Korpus narodne odbrane Jugoslavije

Members of the KNOJ in Slovenia (1944)

The body narodne odbrane Jugoslavije ( Corps of National Defense of Yugoslavia , Macedonian Корпус на народна одбрана Југославија , Slovenian corpus narodne obrambe Jugoslavije ), short KNOJ was a special unit of the Yugoslav military intelligence OZNA for mass liquidation of so-called enemies of the people .

history

The KNOJ was created on the basis of a founding directive from Josip Broz Tito on August 15, 1944. It was founded because the personnel of the OZNA military intelligence service were insufficient for the many liquidations and actually had other tasks. It was "directly [...] subordinate to the People's Protection Officer ( Tito ), who heads the corps through the head of the People's Protection Department of the People's Defense Commission KNOJ ( Aleksandar Ranković )".

This parallel army consisted of about 80,000 men at peak times. The first commandant was Jovan Vukotić (1907-1982) and the supervision was the political commissioner Vlado Janić (1904-1991). The KNOJ was rarely deployed at the front, but organized and carried out the mass executions under the direction and supervision of the OZNA.

literature

Roman Leljak: KNOJ 1944–1945: Slovenska partizanska likvidacijska enota [KNOJ 1944–1945: Slovenian Partisan Liquidation Unit] . Radenci: Društvo za raziskovanje polpretekle zgodovine "OZNA", 2010, ISBN 978-961-269-240-7 (Slovenian).
Josip Jurčević: The Black List of Communism in Croatia: The Crimes of the Yugoslav Communists in Croatia in 1945 . Ed .: Institutunm Historicum Croaticum - Vienna. Zagreb May 2006.

Individual evidence

^ Paul Mojzes: Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century (= Studies in Genocide: Religion, History, and Human Rights ). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4422-0665-6 , pp. 128 .
↑ Michael Portmann: The communist revolution in Vojvodina 1944-1952: politics, society, economy, culture . Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7001-6503-3 , p. 117 .
↑ Jurčević 2006, p. 61 (see literature).
↑ Florian Thomas Rulitz: The tragedy of Bleiburg and Viktring: Partisan violence in Carinthia using the example of the anti-communist refugees in May 1945 . Extended and revised 2nd edition. Mohorjeva Hermagoras, Klagenfurt 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0655-2 , p. 293 .

[1] Paul Mojzes: Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century (= Studies in Genocide: Religion, History, and Human Rights ). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4422-0665-6 , pp. 128 .

[2] Michael Portmann: The communist revolution in Vojvodina 1944-1952: politics, society, economy, culture . Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7001-6503-3 , p. 117 .

[3] Jurčević 2006, p. 61 (see literature).

[4] Florian Thomas Rulitz: The tragedy of Bleiburg and Viktring: Partisan violence in Carinthia using the example of the anti-communist refugees in May 1945 . Extended and revised 2nd edition. Mohorjeva Hermagoras, Klagenfurt 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0655-2 , p. 293 .