This is little known stuff, but is personally important for me, as I'm a descendant of survivors of the Ustaše in a part of Croatia called Kordun.
My great-great grandfather was taken to a church with other Serbs -- they were promised a conversion to Catholicism, but were instead beaten to death with hammers, and the church was burned down on top of them. [0] My great-grandfather was kidnapped and enslaved somewhere in Austria, and my grandfather didn't see him for 27 years. My great-grandfather thought everyone was dead for 23 of those years.
This is a little known part of the holocaust -- very few people even know it happened, except for the few survivors that exist today. This wasn't the end of it for the Serbs of the region, as in the 90s, 150,000+ of them were chased out during operation Storm. [1]
There are some sad songs here and there about this time, like "On Kordun, Grave to Grave"... largely, though, the Serbian culture of the region is all but lost, our genealogical records having been burnt with our churches, and the few important documents that existed along with them.
I've been working at talking to people who lived through it to try and reconstruct some of the history, but it's been a difficult and slow process.
There's a lot of tragedy here, but some of the worst is that on the few videos, articles, etc. that contain information about this holocaust, you see tons of modern neo-ustaše celebrating their genocide in the comments sections. It's like seeing neo-nazis taunt Jews on videos about Auschwitz.
There are stories of heroism, too, though -- there's a story about Nikola Vidović, [2] from my father's village, who rescued the children from one of the only concentration camps made especially for children.
All-in-all, it's important, I think, that we remember atrocities like these, so that they don't get repeated... again...
My great-great grandfather was taken to a church with other Serbs -- they were promised a conversion to Catholicism, but were instead beaten to death with hammers, and the church was burned down on top of them. [0] My great-grandfather was kidnapped and enslaved somewhere in Austria, and my grandfather didn't see him for 27 years. My great-grandfather thought everyone was dead for 23 of those years.
This is a little known part of the holocaust -- very few people even know it happened, except for the few survivors that exist today. This wasn't the end of it for the Serbs of the region, as in the 90s, 150,000+ of them were chased out during operation Storm. [1]
There are some sad songs here and there about this time, like "On Kordun, Grave to Grave"... largely, though, the Serbian culture of the region is all but lost, our genealogical records having been burnt with our churches, and the few important documents that existed along with them.
I've been working at talking to people who lived through it to try and reconstruct some of the history, but it's been a difficult and slow process.
There's a lot of tragedy here, but some of the worst is that on the few videos, articles, etc. that contain information about this holocaust, you see tons of modern neo-ustaše celebrating their genocide in the comments sections. It's like seeing neo-nazis taunt Jews on videos about Auschwitz.
There are stories of heroism, too, though -- there's a story about Nikola Vidović, [2] from my father's village, who rescued the children from one of the only concentration camps made especially for children.
All-in-all, it's important, I think, that we remember atrocities like these, so that they don't get repeated... again...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glina_massacres [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Storm [2] https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB...