THE GREATEST NUMBER OF CHILD WAR VICTIMS RECORDED ON MOUNT KOZARA IN 1942

PRIJEDOR, JULY 17 /SRNA/ - Day of Remembrance for Children Killed in the Genocide against Serbs, Jews, and Roma in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/, 1941–1945, will be observed on July 19 at the memorial ossuary in the hamlet of Macure near Prijedor.

A memorial service will be held at the monument, which states that in July 1942, following the offensive on Kozara, the Ustaše killed 41 fighters, 75 children, and 110 adults from the Kozara villages of Malo and Veliko Palančište, Donji and Gornji Jelovac, Podgrađe, Mirkovac, Međuvođa, Hajdarovac, Čitluk, Novoselac, and Mrazovac. Historian Vedrana Adamović told SRNA that one of the most brutal genocidal actions in the NDH was the treatment of children from Kozara. She reminded that, by a decision of Ante Pavelić on July 12, 1942, three special camps for partisan children were established in the NDH - Gornja Rijeka near Križevci, Jastrebarsko, and Sisak. "Separation from their mothers, the harshest punishments and abuses, starvation, beatings, epidemics of contagious diseases, some deliberately caused, and suffocation by Zyklon, all of these led to mass deaths of children," Adamović recalled. According to research by Dragoje Lukić, the largest proportion of child war victims, 81.24 percent, occurred in 1942, during the Ustasha-German offensive on Kozara. Of the total number of fighters killed, almost 96 percent inscribed on the memorial wall by the monument on Mrakovica are Serbs. According to official data, 68,600 residents of Kozara, including 23,858 children, were interned in 12 concentration camps during the offensive. The exact number of those killed will never be fully known, as they were not properly documented after World War II. Adamović emphasized that details about the crime in Macure are known thanks to a survivor Milutin Macura, who was a boy at the time and in whose house the massacre took place. "He survived thanks to his quick thinking and a killing knife that the executioner had left stuck in the basement door. Holding onto the knife as it was lodged in the door, he remained unnoticed by the criminals who returned to check if anyone was still alive in the basement," she said. Adamović noted that in October 1942, the Ustashas carried out a horrific massacre in Veliko Palančište and Gornji Jelovac. As she recounted, during the three days of the massacre, executions were carried out at several locations in the village of Gornji Jelovac, including Lakino Kuciste /a plateau near the stream/, Kneževića Luka by Hajdučki spring, and Kolareva Luka. She emphasized that Gornji Jelovac, a village under Kozara, stands as a reminder of how the killing of Serbs in the NDH was carried out in a planned, brutal, and repeated manner, which is unprecedented. "Every place along the road to Macure, each terrible in its way, reminds us that as descendants we must preserve the memory of the Serb victims, but precisely because of that, we should also value the life and freedom we have today," Adamović said. She also stated that the initiative by the Government of Republika Srpska's Committee for Preserving the Tradition of Liberation Wars to mark this day at the Macure site as of July 2021 is completely justified. "No matter how much we try to describe the horrors our ancestors endured, no matter how much we research, document, and search, as the second generation of descendants, we have a special mission: to endure and never forget," Adamović said. A very vivid account of the massacre in October 1942 at the Jelovac site, which took place a few months after the tragedy in Macure, is provided by the testimony of Miloš Knežević from Gornji Jelovac, a boy forever separated from his loved ones. He recounted that through the fog, from a distance, they could hear their mother's muffled cries, screams, blows, moans, the sound of bodies falling, and the gurgling of the victims. "Brother Đuro could be heard the most. He was carrying our sister Kosa in his arms, apparently trying to shield and protect her with his body, until he was overpowered and thrown to the ground. The dead were falling on top of me. Lying on and beside me were my dearest ones, embraced, just like they used to be on the straw mattress in our warm home. I was conscious; I could hear what the Ustaše were saying," Adamović said, quoting parts of his testimony. She added that the victims were stabbed with bayonets and iron pitchforks, and that no shots were fired. Another boy, Adamović noted, a fighter for the truth, dedicated and persistent, was Dragoje Lukić, who later became the foremost researcher of the suffering of children from Kozara, and himself a former child inmate in one of the NDH camps. He once wrote: "I tried to rescue from oblivion that most horrific act of vengeance, a part of our history. I had no other intention."