Momčilo Đujić

Momčilo R. Đujić (Serbian Cyrillic: Момчило P. Ђујић; 27 February 1907 – 11 September 1999) was a Dalmatian Serb Chetnik commander (vojvoda, вoјвода) who led a significant proportion of the Chetniks within the northern Dalmatia region of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. A Serbian Orthodox priest, he joined the Chetnik movement led by Kosta Pećanac after the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934. After the invasion of Yugoslavia, he defended local Serbs against the Ustaše and collaborated with the Axis powers against the Yugoslav Partisans throughout the remainder of the war as the commander of the Chetnik Dinara Division (Dinarska divizija, Динарска дивизија). He survived the war, surrendering to the British and eventually emigrating to the United States, avoiding several denied extradition attempts by the Yugoslav government, who accused him of being responsible for the deaths of 1,500 people. Settling in California, Đujić played an important role in Serbian émigré circles and founded the Movement of Serbian Chetniks Ravne Gore Society alongside other exiled Chetnik fighters. He later retired to San Marcos, where he wrote poems and jokes that were published in both the United States and Serbia. He was instrumental in perpetuating Chetnik ideas in the Yugoslav Wars and controversially appointed Vojislav Šešelj as a Chetnik vojvoda in 1989. In 1998, Đujić said that he regretted awarding the title to Šešelj. On 21 May 1998, Biljana Plavšić, President of the Republika Srpska at the time, awarded him the Order of the Star of Karađorđe (First Class). Đujić died at a hospice in San Diego in 1999, aged 92.

Early life
Momčilo Đujić was born on 27 February 1907 in the village of Kovačić, near Knin in the Kingdom of Dalmatia of Austria-Hungary. He belonged to a family which was of Bosnian origin. Đujić started secondary school in Šibenik and went to the Serbian Orthodox seminary in Sremski Karlovci, graduating in 1931 at the age of 22. He was assigned to the Orthodox parish near his birthplace, where his passionate sermons won him the nickname of "Father Fire" (Pop vatra).

Following the 1934 assassination of Yugoslav King Alexander and in anticipation of future ethnic conflict, Đujić met Serbian paramilitary leader and Chetnik movement president Kosta Pećanac. With aid from Pećanac's movement, he organized and began to arm eleven Chetnik bands in his region prior to the outbreak of World War II. He later said: "I knew that the country would not survive, because nobody can put Serbs and Croats in the same bag."

World War II
On 10 April 1941 the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was proclaimed, which was divided into German and Italian zones of occupation and which between April and August had saw large incarcerations, massacres, forced emigration, and murder of Serbs. Weeks after the NDH's establishment, Đujić narrowly escaped capture by Croatian nationalist forces, and in the summer of 1941, organised a Chetnik detachment that seized the town of Drvar from the Ustaše. By that time, he and local Chetnik leader Stevo Radjenović contacted the Italians, in an effort to stop the mistreatment of Serbs, enable the return of Serb refugees, and to repeal a decree that enabled the confiscation of Serb property in the NDH. These requests were accepted by the Italians in the hopes that doing so would win the Chetniks over to collaboration. On 13 August, at a meeting in the village of Pađene, Đujić and other Serbian nationalists formed an agreement for collaboration with Italian forces. On 31 August, at a Drvar assembly, Đujić was given the task of stopping the Italian advance; immediately afterwards, however, he made an agreement with the Italians granting them free passage.

Establishment of the Dinara Division
In early January 1942, the Dinara Division was formed after Đujić was contacted by supreme Chetnik commander Draža Mihailović via a courier. Chetnik commander Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin played a central role in organizing the units of Chetnik leaders in western Bosnia, Lika, and northern Dalmatia into the Dinara Division and dispatched former Royal Yugoslav Army officers to help. Đujić was designated the commander of the division and its goal was for the "establishment of a Serb national state" in which "an exclusively Orthodox population is to live". Đujić says the Dinara Division was "under Draža's command, but we received news and supplies for our struggle from [Dimitrije] Ljotić and [Milan] Nedić. [...] Nedić's couriers reached me in Dinara and mine reached him in Belgrade. He sent me military uniforms for the guardists of the Dinara Chetnik Division; he sent me ten million dinars to obtain for the fighters whatever was needed and whatever could be obtained." By mid-April Đujić and his troops began collaborating with the Italians in anti-Partisan raids. He operated in northern Dalmatia under commander Trifunović-Birčanin who acted as liaison officer between the Chetniks and Italians and whose collaboration agreements were condoned by Mihailović. By June 1942, Đujić and other Chetnik leaders had established co-operation with the Ustaše, although these relationships were "based only on their common fear of the Partisans" and "characterised by distrust and uncertainty". Đujić actively co-operated with Italian forces, with whom he had concluded a non-aggression pact. In late September 1942, Đujić's Chetniks killed up to 200 Croats in the village of Gata near Split, causing outrage by the Italians.

On 10 February 1943, Đujić, Ilija Mihić, Petar Baćović and Radovan Ivanišević, the Chetnik commanders of east Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, and Lika, signed a joint proclamation declaring to the "people of Bosnia, Lika, and Dalmatia" that "since we have cleansed Serbia, Montenegro, and Herzegovina, we have come to help to crush the pitiful remnants of the Communist international, criminal band of Josip Broz Tito, Moša Pijade, Levi Vajnert and other paid Jews". The Partisan rank and file was called upon to "kill the political commissars and join our ranks right away," like the "hundreds and hundreds who are surrendering every day, conscious that they have been betrayed and swindled by the Communist Jews."

Following the death of Trifunović-Birčanin in February 1943, Đujić, along with Jevđević, Baćović, and Ivanišević vowed to the Italians to carry on Trifunović-Birčanin's policies of closely collaborating with them against the Yugoslav Partisans. Đujić's detachments in Dalmatia and western Bosnia were used by the Italians almost up to the point of their surrender. Following Italian capitulation in September 1943, the Germans were less supportive of Đujić than the Italians had been, and restricted his activities to guarding railway tracks from Partisan sabotage. On 19 or 20 November 1943, Mihailović ordered Đujić to collaborate with the Germans, adding that Mihailović himself was unable to openly do so "because of public opinion."

Retreat and surrender
On 25 November 1944, the Yugoslav Partisans attacked the town of Knin, which was defended by 14,000 German troops, 4,500 of Đujić's Chetniks, and around 1,500 Ustaše. On 1 December, Đujić was wounded and sent an emissary to General Gustav Fehn of the German 264th Division in Knin with the following message: "The Chetnik Command with all of its armed forces has collaborated sincerely and loyally with the German Army in these area from September last year. Our common interest demanded this. This collaboration has continued to the present day. [...] The Chetnik Command wishes to share the destiny of the German Army in the future, too. [...] The Command requests that [the village of] Pađene be the base for supplying our units, until a further common agreement is reached."

On 3 December 1944, Đujić's force of between 6–7,000 withdrew to Bihać with help from the Wehrmacht 373rd Division. The Chetniks received ammunition and food from the Germans and began a joint German-Chetnik offensive against the Partisans. General Fehn organized the transportation of Đujić's wounded Chetniks through Zagreb to the Third Reich. Đujić requested a written guarantee from Ante Pavelić, leader of the NDH, to afford him and his forces refuge in German-occupied Slovenia. In addition, Dimitrije Ljotić and Milan Nedić petitioned to Nazi party official Hermann Neubacher in Vienna that Đujić's forces should be allowed passage, as did Slovene collaborationist General Leon Rupnik. On 21 December 1944, Pavelić ordered the military forces of the NDH to give Đujić and his forces "orderly and unimpeded passage". However, Đujić went through an alternate route towards the Istrian peninsula, as the routes offered by Pavelić were not secure from Partisan attacks, and killed the Croatian population along the way. When Đujić reached Slovenia, his forces joined Dobroslav Jevđević's Chetniks, Ljotić's Volunteers, and Nedić's Serbian Shock Corps forming a single unit that was under the command of Odilo Globocnik of the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Adriatic Littoral.

In May 1945, he surrendered his division to Allied forces and they were then taken to southern Italy, from there to displaced persons camps in Germany and then dispersed. After staying in Paris from 1947 to 1949, Đujić emigrated to the United States, to where many of his former followers may have followed him.

Life in exile and failed extradition attempts
In 1947, Đujić was tried and sentenced in absentia for war crimes by Yugoslavia. He was declared a war criminal who as commander of the Dinara Division was responsible for organizing and carrying out a series of mass murders, massacres, tortures, rapes, robberies, and imprisonments, and collaborating with the German and Italian occupiers. He was accused of being responsible for the deaths of 1,500 people during the war.

From 1947 to 1949 Đujić was in France. Following his arrival in the United States, Đujić and his fighters played a role in the foundation of the Movement of Serbian Chetniks Ravne Gore Society. Later, he enraged some in the Serbian diaspora when he endorsed a Communist-authorized Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. However, he remained strongly opposed to the Communist regime in Yugoslavia. Đujić retired to San Marcos, where he wrote poems and jokes that were published in both the United States and Serbia. On 28 June 1989, the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, Đujić granted the title of vojvoda to Vojislav Šešelj, then an anti-Communist dissident who was subsequently described for his activities in the Yugoslav Wars as "a man whose killer commando units operating in Croatia and Bosnia carried on the very worst of the Chetnik tradition." Later Šešelj became leader of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), a government coalition partner of Serbian President Slobodan Milosević. In 1998, Đujić publicly stated that he regretted awarding that title to Šešelj. He was quoted as saying, "I was naïve when I nominated Šešelj [as] Vojvoda; I ask my people to forgive me. The greatest gravedigger of Serbdom is Slobodan Milošević" and that he is "disappointed in Šešelj for openly collaborating with Milošević's Socialist Party, with Communists who have only changed their name. [...] Šešelj has sullied the reputation of Chetniks and Serbian nationalism." According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) testimony of Croatian Serb leader Milan Babić, Đujić financially supported the Republic of Serbian Krajina in the 1990s. On 21 May 1998, Biljana Plavšić, President of the Republika Srpska at the time, awarded Đujić the Order of the Star of Karađorđe (First Class). Đujić's wife, Zorka, died in 1995.

On 28 May 1999, Croatian Justice Minister Zvonimir Šeparović attempted to have Đujić extradited based on lengthy evidence drawn from proceedings carried out by the Šibenik-Knin County Court, but to no avail.

Death
Đujić died on 11 September 1999 at a hospice in San Diego, California at the age of 92. He was survived by his sons Siniša and Radivoje, his daughter Radojka Kinach, two granddaughters, four great-grandchildren, his brother, Boško Đujić, and his sister, Ilinka Đuric, all of whom were residents of California. A New York Times obituary following his death, written by journalist David Binder, wrote that Đujić was "a fierce foe of the Nazis, Fascists and Communists," that participated in "epic World War II battles" and carried out many "acts of wartime bravery." The article and its author were criticized by the Croatian government which said it was "dissatisfied and disappointed" with what it stated was "false" information included in Đujić's biography. Editorial writer for the Washington Post, Benjamin Wittes, observed that the obituary only mentioned "in passing" the war crimes and collaboration accusations against Đujić, as well as his influence in the Yugoslav Wars. Historian Marko Attila Hoare stated that Binder's piece displayed his "admiration of Serb Nazi-collaborator Momčilo Đujić."

A commemoration in honor of Đujić is celebrated semiannually at St. Mark's Church in Belgrade, Serbia and organized by the "Vojvoda Momčilo Đujić" Dinara Chetnik Movement. The Serbian diaspora in the United States set up a monument dedicated to Đujić at the Serbian cemetery in Libertyville, Illinois. The management and players of the football club Red Star Belgrade visited it on 23 May 2010.