CVIJANOVIĆ: PRESERVING TRUTH ABOUT SERB PREBILOVCI VICTIMS IS MORAL AND NATIONAL DUTY

BANJA LUKA, AUGUST 6 /SRNA/ – The Serb member of the BiH Presidency Željka Cvijanović said that today marks the 85th anniversary of the brutal Ustasha crime in Prebilovci, one of the symbols of the genocide against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/, stressing that it is the Serb people`s moral and national duty to preserve the truth about their suffering, no matter how difficult and horrific it may be.

"This is not only a debt to the past, but also a responsibility to the future," Cvijanović added.

She reminded that in August 1941, the lives of innocent people, predominantly women, children and the elderly, were extinguished in the most monstrous manner in the area.

Of around 1,000 residents of the village, more than 800 were killed during those terrible August days. Their only crime was that they were Serbs and Orthodox Christians.

According to Cvijanović, testimonies about the atrocity are horrifying to any reasonable person.

"May the innocent martyrs of Prebilovci be remembered forever, and may their glory be eternal," Cvijanović wrote on the social media platform X.

Today, the 85th anniversary of the Ustasha massacre of Serbs is being commemorated in Prebilovci, near Čapljina.

The Ustasha forces carried out the massacre in Prebilovci between Aug. 6 and 11, 1941, under the command of Ivan Jovanović Crni. Most of the victims were thrown alive into the Golubinka pit, while others were killed on the spot. In Prebilovci alone, 830 Serbs were murdered, and no one survived from 57 families.

Across Herzegovina, there were around 110 execution sites, most of them karst pits such as Golubinka, Korićanka, Jagodnjača, Pandurica, Ržani Do and many others.

The crime in Prebilovci was concealed in former Yugoslavia, and in 1961 the pits into which Serbs had been thrown were sealed with concrete. Excavation of 13 pits in the Lower Herzegovina region began in 1990, and on Aug. 4, 1991, the remains of more than 4,000 Serbs were interred in the memorial ossuary in Prebilovci.

The Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Prebilovci was built and consecrated in 2015 in memory of around 4,000 Serbs from Lower Herzegovina who were killed by the Ustasha forces during the Second World War. The Serbian Orthodox Church canonized the victims later that same year.