Letter from JVuO Battalion HQ to the ISC Army members (1942)

Transcript
HEADQUARTERS
Military-Četnik¹ Commands
“KARAĐORĐE AND PETAR MRKONJIĆ”²
– April 1942
Service post number:
The Mountains.

TO CROATIAN OFFICERS, NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, AND SOLDIERS,³

We are sending You this letter through this Croat brother whom we found in the field during yesterday’s combat. We are letting him return to his home to continue his work, and at the same time, we take this opportunity to send You this letter in which we inform You of the following.

By Your actions as representatives of the army and consequently an organised state, You create terrible misdeeds, and thereby encourage greater hatred between two tribes. The events that have occurred due to Your fault teach You and prove to the public that You are the sole culprits for everything that has happened. On behalf of the enemy, You shed blood and lead a fratricidal war. You do this for the Axis powers, which will undoubtedly be defeated. Wherever Your army goes, it turns peaceful settlements into ashes, and You kill the elderly and helpless children. Are these acts worthy of Croatian culture, and what do You think You will achieve with this? Do not even think that anyone in the world will prevent our uprising; it is a natural consequence of the hostile actions towards our people, but be assured that we do not lead it against the Croatian people, and our fate will be decided by the greatest nations of the world. You can see by our actions that our goal is not to burn Your houses, but we also inform You that if there is any case in the future where Your army burns a Serbian house or kills a woman or child, we will be merciless towards the villages and army where we encounter such acts, because enough is enough patience and enough is enough of our concessions. Soon the people’s court will ask You what You have been doing, and that we will not always be enslaved in the chains of cursed tyranny and that we will soon see the rays of freedom – guaranteed by the strength of Great Britain and America, and also other nations of the world who have invested everything to create an order in which all people will have equal rights.

This is a way for us to understand each other and to agree, but You must admit that it is sad that we are not together in the ranks fighting for that great cause which Your representatives imagine and build in the biggest countries of the world.

Croatian brothers, do not take this as our weakness but keep in mind that we are sorry for any of Your houses to suffer or for any fraternal soldier to die. If it were not so, we would attack You according to the unwritten laws of war, and we would treat Your population as enemies. However, from this You can see that this is not our goal.

Our forces are strong. Croatians, we are proud to have organised this gigantic uprising, but we are also sad to have to lead it in Your absence. This is written by the command cadre, and among them, there are many Croats who work together with us.

Croatians, we are not leading a communist struggle, but a struggle for the King and the Homeland, and with Your actions, You are creating communism and such a chaos in which our people will suffer indiscriminately.

Now we greet You as brothers and wish to see You soon in Greater Yugoslavia. 

CROATS, A FAIRY WILL SOON CRY OUT ON AVALA, PAPUK, DURMITOR, AND THE BLACK SEA.⁴ SOON THE SONG WILL RESOUND AGAIN: “CROAT IVO AND SERB JOVO DANCE A NEW KOLO”⁵

LONG LIVE KING PETAR II 

LONG LIVE THE SERBIAN AND CROATIAN PEOPLE UNITED BEFORE THE FUTURE.

LONG LIVE DR. VLADIMIR MAČEK⁶

WITH FAITH IN GOD, FOR THE KING
AND THE HOMELAND Commandant Lieut. Colonel

Adjutant Dan. J. Janković

Pet. Z. Petrović v.r. M.P./Mil. Com. Bat. with a skull/

Copy made and certified by Senior Lieutenant /Kovačević/

From the Archive of the Memorial Museum at Mrakovica, document F-21/8.

1. Tran. note: The term “četnik” when used by the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland is meant in its original meaning to denote guerillas, rather than the later blanket term or insult it would become. ↩︎
2. Tran. note: Karađorđe Petrović was the leader of the First Serbian Uprising in 1804-1813 and the founder of the Karađorđević dynasty. Petar Mrkonjić was the nom de guerre that King Petar I Karađorđević used when participating in the 1875-77 uprising against the Ottomans (before he was crowned). In April 1942 the battalion operated on the territory of the modern Čelnica and Srbac municipalities. ↩︎
3. Tran. note: The letter was addressed to the “Domobrans”, the regular army of the Independent State of Croatia, which was subordinate to Ustaša officers and also participated in the war crimes against Serb civilians. ↩︎
4. Tran. note: In Serbian mythology, female fairies inhabited mountains and rivers and could help or hinder humans. An example would be the fairy godmother of Marko Kraljević who helped him or the fairy of the Bojana river which hindered the building of the city of Skadar (today Shkoder in Albania) according to the epic song “The Building of Skadar on Bojana”. ↩︎
5. Tran. note: Kolo is the national folk dance which involves circular movements by the dancers, with their arms interlocked, either at shoulder- or waist-level. ↩︎
6. Tran. note: Dr. Vladimir Maček, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, deputy PM of Yugoslavia before WWII started. ↩︎