Nikolić says that the Ustashe crime in Srebrenica was committed on June 14, 1943, on the second day of the Holy Trinity Feast, and another crime was committed in the nearby village of Zalazje a day later, on June 15, on the third day of this great Orthodox feast.

He says it is well known that the Holy Trinity is not marked on the same day each year, but that this crime in Srebrenica is marked always on the Holy Trinity Day, which is also the case this year.

Nikolić says that his neighbor Milena Jovanović, who was hidden and watched what Ustashe were doing, told him about these crimes, and that luckily, she was not discovered. Ustashe massacred all other residents who came into their sight.

“According to their records, Ustashe killed more than 155 Serbian civilians on June 14, 1943 in Srebrenica. The family of a Jew dentist was also killed together with them, as well as the family of a Muslim, the president of a court in this settlement who was married to a Serbian woman,” said Nikolić, whose grandfather Jovo was killed in the house in which he lives now together with his daughter-in-law Vasilija and the five-member Jewish family.

According to Nikolić’s knowledge, the killed Jewish family was related to writer Isak Samokovlija.

Nikolić has been researching this massacre for years. He says the exact number of victims has never been determined, and that he has recently come across information which has not been mentioned anywhere that Zorka Burlica, of Vlasenica, was also killed there together with her five children and mother Marta Vasić.

He says that another 97 Serbs were killed the next day in the village of Zalazje, and according to some information, 107, including 45 members of the Rakić family, 16 members of the Maksimović family and 15 members of the Dragičević family.

NDH documents read that Francetić’s legionnaire, Ustashe officer Josip Korelec, ordered retaliation for the death of his brother in battles around Srebrenica, and led the massacre of Serbian civilians which the Ustashe carried out with the help of some domestic supporters.

“They killed all Serbs they found in their homes. The whole large families such as the Stevanović, Krstić families, and others, were killed. Five members of the family of baker Ostoja Stevanović were killed, as well as 15 civilians from the village of Brežani near Srebrenica who were in Srebrenica on that day. Not a single solder was among those killed and civilians were killed in the most monstrous ways,” says Nikolić.

According to him, plaques with the names of those killed were in the Orthodox church in Srebrenica, but they were destroyed and disappeared in the past war – this is how descendants of Serbian murderers wanted to erase historical facts and remembrance of the Serbian suffering in these parts.

Nikolić says the number and names of all those killed on June 14, 1943 in that area have never been exactly determined as this was not in the interest of the Communist regime, but it is known that this Ustashe officer was sentenced after WWII by a court in Zagreb to a symbolic prison term for the crime he committed and that he was later released soon.

“Bodies of those killed were gathered and were thrown and partially buried in a pit in a site near the police station, and some of the mortal remains were transferred to the ossuary in 1971. Mortal remains from other pits have never been transferred and buried in a dignified manner,” he says.

After the massacre in Srebrenica, the next day, on the third day of the Holy Trinity Feast, Ustashe committed another massacre in the village of Zalazje near Srebrenica, where they massacred dozens of residents.

Their bodies are buried in the memorial ossuary in that village, next to another memorial ossuary of Serbs killed in Zalazje and nearby villages by Muslim forces or descendants of Ustashe in the past patriotic-defense war.

According to official data, 228 Serbs were killed in Srebrenica and Zalazje 75 years ago, 80 of whom were children, and according to unofficial data, more than 250 Serbian civilians were killed in two days in Srebrenica and nearby villages.

Nikolić says that all Serbian villages in the wider area of the Srebrenica local community of Sućeska, such as Slatina, Lipovac, Žedanjsko, Šušnjari, and some other hamlets, were destroyed in WWII, that Serb properties were mysteriously usurped by Muslims after the war, and that no one was held accountable for the deaths of their owners.

According to him, the Communist authorities underplayed the crime, called victims members of the anti-fascist movement, even though they were Serbian civilians who had nothing to do with any ideology.

He notes that this is about falsifying historical facts, which is proven by a relief on the Communist monument which depicts Germans killing Partisans, which is not true as there were no Germans at all in that area, but only Ustashe neighbors who killed civilians only for being Serbs.

Nikolić says that a plaque with names of killed Serbian civilians should be finally put up near the ossuary to prevent the falsifying of history.

Bogdan, a grandfather of Cvijetin Maksimović, was the only one from that family that lived in Vitlovci near Zalazje who survived the massacre only because he was not in the village at the time – he was earlier taken captive to Germany from where he returned in 1945 only to discover the ruined village and that all 16 members of his family were killed.

“It is absurd, but true, that the Maksimović family has not been extinct, as my grandfather survived given that he was arrested and deported prior to the massacre,” Cvijetin says.

According to him, the memorial ossuary does not hold bones of some imaginary anti-fascists, as it has been portrayed for decades, but bones of Serbs killed by Ustashe.

Maksimović says that Serbian generations are obliged to pay respect to these martyrs and keep the memory of their suffering alive, as the crime from 1943 repeated itself in Zalazje in 1992, so we must not allow another one to repeat itself.