Samir KajosevicPodgoricaBIRNJune 7, 202314:19Montenegrin President Jakov Milatovic laid a wreath for victims of a World War II massacre by Nazis and local collaborators in the Piva area — the first time that a state official has attended the commemoration.
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Montenegrin President Jakov Milatovic at the WWII memorial in Doli Pivski. Photo: President of Montenegro.
Montenegrin President Jakov Milatovic joined the annual commemoration in the village of Doli Pivski on Wednesday for 522 Serb civilians who were killed by members of the German SS and their local collaborators on June 7, 1943.
“The state of Montenegro must not forget the innocent suffering of your and our ancestors, relatives and neighbours,” Milatovic said at the commemoration.
He was the first state official to attend the annual event organised by the Serbian Orthodox Church. When the previous Montenegrin authorities were in power, officials avoided attending World War II memorial ceremonies organised by the Serbian church, which the government accused of promoting Serbian nationalism.
The massacre in the Piva area near Montenegro’s border with Bosnia and Herzegovina was carried out during an offensive against Yugoslav Partisan fighters codenamed Operation Schwartz.
The SS’s Prinz Eugen Division, together with Croatian Ustasa fighters and the SS’s Handzar Division, which was made up of Bosniaks, captured and killed 522 inhabitants of the villages of Dub, Bukovac, Miljkovac, Duba and Rudinci.
They then killed them in the village of Doli Pivski, shooting them or burning them alive in houses. Some families were completely exterminated, while 109 of the victims were children.
In 1977, the Yugoslav authorities built a memorial complex in Doli Pivski, and an Orthodox church was added in 2004. The Serbian Orthodox Church proclaimed the victims of the massacre to be martyrs in 2017, and a girl who ran into a burning house in order to die alongside her family was given the title of Holy Martyr Jaglika Pivska.
In July 2022, the Montenegrin parliament adopted a resolution condemning the World War II massacres of Serbs by Nazi troops in Doli Pivski and the village of Velika as genocide.
Around 550 Serb villagers from Velika were massacred during a Nazi SS operation codenamed Daredevil against Yugoslav Partisan forces on July 28, 1944.
In a joint operation by the SS’s Prinz Eugen Division and its ethnic Albanian Skenderbeg Division, supported by local fighters from neighbouring towns and villages, almost half of Velika’s inhabitants were killed, including 120 children.
In July 2021, the then Minister of Economic Development Jakov Milatovic and Interior Minister Sergej Sekulovic were the first government officials to attend the memorial ceremony in Velika.
During World War II, after Yugoslavia was invaded and partitioned by the Axis powers in April 1941, Montenegro was occupied by fascist Italy. The Italian occupation continued until September 1943, and then Montenegro was occupied by German forces until December 1944.
In Montenegro, the Italians and Germans collaborated with the monarchist pro-Serb Chetnik movement. In northern parts of the country, some local ethnic Albanians and Bosniaks collaborated with German forces, either as part of the Albanian nationalist paramilitary movement Balli Kombetar or as part of local Muslim militia units. They were opposed by the Yugoslav Partisans, led by Josip Broz Tito.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
