Arhivski vjesnik, Vol. 54 No. 1, 2011.
Original scientific paper
ARRESTS AND LIQUIDATIONS OF WOUNDED MEMBERS OF THE CROATIAN ARMED FORCES (HOS) TAKEN FROM HOSPITALS IN ZAGREB BY YUGOSLAV ARMED FORCES IN MAY AND JUNE OF 1945 IN THE RECORDS OF STATE ARCHIVES IN ZAGREB
Blanka Matković
Abstract
Based on documents from the two hospitals in Zagreb, Croatia (‘Zakladna’ and ‘Sisters of Mercy’), it is possible, at least to some degree, to reconstruct what happened to the hospitalized members of the Croatian Armed Forces (HOS), most of whom were suffering from heavy injuries and were bedridden when the Yugoslav Army entered Zagreb on May 8, 1945 and found them in the hospitals. Even though contemporary historians do not have access to documents from other Croatian hospitals (because they are not available and/or not preserved) where the members of the Croatian Armed Forces were hospitalized together with soldiers from Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Slovenia, Italy and the New Siberia region, the documents from the ‘Sisters of Mercy’ hospital, currently deposited in the State Archives in Zagreb, definitely confirm previous eyewitnesses’ accounts on how the Department for the Protection of People (OZN-a) conducted massive arrests and transported these patients to the concentration camp „Prečko“ in Zagreb, Croatia. Even though there are no documents regarding the ultimate destiny of these hospitalized Croatian soldiers, the results from excavations and the reports from pathologists made in 1999 i.e. the evidence recovered from the mass grave Jazovka, in Zumberak, Croatia, proves that these wounded Croatian soldiers were mass murdered at this location, together with the hospital staff and other victims. The registration and the release documents from these two hospitals provide necessary information that could eventually, with the help of additional research and excavation of other mass graves, lead to at least a partial list of hospitalized members of the Croatian Armed Forces that were mass murdered by the members of the Yugoslav Army, the Department for the Protection of People (OZN-a) and the Corpus of People's Defense of Yugoslavia (KNOJ) and thrown into Jazovka and other mass graves.
Keywords
Second World War; post-war period; OZNA; hospitals; wounded soldiers; camps; mass killings
Hrčak ID:
90525
URI
Publication date:
19.11.2011.
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