War Crimes in Yugoslavia

[Peter]

A friend recently saw a documentary on TV which detailed several war crimes including a concentration/internment camp in Yugoslavia 1943/44 where one particular guard, first name Petar, had cut the throats of over 1000 prisoners in a 24 hour period.

Is this is a known crime ? He was named but unfortunately the second name was forgotten.

thanks
Pete

[David Thompson]

Iltis -- The fellow's name was Petar Brzica, and the slaughter is supposed to have taken place at Jasenovac camp. There are a lot of hair-raising articles about the claimed murders out there on the internet, but I can't vouch for their accuracy.

[Allen Milcic]

Like many other scenes of super-extreme horror from this time period, the '1000 slashed throats in 24 hours' is a myth, or at least an exaggeration of stunning proportions.

Allen/

[Peter]

thanks David/Allen

What happened to him post war, captured & tried ?

Which camp was it ?

thanks
Pete

[David Thompson]

Iltis -- You asked:

What happened to him post war, captured & tried ?

All the articles I read focused on the throat-cutting story as one of the more lurid aspects of Croatian fascism, and then moved on to another, similar story with the same theme. There may be more detailed information out there, but I got tired of reading the same short and bloody tale over and over again.

Which camp was it ?

The story was set in Jasenovac camp.

[Benoit Douville]

Iltis,

Father Petar Brzica was a Catholic priest. He supposed to have cut the throats of 1 360 prisoners with a especially designed butcher's knife called "srbosjek" or Serb-Cutter. Like David and Allen mentioned, it is probably exageration.

Sources: Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Regards

[Allen Milcic]

Gentlemen:

Petar Brzica was a failed seminarian who held the rank of Lieutenant in the Ustaska Obrana (the infamous Ustasa Defense under "Maks" Luburic that ran the internment and concentration camps in the NDH). He was NOT a priest. (source: University of Zagreb, History Department)

The ridiculous claim that this individual would be physically capable of slaughtering 1,360 people in one day is simply grotesque and practically impossible (almost one person per minute for the entire day?!); this is aside from the fact that the Jasenovac camp system was created as a labour-industrial complex, so the senseless slaughter of the potential work-force would be counter-productive to say the least. Jasenovac was not a nice place, and thousands died in miserable circumstances, but claims of this kind (i.e. "1,360 killed in 24 hours") are simply an insult to the victims - it is as if the dead are not worthy of sympathy and the criminals not guilty enough if the sufferings or the excesses are not exaggerrated a thousandfold.

Regards,
Allen/