GERMANS EXECUTED CIVILIANS, INCLUDING SCHOOLCHILDREN, IN KRAGUJEVAC

BIJELJINA, OCTOBER 20 /SRNA/ – On October 21, 1941, a German "punitive expedition" executed nearly 3,000 Serbian civilians in Kragujevac, including local schoolchildren.

The day before, German troops had surrounded the city, while patrols arrested people in their homes, shops, taverns, churches, offices and schools.

At the local grammar school, they rounded up all students from the fifth to the eighth grade, along with teachers and the school principal, Milivoje Pavlović, who refused to accept mercy from the occupiers and chose to share the fate of his students.

The German occupiers executed 2,796 civilians from Kragujevac and nearby villages, including 300 students and teachers from the First Kragujevac Grammar School and 15 children aged between eight and 15.

At the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, it was accepted that approximately 7,000 civilians had been executed in Kragujevac over the entire period of reprisals.

The crime was committed under an order issued by German leader Adolf Hitler stipulating that 100 Serbs were to be executed for every German killed.

The order applied only to Serbs because the Nazi leader feared Serbian resistance, which the Germans had encountered during the First World War.

The Kragujevac massacre was one of the largest and most horrific atrocities committed against civilians in a single location and on a single day during the Second World War.

In memory of this terrible crime, the annual "Great School Lesson" memorial event is held at the monument to the victims in Šumarice Memorial Park in Kragujevac, with the participation of artists, schoolchildren and citizens from all parts of the country.