Banski Grabovac massacre

Banski Grabovac massacre
Part of World War II in Yugoslavia
LocationBanski Grabovac, Independent State of Croatia
Date24-25 July 1941
TargetSerbs
Attack type
Summary executions
Deaths1,100–1,200[1][2]
PerpetratorsUstaše

The Banski Grabovac massacre was the mass killing of 1,100-1,200 Serb civilians by the Croatian fascist Ustaše movement on 24-25 July 1941, during World War II.

After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, Adolf Hitler set up the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a puppet state ruled by the fascist Croatian Ustaše regime led by Ante Pavelić.[3] The Ustaše then embarked on a campaign of genocide against the Serb, Jewish and Roma population within the borders of the state.[4]

The massacre occurred after acts of resistance against the NDH by armed Serbian peasants.[5] The first major clash between the Ustaše and anti-fascists in the territory of Croatia took place in the village of Banski Grabovac on July 23-24 when 42 rebels charged a municipal building and train station, seizing more than 50 rifles.[6] On July 24-25, the Ustaše captured the village and arrested more than 1,200 Serbs from surrounding villages.[6][1] Approximately 800 people were shot and killed on the spot while others were taken to the Jadovno concentration camp and killed there.[5] Nearly the entire village's Serb population was annihilated.[1] Those killed on location were buried in mass graves near the village's station.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c Biondich, Mark (2011). The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence Since 1878. Oxford University Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-19929-905-8.
  2. ^ Hoare, Marko Attila (2006). Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941-1943. Oxford University Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-19726-380-8. On 24–25 July, the Ustashas massacred 1,200 people at Grabovac near Petrinja
  3. ^ Molnar, Christopher A. (2019). Memory, Politics, and Yugoslav Migrations to Postwar Germany. Indiana University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-25303-775-6.
  4. ^ Byford, Jovan (2020). Picturing Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia: Atrocity Images and the Contested Memory of the Second World War in the Balkans. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-350-01598-2.
  5. ^ a b c Tomic, Yves (7 June 2010). "Massacres in dismembered Yugoslavia, 1941-1945". sciencespo.fr. The Paris Institute of Political Studies.
  6. ^ a b "WWII Serb victims commemorated in Croatia". B92.net. 22 July 2012.

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