Sanski Most massacre

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A path towards one of the monuments on Šušnjar Hill, where the mass murder mostly took place.

The Sanski Most Massacre , also known as the Šušnjar Massacre , was a war crime during World War II . In 1941 up to 5500 Serbs and 40 to 50 Jews were murdered in the city of Sanski Most . The massacre was mainly perpetrated by the Croatian-fascist Ustasha , but also by Bosnian-Muslim militias during the period of the fascist Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

Since then the city has been considered free of Jews . There were also serious sexual assaults on girls and women. The bodies were buried in mass graves , most of them on the Šušnjar hill. Today the Šušnjar memorial is located there, but it is considered to be severely neglected.

history

During the raids that the Ustaša began in early 1941 against the non- Croatian population, especially against Serbs, Jews, Roma and Sinti , 7,000 Serbs and 65 Jews were forcibly gathered in and around the city of Sanski Most alone . The first major massacres of Serbs were reported there in April. In May about 30 Serbs were hanged in the city park of Sanski Most. Between August 2 and 3, 1941, the murder of another 2,862 Serbs by the Gestapo was recorded. The Serbian population was abducted from Sanski Most and brought to the Šušnjar hill. Eventually the victims were forced to dig their own graves.

They were then murdered and buried in mass graves. The mass murder was mostly brutal, using weapons of various kinds, including axes and knives, and it lasted three days. According to the information at the time, the soil was said to have been discolored by the blood for months. However, some were able to save themselves due to the forced conversion of Christian Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism . A memorial was only established in 1971 by the then communist authorities of Yugoslavia.

There are also two more mass graves one kilometer from the city center, each 100 meters long, four meters wide and eight meters deep, and in which 4,000 corpses are supposed to be buried, as well as a total of 3,000 more in other places around Sanski Most, which today form the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina belong. According to this information, the number of victims would be over 10,000, but the exact number of victims has not yet been clarified for various reasons, such as the disability, precise examinations and localizations.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Marie-Janine Calic : History of Yugoslavia in the 20th Century - 9. The 1940s: Total War - Ethnic Cleansing. Verlag CH Beck , Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60645-8 , p. 159.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Paul Mojzes: Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century - Multiple Genocides of World War II: Western Balkans - Bosnia and Herzegovina. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4422-0663-2 , pp. 74-75.
  3. ↑ a b c d Politika : Zločin nad istorijom (Serbian)
  4. ↑ Crobihtour.com: Memorijalni kompleks "Šušnjar" (Croatian) ( Memento from April 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ a b c RTRS : ГОДИШЊИЦА СТРАДАЊА СРБА И ЈЕВРЕЈА НА ШУШЊАРУ (Serbian)

Coordinates: 44 ° 45 ′ 44.8 "  N , 16 ° 41 ′ 2.4"  E