TRUTH ABOUT CRIMES AGAINST SERBS HIDDEN FOR DECADES DUE TO COMMUNIST CENSORSHIP

BELGRADE, JANUARY 12 /SRNA/ - The Forgotten Roots Foundation has published the original 1974 court verdict, by which the communists banned Dragan Grgić's book "The Korana as a Wound" in order to hide the truth about the crimes of the Ustashas against Serbs in the Bihać region and southern Kordun.

Dragan Radović, the founder of the Foundation, told SRNA that the verdict is an extremely valuable source for studying the mechanisms of censorship in the SFRY, giving the impression that the judges could not have even imagined that someone would read it half a century later, and that what is written there is compromising for the communists.

"They literally wrote their own verdict," Radović emphasized, pointing out that two key disputed sections stand out in the document, the first being the identification of the perpetrators' nationality.

As he explained, wherever the book stated that the perpetrators were Croats and Muslims, it was marked as unacceptable.

"It was allowed to say individually that Avdo Avdić committed this or that crime, but to say that Muslims from a particular village committed crimes against Serbs and that they did so en masse was marked as problematic because it `undermines the honor and reputation of our peoples` and so on," Radović said.

The second disputed issue concerns criticism of the Communist Party and its decisions. Radović explained that the judges cite as an example Grgić's emphasis on Muslims switching from the Partisans to the Ustashe and vice versa, stating that this is true, but that it creates a certain impression.

"So, it is true, but it cannot be described in that way," Radović said.

Radović pointed out that Grgić's memoirs were first banned in 1961, and that the author was temporarily imprisoned on charges of alleged criminal offenses, including "enemy propaganda and inciting national hatred and intolerance," adding that even after the prosecutor dropped the criminal charges against the writer, the legal persecution of his book did not end.

"At the end of a lengthy process, in 1974, the District Court in Sremska Mitrovica issued a ruling banning the printing and distribution of the book, and ordered the confiscation of all copies and accompanying materials," Radović said.

He said that the author managed to preserve several copies of the book and, shortly before he died in 1984, handed them over to his friend Nikola Božić, hoping that a better time would come when someone would be able to publish it.

"In that way, one copy was preserved, literally kept in an attic, covered in dust. While conducting research for the documentary film `Garavica,` I learned about it, obtained the material, and published it," Radović said.

When it comes to Grgić's materials, Radović said that he has two original notebooks handwritten in Cyrillic, typewritten transcripts, and a series of photographs and documents belonging to the author and his wife, Bojana, who had no children and whose families were killed by the Ustashas.

The original verdict has been preserved at the court in Sremska Mitrovica, and he said he is particularly pleased that certain copies of the book and transcripts of all those materials and the verdict nevertheless ended up in the AVNOJ Museum in Bihać because, as he emphasized, no one can dispute the authenticity of the book.

The book was published in 2023, and its original title was The Tragedy of the Serb People in the Bihać Region. It was the first book about the suffering of Serbs in the area of the Great County of Krbava–Psat within the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/.

In addition to physical executions and expulsions, Orthodox Serbs were also subjected to religious conversion, which often did not guarantee that they would not be executed.