"WITNESS TO JASENOVAC'S HELL" ILIJA IVANOVIĆ: WILL THEY KILL ME, I AM A CHILD, I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG!?

BANJA LUKA, APRIL 26 /SRNA/ - One of the surviving Jasenovac camp inmates, Ilija Ivanović, who managed to escape the camp at the age of 16 during a breakout, wrote the book "Witness to Jasenovac's Hell," in which he described the torment and suffering of the camp inmates.

The portal srpskanational.com is publishing excerpts from the book in which the now deceased Ivanović described the events in the camp on April 21 and 22, 1945:

On April 21, 1945, the Ustashas drove the women to kill them in Gradina. The women are singing. There were several hundred of them. Silence in the men's camp. Everyone was distraught. The uncertainty was tearing at their nerves. Suicides by hanging became more frequent. The Ustashas were agitated, running here and there. A terrible commotion. We asked ourselves: What will happen? Everyone withdrew into themselves, fantasizing about deliverance. They hoped, then lost hope. And so bright and dark thoughts alternated.

Dušan Prpoš from Sovjak near Gradiška constantly wears an old rope around his neck and says he will hang himself. He will not allow himself to be slaughtered. He will judge himself and end his torment. At times he completely loses hope of salvation. I encourage him and dissuade him from his intention. I harbor a hidden hope and believe in a miracle, although I see no reasonable way out. Still, I hope...

I watch the sun rising from behind the clouds. Am I not going to see that sunrise tomorrow? Will they kill me? Why? I have done nothing wrong. I have done no harm to anyone. I am a child. Maybe they will not kill me... And then, as if from a fog, a scene emerges for me, which I saw a year ago, when the Ustashas caught up with a group of women, children and old people, someone from Kordun said. I look at that poor column, surrounded by Ustashas, butting them and hurrying them along. They are leading them towards the scaffold to Gradina. I know that they are going to their deaths.

A woman is carrying a baby in her arms. She asks the Ustasha to let her sit down and breastfeed the baby. He roughly pushes her back into the line. She separates herself, sits down by the side of the road without permission, and breastfeeds the baby. Ustasha notices her. He returns. He hits her in the back with the butt of his rifle. The baby falls out of her hands. The Ustasha takes it, throws it up, takes out a dagger, and stabs it with the blade. The mother falls unconscious.

Optimism is fading. Dark forebodings are swarming. If they killed a few months old baby, they would kill me too. There is no escape...

The song of the last camp inmates is getting fainter. They have already been transported by ferry across the Sava to Gradina. The two of us still can't find a solution where to hide. Every idea has its weak points. Our planning is interrupted by the group leader's order to take the most necessary personal belongings and prepare to move. It's over, I think. This is the end. There's nowhere to go. The sky is high, but the ground is hard. My master Moric Altarac and I are packing our tools in the barbershop in "Ciglana". We might need them, the master says. We each take a blanket and head out.

Into the front, faster, faster, the Ustasha shouts are heard from all sides. We line up. They lead us towards the gate. If they chase us towards the village, there is hope. If we go straight to the scaffold, it is over. They drive us to the left, down the Sava, along the road towards the eastern exit and the former women's camp. A sense of relief sets in, visible in all of us. A glimmer of hope awakens. Maybe we are going to work somewhere?

The Ustashas are rough. They swear, shout, threaten, but they don't hit us with rifle butts, so that gives us hope that we can go to work somewhere. Maybe they still need us? All the camp inmates have been driven out. There are plenty of us. The column is long, what is this? A camp relocation? Where to?

I don't see Dušan. What's going on with him? Živko Gigović and Radovan Popović from Trebovljani are in a column near me. I look across the Sava to the Prosara mountain. The heights of Kozara are also blue. Over there behind Prosara are Podgradci. There is freedom. There is my mother, sisters, and brother. How close it is. I would get there quickly, in five to six hours on foot. But the obstacles are insurmountable. Will I ever see my family? Where are they chasing us? Black thoughts again. Maybe they are chasing us into the forest near the village of Košutarice. They will liquidate us there.

We are going to the tailor's shop building, to the women's camp, said Master Altarac and brought me back to reality. Indeed, we are turning off the road near the Sava. They forced us into the building of the former tailor's shop, where until yesterday there was a women's camp. The building is spacious. It has a ground floor, an upper floor and an attic. They crammed us all inside. There are about a thousand of us, maybe more. The door closed behind us. They placed guards at all the exits, even though we were inside the camp perimeter.

Around the building is a plain. The windows to the east look out onto the wall and the bunkers on it. Every fifty meters on the wall is a bunker with an Ustasha crew and the obligatory machine gun facing us. The wall was built by the camp inmates, it is about four meters high. They had to fence themselves off. And now that wall, together with the gun barrels, represents an insurmountable obstacle to freedom. And our view is narrow. To the west, along the Sava, through the windows, we see our labor camp. There is the economy, a brickyard, a sawmill, a chainsaw mill, a carpentry shop, where until yesterday we worked, got sick, starved and died. On the south side is the Sava, separated by barbed wire woven in several rows. It is said that at night it is electrified.

To the north is the wall, bunkers, and behind it is the Novska-Jasenovac-Sunja railway. The encirclement is complete. The Ustashas had foreseen everything well, especially the geographical position. They ideally used natural and artificial obstacles to minimize the possibility of escape.