Published in Belgrade, 2005
by Fund for Genocide Research, Belgrade

Translated by Petar Makara with permission from the author.

Copy edited by Wanda Schindley, PhD.

Translator's note: The Catholic fanatics known as Ustashas converted the entire "Independent State of Croatia" (ISC) into a slaughterhouse. Everyone, including children, born as a Serb, a Jew or a Gypsie was marked for death. Entire Serbian villages and entire regions of Bosnia and Krajina were slaughtered or machine-gunned. The Survivor talks about the destiny of three Bosnian Serb villages (Drakulić, Šargovac and Motike) near the majority Serb-populated town of Banja Luka. The author of the book, Mr Lukajić, was born in a nearby village.

The translator's notes, intended to make the text more understandable for the English reader, are in square brackets. The verb tenses, though sometimes inconsistent, are maintained when the speaker is telling the story as if reliving it.

[Beginning of the translation]

Testimony of Radomir Glamočanin

"I was born in 1927 in the village of Drakulić which is close to [the town of] Banja Luka. The Ustasha criminals slaughtered the entire Eastern Orthodox [i.e. Serbian] population of my village as well as of the [nearby] villages of Šargovac and Motike and [the Serbian] miners in Rakovac mine.

"On that occasion, Ustasha soldiers lead by [Croatian Catholic] priest Tomislav Filipović from monastery Petrićevac [near Banja Luka, Bosnia] killed in the most cruel ways some 2,300 inhabitants of the mentioned villages.

[For the full list of known names of victims, follow this link.]

"Some 550 of the victims were children of ages one to nine years. The mass slaughter was survived only by those who were not at home at the time.

"During this slaughter, the Ustashas killed my mother, four of my brothers and three sisters. In total they murdered 45 members of my family. Out of those 24 were children. The Ustashas murdered my family by first trapping it my uncle’s son’s stable They would then take members of the family outside one after another and slaughtered them with knives or murder them with axes and hammers. When my brother Milan’s turn came, he grabbed an axe from an Ustasha and cut him with it. As far as I know, that was the only case of physical resistance from a victim facing Ustasha daggers during the slaughter in our three villages. Another Ustasha took a rifle and killed Milan. That is why my brother was killed with a firearm. All other members of my family were bestially murdered with knives and axes.

"My mother and sister, an eight-year-old child, realizing what tragic destiny lay ahead of them, tried to escape through an auxilliary exit of the house, but they were noticed. An Ustasha hit my mother on the head with an axe. My little sister fell on my mother, who was covered in blood, and asked her to keep on running. The Ustashas chopped her up, too, and left the two of them lying in the snow for days.

"The crime I am talking about happened on February 7, 1942 in Drakulić, Motike and Šargovac [Serbian majority] villages located to the west of [the town of] Banja Luka [in Northern Bosnia] and the [nearby] mine of Rakovac. The entire Serbian population was slaughtered [on that one day]. The mass murder of the innocent civilians was perpetrated by an Ustasha military unit [so-called bojna] from Zagreb [capital of Croatia] with help of the local Ustashas, all of which were lead by [Catholic] Friar Tomislav Filipović Satan. [Filipovic was nicknamed by victims "Father Satan."] They were aided by Croatian farmers from those villages--by the neighbors of the Serbs.

"As the snow was four- to five-feet high, the Serbian inhabitants could not save themselves by running.

"The crime was perpetrated with the intention of destroying the entire Serbian population, the adherents ofOrthodox Christianity. This is obvious from the fact that the murdered were not only adult males of fighting age but also old people as well as women and children. All of the babies still in diapers and cribs were killed. In a few cases, the Ustashas murdered women who were about to give birth. They would take babies from the wombs and then murder those unborn babies.

"On that day the following members of my family were murdered:

 1. Mileva Glamočanin, my mother, born 1892 [age 50]
 2. Mileva Glamočanin, my younger sister, born in 1934 [age 8]
 3. Drago Glamočanin, my brother, born in 1921
 4. Mara Glamočanin, my sister-in-law, wife of my brother Drago, who was about to give birth
 5. Their live, still unborn child
 6. Vidoje Glamočanin, my brother, born in 1910
 7. Milica Glamočanin, my sister-in-law, Vidoje's wife
 8. Stanko Glamočanin, their child [boy] born in 1934
 9. Miloš Glamočanin, my half-brother, on father's side, born in 1912
10. Persa Glamočanin, wife of my brother Miloš
11. Radmila Glamočanin, born in 1933 [age 9], daughter of Miloš and Persa
12. Jelena Glamočanin, born 1935 [age 7], daughter of Miloš and Persa
13. Petar Glamočanin, born 1936 [age 6], son of Miloš and Persa
14. Gojko Glamočanin, born 1938 [age 4], son of Miloš and Persa
15. Zorka Glamočanin, born 1940 [age 2], daughter of Miloš and Persa
16. Milan Cvetić, born 1910, my half-brother, on the mother's side
17. Danica Cvetić, born 1910, Milan's wife
18. Leposava Cvetić, married name Stankovic, my half-sister on mother's side
19. Miroslava Stanković, daughter of Milan and Leposava
20. Dragica Stanković, daughter of Milan and Leposava
21. Nedeljko Stanković, son of Milan and Leposava
22. Jovanka Glamočanin, married Mitrović, my sister
23. Gojko Mitrović, my brother-in-law, Jovanka's husband
24. Dušanka Glamočanin, born 1923, my niece, daughter of my cousin [son of my father's brother] Đurđe Glamočanin, who survived because he was a prisoner of war [as a captured soldier of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia], interned in [Nazi] Germany
25. Gordana Glamočanin, born 1927, my niece, daughter of my cousin Đurđe Glamočanin
26. Vasilija Glamočanin, born 1940 [age 2], my niece, daughter of my cousin Đurđe Glamočanin
27. Radojka Glamočanin, born 1931 [age 11], my niece, daughter of my cousin Đurđe Glamočanin, who was slaughtered by Friar Satan
28. Sava Glamočanin, born 1932 [age 10], my niece, daughter of my cousin Đurđe Glamočanin
29. Milan Glamočanin, born 1934 [age 8], my nephew, son of my cousin Đurđe Glamočanin
30. Borislav Glamočanin, born 1935 [age 7], my nephew, son of my cousin Đurđe Glamočanin
31. Stanislav Glamočanin, my nephew, son of my cousin Đurđe Glamočanin
32. Milica Glamočanin, my sister-in-law, wife of my cousin Đurđe Glamočanin
33. Ostoja Glamočanin, born 1933 [age 9], my nephew, son of my cousin [son of my father's brother] Kosta Glamočanin, who also survived as prisoner of war in Germany
34. Slobodan Glamočanin, born 1935 [age 7], nephew, son of my cousin Kosta Glamočanin
35. Stevan Glamočanin, my cousin [son of my father's brother]
36. Zorka Glamočanin, my sister-in-law, wife of my cousin Stevan Glamočanin
37. Aleksa Glamočanin, born 1930 [age 12], my nephew, son of my cousin Stevan Glamočanin
38. Todor Glamočanin, born 1931 [age 11], my nephew, son of my cousin Stevan Glamočanin
39. Anka Glamočanin, born 1933 [age 9], my niece, daughter of my cousin Stevan Glamočanin
40. Kovilja Glamočanin, born 1934 [age 8], my niece, daughter of my cousin Stevan Glamočanin
41. Gospava Glamočanin, born 1936 [age 6], my niece, daughter of my cousin Stevan Glamočanin
42. Dušan Glamočanin, my cousin, [son of my father's brother]
43. Dušanka Glamočanin, my sister-in-law, wife of my cousin Dušan Glamočanin
44. Petar Glamočanin, my uncle [brother of my father]
45. Danica Glamočanin, my aunt, wife of my uncle Petar Glamočanin

"Other families perished in this slaughter. The families of my friends, in-laws and neighbors were the families: Solić, Stanković, Todorović, Amidžić, Perić, Vukobrat, Đurić, Kamber, Kuruzović, Plavšić, Piljagić, Radinović, Savanović, Smiljanić, Ševo, Stijaković, Torbica, Tunić, Čušić and many other ones. [For the more complete list, follow this link.]

"On February 7, 1942, the Ustashas murdered some 1,500 individuals in the villages of Drakulić and Šargovac, out of which 343 were children up to 14 years of age. After the genocide they perpetrated, the Ustashas continued by pillaging the property of the murdrered families. In doing that, they had no respect for even most sacred possession of the victims--their family photographs, icons [religious pictures], rings and jewelry. They stole furniture and other contents of the houses, wheat from storages, cattle, pigs and all other objects of any value. Nothing was ever returned--nothing was reimbursed to the surviving members of the families or to their legal heirs.

"The witnesses to this slaughter were guides to the Ustasha bojna [the military unit], the ones who were chosen [among local Croats] to point out the Serbian houses such as [Croat] Ivo Jurić, a miner from the Rakovac mine and a native from Šargovac; [Croat] Stipe Golub, a worker from Šargovac; [Croat] Šimun Pletikosa, a farmer from Budžak near Drakulić. After the end of the war, the court in Banja Luka sentenced the mentioned guides to some jail time, but, through amnesty, their sentences were severely reduced, so they were soon let out [of jail] to live freely among their Serbian and Croatian neighbors, in their villages of origin.

"Not only the mentioned guides but also all other inhabitants of the villages Drakulić, Šargovac and Motike of Croat and other varied nationalities knew about this massacre, but they would never talk about it. Through legal institutions in Banja Luka and, first, through the Association of the [Resistance] Fighters, I tried myself many times after the war to initiate an action to erect a monument to the victims of the February 7, 1942 massacre. I would always get an answer that it was not the right time to do it, that one should be very careful in initiating such actions, that old wounds did not yet heal and that it might cause intolerance among people of different nationalities. Only thirty years after the massacre in 1972, under the pressure of a large number of surviving Serbs and their families, was a monument, common for all three villages and to all of the victims, erected. The monument had some names of the victims inscribed, but not all. The perpetrators of the crime were not even mentioned. Instead of concretely and clearly stating that Ustashas [Croat Nazis] slaughtered some 2,370 innocent Serbs on February 7, 1942 in the villages of Drakulić, Šargovac and Motike, there were some general, vague phrases like 'the grateful people erect this monument to the patriots who perished as result of the fascist terror.' The participation of [Croat] Ustashas and [their leaders] the friars who actually perpetrated the crime was thus masked. An uninformed person passing by--and all generations to come--would probably conclude from this text that the crime was perpetrated by fascists Italy and Germany and would not learn that even unborn or just born children were slaughtered. These [human beings] could not have been 'patriots.' With this act, the Ustasha crime was not only minimized but completely hidden.

"I am thinking about all of this, and I am giving this testimony so that memories of my mother, my brothers, my sisters and all my relatives, the in-laws and friends, the memories of all those innocent Serbs slaughtered by Ustashas are not lost and so that the truth about them and their suffering does not get swept away with fabrications of history--so that victims are not forgotten.

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