SCARS ON UZDOL 'What hurts me the most is that no one answered and no one will answer'

In the third documentary series of "Scars", on which Hercegovina.info and Gerila.info work together, we present a confession from Uzdol.

Every year on September 14th, the Prozor Rama village of Uzdol remembers the murdered residents. Years have passed, but memories haven’t faded, and deep scars are still visible.

Registrar Kazimir Zelenika lost three family members in one day – father, mother and eldest daughter Jadranka (b. 1981), but what hurts him the most is that the commanders and perpetrators of the massacre are walking free.

"I am Kazo Kazimir Zelenika. I was born in 1956 here in Uzdol. I am married, I have a wife, eleven living children, fifteen grandchildren. One of my children died, my oldest daughter Jadranka, who was born in 1981, she was 12 years old when she was killed. She was killed on September 14, 1993. My father Ivan, who was born in 1930, and my mother Ruža, born in 1931, were killed also with my daughter Jadranka. They were killed in my house.

My father and mother were killed in the room where they were sleeping. I guess the little one got up earlier, she ran out into the hallway and she was killed in the hallway of the house. And that's why I feel bad when the BiH Army says we defended Bosnia and Herzegovina. How did they defend Bosnia and Herzegovina and at the same time attack their own country? They attacked Uzdol, the population, old people, the infirm, grandmothers, grandfathers, children. And they say they defended that, they defended Bosnia and Herzegovina. Who did they defend against? This is my house, my country, my parish," says Zelenika.

The rest of the family took refuge in Prozor, and if it hadn't been for that, there would have been many more victims. Little Jadranka returned to Uzdol on one weekend to be with her grandparents.

All dead

It was Kazimir who found murdered family members on his doorstep.

"I came here with my cousin, my two cousins. When we entered the house, the little one was in the hallway, still showing signs of life, snoring, foaming. My father was dead, dropped lying on his stomach. His nose was bent as he was laying on his stomach. My mother was on the double bed, she was shot in the head. Her forehead was blown off, her whole hair, she had longer hair, she was wearing a scarf, a shawl. I guess she was hit with a burst fire, her brain flew up into the ceiling. We whitewashed that a dozen times, but it couldn't be covered. Some fat, I guess. When our sisters and children would come so they couldn’t see it. When we buried them, one bone remained. Later, when we disassembled the bed, one bone of the skull remained there, like a matchbox, five by five centimeters, a parietal bone stuck to the side of the bed. And that's how it was, everyone was dead...", recalls Zelenika, who lives with his wife in the same house where his loved ones were killed.

Uzdol is a purely Croatian village that had about 500 inhabitants before the war. There they killed 41 people, 29 civilians, 12 soldiers. And no one was held accountable for that massacre. Sefer Halilović was accused as the leader of the Neretva operation, but he was acquitted.

"Then on September 14th, they massacred us, set us on fire, and even tried to lie that we dragged civilians from central Bosnia, Busovača, Vitez, Travnik, ask God where from, but all of them were our locals, my best man, godfathers, my relatives, my friends. I know everyone by heart. Wake me up in the middle of the night, I'll open my eyes and say: It's Mijo, it's Ante, it's this one, it's that one, it's Franjo, it's Martin, I know everyone, godmothers Kate, Perkuša and everyone else..." states Zelenika.

Only those who were not at Uzdol on September 14th survived the massacre at Uzdol.

"They knew where everyone lived. That's what they were attacking. There is a village here called Budim, no one was in three or four houses, they didn't even come there, they knew there was no one there. One hundred meters above me was my neighbor Zelić, little Marija, she was a year older than my Jadranka, her brother Stipo was a year younger than my Jadranka. He was born in 1982. They were running, poor things, with their mother Ruža down this road where you turned to get to my house. And that's when they turned to the road. Maria almost ran across the lower road that goes towards Here and then a burst of fire cut Maria down. Little Stipe started running away to my house, up here to me. He was wearing yellow shorts. He dropped his blue tracksuit, I guess he didn't even manage to get dressed while they were running away.

We found two or three automatic rifle magazines and two M57 grenades. That's what they dropped when they chased those kids. They met them down on the road and killed them there, and they killed their mother right up there. There's a monument down in that creek. You can see Ruža, Marija and Stjepan Zelić.

Down in Raiči there was one Ivka Raič, née Marić. She was immobile for about 10 years, we found her dead too. She couldn't go anywhere because she was immobile. There is a chair and a bed where she was sitting. She was sitting on that chair, her husband moved her to the chair so she could sit for a while, she got fed up laying down. Mijo was killed in front of the house, he had that hat on, he was lying in front of the door, killed. Ivka was sitting dead. And immobile for ten years, she couldn't go anywhere...

They killed those Raičs then, and here in Križ, they killed Martin, Franjo Stojanović, Ante Brko, my aunt down there, my father’s aunt actually, so we called her aunt too. She was Luca Zelenika, born in 1906, she was the oldest, and little Stjepan was the youngest...", Zelenika continues listing.

After the massacre, the civilians were transferred to Prozor, and further to Split for autopsy.

"We immediately buried the soldiers in the Prozor cemetery in Prozor, 12 of them. We couldn't dig graves here, they were shooting. They immediately returned, while they killed them all, butchered them, as soon as our army arrived from Makljen, they ran away and left the corpses behind," Zelenika recalls further.

The victims were buried in the Prozor cemetery. "Then there weren't enough concrete slabs, so we were cutting boards. It wasn't even a five-centimeter-wide board, but a 2.50 centimeter one, so we were cutting them with a chain saw, so that they could be placed and then covered with earth. They were there for ten years, then we transferred them here to Uzdol".

His Jadranka would be 43 years old today. Her life was taken before she met her brothers and sisters.

No one was held accountable for the crime

Before the war, Kazimir, who was the registrar, knows best that Uzdol parish had about 1,700-1,800 Croats, a total of about 2,000 with Bosniaks.

"Now there are about 250-300 of us here. There used to be 700 students in the school. When I was born in 1956, 157 of us were born here in our local community of Uzdol, and several of them in Travnik. Most of the births were at home, but critical pregnancies were sent to Travnik. Now, not so many people are born in the whole municipality in the whole year. Currently, we have about fifteen students in the school," says Kazimir. The locals are most hurt by the fact that no one was held accountable for the crime.

"What hurts me the most is that no one answered and no one will answer. Politics got involved, politics don’t want to have it solved and that's it. Unfortunately! All that was, all that was recorded and all that was done, but in vain. Don't touch us, we won’t touch you and that's it. Buza answered a little, then they put everything on Buza, so that he would be the sacrificial lamb. "Buza did not kill, we know who did," he concludes.

The Archbishop of Vrhbosna, Cardinal Vinko Puljić, made the decision to declare this place of suffering a place of special reverence for the victims of war in 2016, a year that was also declared the year of divine mercy, and when this Parish celebrated its 160th anniversary.

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