STIJAKOVIĆ: THAT DAY, USTASHAS SLAUGHTERED 22 MEMBERS OF MY IMMEDIATE FAMILY

BANJA LUKA, JUNE 25 /SRNA/ - As a boy, Dragan Stijaković miraculously survived the massacre in Motike on February 7, 1942, by crawling under his bed and watching as the Ustashas bayoneted his family members one by one.

Stijaković survived, but, as he himself says, his soul remained in that room forever. His testimony is not only a record of the monstrosity of the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/, but also a testament to silence after death.

"On February 7th, at around 7:00 in the morning, the Ustashas slaughtered 22 members of my family. I heard dogs barking; I looked out the window and saw Ustashas in uniform. In front of them on the porch were my two brothers. I immediately crawled under the bed in the room," Stijaković said forLazar Lukajić's book "Friars and Ustashas Slaughter".

He states that there were nine of them in the room measuring about fifteen square meters, and the rest were outside the house.

"While I was hiding under the bed, there was a commotion in the room. All the family members were on their feet. Some were walking around the room, while others stood frozen. I crawled deeper and deeper under the low and wide wooden bed and arranged it so that I could see what was going to happen in the room without anyone seeing me. I was also partially obscured by some old things under the bed," said Stijaković.

According to him, shortly after he began hiding, a young Ustasha, with blond hair that could be seen under his cap, entered the room.

"He doesn't see me. He's holding a rifle at the ready in his hands, and a bayonet on the rifle. My mother Zorka was standing in front of him. The Ustasha stopped for a moment on the threshold, not saying a word or making any kind of expression, he just looked left and right briefly, crossed the threshold and pushed the tip of the bayonet into my mother's chest, near her left breast.

Then he pulled the rifle, which he was holding with both hands, towards him. I see a bloody bayonet coming out of my mother's body. My mother stood there for a short while, blood dripping down her dress. She didn't say a word. And the Ustasha is standing next to her. For a short while. Then my mother collapsed to the floor," Stijaković remembers.

He said that when she had already fallen, the Ustasha stabbed his mother in the head with a bayonet, below her left eye.

"He didn't hit an eye. My mother didn't let go, not even a sound. She remained lying on the floor. Blood was seeping through her clothes and spilling all over the floor. The other children in the room, terrified like sheep when a wolf enters among them and slaughters them one by one, stood petrified and watched what the Ustasha was doing. He didn't say a word, didn't open his mouth, didn't make an expression. He didn't rush, but calmly, coolly stepped over his mother, and began to stab the children one by one, as if he were stabbing hay bales with a pitchfork," said Stijaković.

He said that the Ustasha didn't bend down at all, which may have saved him.

"He didn't find me under the bed. I can see the lower part of his body moving around the room, but I don't move. I can't even move. It's like I'm frozen, petrified. I see everything and know everything, but I can't move any part of my body," Stijaković recalls.

Stijaković stated that his body was numb, but his mind and senses were alive.

"And my feelings were numb. I'm not afraid, I'm not excited. I wasn't afraid that he would slaughter me. The fear disappeared. So, just that one Ustasha butchered eight of our people in the room in a short time with a bayonet on his rifle. He didn't slaughter anyone, nor did he have anything else in his hands, except a rifle with a bayonet on which he just stabbed them one by one," Stijaković testified.

During all that time, he states, the other Ustasha just stood at the door of the room, on the threshold, watching his comrade stabbing.

"They didn't exchange a word. Both were silent as if they were mute. If he had told me to come out and stand in front of him, in front of the bayonet, to be stabbed, I would have done it calmly and without fear. It's a strange and incomprehensible feeling. And I experienced it," Stijaković pointed out.

However, Stijaković said that he later experienced and survived it all in a different way, with a lot of pain, suffering and fear.

"I watched the Ustashas stab my nearest and dearest. I cannot describe the situation in that small room where on February 7, 1942, there were ten dead or wounded family members and two of us healthy children. It is especially difficult to understand and describe from their reactions what they consciously felt in their souls, so half-alive," says Stijaković.

He pointed out that even in the horror films he later watched, he had never seen such a terrible scene, because even the most terrible ones seem pale in comparison to the real, tangible horror in that small room in Motike.

"I can't describe it either because I've been running away from it for the past 60 years, just as I'm still running away from it now as I speak. That's why I haven't told anyone about this horror in detail, nor have I personally written it down. I can't and won't remember that room and the details in it. I just skim through it with my memory, and then I run away. And talking about this is very difficult for me. Still, I'm doing it for them," said Stijaković. /to be continued/