Ustaše general, Vjekoslav Luburić, ordered the "cleansing" of Serbs from the Donji Lapac area in Lika and the bordering regions of Bosanska Krajina. [3] [4] During this time, hundreds of Serb men, women and children were arrested and killed by Ustaše forces. Many of the bodies were dumped into pits and caves, which included a pit near to the village of Boričevac. Other bodies were mutilated and left on display, so as to encourage other Serbs to flee the area. Homes in Serb villages were burned and looted. [5] [6]
A small number of local Croats, including those from Boričevac and other areas, had been complicit in Ustaše crimes. However, the majority of Croats did not take part in such crimes, many moderate Croats were opposed to them and actively tried to help their Serb neighbours. [7]
On 27 July 1941, local Serbs launched an uprising against Ustaše authorities. [8] Throughout July, August and September 1941, Croat and Muslim villages across Lika and Western Bosnia were attacked and massacred by Serb insurgents, such killings were said to have been acts of retaliation for earlier Ustaše massacres against Serbs. [9]
On 2 August 1941, Serb insurgents entered Boričevac; said to have been angered after discovering the remains of Serb victims killed by the Ustaše, [5] the insurgents killed the remaining Croat civilians, all of whom were elderly, women or children, that had not been able to flee. [10] The village was burned the ground, the village's Catholic church was looted and destroyed. Surrounding villages were also burned and massacred. [11]
Sources differ as to whether the Serb insurgents were Chetniks or Yugoslav Partisans. [9] [12] [13]
At least 55 [10] Croat civilians were massacred, but other sources cite up to 179 civilian victims. [14] About 2,000 of Boričevac's residents fled beforehand to Kulen Vakuf. [10] [13]
Croats that survived the massacre, and those who fled from Boričevac, were eventually settled in the area around Bjelovar. Under the Communist period, they were forbidden to return to Boričevac. Most were able not return to their homes until the end of the Croatian War of Independence. [15]
In contemporary Croatia, the commemoration of the Srb uprising is seen as controversial, with polarising opinions between Croats and Serbs. Serbs see the uprising as a testament to Serb anti-fascist resistance against Ustaše terror, while some Croats see the uprising as a revolt by Serb nationalists who murdered Croat civilians. [16] Max Bergholz argues that due to the controversy surrounding the nature of the Srb Uprising (the involvement of Yugoslav Partisans with the Serb insurgents) and the post-war narrative within Yugoslavia of not confronting the crimes committed between the different Yugoslav ethnic groups, that Croat and Muslim victims of Chetnik and other insurgent massacres have not yet been appropriately commemorated. [17]
The Bleiburg repatriations were a series of forced repatriations from Allied-occupied Austria of Axis prisoners of war and Axis troops whose surrender had not been accepted by the British Army, conducted by the Yugoslav Army (JA) and the British Army, in May 1945, after the end of World War II in Europe. During the war, Yugoslav territory had been annexed or occupied by the Axis powers. As the war ended, tens of thousands of Axis troops and collaborationist soldiers and associated civilians fled Yugoslavia to Austria as the JA took control. When they reached Allied-occupied Austria, in accordance with Allied policy, the British Army refused to accept their surrender and directed them to surrender to the Allied-aligned JA instead. They were then subjected to forced marches, together with columns captured on Yugoslav territory by the JA. Tens of thousands were executed; others were taken to forced labor camps, where more died from harsh conditions. The events are named for the Carinthian border town of Bleiburg, where the initial British refusal to accept the surrender of the leading elements of the fleeing troops occurred, and from which some repatriations were carried out.
Vjekoslav Luburić 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 spearheaded the contemporaneous genocides of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH.
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Operation Alfa was an offensive carried out in early October 1942 by the military forces of Italy and the Axis puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), supported by Chetnik forces under the control of vojvoda Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin. The offensive was directed against the communist-led Partisans in the Prozor region, then a part of the NDH. The operation was militarily inconclusive, and in the aftermath, Chetnik forces conducted mass killings of civilians in the area.
The Blessed Martyrs of Drina are the professed Sisters of the Congregation of the Daughters of Divine Charity, who died during World War II. Four were killed when they jumped out of a window in Goražde on 15 December 1941, reportedly to avoid being raped by Chetniks, and the last was killed by the Chetniks in Sjetlina the following week. The five nuns were later declared martyrs and beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 24 September 2011.
Petar Baćović was a Bosnian Serb Chetnik commander within occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. From the summer of 1941 until April 1942, he headed the cabinet of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Milan Nedić's puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia. In May and June 1942, Baćović participated in the joint Italian-Chetnik offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans in Montenegro In July 1942, Baćović was appointed by the Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović and his Supreme Command as the commander of the Chetnik units in the regions of eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Axis puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia. In this role, Baćović continued collaborating with the Italians against the Yugoslav Partisans, with his Chetniks formally recognised as Italian auxiliaries from mid-1942.
The Srb uprising was a rebellion against the Independent State of Croatia that began on 27 July 1941 in Srb, a village in the region of Lika. The uprising was started by the local population as a response to persecutions of Serbs by the Ustaše and was led by Chetniks and Yugoslav Partisans. It soon spread across Lika and Bosanska Krajina. During the uprising numerous war crimes were committed against local Croat and Muslim population, especially in the area of Kulen Vakuf. As NDH forces lacked the strength to suppress the uprising, the Italian Army, which was not a target of the rebels, expanded its zone of influence to Lika and parts of Bosanska Krajina.
The Gudovac massacre was the mass killing of around 190 Bjelovar Serbs by the Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement on 28 April 1941, during World War II. The massacre occurred shortly after the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Ustaše-led Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). It was the first act of mass murder committed by the Ustaše upon coming to power, and presaged a wider Ustaše-perpetrated campaign of genocide against Serbs in the NDH that lasted until the end of the war.
The Blagaj massacre was the mass killing of around 400 Serb civilians by the Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement on 9 May 1941, during World War II. The massacre occurred shortly after the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Ustaše-led Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (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.
Ismet Popovac was a Bosnian Muslim lawyer and physician who led a Muslim Chetnik militia known as the Muslim People's Military Organization (MNVO) in Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II. He was active in pre-war Yugoslav politics, becoming a member of the Serbian Muslim cultural organization Gajret and serving as the mayor of Konjic, a town in northern Herzegovina. He is also said to have been candidate for Vladko Maček's electoral list, but was left without a job in the Yugoslav state government after the creation of the Banovina of Croatia in August 1939.
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