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Ante Pavelić was sworn in in 1941.
Eight decades ago, the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church sent the first of four Memoranda to the occupation command of the German army in Serbia, in which they presented numerous atrocities committed in the first and second years of the war on the territory of the newly established Independent State of Croatia.
All these documents were recently published in the collection “Memoranda of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church 1941-1942. years to the military-administrative commanders of Serbia “. It is a capital part in which four memoranda were presented to the general public for the first time, and the author of the collection is Veljko Đurić Mišina, long-term director of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade.
Numerous crimes against Serbs, but also against the Serbian clergy within the Independent State of Croatia, forced the SOC Synod to send the first Memorandum to the German command in Belgrade on July 24, 1941, addressed to the Chief Military Commander in Serbia, General Luftwaffe, Ludwig von Schroeder. . It turned out that this general would never see that document because he had died in a plane crash only a week earlier. However, the German authorities were presented with details of “terrible terror” and “lawlessness”, as the Synod described the situation in enslaved Serbia and parts of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with a majority Serb population.
Serbian families fled to Serbia in 1941 before the Ustashas.
From Vojvodina to Kosovo
“As pleasant as it is to state the loyal, chivalrous relations between Serbs as the defeated, Germany and the Italian army as the victor, it is so sad to witness terror by Hungarians, Bulgarians, Albanians and above all Croats, who gained power over large parts of Serbia without a drop of blood. people, people since when, so to speak, both Hungarians and Bulgarians sought and received a pact of eternal friendship, and Croats liberated from Serbian blood had received an autonomous Croatia within Yugoslavia “, reads the beginning of this letter and immediately continues:
“The Hungarian regular army first started killing Serbs in the masses, right from the first days of the occupation and without any verdict. In Novi Sad alone, it is believed that about 3,000 souls were killed, in Sirig over 500, it was similar in Sentomash, Senta, Sombor, Curug, Subotica, so that a total of 15-20,000 Serbs were killed in the area of Backa. All Serbian colonists were completely looted and then deported. Among the others killed there are priests: Vaso Stojadinović with his daughter in Čurug, Archbishop Dimitrija Bokšan in Sombor, in the church, and Archbishop Petrović in Beli Manastir in Baranja. “
Describing the activities of Bulgarians in that first war year, the SOC Synod states that they limited themselves mainly to the forced evacuation of Serbs from both towns and villages, and that Skopje’s Metropolitan Josif was among the exiles, and that the Serbian language and surnames were removed from of all inscriptions.
The situation was much worse in Kosovo, where the SOC Synod reports that in the areas of Prizren, Gjakova, Peja, Albanian gangs set fire to and looted Serb villages, as a result of which more than 30,000 Serb refugees fled to central Serbia.
The greatest crimes in the NDH
However, the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church warns the German command in Serbia that the greatest crimes against Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church are taking place in the newly established NDH.
“According to Austrian statistics, 1,575,478 Orthodox Serbs have lived on the territory of today’s Independent State of Croatia since 1910, compared to 2,577,395 Catholic Croats. According to statistics from 1931, which were also used by Dr. Mladen Lorković, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Independent State of Croatia in his book ‘The Land and People of Croats’, published in Zagreb in 1939, the ratio between Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats was as follows: 1,853,490 Orthodox Serbs according to 3,012,334 Roman Catholic Croats. According to these statistics, there are twice as many Roman Catholics in Croatia and Slavonia as Orthodox Serbs, and twice as many Orthodox Serbs as Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This scale is really more favorable because most of Dalmatia remained outside the Independent State of Croatia. The Croatian government wants to remove all Serbs with drastic measures, tendentiously emphasizing that Orthodox Serbs there are not autochthonous but newcomers. In fact, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there has always been twice as many Orthodox people as there are Catholics. In Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, the ancient Orthodox minorities increased with the numerous immigration of Orthodox Serbs even in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Serbs came to the areas abandoned by the Croats, due to the Turkish invasions, then they formed the Military Krajina for centuries, a living bulwark of the Habsburg monarchy and Christianity against the Turks. To call them newcomers today after so many centuries is just as unfair as it would be unfair to call newcomers Germans in the whole of Germany east of Lada “, reads the beginning of the first memorandum of the SOC Synod sent to the German command in Serbia.
The book “The Country and the People of the Croats”, by Dr. Mladen Lorković
Judgments without a court
The first Memorandum of the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the German command in Serbia states that all abuses of Serbs in Croatia are carried out without any trial, “by simple force, by an organized mob, which is full of criminal types.”
It is further stated: “But all this is done according to the instructions of the Croatian government. Today, the highest Croatian officials give irrefutable proof of that in their public statements. For now, we can give a few statements by Dr. Mile Budak, Dr. Milovan Žanić, Dr. Mirko Puk, Minister of today’s Croatian government and staff Dr. Viktor Gutić from Banja Luka, as well as the writing of the inspired Croatian press. “
“You will all go to Siberia”
Arguing the claims about the political background of the crimes against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, the SPS Synod also cites the statement of Dr. Viktor Gutić:
“Hundreds of thousands killed, hundreds of thousands evicted, the rest left without leaders, will convert to Catholicism and in ten years we will have a purely Croatian people in Croatia. In particular, the border zone towards Serbia at a depth of 50 km will be completely cleared of Serbs. This has already been done in several sections. And all that you Serbs complain about the most is just an introduction to your extermination. Serbia is a temporary place for you, from where you will be transferred to Siberia. “
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