From the book, Jasenovac Then & Now: A Conspiracy of Silence by Wm. Jasenovac Then & Now—William Dorich


Dr. Prvislav Grizogono

Roman Catholic Croat and
former Yugoslav minister forced
to escape as a refugee to Serbia


Winter of 1942 - A letter to Archbishop Stepinac


“I am writing to you as a man to a man, as a Christian to a Christian. I have been meaning to do this for months, hoping that the dreadful news from Croatia would cease so that I could collect my thoughts and write to you in peace. For the last ten months, Serbs have been killed and destroyed in Croatia in the most ruthless manner and their property is being destroyed. The blushes of shame and anger cover the face of every honest Croat. The slaughter of Serbs began from the very first day of the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (Gospic, Gudovac, Bosanska Krajina, etc.) and has continued relentlessly to this very day.


The horror is not only in the killing. The killing includes everybody: old men, women, and children—with accompanying barbaric torture. These innocent Serbs have been impaled; fires have been lit on their bare chests, they have been roasted alive, burned in their homes and churches while still living, covered with boiling water and their skin peeled off and salt poured in their wounds... Their eyes have been pulled out, their ears, noses, and tongues cut off... The priests have had their beards and mustaches raised together with their scalps, their sex organs severed and put into their mouths... They have been tied to trucks then dragged across the ground... Nails have been pressed into their hands and their heads nailed to the floor... They have been thrown alive into wells and abyss’s and grenades have been thrown into them... Children have been thrown into flames, into boiling water, into lime kilns... Their legs have been torn from them, their heads have been smashed against walls, their backs have been broken against rocks and tree stumps... And, so many other horrible tortures have been perpetrated, such as normal people can hardly imagine...


The rivers Sava, Drava, the Danube and their tributaries have carried thousands and thousands of the corpses. Dead bodies have been found with the inscription: ‘direction Belgrade—traveling to King Peter. In a boat which was found on the Sava River there was a heap of children’s heads with the head of a woman (who could have been a head of one of the mothers of the children) with the inscription: ‘Meat for the Jovanova Market in Belgrade.’


Horrifying is the case of Mileva Bozinic from Stabandza, whose child was removed from her womb. There was also the case of the roasted heads in Bosnia, the vessels full of Serbian blood, the case of Serbs being forced to drink the warm blood of their slaughtered kin. Countless women, girls and children, mothers in front of their children and children in front of their mothers, were raped or else sent off to Ustashi camps to serve the Ustashi. Rapes even took place on the altars of Orthodox churches. In the Petrinja country a son was forced to rape his own mother. The slaughter of the Serbs in the Glina Orthodox church and the murder of Serbs on the altar of the Kladusa church is without precedent in history. There are detailed and original accounts of all these horrors. Even the Germans and the Italians were astounded by these crimes. They photographed a huge number of cases of such slaughter. The Germans are saying that the Croatians did this also during the 30-Years War, and that is why there has been a saying in German since then—’God save us from the plague, hunger and the Croats.’ The Srem Germans despise us because of this and behave in a more human fashion with the Serbs. The Italians photographed a vessel with 3.5 kilograms of Serbian eyes, as well as a Croat who wore a necklace strung with Serbian eyes and another one who came to Dubrovnik with a belt on which cut Serbian tongues were hanging.


The horrors of the camps in which the thousands of Serbs were killed, or were left to die from exposure, hunger and cold weather, are too terrible to mention. The Germans have been talking about a camp in Lika where there were thousands of Serbs; but when the Germans got there they found the camp empty, drenched in blood and bloody clothing. In that camp it has been said a Serbian bishop also lost his life. Thousands upon thousands of Serbs in the camp of Jasenovac are still being tortured as they are spending this fierce winter in wooden Gypsy shacks with no straw or covering and with a ration of two potatoes per day. In the history of Europe there have been no similar cases. One would have to go to Asia at the time of Tamerlane or Genghis-Khan or to Africa, to the countries of their bloodthirsty rulers, to come upon similar situations. These events have shamed the name of Croatia for centuries to come. Nothing can absolve us fully from this ever again. We will not be able to tell even the last wretched man in the Balkans about our thousand year old Croatian culture, because even the Gypsies never perpetrated such cruelties.


Why am I writing this to you when you are not a political personage and can no bear responsibility for all this? Here is why: In all these unprecedented barbarian crimes which are more than Godless, our Catholic Church paticipated in two ways. A large number of clergy, priests, friars, and organized Catholic youth took active part in all this. It has also happened that Catholic priests became camp guards and Ustashi accomplices and so approved of the torture and slaughter of Christians. A Catholic priest even personally slaughtered an Orthodox clergyman. They could not have done all this without the permission of their bishops, and, if they did, then they would have to lose their jobs and be taken to court. As this did not happen, it means that their bishops granted them permission.
Secondly, the Catholic Church made use of all this to convert the surviving Serbs. And while the soil was steaming from the innocent victims’ blood, while groans shuttered the chests of the surviving victims, the priests, friars, and nuns carried in one hand the Ustashi daggers and in the other their prayer books and rosaries. The whole of Srem is inundated with the leaflets written by Bishop Aksamovic and printed in his printing shop in Djakovo, calling upon the Serbs to save their lives and property by converting to Catholicism. It was as if our Church wanted to show that it could destroy souls just as the Ustashi authorities destroy bodies. It is an even greater blot on the Catholic Church, as at the same time many Orthodox churches and all the Orthodox monasteries have been confiscated, their property plundered as well as many historical treasures. Even the Patriarchate church in Sremski Karlovici has not been spared. All this violance against conscience and the spirit has brought even greater disgrace to the Croat nation and name.”


Prvilsav Grizogono
February 8, 1942.