ŠARGOVAC: SCHOOL OF DEATH AND THE BLOODY HOUR OF NO RETURN

BANJALUKA, JUNE 23 /SRNA/ - The Ustashas continued their bloody feast on February 7, 1942, in the village of Šargovac, by killing Serbian pupils in the school, where, apart from Viktor Gutić, friar Miroslav Filipović, known as Fra Satan stood out by committing the most monstrous acts that the human mind cannot even comprehend today.

Leaving the devastation in Drakulić and the streams of blood that colored the snow, the Ustashas moved on. It was the turn of the neighboring village - Šargovac. Here, Fra Satan, one of the most notorious Ustasha criminals in terms of brutality and sadism from World War II, enters the scene.

Filipović was called by many a unique monster because he was both an organizer and a butcher.

What is recorded about Filipović in the book "Friars and Ustashas Slaughter" by author Lazar Lukajić is unimaginable from today's perspective. Together with them, the crime was planned in detail by their closest associates, among whom were also many Catholic friars, who were the main spiritual initiators of the massacre of Serbs.

Fra Satan and his 12 followers, as they were called the apostles of death, set off from school on a bloody feast. According to the recorded statements, it was morning, between 10:00 and 11:00.

In today's Đura Jakšić Elementary School, they found fifty-two children in class. They entered a class and greeted the teacher and the children.

Teacher Dobrila Martinović, after the war, gave a statement to Lazar Lukajić, which he quoted in his book:

"Friar Miroslav Filipović suddenly entered the classroom during class with 12 of his Ustashas, imitating Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles. I knew him well from before. The children knew him too, because the friar often passed through Drakulić, Šargovac and Motike. He was dressed in a new Ustasha uniform. The Ustashas stood next to the lectern and the school board, facing the desks and the children," Martinović said.

Then, Fra Filipović asked the teacher to take a Serbian child out of the desk. The teacher, not suspecting what was about to happen, brought out the little girl Radojka Glamočanin, the daughter of a prominent landlord, Đuro Glamočanin, who was then a prisoner of war in Germany and thus survived the war.

"The friar gently accepted the child, lifted him onto the lectern and then began slowly, with a vengeance, to slaughter him in front of the other children, the teacher and the Ustashas. There was screaming and panic in the classroom," the teacher testifies.

The terrified children screamed and jumped, and Fra Satan, calmly and with Jesuit dignity, addressed his Ustashas.

"Ustashas, in the name of God I baptize these bastards, and you follow my path. I am the first to accept all the sins on my soul, and I will confess and absolve you of all your sins!" shouted Filipović.

Then he ordered the teacher to take all the Serbian children out into the yard. Then he went to another classroom, and ordered the teacher Mara Tunjić to take all the Serbian students out. In the yard, on the packed snow, he placed the Ustashas in a circle, and ordered the children to run past them.

As each child ran into it, the Ustashas would slaughter and maim it. And so on until all the children were slaughtered. For the "butcher's baptism", the Ustashas most often took children as the first slaughter.

On that February 7, 1942, instead of grades, the school was written in moans. Instead of a bell - screams.

"We went crazy from the fear and horror that the Ustashas did that day, after that I was never the same person again," Marinović testified.

CHILDREN WERE THE FIRST SCREAM, AND VILLAGE - THE LAST BREATH

When they slaughtered the children, they headed for the houses to finish off the village. From the classroom of death, they stepped between the thresholds where women held children in their arms.

Every room became an execution cell, every barn - a shelter that did not protect. And, the village, a mass grave. Among other things, a so-called "flail for beating Serbs" was also used in the massacre.

The Ustashas were especially monstrous towards Serbian girls. They demanded that they lift their skirts, then stabbed them between the legs with bayonets until they blead out.

Mile Todorović's entire family was slaughtered. He survived by sheer luck, because he was not in the village at the time of the massacre.

"I came home, and it was deserted, only in the barn cows were mooing. When I left the house, I heard something crunching. I went closer and found about 100 meters from my house a pile of bodies - about 70 people, children, women. One of them was sitting and moaning," he says.

He approached the man and called out to him, but he did not understand him.

"He was cut in the cerebellum, I recognized him. He had a shoe on one foot, and was barefoot on the other. One small corpse seemed to me to be my youngest daughter. Then I fainted," Todorović testified.

After a certain time, he got up and started walking, and people were still moaning and calling out on all sides.

"The snow was red all around, about fifteen meters away. I started walking because the Ustashas were coming singing their song, to check if anyone was alive, to verify it. The villages were deserted," he said.

Todorović stated that the Ustashas scavengers dragged looted food, valuable pieces of furniture, and livestock and poultry from the deserted peasant homes to their warehouses.

"There are original photographs, on which the grinning faces of these monsters, who hold in their murderous hands the severed heads of the murdered, mostly children", is Todorović's testimony recorded in the book "Friars and Ustashas Slaughter". /to be continued/