Transcript
Attachment to document no. 442/Conf. of 10 August 1941 of the Command of the 23rd Artillery Regiment “Re”
TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF THE KINGDOM OF ITALY BENITO MUSSOLINI
Rome
Your Excellency,
Since the Italian army, by your order, crossed the Yugoslav border and occupied Dalmatia, Lika, and other regions, order and peace prevailed in these lands until 15 April 1941.
The population of this region accepted this event calmly, and on every occasion complete harmony between the population, commanders, and soldiers of the victorious Italian arms was evident, to the amazement of the commanders themselves.
This peaceful life lasted until Your Excellency issued the order for the withdrawal of Italian troops from Croatia, after which true hell ensued—murders and massacres of peaceful Orthodox people, numbering around three million souls.
This peaceful population was expelled from its ancestral homes, completely plundered, and now has no goal before it.
What no nation that prides itself on culture would do has been done by the Croatian people.
They burn and destroy houses, fields of grain, and everything representing the survival of this people; they demolish monuments, churches, and even graves.
Everything is so horrific that nothing comparable has ever been written in history.
Your Excellency! This peaceful Orthodox people endured all these abominations stoically in the hope that they would end; unfortunately, however, they continue.
With deceitful lies, Croats lure peaceful Orthodox people in groups of three to four hundred, bind them together, torture them, cut their bodies into pieces, douse them with gasoline, set them on fire, and finally kill these living torches—now pitiful figures with nothing human left—and throw them into pits or rivers.
Even in this century, Croatian thousand-year culture allows such beasts to exist!
Your Excellency, the remnants of the Orthodox population—elderly men, women, and children—are abandoning their homes and hiding in forests like wild animals, merely to save their bare lives.
These exhausted elders, women, and children are called “četniks” and “komitas,” and under the pretext that they represent a danger to Croats, they are tortured in ways that even your soldiers are left stunned and condemn.
In view of the above, I beg Your Excellency, through the commander of your troops, to save this people.
The remnants of this abused Orthodox population implore Your Excellency and the entire great and cultured Italian people to once again take authority in these lands and restore order and peace. The people give you their word of honor and swear by what is most sacred to them that they will be peaceful and honest, and that in every respect you will have in them the best of citizens.1
On behalf of the Orthodox population.2
Korenica, 25 July 1941 – XIX
Signed: Milan Priča
Certified as a true copy
Staff Lieutenant Colonel, Head of Section
Renato De Francesco
Certified Italian-language copy in the Military Archive (Belgrade), IA, box 651, reg. no. 3/5-3,4, with Serbian translation reg. no. 3/5a-6,7.
Translated to English by Books of Jeremiah
- The document is attached to document no. 442/Conf. of 10 August 1941 of the Command of the 25th Artillery Regiment “RE,” together with another petition from the population of Korenica addressed to the commander of Italian armed forces in Korenica, requesting protection from Ustaša crimes: the burning of houses, abuse, killings, and massacres. The forwarding document further states: “The cruelties described in these petitions correspond to the truth according to oral reports given to me by Senior Sioli, commander of the garrison.” Certified Italian copy in the Military Archive (Belgrade), IA, box 651, reg. no. 3/5-1,2, and translation reg. no. 3/5a-4,5. ↩︎
- Protection from Ustaša crimes against Serbs from Herzegovina was also requested from Italian authorities by Dr. Novica Kraljević, a representative of refugees from these regions, in his letter of 19 August 1941 to the Prefect of the Province of Kotor, Mr. Franco Scaselati, in which he states, among other things: “In neighboring Herzegovina the tension is enormous. In this small province more than ten thousand people have been killed in the most bestial manner, and over thirty thousand are now hiding in forests. The atrocities go so far that people are dismembered alive, boiled, and just a few days ago in Čapljina a man was slaughtered and the Ustašas sprinkled their meal with his blood…” Military Archive (Belgrade), ANDH, box 85, reg. no. 3/14 and box 143a, reg. no. 38/5. ↩︎
