The massacre in Gudovac

Background

Gudovac is a village near Bjelovar , located about 80 kilometers from Zagreb . The population of the village was mixed, about two thirds were Croats , one third were Serbs . According to the 1931 census conducted in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , out of 8,000 residents of the municipality, 3,000 were Serbs ^[1] .

On April 6, 1941, troops of Germany and Italy invaded Yugoslavia. They were joined by the armies of Hungary and Bulgaria . Having experienced problems with equipping with modern weapons and the ethnically fragmented Yugoslav army was quickly defeated. Directly in the vicinity of Bjelovar during the invasion of the armies of the “axis” countries, a mass rebellion took place in army units, staffed mainly by local Croatian conscripts who refused to fight against the Wehrmacht ^[1] . The rebels blocked Bjelovar and demanded the surrender of the garrison, threatening otherwise to kill all the Serbs and members of the officers' families living in the city and the surrounding area. Then there was an assault on the city, the captured soldiers and officers remaining loyal to Yugoslavia were transferred to the Germans and Ustash. The uprising of the regiments and the assault on Bjelovar were subsequently actively used by the Ustash in their propaganda ^[2] .

After the occupation of Yugoslavia and the division of its territory by the Axis countries on the territory of Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina and part of Serbia , the Independent State of Croatia was created. The national political goals of the Ustashas were pursued not only by the establishment of state independence of Croatia, but also by giving the new state an ethnically Croat character. The main obstacle to achieving this goal was the Serbs, who made up a third of the population of the NHC. As a result, from the first days of the existence of the NHC, the Ustashi began active anti-Serb actions. The prelude was a powerful propaganda company portraying the Serbs as enemies of the Croatian people, who have no place in the NHC. The culmination was the massacre of Serbs and their internment in numerous concentration camps ^[3] .

Following the example of Nazi Germany , the Ustash regime issued racial laws in the image and likeness of the Nuremberg laws against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies . In a speech in Gospic on June 22, 1941, one of the leaders of the ousting Mile Budak formulated a program of action against the Serbs, which was published on June 26 by the Hrvatski List ^[4] :

Ustashi pursued a differentiated policy towards nations declared enemies. The difference in attitude towards the Serbs and Jews was the desire of the Jews to completely destroy, and the third to destroy the Serbs, to catholicize the third, to expel the third to Serbia ^[5] . Thus, the Ustashi planned to make their state completely mono-ethnic . The Italian historian Marc Riveli wrote that the Jewish question was not the main “racial problem” for the ustashi. In his opinion, Pavelich undertook the extermination of Jews “in order to please the most powerful Nazi ally” ^[6] .

The destruction of Serbs and Jews in Bjelovar was entrusted to Dido Kvaternik . Presumably, the orders on this were given by the leader of the Ustasha Ante Pavelich orally, since the corresponding documents were not preserved in the archives. Quaternary later recalled ^[7] :

Massacre

After the surrender of the Yugoslav garrison, control of Bjelovar passed to the Ustash. In the vicinity of the city, clashes took place between the Ustashi and the Yugoslav units, which remained loyal to the government. The leadership of the Ustashs in Bjelovar believed that Serb officers were hiding in the surrounding villages, who took off their military uniforms and hid their weapons. Many houses were searched for weapons, and at the same time there were arrests of "undesirable elements", especially the communists. Ustashi stated that several members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia found weapons in their homes ^[1] .

The arrests and disarmament of the communists and former soldiers of the Yugoslav army were accompanied by killings, among the dead were civil Serbs. Kvaternik, who was in Bjelovar, feared Serb rebellion against the Ustasha regime. After hearing rumors of an impending uprising on May 6, he, along with his assistant Sharich, organized the arrest of about 530 Serbs from Hrubishno-Pol . All of them were sent to Danitsa concentration camp near Koprivnitsa , from where they were then transferred to other concentration camps - Jasenovac , Pag, Stara Gradika, etc., where most of them were killed ^{[8] [9]} .

On April 25, Serb Milan Radovanovic was arrested, who came to the police station in Gudovac to hand over weapons. After the collapse of his regiment, Radovanovic took refuge in the village of Prgomelye and did not manage to surrender his uniform and weapons until April 24, which the Ustashi appointed. The next day, two escorts led him to Bjelovar, but on the way to the city they were shot at by unknown persons. Radovanovic and one of the escorts perished. On the same day, another local police officer was killed in Gudovac. Despite the fact that the investigation was never carried out, Ustash propaganda accused the Serb Chetniks of the attack. In historiography, there is a version that the attack was inspired by the Ustashi themselves in order to get a formal reason for the massacre. According to another version, the attack could have been carried out by soldiers of the royal army hiding in the vicinity ^[1] .

After they learned about the attack in Bjelovar, Kvaternik ordered the arrest of 200 Serbs from Gudovac, Veliko Korenov, Malo Korenov, Prgomel, Bolch, Klokochevac, Tuk, Stancici and Breza. Assistance to the Ustash was provided by the soldiers of the formed army of the National Palace of Humanities and members of the "Village Guard" - the militarized formation of the Croatian Peasant Party . Arrested, as a rule, the most famous and wealthy Serbs, including teachers, entrepreneurs, priests ^[10] . The village of Gudovac was chosen as the gathering place, where the Ustashi brought about 195 captured Serbs ^{[1] [11]} .

After a brief stay in the municipal administration building, the arrested Serbs were informed that they would be taken to Bielovar for questioning. However, the convoy, accompanied by 70 escorts, was sent to the other side and stopped on a field on the banks of the Plavnitsa River, which usually hosted an open-air fair. On the way to the place of execution, the guards insulted the arrested Serbs, forced them to sing Ustash songs and repeat “Long live Pavelich! Long live the Quaternary! ” ^[1] . Having built the Serbs on the field, the guards fired two volleys at them, and then finished off the wounded with bayonets. Several Serbs managed to survive and hide from the executioners who killed the wounded ^[1] .

Further Events

Ustashi never tried to hide the events in Gudovac, using them to instill fear among the Serbs. The local population was also aware of the massacre. After the murder, the Ustashi forced the villagers to dig a mass grave of 150 square meters and pour the bodies of the victims with quicklime in order to speed up the decomposition. After this, the peasants from Gudovac were allowed to go home ^[12] .

The next day, the wife and daughter of one of the victims reported the incident to German officers. The command of the occupying forces demanded a partial exhumation of the bodies and punishment of those responsible. Soon, 40 suspects in the massacre were arrested by German soldiers . After that, Mladen Lorkovic met with the German ambassador to the NHC Siegfried Kache and said that the execution of the Serbs took place in revenge for the murder of 11 Croats. Lorkovich also told Kasha that the incident was an internal matter of the NHC and asked for the release of the arrested Ustasha. He promised the German ambassador that Zagreb would conduct a full investigation. As a result, the Germans released the detained Ustasha, but the promised investigation was never carried out ^[13] . None of the organizers of the massacre was punished ^[1] .

The Gudovac massacre became a harbinger of many other mass killings of Serbs throughout the NHC - in Blagaya, Gospic, Clay , etc. A significant part of the victims of the genocide died or suffered in the numerous concentration camps created by the Ustas. The death toll of Serbs amounts to several hundred thousand people, and the number of refugees was also high ^[14] . At the Nuremberg trials, these killings were recognized as genocide ^[15] .

Estimates of Historians

The version of the Ustasha that the execution in Gudovac took place as revenge for the murder of 11 Croats was previously considered by the majority of researchers to be untenable. Croatian historian Zeljko Karaul wrote that 11 Croats were shot by Yugoslav soldiers before the surrender of the country, as they were evading mobilization ^[1] . Slavko Goldstein wrote that the vast majority of Croats, whose deaths the Ustash accused the Serbs, actually died during the rebellion of the army units in Bjelovar staffed by Croatian reservists ^[16] . Michel Levy, who specializes in Holocaust history, claimed that there was no murder of 11 Croats attributed to the Serbs. In turn, Philip Cook and Ben Shepard noted that the massacre occurred before the organized resistance of the Serbs in the occupied territories began ^[17] .

Memory

In 1955, the Yugoslav authorities erected a mausoleum and a monument on the site of the massacre. The author of the monument was the Serbian sculptor Warrior Bakic . In 1991, during the war in Croatia , they were destroyed by Croatian nationalists, as well as another monument to Bakic "Belovarets", which Bakic dedicated to his brothers, killed by the Ustash. In the same year, local residents signed a petition for the restoration of Bjelovar’s. Its opening took place in December 2010 ^[18] . Representatives of the anti-fascist movement of Croatia have also repeatedly proposed the restoration of the monument in Gudovac, but this has not yet happened ^[19] .