Petar Brzica 1917 – 2010 ), 1 alias “But” , was a Croatian fascist and criminal war of the Second World War . Before the war he was a scholar at the Franciscan College of Široki Brijeg in Herzegovina and a member of the Great Brotherhood of the Crusaders.

Before World War II

He spent some time studying law in Zagreb , where he became a member of the Ustasha Youth and later a member of the Fascist government of the Croatian Ustasha (1941-1945) and one of the guards at Jasenovac concentration camp. 2 As a member of the Militia Ustashe , he held the rank of lieutenant . 3 4 5

Crimes

Although known for having beaten a prisoner to death in March 1943, 6 was noted for winning a horrendous contest which consisted in killing as many Serb prisoners as possible who had just arrived in Jasenovac concentration camp using A knife called “srbosjek”. 7 8 9 10 11 12 Brzica boasted of winning the contest after massacring the largest number of prisoners, killing 1,360 people in a single night. 1314 Some other sources claim that the number of victims is lower, placing them between 670 and 1100. 15 16

Petar Brzica received a watch of gold , dishes of silver a feast consisting of roast pork and wine, among other things, as a reward for winning the “competition”. 17 He escaped to the United States after the war, but he lost track of his whereabouts in the 1970s , so he could never be prosecuted for his crimes. 18 However, in a Croatian publication in 2009, there is a recent photograph of him, already old but in an apparent good state of health, smiling at the entrance to a restaurant or cafe. 19

Testimony of the atrocities

Then you can appreciate a quote provided by Friganovic Mile, one of the participants in the slaughter of Saturday 20 29 of August of 1942 , in which Petar But Brzica 1,360 people killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp:

The Franciscan Pero Brzica, Ante Zrinusic, Sipka and I bet to see who would kill more prisoners in one night. The killing began and after an hour I killed many more than them. I felt in the seventh heaven. I had never felt such ecstasy in my life, after a couple of hours I had managed to kill 1,100 people while the others could kill between 300 and 400 each. And then, as I was experiencing my grandest ecstasy, I noticed an old peasant standing quietly watching me as he killed my victims and them as they died with the greatest pain. That look struck me in the middle of my greatest ecstasy and suddenly I froze and for a while I could not move. Then I approached him and discovered that he was from the village of Klepci near Capljina and that his family had been murdered and sent to Jasenovac after having worked in the forest. He spoke to me with an incomprehensible peace that affected me more than the heartbreaking screams all around me. Suddenly I felt the need to destroy his peace through torture and thus through his suffering I could restore my state of ecstasy in order to continue the pleasure of inflicting pain. I pulled him aside and made him sit with me on a log. I ordered him to shout: ‘Long live the Poglavnik [caudillo] Pavelic!’, Or I cut your ear. Vukasin did not speak. I ripped out an ear. He did not say a word. I told him again to shout ‘Long live Pavelic!’ Or I’ll rip your other ear off. I ripped out the other ear. He shouts, ‘Viva Pavelic!’ Or I’ll rip your nose out and when I told him for the fourth time to shout ‘Viva Pavelic!’ And threatened to pluck his heart with my knife, he looked at me and in his pain and agony told me: ‘Do your work, creature!’ Those words confused me, froze me, and I ripped out his eyes, ripped his heart out, cut his throat from ear to ear and threw him into the well. But something broke inside me and I could not kill any more that night. The Franciscan Pero Brzica won the bet because I had killed 1,360 prisoners and I paid without saying a word. Mile Friganovic 21

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