Pavle Đurišić
Pavle Đurišić ( Serbian - Cyrillic Павле Ђуришић ; born July 9, 1907 in Podgorica , Principality of Montenegro ; † April 21, 1945 in Jasenovac concentration camp , Independent State of Croatia ) was an officer in the Royal Yugoslav Army and the leader during World War II ( Voivode Komski) from monarchist National Serb Chetnik associations in Montenegro .
Đurišić collaborated with the fascist Italian and National Socialist German occupying power in Yugoslavia and was responsible for war crimes and ethnic cleansing of the Bosniak population in Sandžak and Bosnia .
Life
Đurišićs father took the first two Balkan wars in part and fell in the First World War . Đurišić decided after 7th grade at high school to join the royal Yugoslav army. In Sarajevo he trained as a sergeant . Furthermore, a few years later he achieved the rank of captain in Berane .
With the outbreak of the Second World War and the incursion of the fascist Italian army of Benito Mussolini into the Kingdom of Albania , Montenegro and Metohija (Yugoslavian Banschaft Zeta ) as well as the Raška , Đurišić was involved in the first fighting, which with the defeat of the Yugoslav army and the conquest of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . In the so-called "Uprising of July 13, 1941", Chetnik units under his command succeeded in retaking the Italian-occupied town of Berane and holding it for a few days. In November 1941 he joined the Chetnik federations led by Draža Mihailović and was promoted to major .
From 1942 Đurišić fought the communist Tito partisans in a bloody fratricidal war and negotiated a non-aggression pact with the fascist Italians. Đurišić and his troops undertook two forays into the Muslim settlement areas of Sandžak and southeastern Bosnia in early January and early February 1943 , in which around 10,000 Muslim civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in massacres . Đurišić's murder in February was made easier by the fact that the Italian troops allied with the Chetniks had previously disarmed the Muslim militia in Sandžak.
After some time, however, the partisans gained the upper hand in regions of Montenegro that were difficult to control by the Italian army. In 1943 the German Wehrmacht invaded the Italian-controlled Montenegro. Despite the pact with the Italians, Đurišić and his men were captured by the Wehrmacht. On May 10, 1943, a raid troop of the Brandenburg division headed by Draža Mihailović, led by a lieutenant, made contact with Đurišić. Đurišić submitted an offer of alliance against the Tito partisans on the spot and vigorously denied his subordination to Mihailović. Despite Đurišić's willingness to collaborate and the support of the shock troop leader, the German high command refused to cooperate. Đurišić was disarmed and arrested on May 14, 1943 by an advance division of the 1st Mountain Division at his headquarters in Kolašin . The Italian troops, who were actually allied with the German Wehrmacht, sent themselves to their ally Đurišić to free themselves by force of arms. This, together with other Italian aid for the Chetniks, such as the refusal to help disarm them, led to displeasure at the highest level between the Axis powers.
captivity
Đurišić was flown to Berlin and came to a concentration camp in the east of the German Empire . From there he managed to escape. At the border with Serbia on the Danube, determined by the German fascists , he was again taken prisoner by Germany. He was only released again through the intercession of the Serbian collaborator General Milan Nedić . With Nedić he negotiated a mutual assistance agreement. It is controversial among historians to what extent he personally, as well as the Chetnik movement in general, followed the ideals of fascism. The propaganda of the Nedić regime named the voivod Đurišić as a war hero personally honored by Hitler with the Iron Cross and elevated to lieutenant colonel by General Nedić. After consultation with Nedić, he founded the Serbian Volunteer Corps ( Srpski Dobrovoljački Korpus - SDK ), which was one of Nedić's conditions.
Decline
In 1944 the communist partisans succeeded in bringing the region around the Prokletije Mountains under their control. The immediate fall of the fascist puppet regime in Montenegro could no longer be avoided and a re-establishment of the Yugoslav monarchy that he favored had failed. He again negotiated a non-aggression pact with the Italians for those fleeing from the partisans. To support the fight against the partisans, however, he was ordered by Mihailović to the Banovina Drina . There there were disagreements with Mihailović, who has meanwhile been promoted from the King of Yugoslavia to General. Against the resistance Mihailovics Đurišić be familiar with its Cetniks a distant relative of Đurišić, the to Ustascha overflowed Sekula Drljević to "the common fight against the communists". However, he betrayed him and on April 20, 1945 he and his men were arrested by the Ustascha near Banja Luka and transferred to the Jasenovac concentration camp . A day later, Đurišić and other officers were murdered. His remaining Chetniks were murdered on April 22nd.
meaning
Pavle Đurišić is perceived as a tragic figure who has fallen victim to the ideologies of the great powers, especially by the Serbs who have fled, emigrated and expelled from the region around and in Montenegro because of the communist politics. Since the collapse of Yugoslavia and the worldview shaped and dictated by Tito , his work and the Chetnik movement itself have been perceived more differently in Serbia , the Republika Srpska and Montenegro. Immediately after the war he wrote a folk song about him called Đurišiću mlad majore ( Đurišić, you young major ). Like other Chetnik songs, this was forbidden during Tito's rule in the People's Republic of Yugoslavia .
Awards (selection)
- Iron Cross 2nd class on October 11, 1944
literature
- Radovan Kalabić: Ravnogorska Istorija (History of Ravna Gora), Belgrade, 1992.
- Borivoje Karapandžić: Građanski rat u Srbiji 1941–1945 (Civil War in Serbia 1941–1945), Belgrade, 1992.
- Kosta Nikolić: Istorija Ravnogorskog Pokreta (History of the Ravna Gora Movement), Book 1–3, Belgrade, 1999.
- Milosav Samardžić: Draža Mihailović i opšta istorija četničkog pokreta (Draža Mihailović and the general history of the Chetnik movement), Kragujevac, 2005.
- Vladimir Dedijer and Antun Miletić: Protiv zaborava i tabua-Jasenovac (1941–1945) (Against forgetting and taboo - Jasenovac (1941–1945)), Sarajewo, 1991.
- Savo Skoko: Krvavo kolo Hercegovačko (Bloody Herzegovinian Kolo), Podgorica, 1995.
Individual evidence
- ^ Jozo Tomasevich: The Chetniks, War and Revolution in Jugoslavia, 1941–1945 . Stanford 1975, p. 258 f . ; Also BA / MA, RH 24-15 / 4 “The national uprising movement of the Cetniks in the independent state of Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro” (May 5, 1943); Quoted from Klaus Schmider: Partisan War in Yugoslavia 1941–1944 . Mittler, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8132-0794-3 , p. 196 .
- ↑ Various sources in the BA, cited in Schmider, PARTISANENKRIEG, p. 347.
- ↑ BA / MA, RH 28-1 / 95 telex to Bfh. Croatia, Ia (May 11, 1943), quoted from Schmider, PARTISANENKRIEG, p. 269.
- ↑ BA / MA, RH 2/682 Report about a meeting of the commander of the 1. Geb.-Div. with the Italian commanding General Roncaglia, on May 14, 1943 at 10 a.m. in Berane (May 19, 1943), with two attachments, quoted in Schmider, PARTISANENKRIEG, p. 270.
- ↑ Correspondingly dated award document, signed by Major General Wilhelm Keiper
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Đurišić, Pavle |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Djurišić, Pavle; Ђуришић, Павле (Serbian-Cyrillic) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Yugoslav officer and Montenegrin Chetnik leader |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 9, 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Podgorica , Principality of Montenegro |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 21, 1945 |
| Place of death | Jasenovac , Independent State of Croatia |