Milica Matić

... how it will be, and she was afraid for a reason because the new war started again, nationalism raising, hatred. In 1991, in the house with my parents lived also two kids of my deceased brother, Đurđica, and Miloš, wife of my deceased brother Milica. My mother was 83 at the time, and my father was a bit younger, he was 79 years old. In 1991 they all become refugees. My brother was working in the gymnasium in Gospic when the war started, but he needed to leave his work when the war started. He helped my parents and the rest of the family sent them to our cousins’ house in Belgrade. He sent his wife and kids to Kikinda, my deceased brother’s wife and kids in Udbina, so in that way all were safe. He returned, didn’t want to be a burden to anybody, and he worked in Gospic half-time. His heart was in bad condition, and his health was not good too, but he went to the Red Cross asking for something to do, he didn’t want to be a burden. And since then he was working with UNPROFOR on the exchange of the bodies.

It was around the 2nd of August when in my village Ustashe slaughtered everybody, they killed everybody, and there was a need to escape from the village. People started to move around the village, they needed to escape to save themselves. And they escaped, they took the most important, cattle, cows... My mother had only one cow, and she was taking it with her, and if she had only one small horse... All the villagers were moving toward Velebit Mountain. There they were hiding in the ravines, in Velebits’ valleys, and they there were for around two-three days, it seems like a safe hiding place. There they were milking the cows, giving to the children to eat all that they had taken with them. The rain started to fall, and the kids were frozen and scared, they were hungry and crying. On the morning of the third day, as my mother told me, in the dawn, they heard the gunshots. The panic spread and people started to run away. My mother, with her mother-in-law, moved to the nearby valley, which was a bit further from the previous hiding place. But until the afternoon, Ustashe were everywhere around them, they could hear shootings louder, and they could hear them catching people who were still alive. That’s how the chaos started. Around noon, my mother’s hiding place was also fully surrounded, it was not possible to move somewhere from there anymore. Ustashe made a camp there and collected the people from the woods, some they killed immediately, and some were tied in that camp. There were, as my mother was telling me, around 120 women and children and around 50 men.