NEIGHBOR ILIJA MARIĆ AMONG CUTTHROATS

BANJA LUKA, JUNE 26 /SRNA/ - Dragan Stijaković testified that six female members of his family, including four girls, who remained alive in the house after the Ustasha feast, were finished off by Ustasha policemen, one of whom was their neighbor Ilija Marić Krivousti /Crooked Mouth/, who, like other Croats, had often come to Stijakovićs’ house for the Serb traditional feast - slava.

Stijaković said that when the Ustashas left the house, he saw some of the household members half-alive, but that there was no way they could be saved, and that he did not know what to do with them while they were showing signs of life in severe agony.

"As soon as the Ustashas left, six-year-old Marica, my brother Laza's daughter, crawled under my bed and said, `Uncle, they didn't find you!` It was then that a burden fell off me for the first time. I came to life. I gained strength. I could move. I got out from under the bed and stood up," Stijaković recalls.

Stijaković said that it was only then that he was shaken by what had happened in the room.

"I was overcome by a shudder and a shiver, but just briefly. There was still life in the room. Some were moaning, groaning and screaming. Some were shaking in death throes. Someone was snoring. The first thing I saw was that my two nieces were alive - six-year-old Marica and two-year-old Dobrila," he recalls.

To his surprise, his mother Zorka was also alive.

"She somehow managed to get up. Stabbed and bloody all over her body, and especially gruesomely on her face, she looked terrible. The socket of her left eye was all covered in blood. The eye was not even visible. Her eyelids were closed and smeared with blood. She was pale, but fully conscious. When I approached her, she said to me: `Run, son, you can't help us!`" said Stijaković.

He states that there was no one near the house at the time, and that he immediately ran through the plum grove, towards the Vujića Stream.

"At that time I was already ready to run away and defend myself if someone caught up with me. I would not let myself be slaughtered so easily anymore. I ran, it seems to me, like the wind to the Vujića Stream. It was around 9:00 in the morning. The morning was dry, gray and very cold. While I was running, I saw nothing but the whiteness of the snow. And I had no way out! There was no passage up the stream; a dangerous path down the stream, on the right side of the stream the Ustashas slaughtered Serbs, on the left side of the stream the Catholic, Šokac settlement of Josipovići. Since I had no other way out, around noon I started walking back home," Stijaković recalls.

He says he heard that there were living people in the room who were moaning and groaning loudly.

"In the room - it was horrible! My mother Zorka was still alive. When I escaped a few hours ago, she stayed in the yard, leaning against the door of her building. Now she was lying in the room on the bed. She still had the strength to go back to the room and climb onto the bed," he said.

Sister Slavka was also alive and lying on the bed next to our mother.

"They were not covered, although it was very cold in the room. Mother is looking at me. She is fully conscious. She is twitching a little, but she cannot move. My sister, who was lying next to her, was moaning and groaning, but she was unconscious. Mother doesn't say anything. She just looks at me and moans, groans and sometimes sighs deeply. I don't say anything either," Stijaković remembers.

He said that he started dragging the dead on the floor and stacking them side by side on one side of the room, against the wall, so that he could reach the bed and the stove.

"Then my mother spoke. She said, `Dragan, light a fire! We're going to die of the cold.` Those were the first words she said since we found ourselves in the room. Suddenly, dogs were barking in front of the house.

My mother said, `Look who it is, run away! At least you're alive!` I looked out the window and saw gendarmes coming down the road from above Stanoja's house. They were about 50-60 meters away from the house. I immediately ran to the opposite door of the house. I ran towards the basement, and then I peeked around the corner of the basement and saw the gendarmes approaching the house. They were all in uniform," he testified.

Stijaković remembers recognizing his neighbor Ilija Marić, nicknamed Krivousti, among them.

"I knew him well, and he knew all our family. We fled, and the gendarmes left to live in our house for a while," he said.

According to Stijaković's testimony, the only survivors in the room were his mother Zorka /53/, sister Slavka /11/, daughter-in-law Zorka /30/ and her two daughters Marica /6/ and Dobrila /2/, and his brother Mlađen's daughter, three-year-old Desa.

"They killed them all right there in the room. Our neighbor Ilija Marić Krivousti, who, like other Šokci from the neighborhood, came to our house for every celebration and feast and sat with the guests in the house all day long, eating and drinking. There you go, I escaped and survived.

I told this in more detail for the first and only time now to you, so that it would be recorded, so that it would not be forgotten. Not so that people would know what the Croats from our village of Motika were like during Pavelić's Independent State of Croatia /NDH/, but out of respect for the innocently murdered in my village and two neighboring villages. It was hard for me to tell you this, but now, it seems to me, it is easier. It is as if I have been relieved a little," said Stijaković.

Dragan Stijaković's memory was recorded on a cassette tape, which was handed over to the Genocide Museum in Belgrade. /to be continued/