Glina massacres

The Glina massacres were genocidal killings of nearly 2,000 Serb peasants in the town of Glina in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. The first massacre in the town occurred on 11 or 12 May 1941, when a band of Ustaše led by Mirko Puk murdered 260–373 Serb men and boys in a Serbian Orthodox church before setting it on fire. The Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, sent a letter of protest to Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić after receiving news of the massacre. He did not condemn the atrocity publicly and was later tried by Yugoslavia's new Communist government for collaborating with the Ustaše.

The second massacre in Glina occurred on 30 July of that same year, when 700–1,200 Serbs were massacred by a group of Ustaše led by Vjekoslav Luburić after being invited to celebrate a mass conversion to Roman Catholicism. Ljubo Jednak, the only survivor of this massacre, went on to testify at both Stepinac's 1946 trial and the 1986 trial of the Ustaše government's Minister of the Interior, Andrija Artuković. Puk was captured by British forces in 1945 while attempting to flee to Austria and was extradited to Yugoslavia the following year, where he committed suicide. Luburić escaped Yugoslavia after the war and moved to fascist Spain, where he was assassinated by Ilija Stanić, an agent of the Yugoslav State Security Service.

Following the independence of Croatia from Yugoslavia, a marble plaque bearing the names of Serbs killed in the massacres was removed by Croatian authorities in the town, and the facility was demolished. After the war, the local authorities failed to restore the memorial pavilion and instead dismantled it, converting the venue into a generic cultural institution, to the dismay of the local Serbian population.

Background
On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the Royal Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated. The country was then dismembered and the extreme Croat nationalist and fascist Ante Pavelić, who had been in exile in Benito Mussolini's Italy, was appointed Poglavnik (leader) of an Ustaše-led Croatian state – the Independent State of Croatia (often called the NDH, from the Nezavisna Država Hrvatska). The NDH combined almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of modern-day Serbia into an "Italian-German quasi-protectorate". NDH authorities, led by the Ustaše militia, subsequently implemented genocidal policies against the Serb, Jewish and Roma population living within the borders of the new state. Ethnic Serbs were persecuted the most because Pavelić and the Ustaše considered them "potential turncoats" in what they wanted to be an ethnically pure state composed solely of Croats. Racist and antisemitic laws were passed, and ethnic Serbs, representing about thirty percent of the NDH's population of 6.3 million, became targets of large-scale massacres perpetrated by the Ustaše. By the middle of 1941, these killings reached degrees of brutality that shocked even some Germans. The Cyrillic script was subsequently banned by Croatian authorities, Orthodox Christian church schools were closed, and Serbs were ordered to wear identifying armbands. Mile Budak, the Croatian Minister of Education, is reported to have said that one-third of Serbs in the NDH were to be killed, one third were to be expelled, and one-third were to be converted to Roman Catholicism. The Ustaše then established numerous concentration camps where thousands of Serbs were mistreated, starved, and murdered.

Glina is a small market town in the Banija region of Croatia located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) south of Zagreb. In 1931, the town itself had a population of 2,315 people and was inhabited mostly by Serbs, Croats, and Jews. Shortly after the Ustaše took power, the Croatian Minister of Justice, Mirko Puk, established a base in the town.

First massacre
On 11 or 12 May 1941, a band of Ustaše led by Puk seized a group of Serb males from Glina and detained them regardless of occupation or class. The Ustaše then herded the group into an Orthodox Church and demanded that they be given documents proving the Serbs had all converted to Catholicism. Two Serbs produced the required documents and were released. The Ustaše then locked inside and massacred those who did not possess conversion certificates, including priest Bogdan Opačić. The bodies were then left to burn as the Ustaše set the church on fire and waited outside to shoot any survivors attempting to escape the flames. Estimates of the number of Serbs killed range from 260 to 417.

On 14 May, the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, sent a letter of protest to Pavelić after receiving news of the massacre. However, he failed to condemn the atrocity publicly. The next day, Pavelić visited Rome and was granted a private audience with Pope Pius XII, who offered de facto recognition of the NDH on behalf of the Holy See. Although he was aware that Pavelić was a totalitarian dictator, there is no evidence that the Pope had any knowledge of the first Glina massacre at the time.

Second massacre
On the night of 30 July 1941, a massacre similar to the one in May again occurred in Glina. That summer, the Ustaše had offered amnesty for all Serbs in the NDH who would convert from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism. Many Serbs responded positively, and one group turned up at the Serbian Orthodox church in Glina where a conversion ceremony was to take place. The 700 to 1,200 Serbs who had gathered, thinking they were to undergo a conversion ceremony, were greeted by six members of the Ustaše under the direct command of Vjekoslav Luburić. When all were inside, the doors to the church were sealed. The Serbs were then forced to lie on the ground as the six Ustaše struck them one by one on the head with spiked clubs. More Ustaše then appeared and the killings continued. Victims were killed by having their throats cut or by having their heads smashed in with rifle butts. Only one of the victims, Ljubo Jednak, survived after playing dead and later described what had happened:

"They started with one huge husky peasant who began singing an old historical heroic song of the Serbs. They put his head on the table and as he continued to sing they slit his throat and then the next squad moved in to smash his skull. I was paralyzed. "This is what you are getting" an Ustaša screamed. Ustaše surrounded us. There was absolutely no escape. Then the slaughter began. One group stabbed with knives, the other followed, smashing heads to make certain everyone was dead. Within a matter of minutes we stood in a lake of blood. Screams and wails, bodies dropping right and left."

The bodies were then put into trucks and were taken to a large burial pit, where they were left unattended long enough for Jednak to escape.

Aftermath
Following the massacres, many Serbs from Glina and its surroundings fled to Serbia or were deported to Ustaše-controlled concentration camps. The NDH collapsed in May 1945, and the following year the Nuremberg trials judged that the persecution experienced by Serbs in the country was a crime of genocide. Local Serbs returned to Glina after the war, partly out of a desire to remain near the graves of their deceased family members.

Puk, the organizer of the first massacre, was captured by British forces while attempting to flee to Austria in May 1945 and was extradited to Yugoslavia several months later, where he committed suicide by slitting his wrists with a razor blade. Luburić, the organizer of the second massacre, escaped Yugoslavia after the war and moved to fascist Spain, where he was assassinated by Ilija Stanić, an agent of the Yugoslav State Security Service (UDBA). Pavelić survived the war and died in Spain in 1959. Stepinac, who failed to publicly condemn the atrocities in Glina, was accused of collaborating with the Ustaše by Yugoslavia's new Communist government and was tried in 1946, where Jednak testified against him. He was subsequently sentenced to sixteen years imprisonment and died while under house arrest in 1960. In 1986, Jednak testified against the Ustaše government's Minister of the Interior, Andrija Artuković, at his trial in Croatia.

Legacy
Out of an estimated 300,000 Croatian Serbs that were murdered by the Ustaše from 1941 to 1945, more than 18,000 were ethnic Serbs from Glina at its surroundings. The two massacres that occurred in the town in 1941, sometimes described as pogroms, took the lives of less than 2,000 Serbs. Journalist Tim Judah has described them as being one of the most infamous of the early atrocities perpetrated by the Ustaše.

The poem Requiem (Rekvijem, Реквијем) by poet Ivan V. Lalić is dedicated to the victims of the two massacres in Glina. After the war, Yugoslav authorities removed the physical remnants where the church from the second Glina massacre had stood. In 1969, a monument by Antun Augustinčić and a museum (Spomen-dom, lit. "Memorial home") were erected on the site and were dedicated to the victims of the massacres.

Following the independence of Croatia from Yugoslavia, the monument, a marble tablet bearing the names of Serbs killed in the massacres, was removed by Croatian authorities in the town. The memorial museum was heavily damaged in 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence. In August 1995, the Augustinčić monument was damaged and removed, and the local authorities began working on the conversion of the memorial into a general-purpose cultural institution named the "Croatian Home" (Hrvatski dom). The move was met with indignation by the Serbian community, who complained to the local authorities, to the Ministry of Culture, and to the Prime Minister of Croatia. They were publicly supported by Slavko Goldstein, but the local Croatian Peasant Party politicians rejected their pleas.