Jasenovac
Jasenovac was a camp established by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II, and operated from August 1941 to April 1945 near the village of Jasenovac. The concentration camp, one of the ten largest in Europe, was founded and managed by the ruling "Ustasha" regime. The Jasenovac camp complex consisted of five detention facilities used to isolate and kill Jews, Serbs, Roma, and other non-Catholic minorities, as well as Croatian politicians and opponents of the regime.
Conditions in the camps were horrendous. Prisoners in the detention facilities were starved, beaten, and lived in inhumane conditions.
Determining the exact number of Jasenovac victims is very difficult due to the destruction of many documents from that time period, however rough estimates can be found on the website of the "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" along with the names of documented victims and surivors.
Children of Kozara
Of all the crimes that took place in the camp, the worst were the crimes against children. It took more than three decades to determine the list of deaths of children from the area of Kozara.
In four years, 11,194 children from 219 Kozara villages and towns were killed. This included 6,302 boys and 4,874 girls; the youngest in diapers and the oldest only 14 years old.
Implications on the Region of Kozara
On the northern slopes of Kozara, in the central part of Knešpolje (Republika Srpska), there are the following parishes: Jelovačka, Knežička, and Medjuvodjska, which today form one parish. The seat of this parish is Knežica, which is located between Kozarska Dubica (16 km) and Prijedor (16 km). In 1941, these parts became part of the NDH. That year, the priests of these parishes were taken to Ustasha camps (the parish priest of Jelovac, Đuro Šarac, the parish priest of Milan, Labus, and Blagoje Šiljegović of Medjvodje), and then expelled to Serbia.
The largest massacre of the Serbian people during 1942 (Kozarska offensive) was carried out on the territory of these parishes. There is no household in this region from which at least a few members were not taken to the Jasenovac Ustasha camp. In order to hide the national character of the suffering, the Communist Party constantly emphasized the suffering of the municipality of Bosanska Dubica, and not the Serbian people.
The suffering did not bypass churches either. The churches in Knezica, Brekinja, and Vlaskovci were destroyed, while the churches in Donji Jelovac and Medjuvodje were looted and desecrated. This was completed by the communists in the post-war period. The church in Donji Jelovac was turned into a warehouse of the village workers' cooperative, and the temple in Medjuvodje was completely destroyed in the 1950s.
The period after 1945 is characterized by the suffocation of Orthodoxy and the confiscation of church property. Many did not baptize out of fear, nor did they allow a priest in the house and celebrate their Slava. From 1941 to 1993, the parishes were without priests, and since 1993, the parish priest has been Father Željko Jevđenić. Through the efforts of the faithful, a cemetery church was built in the village of Donji Jelovac dedicated to St. Ignatius the Godbearer (endowment of Mr. Ostoja Gnjatović in 2002), a cemetery church dedicated to Vasilije Ostroški in the village of Pobrđani (endowment of Mr. Borko Bosiočić in 2005), a bell tower in the village of Brekinja and an unfinished bell tower in Medjuvodje. Most of these buildings are being built on demolished foundations.
Medjuvodje Parish
The Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God was built and consecrated in 1886. It was looted and desecrated in World War II. It was demolished in the mid-1950s and the bell was sold by local communists to the village of Tramosnje. In 1998, the construction of the bell tower began on the site of this church.
Attempts to rebuild a church in Medjuvodje have been going on for more than twenty years. In 1954-1955, the parish church was demolished, which was located a few kilometers from the place where a new one dedicated to the martyrs of Jasenovac is being built today.
Many of the children, women, and others from the area of Kozara, Knešpolje and many other areas, after the offensive on Kozara, were taken through Međuvođe, and then killed and executed in the Jasenovac camp.
In order not to forget their sacrifice, today we as their descendants have an obligation to remember them not only on certain occasions, but to ask them for heavenly intercession.
Sources
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jasenovac.
Lukic Dragoje. Rat i Djeca Kozare. Knjizevne Novine, 1990.
Graif, Gidʿon. Jasenovac: Auschwitz of the Balkans. Knjiga Komerc, 2018.
"Events from the past of a nation, no matter how famous they may be, fade over time and are forgotten, if someone does not record them. . . what is not written did not occur. ""
-Branko Copic