USTASHA CRIME AGAINST SERBS IN PREBILOVCI FITS INTO GENOCIDAL POLITICS OF NDH

BELGRADE, AUGUST 5 /SRNA/ - On the occasion of 84th anniversary of the Ustasha crime against Serb civilians in Prebilovci, Director of the Belgrade Museum of Genocide Victims Bojan Arbutina told SRNA that itis a crime that fits into genocidal politics of the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/.

"Each of these crimes contributed to the genocidal policy of the NDH and is identical to all those crimes that were committed in numerous Serbian places throughout the NDH, that is, in the area from Herzegovina, Bosnia, territories where Serbs lived from Dalmatia, all the way to Slavonia and Syrmia," said Arbutina. He pointed out that Prebilovci near Čapljina is one of the most suffering villages in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Arbutina mentioned that the Museum of Genocide Victims is involved every year in marking the anniversaries in Prebilovci, so it will be the same this time, where it carries out activities with the aim of preserving the truth about the suffering of the Serbian people from being forgotten. He stated that last year this museum opened a permanent exhibition in the Holy King Milutin House of Culture in Prebilovci, and tonight it will organize a screening of the film "The Cross from Kosovo" and the promotion of the collection "March Program 2004" with colleagues from Kosovo and Metohija. "In this way, we will show that this historical process in the 20th century is the same for Serbs wherever they live and that it brought many sufferings to our people. And in this way, we will connect our people from Kosovo and Metohija, our people from Herzegovina", said Arbutina. Speaking about what was the most terrible thing in Prebilovci during World War II, Arbutina stated that, as in every Serb village on the territory of the NDH, the Ustashas killed children, old people and women there in an extremely cruel way and in a short time interval. "It was also terrible that, after that, for decades those pits /into which the killed Serbs were thrown/ were covered with concrete like many other pits in Herzegovina. It is terrible that we did not remember those victims at all. But here are some better times coming that those victims will remain written in our collective identity and memory," stressed Arbutina. When it comes to the Museum's plan to preserve Serbian victims from oblivion, he said that the main goal of the Museum is to nurture the culture of remembrance of victims of the genocide against the Serbian people in NDH, and also to conduct numerous project, and that it will continue. He pointed out that two days ago, the Museum opened an exhibition in London, in cooperation with the Ambassador of Serbia in the UK and with the Diocese of the British-Irish of the Serbian Orthodox Church, where the suffering of children in the wars from 1990 to 1999 was shown. "Today in Prebilovci, tomorrow in Trebinje. There is a large number of projects, investigating crimes, registration of victims, movie shootings, organizing exhibitions," said Arbutina. When asked by SRNA whether a "black book" of Serb victims will ever be written, at least from the 20th century, Arbutina said that it will, and that the Museum and other institutions of science and culture, as well as state institutions, are also working on the list. "We are working on the list. There is nothing in dispute, but I think we have to work so that in public opinion we get to the point where we are fully aware of what we went through in the 20th century and cultivate a culture of remembrance, so that we don't forget and learn lessons," Arbutina told SRNA. In 1941, the Ustashas brutally killed 823 out of a total of about a thousand villagers of Prebilovci, Herzegovina, just because they were Serbs, and in 1992, the descendants of those villains destroyed the memorial ossuary where the remains of the martyrs were kept. Prebilovci, a Serb village near Čapljina in the Neretva Valley, is a symbol of the suffering of Serbian Herzegovina during the criminal NDH and is the most suffering village in Europe in World War II, in which 57 families were completely destroyed in 1941, 36 hearths were extinguished, i.e. in a village that had about a thousand inhabitants, 823 of them were killed. On August 6, the Serbian Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Martyrs of Prebilovac and Other Martyrs from Herzegovina. The last living witness to the tragedy of August 1941, Pavle Bulut, then 14 years old, who escaped the pit in Šurmanci by sheer chance, died in 2023 in Belgrade, at the age of 96. Among the first Serbian victims from Prebilovci was the father of one of the most famous Serbian academics, Milorad Ekmečić, who was thrown into the Hutovo Pit, near the railway line towards Popovo Polje and Trebinje.