RADOVIĆ: FIRST MEMORIAL CHAPEL DEDICATED TO MURDERED SERB CHILDREN BEING BUILT IN TRAGIC VILLAGE OF BRIŽINA

BELGRADE, SEPTEMBER 6 /SRNA/ – In the village of Brižina near Bugojno, where on April 20, 1942, Ustaše forces burned 86 Serb civilians in a barn belonging to local resident Nedeljko Pilipović, including 46 children, the first memorial chapel dedicated to murdered Serb children of World War II is being built on the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

On the interior walls of the chapel, which measures eight by four meters and is located within the Orthodox cemetery of the now-abandoned Serb village, the names of over 500 Serb children under the age of 16 who were killed in the areas of Kupres, Bugojno, and Donji Vakuf will be inscribed instead of traditional frescoes. The initiative to build the chapel was launched by Bugojno parish priest Slaviša Đurić and the Forgotten Roots Foundation, and it has received exceptional support from Serbs born in the area, as well as from those displaced around the world. Dragan Radović, founder of the Forgotten Roots Foundation, told SRNA that the chapel structure has been built, and the installation of roof beams and covering is underway. “The most important thing is that there are many donors- People wholeheartedly embraced the idea of building this chapel. As far as I know, this is the first chapel dedicated specifically to the murdered Serb children. There are chapels dedicated to Serb suffering in general, but this one specifically focuses on the murdered children,” Radović said. He noted that a significant portion of the roughly BAM 4,000 needed for the chapel was raised through sales of the publication Zanesovići, released by the Foundation, which contains complete records of the murdered children from the area, compiled with archival documentation. “It lists the child’s name and gender, father’s name, village of birth, date and year of birth, and the date and place of death. There is a large number of children under one year old, even newborns two or five days old, often recorded in documents as unbaptized children,” said Radović. He emphasized that the murdering the youngest children permanently erased many Serb families from the Kupres plateau and Uskoplje Valley, and that this chapel is a way to prevent them from falling into oblivion. “A poor dirt road leads to Brižina. There are no more Serbs living there. A monument has been erected on the site of the barn where the Serbs were burned to death in April 1942. The victims were never exhumed; their remains were simply buried over. Near that location is our cemetery, where the chapel is being built,” Radović said. He stressed that Serbs from this area want the world to hear this story, and that Father Slaviša Đurić is a great fighter. Supporting this, Radović noted that the Bugojno parish priest accomplished the seemingly impossible - he managed to erect a monument inside the local church dedicated to the soldiers of the Republika Srpska Army from the Bugojno parish area. “He found a way to raise the monument inside the church. On the north side is the monument to the soldiers, and on the opposite side is a monument to civilian war victims, both within the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos in Čipuljić,” Radović said.