MEMORIAL SERVED FOR GENERAL DRAŽA MIHAILOVIĆ

BILEĆA, JULY 17 /SRNA/ - A memorial service was held today at the monument in Ravna Gora Park in Bileća for General Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, commander of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, marking the 80th anniversary of his death.

Radoslav Uljarević, a member of the Movement of Serbian Chetniks in the Homeland, namely the Bileća Chetnik Detachment, said that Mihailović gave his life for the Serbian faith and Orthodoxy. "Today we are marking 80 years since the suffering and unjust trial of Duke Draža Mihailović," Uljarević said, also reminding the patriotism and honor of the late Duke Slavko Aleksić. Member of the Bileća Chetnik Detachment Veselin Vujović reminded that Mihailović was the first guerrilla fighter in occupied Europe, an officer who gathered around him all those who had the courage to oppose Germany and Hitler. "Unfortunately, history has done a great injustice to those heroes who perished in that Golgotha of struggle for their Serbian people, the honorable cross and golden freedom," Vujović said. Before the memorial service, a requiem service for Mihailović was held at the Cathedral Church in Bileća. Mihailović was arrested by OZNA on March 12, 1946, and the communist authorities of the time sentenced him to death, accusing him of being a "collaborator of the occupiers and a war criminal". Mihailović was executed at an unknown location on the night between July 16 and 17, 1946, and the place where he was buried remains unknown to this day. US President Harry Truman posthumously awarded Dragoljub Mihailović the Legion of Merit in 1948 for saving American pilots. Mihailović was rehabilitated by a decision of the Serbian Assembly in 2004, which assessed both opposing Serbian movements from the Second World War as resistance movements.