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Dušan Novaković (84) from Novi Sad was brought from his native Bihać to Jasenovac at the age of three, along with his mother and sisters.
He described the horrors they experienced in the three camps in the book “Between Heaven and Earth”, and gave some details to the media.
Today, Grandfather Dušan paints an icon with which he remembers Saint Bartholomew and Barnabas in 1941, when the Muslims Ustashas, on that same holy day, transported all Serbs from Bihać and its surroundings on foot 30 kilometers through the mountain to Bosanka. Petrovac.
– They were shot first and then massacred. When I was a child, I saw when the car passed, my arms and legs hung loaded, blood dripped and those slaughtered people were driving into the abyss, recalls Grandpa Dušan.
Many of Dusan’s neighbors never made it to the camp. They were killed and buried in graves.
– There are four graves 100 meters long and four meters deep. All 12,000 Serbs were killed there, says Novakovic.
Those who managed to escape certain death hid on Grmec Mountain.
– The Ustasha discovered them. It just got up. The 6,000 people, women, children and the elderly were massacred. Branko Ćopić described that, so that, he says, crows go in the morning to eat their meat and at night they return to their nests as heavy as lead, Dušan says.
The survivors were sent to camps, mainly Jasenovac. Dušan was saved thanks to the advice that a neighbor gave his mother.
– When the transport arrives in Jasenovac, as soon as a male child is born, only one male child is born, they kill immediately! So, since you have five daughters, put the dress on him, tie the scarf on him, so they don’t realize he’s a man. Here I am, with the help of God, I stayed alive, like the sixth child – says Dušan.
He remembers Jasenovac the least, as he puts it, because of the trauma, except that he saw the children around him die of disease and starvation.
– I remember that my mother made a piece of paper, like that, a piece of mold, she throws the mold and gives me those crumbs – says Dušan.
Dušan and his family were saved from Jasenovac in 1943 by the Red Cross. After the war, the family moved to Bački Jarak.
– I never felt hate, but I felt sad. Why did that have to happen to us? Dušan wonders.
He turned his grief for his family, neighbors and compatriots into prose and poetry in various books. After all, Dušan found the strength to write and paint, and also sang in the church choir.
– In the depths of the abyss of the well, his bones remained, Bartholomew and Barnabas prayed: God, forgive, God forgive; God is simple: these are verses written by Grandpa Dušan.
(Kurir.rs/RTS)
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