document count: 14

 

It has been alleged that scores of incriminating documents were packed up and carried out of the country by retreating Ustase forces in May of 1945, or were hidden at various safehouses throughout Croatia. Nevertheless, thousands of pages were preserved in the NDH Archive. They are, by turns, shocking, banal, and revolting. The most notorious Ustase crimes, such as the Glina church massacre, are therein corroborated in the words of various onlookers, witnesses and, in some cases, participants.

For the official public decrees of the Ustase government, post-war investigators looked to the Narodne novine - the "official gazette" which was distributed throughout the country via the Ustase's bureaucratic apparatus. For police reports, commendations, army communications, and reports forwarded by outsiders, the NDH Archive proved to be a unique record of what a modern totalitarian state, built upon genocide, sounds like when it talks to itself.

The translations below are, in many cases, the first time these documents have appeared in the English language. For other official and quasi-official documents from the Independent State of Croatia, see also Ante Pavelic, Andrija Artukovic, Mile Budak and Jasenovac.

Order: The White Armbands
May 13, 1941: Order to the municipal leadership ordering all Serbs to wear a white armband designating them as Orthodox

Expulsion of Serbs from Slavonia and Srem
June 2, 1941: Just six weeks after the founding of the NDH, organized mass explusions begin

Report by Laxa on Unrest in Hercegovina
c. July 5, 1941: Report by General Vladimir Laxa of the Croatian regular army forces on atrocities by the Ustase in Hercegovina in the first months of the NDH

Letter: Slovenian Settlers on Massacres Near Vojnic
August 2, 1941: Found in the NDH Archives, this is a letter written by Slovenian settlers relocated from the German Reich, addressed to German General Edmond Glaise von Horstenau on the extrajudicial murder of 400 Serbs by the Ustase

Report: Seven Hundred Hostages Shot by the Ustase
August 6, 1941: Report on a rise in Chetnik activity and the corresponding massacre of 700 Serbian civilians from Sanski Most by the Ustase near Banja Luka

Police Report on the "Cleansing" of Serbs near Slunj
August 13, 1941: Shocking eyewitness report by the Croatian commander of a police platoon in Slunj about the mass expulsions, conversions, and slaughter of his area's Serbian inhabitants

Order: Request by General Laxa for Ustase to Leave Bosnia
September 11, 1941: Decoded communication from General Vladimir Laxa to the Ministry of Defense for "murdering and pillaging" Ustase units from Hercegovina to be removed from Bosnia at once before they provoke an even larger uprising

Report on the Murder of 800 Civilians near Petrinja
December 3, 1941: Tersely-worded request for information by German General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau regarding the massacre of 800 "men, women and children" by the Ustase near Petrinja

Report on the Death of Peasants in Jablanica
December 4, 1941: Police report from Banja Luka on the massacre of 107 Serbs, "mostly boys from 12 to 15 years of age," and the massacre by the Ustase of mourners at a Serbian funeral

Report on the Slaughter of Serbs near Pokupje
October 15, 1942: Report forwarded through the Interior Ministry regarding the killing of Serbs in Kordun and Banija since the NDH's formation in April 1941, including the notorious Glina Church Massacre

Proposal for Decoration for Nada Luburic
1944: Proposal for a decoration for Nada Luburic, future wife of Jasenovac commandant Dinko Sakic, for bravery

Decoration for Nada Luburic, Maja Buzdon, etc.
1944: Order signed by Ante Pavelic himself bestowing a military decoration on female concentration camp guards at Stara Gradiska

 

- None.

 

- None.