1 From Croatia's Concentration Camps for Children: A Child's Story told by Zora Deli} Skiba.

1 Translated 1991 by John Peter Maher Ph. D. I was one of the girls wearing a number around the neck, one of the 23,000 children from Mount Kozara who were scattered around the Ustasha camps.2 I was only four years old when they shut me behind barbed wire, beat me, and told me that the Partisans had brutally murdered my mother and father. I'm the fourth child. People who knew my parents say I look like my father and have his nature. I was born in the village of Kruhari. The Orthodox church where I was baptized was burnt down by the fascists in 1941. That's why I don't know the exact date of my birth. Older people say that I was born three years before the war. My father wasn't able to work his big farm alone, so he hired tenant farmers. Among them was Omerica Alagi}, nicknamed "the broom," a poor farmer. My father helped feed and educate his numerous children. It was no 1Jovan Kesar. "Moje detinjstveno ukradeno" ('My stolen childhood'). Nacionalni Park "Kozara". Prijedor. pages 96ff. (National Park Kozara, published at Prijedor in 1988.) Reprinted in Milan Bulaji} 1989. (Four volumes) Usta{ki zlo~ini genocida i su|enje Andriji Artukovi}u 1986. godine.. Volume IV, pages 767-774. Izdava~ka Radna Organizacija "Rad". (Ustasha crimes of genocide and the trial of Andrija Artukovi}, 1986. Published at Belgrade by the Labor P{ublishing Organization "Labor".) 2Mt. Kozara in northwest Bosnia was the site of one of the greatest slaughters of children in world history. other than Omerica who took my father off to be shot. That was August 2, 1941. He put on the Ustasha uniform in order to get my father's farm. After he killed my father, Omerica returned, set fire to our house and the barn where my mother was milking the cows. The five of us children watched how our mother was burned alive. Caught by the flames, mother struggled to get out of the barn, which burned down with all the supplies stored in it. She fell dead at the door. She was burned over her whole body. Only the soles of her feet were not burned. In Kruhari, on the clearing called [u{njar, where our house and farm once stood, today there is a memorial tablet to 5,5000 victims of the fascist terror. Among them are my father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and father's brothers. The Ustashas began the massive murder of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies on this place of execution on August 1, 1941. Two large ditches were dug, three metres wide, over two metres deep, and 40 metres long. The murderers led columns of slashed people, bound with barbed wire, chains, and ropes, to these terrible graves. First they hit them with mallets, hoes, axes, and iron bars, then finished them off with rifles and machine guns. The killers hacked some people to pieces with knives and threw them into graves running with blood. On August 3 in the evening the killing was finished. According to a report of the Kotar District 3,000 hostages were killed here in just one night by one Ustasha company from Zagreb. I still hear the screams of the victims and the howling of the murderers. Their blood is still flowing! Terrified by the bloody scene, my sisters, my brother and I did not dare

2 come near our burnt out home. Dressed in rags, dirty, infested with lice, we hid in the woods around the farm. Contagious disease broke out in Kruhari. After the massive shootings bodies were only half buried. The thin layer of soil could not soak up all the streams of blood. We could not find any water to drink. All the wells in the village were full of human blood. In the town of Sanski Most the Ustashas held a wild party. They were celebrating their banquet of blood. They got drunk, they were singing and cursing. On the horns of the roasting oxen's, instead of apples, they placed cut off human heads. At the beginning of October 1941 the Ustashas began to re-baptize Serb children and convert them to the Catholic church. They went after us like dog catchers after mad dogs. They caught the four of us. When they had collected enough children, a Catholic priest came to us. He taught us the prayer: "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault... Saint Peter ..." [Zora here remembers fragments of the Catholic liturgical prayer I confess, the confiteor: "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa": translator's note.] One Ustasha said that anyone who could not learn the prayer would be slaughtered before the priest could baptize him. The priest went from child to another. He waited for each to recite the prayer, then sprinkled him with holy water and put the holy host on to his tongue. My eldest sister Nevenka whispered to us that we could not on our life swallow what the Catholic priest put in our mouth. My re-baptism was a bit different from that of the other children. I was in the youngest group and was unable to memorize the prayer. When my turn came I was struck dumb. Immediately an Ustasha came up behind me, holding a knife in his hand. He cut the skin on my throat with a quick stroke. Seeing that he was going to kill me, Nevenka began to recite the prayer for me, and through my tears and with blood streaming from the cut, I recited: "My ff---, my ff--, my gievous ff--..Say Eter... (St. Peter)". I was four years old and I was supposed to atone for my most grievous fault to people whose arms were bloody up to their elbows. Like St Boniface, while they poured molten lead into his mouth, "thank you, Jesus, son of God...". It was like Lawrence the martyr, to the torturers roasting him on the grill, "turn me over, I'm done on this side". When we were alone, after the re-baptism, the four of us spat out the remainder of the dough from the host put in our mouth by the priest. We believed that the re-baptism was not valid for us since we did not swallow the holy object. The image of the fascist who cut me so deep with his knife is etched into my mind. That's one of three images that come back to me in my dreams. I still carry the scar of that knife on my throat today. Wounds heal, but scars grow old with us. It wasn't long until the Ustashas started to send the children off to camps. That was a real chase, like the hunter after the hare. They only managed to catch my brother Mile and me; Nevenka and Dara managed to get away in time. They transported us to the collection sites in cattle cars. We had no food nor water. There were kids from all over, from Kozara, from Lika, Banija, and Kordun. Catholic nuns of the order

3 "Sisters of Mercy" took over our "care". First they lined us up. They sheared us like sheep. I left the rank and hid in the toilet of a wooden building. I don't know why I didn't surrender to the shearing, but I clearly remember the beating I got from the "sister of mercy". When she found me hiding under a table and saw I was the only one unshorn, she beat me so long that I passed out. I don't know how long it was before I came to. The first thing I did, I still remember, was to feel for my hair, but it was gone. They shaved my head while I was unconscious. After that another nun put a cardboard sign around my neck with my concentration camp number "97". After the mass shearing they gave us a kind of cape to wear, so you couldn't see the rags we had on. They rounded us up in a group and photographed us. Many, many years later I managed to find that picture and find out why it was necessary for them. In fall 1941 that picture was published not only in the "Independent State of Croatia," but also in west European newspapers. The caption below the picture stated: "War orphans from Lika, Banija, Kordun, and Bosnia, whose parents were murdered by red communist slaughterers." That awful lie, which the fascists launched all over the world, enabled them to get large quantities of food, clothing, footwear, and medicines. Good people around the world sent us help through the Red Cross, not knowing that they were only helping our tormentors and murderers. After the "group portrait" they separated me from my brother and took me to some camp or other, to this day I don't know which. But I remember wooden buildings and a lot a water all around. My memories of that camp exist, although for a long time I thought they were the product of my night mares. But most of my dreams have a link to reality, for there's no reason for some event I remember in my dreams not to be true. This is how it goes. I wake up, I feel as if I am coming back to life, like I have overcome some severe sickness that many of my fellow concentration camp prisoners probably died from. All around me I see sick kids lying on straw, like me. Their stomachs are swollen. They are all skin and bones. Their eyes bulge out. Their scalps are covered with big, oozing scabs. Many are so starved that they cannot stand up. They are dying around me. I remember some men with shovels dumping dead children, the way they spread manure from the stable. One them, believing that I was dead too, caught me on his shovel. I screamed, showing that I was alive. He gave me a swat with his shovel and took off. I don't remember what happened then or how I was shipped to the children's concentration camp at Jastrebarsko. I remember the first beatings I got in that camp, and why I got them. The room where they kept us was dark and damp. It must have been morning. I woke up. The straw I was sleeping on stank of urine. My clothing was threadbare. I had no blanket. I was shivering. I remember some nuns coming in. They had clubs in their hands. They turned us over to see if the straw under us was dry or wet. Every kid who wet his straw bed in the night got beaten. So I got the daylights beaten out of me. The nun who beat me was Sister Gracioza [Gracious]. I remember her name because after that she beat me the most. She bent me over a wooden bench

4 and counted off 97 lashes with a whip over my naked body. She said, "Remember your number! [The number of blows, 97, was also my prisoner's number.] And whenever you're not good, that's how many you'll get. Everyone here had better remember their number and their place. That is God's will. Whatever, in the Ustasha concentration camp God's bookkeeping was massive and regular. That day I didn't have the strength to go to morning Mass. I lay the whole day hungry on the straw. That night I couldn't sleep because of the pain. Maybe that was good, because I couldn't have the nightmares that made me wet my bed of straw. The day after that sleepless night I was sleepy. I wasn't beaten for bed wetting, but for falling asleep at Mass. Any kid who fell asleep in church had to hold out three fingers for the nun on duty that day to hit with a stick. Once they put a tight rubber band around my neck with a sharp piece of glass in the knot. They placed it right on the still raw wound from the Ustasha's knife wound. The rubber choked me and the glass bored hot and deep into my flesh. I still carry that scar on my throat. I touch it and shudder whenever I look in the mirror. God, how we in postWW II Yugoslavia had covered up their hatred for us, what evil they did to us! Once someone asked if prison was the model for hell or if hell was the model for prison. Those of us who passed through the hell of Ustasha prisons don't find it a dilemma. In finding out more about our stay in the concentration camp Jastrebarsko I have found Dragoje Luki}'s book The war and the children of Kozara to be of inestimable help. Luki} himself was in this camp. He spent years of his life searching for the children, including his two brothers and his sister, who were thrown into this bloody maelstrom of concentration camp hell. With the help of an Ustasha card file he was able to decipher about 11,000 names, including my file card. Luki}'s book is an extremely moving testimony of the Kozara tragedy. About 3,336 boys and girls passed through the children's camp in Jastrebarsko. 768 of them died. By order of the Fuehrer (Poglavnik) Ante Paveli}, this camp was intended for the "planned raising of refugee children from Kozara". So, we were refugees; we hurried of our own free will into barbed wire enclosures. In the Jastrebarsko concentratrion camp I experienced my second re-baptism [from Orthodoxy to Catholicism]. Only this time it was more seemly. The nuns, in their special way, strove to have us look our best for this solemn event. They bathed us, dressed us up, and fattened us up. When the priest who was to baptize us came, all the Sisters of Mercy were happy that it was "him". They tried to transfer their satisfaction to us. All the children got a "kum" [godparent] of their own for the rebaptism. Many women from Jastrebarsko volunteered to be our godmothers. Those new godmothers of ours were really welcome to us. Once a week the were permitted by camp authorities to visit their "godchildren". They used to bring something to eat, and they bathed us. Since we had become Catholics, the nuns taught us various prayers. We celebrated Catholic holy days. For Easter they gave us boiled colored eggs. We also celebrated St. Nicholas' Day. A person dressed as the saint came

5 to the camp; we children didn't like him. By custom he is accompanied by "Krampus". He scared us something awful. He was frightening, all red, his tongue hanging far out of his mouth, with horns on his head. In his hands he held a long, heavy chain. "Saint Nicholas" distributed presents to the sisters, but "Krampus" spanked us with birch twigs. That brought smiles to the nuns. They really entertained themselves. I remember one sister laughing at me as the devil [Krampus] swatted me with his iron chain. She nearly choked from laughing, and I cried from the pain. I began to notice some strangers who more and more often used to come to our camp. They would stop by the little orphans, pick out one of them, and take him away. How I wished that someone would take me far, far away, where I would never be hungry again, where no one would beat me, where I wouldn't have to sleep on straw, where I wouldn't have to look around and watch my friends dying. Then autumn 1942 came. Many kids had left the camp. But no one wanted to take me. Then I made a decision: I would pick one of them for myself. I still can't explain this move of mine. In my child's mind I hatched the convention that I had only one chance and I had to take advantage of it. Something awfully powerful pulled me out of that ring of death. I wanted so much to get out that I ran up to the first person that came into the orphans' camp. I grabbed him firmly by the hand and said: "Daddy, take me away. I'll be good!" The man I begged to adopt me was about fifty years old. He was looking for a male child to adopt, but I knew I had unsettled him by my action. I stubbornly held him by the hand and looked at him pleadingly. The minute he began to question me I knew I had achieved my goal. I remember every words that the sister said: "Mister, Dasovi}, as hard as I've tried, I cannot find you a male child, as you want. We know for sure that this little girl has no father or mother. Her name is Zora Deli}. She was born in Kruhari, near Sanski Most... I see that you don't really like her, but at the moment we don't have anything better. Don't let it bother you, Mr. Dasovi}, that she's covered with scabs and her stomach is distended. She's very smart and with good care she'll shape up fast. A year spent in Ustasha concentration camps had done its work. I had totally forgotten my own name. For a whole year I was only the concentration camp number printed on my tag. It was only to that number that I reacted. I had forgotten my parents, as if I had never had any. I was all of five years old, but it seemed as if I had been grown up forever. He said, "I'll take Zora. For me it's better she has no parents." I never let go of his hand. My joy was measureless. I had found a daddy. As we went out of the camp my father said to me: "When we get to Zagreb I'll buy you a doll. You'll be a pretty girl when you recover." I didn't know what a doll was, what Zagreb was. I smiled to think of the words "you'll be a pretty girl". I liked my new dad. He got me out of the concentration camp and protected me from the cruel Micika, [my new "aunt," Mitzilein]. I believed in him without reserve, and was convinced that

6 my true parents had been killed by the communists. In the morning, when "aunt" Micika saw the wet bed again, she screamed: "if this stinking little Bosnian brat wets the bed any more, I'll strangle her. Why don't you take this little Bosnian garbage in hand? She needs good training, like your dogs." My new dad was never without his white shepherd dog at his side. He was a Domobran officer and he trained police dogs for the use of Paveli}'s army. Intimidated by Micika's threats he took me outdoors. His white police dog was at his side. He set me in one corner of the yard and the dog in another. He raised his hand and, looking at the dog, pointed to me. On the signal "bandit" the dog rushed at me. He was practically on top of me. I could see his huge teeth and feel his hot breath, when daddy Slavko ordered him to "stand!". If he hadn't, the dog would have ripped my throat out. Daddy Slavko laughed hard when I almost passed out. "After this you won't even think of wetting your bed again, will you, my little one?" After having my picture taken, daddy took me to St. Peter's church to be re-baptized. Aunt Micika came with us; she was to be my kuma (god mother). So I was baptized for the third time. I took my new name, Marija, after Aunt Micika, whose real name was Marija ^op. My daddy said, "you'll take your surname from me, Dasovi}." The Church has declared your date of birth to be April 10. Don't forget it. That is the day of the creation of the Independent State of Croatia. When anyone asks you your nationality tell them you're pureblooded Croat, born in Zagreb of your father Slavko and an American mother, Bessie. The church issued me a baptismal certificate, which I didn't have before. I hated my new name. When someone called me Marija, I didn't want to answer. I detested her name the way she detested me when I arrived from the concentration camp, skinny and all covered with scabs. "You're stubborn like all Bosnians," is what Aunt Micika had to say to me. My third baptism was beautifully celebrated. Aunt Micika prepared a big meal. A lot of her friends came and they all had a good time. I was withdrawn. That night I had dreamed about my first re-baptism and about the Ustasha who started to slaughter me. I said nothing to my new daddy. I cried softly in the dark. In the morning Micika wondered about the wet pillow case. She shook her head and said "What is this, pissing on your pillow? You'll always be a stinking Bosnian." From first grade I remember my First Holy Communion. Daddy Slavko bought me a white dress, white gloves, and white shoes. My hair was long again and in braids. On my head I wore a wreath of little white flowers and a diaphanous white veil. I looked like a bride. For our teacher Vinfrida First Communion was the most significant day, and she prepared it for us with her whole heart. She taught us many prayers, hymns, and how to say the rosary. I was well prepared, since I had learned all that in the Jastrebarsko concentration camp. First Communion took place in the Zagreb cathedral on the 26th of March, 1945. My whole class, like little angels, took part that day. The priest who placed the host on my tongue looked familiar to me from somewhere. I

7 told my daddy Slavko that I had seen that priest somewhere. "Where?," asked daddy Slavko. "In the Jastrebarsko concentration camp. He put the host on my tongue when they re-baptized us there. "Don't let me ever hear you say such a thing again! He was fierce and pointed his finger at me. "That is our revered and most honorable Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac. How could he stoop to converting Serb vermin?" I went to confession only when I was forced to. I'll never forget one time in spring 1948, when I had to go confession in preparation for confirmation. It was in the cathedral. Through the grille of the confessional I could only see part of the priest's face. He asked me what books I was reading. I told him "the ones we have for school". He rebuked me for that and said I could read only those books approved by the Church. The priest got up and told me to come with to the sacristy to get some church literature. When we got there he lifted his cassock and opened his fly... I started to scream and cry. I remember his eyes on his fleshy face. I was shaking all over and crying. He calmed down at once, let his cassock down and threatened he wouldn't let me out of the sacristy until I stopped crying. I left the sacristy virginal, but I swore never to go to confession again. Going home I cried. Everywhere around me was the abyss. Oh, God, how far will that follow me? It was as if "luckless" was written on my brow. I was in the power of some unbreakable circle. Seven days later, it was a Sunday in May, Confirmation took place in the cathedral. I went to the ceremony with my kuma Maja Vitaus. She bought me a gold chain and cross. One of the Zagreb bishops performed the confirmation ceremony. When he came to me he anointed my forehead with something oily, then gave my kuma a silk cloth to wipe the chrism off my brow, and then he put the cloth down. Then he put the holy host on my tongue, and my kuma put the chain and cross around my neck. Finally, my kuma took me, dead tired, to the photographer to eternalize the solemn event. Then came the day I will always remember. I don't remember the exact date, but I know it was in autumn 1948. Airplanes were circling overhead. Aunt Jelka said "there's going to be war again. There's a mess about Trieste. I knew this peace wouldn't last." When she opened the door, a young woman with two little children. "Who are you looking for?," asked Aunt Jelka. "I am Nevenka Deli}. At the Red Cross they told me that my sister Zora was here with you. I've come to see her." Nevenka told me that nine of us orphans survived the slaughter, five brothers and the sister of our parents: Nevenka, Dara, Mile, Jovica, me, and four children of uncle Dushan, Petar, Drashko, Slavka, and Rada. She told me she has a photograph from 1941 of me, my brother Mile, Slavka, Rada, and Drashko. The Ustashas took the picture before we were sent to the concentration camp. "I thought you and Mile and Rada were dead," sobbed Nevenka. "Thank God, you survived. ...."How did it go with you?" "I made it to the Partisans after the forced conversion. We caught some Ustashas in one raid. Omerica, the one who killed our family, was one of them.

8 All of them were condemned to death. " Did those Ustashas wear black uniforms?" "Yes. They wore black uniforms and black caps with the letter 'U '. After the trial women at Sanski Most went after them. The women beat them with sacks filled with stones. They pulled one guy's moustache out hair by hair. "Here's for my dead son, here's for my slaughtered husband." Before he was shot, I told him, "a year ago you had weapons. You tied us in barbed wire. Now it's the other way around. If you thought you could butcher and kill forever you were wrong. The Broom cried like a baby, fell to his knees, begged me not to kill him." I got married when I was 17, like all the Deli} girls. Vlajko and I tied the knot on November 29, 1956, the day of our Republic. I gave birth to two children, a boy Milorad and a girl Slavica. They say I fed them with warmth and smiles more than with milk. I never raised a hand to them. They have everything I never had, father, mother, a happy childhood. An exact date of birth, even that. In my family Aunt Jelka lived 22 more years. She died in 1991. We buried her in the Catholic cemetery in Mostar, out of respect to her religious convictions. Where is her soul? Did she look into other face of heaven, the face without scratches and scars? Not long ago some people close to the Catholic Church in Mostar visited me. They said that the Glas Koncila ['Voice of the Council', official publication of the Croatian Catholic church] had prepared a human interest article about aunt Jelka and they came to ask me for something nice to say about the saint who, they say, brought me up and nourished me."

About the translator : John Peter Maher Ph. D. Emeritus Professor of linguistics Special Agent, US Army CounterIntelligence Corps, 430th Military Intelligence Battalion, Northern Italy: Yugoslav desk, interpreter-translator, German, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian languages. 1959-61. Fulbright Lecturer: University of Trnava, Czechoslovakia. September 1966. University of Sofia, Bulgaria. October 1966-February 1967. University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. February-June 1990. Fulbright Research Scholar: Western Europe (especially Ireland and Italy). April-August 1984 Academic degrees: 1965. Doctor of Philosophy in Historical Linguistics, Indiana University. 1958. Master of Arts in Greek & Latin, The Catholic University of America, Washington DC 1955. Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (Foreign Languages), Harpur College (SUNY Binghamton) 1953. Associate of Arts, Classics, St. Bernard's Seminary & College, Rochester NY