- Kragujevac massacre
The Kragujevac massacre was the massacre of between 2,300 to 5,000 civilians, mostly
Serbs and Roma, women and schoolchildren — inKragujevac ,Serbia , thenYugoslavia , by the soldiers ofNazi Germany onOctober 20 and 21, 1941. [http://www.geocities.com/sqokeeffe/5.htm] [http://www.antiwar.com/orig/savich3.html] It was one of the worst massacres during the German military occupation of Serbia.Staniša Brkić, curator of The Museum of October 21, published a book in 2007 where he listed names and personal data of 2,796 victims [ [http://www.blic.co.yu/srbija.php?id=16913 Blic Online | Srbija | „Engleska krvava bajka“ u Kragujevcu ] ] .
Causes
Field Marshal
Wilhelm Keitel issued an order applying to allEurope to kill 50 Serbian hostages for every wounded German soldier and 100 for each killed onSeptember 16 ,1941 . [Cohen, Philip J. "Serbia's secret war: propaganda and the deceit of history", Texas A&M University Press, 1996] German soldiers were attacked in early October by the Royal Yugoslav Army a.k.aChetniks (Četnici) nearGornji Milanovac , and the massacre was a direct reprisal for the German losses in that battle.Arrests and the massacre
On the day of
October 19 in the early morning, the whole city was raided. Around 10,000 civilians, aged 16–60, were arrested. A whole generation of high school children was taken directly from their classes. The executions started at 6 PM on the following day. People were shot in groups of 400. The shootings continued into the next day, at a lesser pace. The remaining prisoners were not released, but were held as hostages for further reprisals.The monument and commemoration
To commemorate the victims of the massacre, the whole of
Šumarice , where the killings took place, was turned into a memorial park. There are several monuments there: the monument to killed schoolchildren and their teachers, the "Broken Wings" monument, the monument of pain and defiance, the monument "One hundred for one", the monument resistance and freedom, the monument to shoe cleaners.A famous poem about the massacre of the schoolchildren, "
Krvava Bajka " ("A Bloody fairy tale"), was written byDesanka Maksimović .References
See also
*
Serbia (1941-1944) External links
* [http://www.spomenpark.com/ Museum of October 21.]
* [http://www.antiwar.com/orig/savich3.html German Occupation of Serbia and the Kragujevac Massacre]
* [http://www.geocities.com/sqokeeffe/5.htm Case Studies in Serbian Historical Consciousness: The Kragujevac Massacre] , by Sarah O'Keeffe
* [http://www.svetskirat.net/istorija/kragujevac1941.htm Kragujevac massacre] sr icon
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