ČUČAK: EVERY DAY IN CROATIAN CAMPS WAS A STRUGGLE FOR BARE SURVIVAL

BANJA LUKA, JULY 28 /SRNA/ - Miroslav Čučak from Trebinje testified for the Memorial Center of Republika Srpska about his captivity in the Croatian camps of Gabela, Metković, Opuzen, the Zagreb camp Kerestinec, and the Split camp Lora, where over the course of six months in 1992, he survived the most horrific tortures there and, as he recalled, every day was a struggle for bare survival.

"I begged them for death. I begged them as I would God to kill me. `No,` they would say, `a bullet is too expensive for a Chetnik.` They used to say: `You Chetniks need to suffer,`" Čučak pointed out, recalling the six months he spent in Croatian camps in 1992. Čučak noted that the most severe tortures were endured in Lora in Split. "They tied chains around my neck and dragged me all day long, until the very last rags fell off my body. That is satanism. I was a professional soldier, but I would never do such a thing even to my worst enemy. Never. I swear by the honorable cross and Saint Basil of Ostrog, never," said Čučak. For him, every day in captivity was a fight for his bare life. "An hour in the camp feels like a hundred years because you are just waiting for death. You don't know if they will shoot you, slaughter you with a knife, or hit you in the head with a sledgehammer," Čučak recalled. He speaks of the Lora camp as a place where human life held absolutely no value. "Lora was the worst camp in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, in the heart of `civilized Europe`. A death camp, black Lora. We were nothing but dust there – one moment you exist, the next you don't," said Čučak, who was freed in a prisoner exchange on August 14, 1992, after six months of captivity. The fate of the Čučak family has been marked by suffering for generations—14 members of this family were thrown into the pits near Prebilovci, and during the Defense-Patriotic War, seven more of his relatives, from both his father's and mother's sides, lost their lives. "After his recovery, Čučak did not give up the fight; he put the uniform back on and, as a member of the Army of Republika Srpska, remained on the battlefield until the end of the war," stated the Memorial Center of Republika Srpska.