– Budo Simonović, “The Fiery Mary of Livno” –
If it is true that a man is descended from an animal, it is quite certain that his sense of torturing and killing the members of his own species makes one of the first big differences. It seems that this aspect of “humanization” has been best applied by Ustashas who remain unique in mercilessness, bloodthirstiness, and brutality. This was especially made itself felt in Livno and its surroundings, where all their crimes were committed, as elsewhere, with the blessings of Catholic prelates.
So in July of 1941, a parish priest of Lištani, Božo Šimleša, made it known to his flock that Serbs were outlawed, threatening with the Doomsday judgement to everyone who did not take part in the “holy struggle against the misfits of Catholic faith”. At the same time, father Dr Srećko Perić, thundered from the altar of Livno Monastery:
“Brothers Croatians! Go at once to slaughter all Serbs, first slaughter my sister who has married a Serb. Then come to me, and I will accept all your sins wholeheartedly…”
And so it occurred: there was especially no pity for those who had blasphemed against the Catholic faith by falling in love with the members of another denomination.
So Marija Vukelić-Zirojević, a Croatian from Zagreb, paid fro her “sinful” love with her life. She fell in love with and married Communist and revolutionary Vojin Zirojević (after the war he was proclaimed a national hero), and one summer day in 1941 she was summoned to get ready for the journey to Serbia. Her journey ended in the infamous Koprivnica Forest…
In the same way as destiny joined Marija and Vojin during their lifetime, it joined them in their death. A few months later, more precisely in Spring of 1942, Vojin died a martyr death. In the same way as the hands of Ustasha butchers did not shake while slitting the throat of Marija, a Croatian, the hands of their brothers in arms, Chetniks, did noth shake while they were torturing and slaughtering Vojin, a Serb.
Milan Radoja has left an entry about it as well:
“That day Vojin Zirojević followed us to see what would happen. When he came to Crni Lug, Parajčićes and Jovičićes who had hidden themeslves when they were asked to hand arms, took him by surprise and drove him into a gully half a mile away from the road. When we went past, they drove him to the village of Peulje and after that to Bosansko Grahovo, hadning him over to the Chetnik Headquarters of priest Đujić.
A month later the story was told by tobacco black marketeers. They said that his chasers were commended for bringing the incorrigible red Commie, Partisan counselor. They said: He got what he deserved, they were beating and torturing him mercilessly, and then they threw him into the pit alive.
Some shepherds were catching pigeons in the pit, and they heard a man’s voice. Then they went to a water-mill that was in the vicinity. Men who were there because of milling took ropes from horse pack-saddles, took him out and brought him to the mill, where he was given some milk to drink. When he recovered he said: You know, folks, my wife was killed by Croatians, and I was destined to be killed by Serbs…
Then Chetniks came to know about him and they came to finish him off…”
Toma Rimac, a Croatian girl, fell in love with Mijo Crnogorac from the village of Čelebić, and married him. Her relatives and Catholics in general could never forgive her for that, and among Serbs she was so beloved that many men used to seek her advice.
Her nephew Niko Križan, the village headman in Čelebić, did not have such a good opinion of her. As soon as a rumor ran that Ustashas were committing crimes, Toma went to ask her nephew if it was true and if Serbs in Čelebić and her family were in danger:
– Come back to your mother’s faith and you and your family may sleep at ease – her nephew retorted.
– I changed my faith once because of love and there is no force that could make me do it again – said this proud and wise woman and slammed the door shut.
Her daughter Marica was married to a Serb Nikola Kravar-ušić. Nikola had worked in America and when he came back in 1926 and bought a car to be taxiing – it was the first taxi in Livno. However, he did not make a profit, and he became an inn-keeper, but he could not benefit from it either, and he made up his mind to set up a bus company. He bought modern buses that operated a service between Livno and Split and between Livno and Bosansko Grahovo. The job was booming, but it was messed up by the war.
One day a friend of his, who had worked with him in America, Petar Gotovac, a Croatian, warned Nikola to take care and find some shelter for a while. Nikola followed his advice and he put gold and money into a paper bag and took it to his mother-in-law in the village of Čelebić, proceeding to Split after that. He stayed in Split for a few days. His wife and children remained in Livno.
However, he was informed that his wife was ill and he went back at once. He did not reach his home: he was arrested and disappeared without a trace, like almost all noted Serbs from Livno…
When Nikola was killed, Toma tried to buy the mercy for Nikola’s and her families. She went to the village headman, Niko Križan, again and put all Nikola’s treasure before him. The headman took the bag and put it away at once, and said laughing on the wrong side of his mouth:
– My dear aunt, you can hardly buy off your head with this, there are too many people in your house for this amount of money…
– When there is not money for the others, then there is not for me either – Toma said to him – and where my folks go, I will go, too!
With almost all the members of Crnogorac family, Toma, a Croatian, met her end in the Čelebić School…
We know nothing for sure abou the fate of Milan Šunjka and his cousin Dušan. They seem to have perished because of Milan’s “sinful” love.
– Milan married Iva, a Catholic – says his sister-in-law Sava Šunjka. She came to live with him out of love – she was the only daughter of her mother. She was as pretty as a picture, and she was so good, an angel of mercy. Her uncles and cousins kept threatening her, they couldn’t reconcile to her changing the faith. We took care of her not allowing her to be alone. The poor wretch, saving your reverence, got pregnant, so that we thought she was not in danger any longer. We stopped guarding her, it was obvious that she was pregnant – who could expect evil. One day she went to tend sheep in the field, and her relatives came and took her away. She was never seen after that. The story went that she had a miscarriage, that her child was not buried but thrown somewhere – “Let Serbian cur be torn to pieces by dogs…” Later on we heard that she is alive and that she makes inquiries about us and sends her regards to us…
Milan grieved for Iva for three years and then he met another Iva, a Serb from Dalmatia, but she didn’t bring him good luck either. She was in the sixth month of pregnancy, but the butchers slaughtered her in the Čelebić School like all others…
On the eve of Fiery Mary’s Day, when men were captured in the village of Čelebić, it seems that Milan and Dušan were in the field. Owing to their neighbor and friend, Tadija Rimac, a Croatian, they escaped the arrest and the fate of other men who were thrown into Bikuša Pit the next day.
Unfortunately, it seems that their destiny was even worse.
First they found shelter in the field, in the unreaped wheat, but Vatroslav Rimac, called Bilan, also a Croatian, found them and told them to run for their life. Instead of going somewhere out of the village they, as it was explained twenty years later in an unsigned letter addressed to Milan’s brother Vlado Šunjka, somehow passed through the village and sneaked into a stable in order to find out something about their family.
It seems that someone noticed them, so that the next day, after women and children were taken to the School, they were killed after brutal torturing. In the unsigned letter, the “eye-witness” wrote down that they had riveted their legs and arms to some logs and crucified them, giving vent to their lower instincts, and being especially angry with Milan, they were castrating him saying over and over: “Now you may get married with a Catholic…”
Naturally, no one knows the whereabouts of their grave. When at some time past the extraction of gravel in the field below Čelebić was resumed, a loader operator discovered human bones. As presumed, it must be one of tens of undiscovered mass graves where the bones of Milan and Dušan Šunjka might be.
However, the bones are still at the same place. All around enormous amounts of material have been extracted, and only in the middle of this crater there stands a mound of the untouched gravel on whose top, as local residents affirm, there is an unchanted?? grave of the great martyrs.
(The unusual “monument” in Čelebić gravel mine is no more. In the meantime the mine has been much enlarged, the mound of material has been put to use so that one more trail of Ustasha crimes has been wiped out, and the story of a mass grave of unknown victims has fallen into oblivion, B. S.)
(Excerpt from: Budo Simonović, The Fiery Mary of Livno, trans. Lazar Macura [Belgrade: Association of Citizens of the Fiery Mary of Livno / Svetigora, 2015], pp. 283-288.)