{"id":15651,"date":"2021-02-18T22:22:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T21:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.p-portal.net\/?p=15651"},"modified":"2021-07-15T10:45:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T08:45:31","slug":"plot-142-a-mound-for-children-without-names-or-childhoods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/plot-142-a-mound-for-children-without-names-or-childhoods","title":{"rendered":"Plot 142 \u2013 a Mound for Children without Names or Childhoods"},"content":{"rendered":"

A damp, cold and gloomy February morning in the largest \u201ccity of the dead\u201d in the Republic of Croatia. Footsteps both sharp and dull ring out in the dead silence; not a soul is in sight. A curtain of boring and monotonous rain comes down on Zagreb\u2019s Mirogoj Cemetery, obscuring the view. Only the raindrops are alive, connecting and merging, turning into small streams and then into veritable small torrents. They run down headstones; thousands upon thousands of them murmur and gurgle through the passes and flow away towards the vale and nearby forest. In this river, by now no longer small, tears drown \u2013 both rain tears and real ones. Thoughts are alive, too, while the glance flits from one tombstone to the other, each hiding one or several life stories and destinies, many dead and long-gone loves. Who are these people; does someone remember them today, or have they vanished forever in the oblivion of time?<\/p>\n

Remembrance and admonishment against the darkest period<\/h2>\n

First names, family names and dates follow one another. There are humble and there are monumental last abodes, but in death everyone is equal. Some are long gone, and their monuments are sad and worn by time, while others\u2019 are still well-tended. Families He\u0107imovi\u0107, Juri\u010di\u0107 and Bahtijarevi\u0107, the Jo\u017einec family, then families Papi\u0107i and Benci\u2026 and we come to the Plot 142, bordered with a hedge on three sides. Candles and flowers, scattered toys and a small, discreet monument, as well as a small tombstone in which it is carved: \u201cSeveral hundred children from Kozara are buried here.\u201d Only a few square meters hold the last resting place of several hundred innocent girls and boys. Nearly a thousand innocent little lives. The story dates from not so long ago, from a period darker than the dark Middle Ages.<\/p>\n

In the year 1942 the world was already deep in the Second World War, the war that claimed the largest number of civilian casualties, the war which was fought not only for territory and resources, but in which people were tortured and killed because of their religion, nationality, race, political orientation\u2026 To unfathomable proportions. Unfathomable, because those who started and waged the war did not spare anyone, not even the most vulnerable ones \u2013 children.<\/p>\n

In the struggle for their lives<\/h2>\n

In June 1942 German and quisling units started Operation Western Bosnia<\/em> in the area of the Kozara mountain and Potkozarje, inhabited mostly by Serbs. Despite the unyielding resistance of the partisans and the unity of local Serbs, Croats and Muslims, fascist forces surrounded the entire area and started the systematic extermination of the local civilian population. Thousands of people were killed on the spot, while thousands were sent to concentration camps. Thousands of Kozara children were not spared either.<\/p>\n

The power they were ensured by their powerful German ally caused the Ustashe to lose all reason and erased their last shreds of humanity. Because of them, Kozara children were no longer awakened by sunrays shining through the thick Kozara forest or by their parents\u2019 voices, but by gunshots, detonations and the sounds of war.<\/p>\n

Camps more terrible than death<\/h2>\n

In his book Jasenovac \u2013 Tragedy, Mythomania, Truth<\/em>, historian Slavko Goldstein<\/strong> writes that the people from ravaged Kozara were placed in Jasenovac area concentration camps of Stara Gradi\u0161ka, U\u0161tica, Mlaka and Jablanac. Due to overcrowding, new temporary camps were established in Prijedor, Kostajnica, Cerovljani and Novska. The \u201cmost able and healthy ones\u201d were sent to concentration camps and work camps of the Third Reich as slave workforce. Thousands of Kozara people were sent to villages in Slavonia, Posavina and Moslavina, where workforce was needed due to the conscription of men into the army. According to data by Dragoje Luki\u0107<\/strong>, the author of the book The War and the Children of Kozara<\/em>, 68,600 people were expelled from Kozara, among them almost 24,000 children under the age of fifteen.<\/p>\n

Through the effort of Diana Budisavljevi\u0107<\/strong>, 6230 out of more than 12,000 children in Stara Gradi\u0161ka camp were rescued. These and many other children were hungry, thirsty, barefoot, sick, exhausted and separated from their parents, helpless as they themselves were.<\/p>\n

They survived Kozara, but not the consequences of the camps<\/h2>\n

In her book Diana Budisavljevi\u0107 \u2013 the Unsung Heroine of the Second World War<\/em>, according to the List of Children Victims, historian Nata\u0161a Matau\u0161i\u0107<\/strong> states that during 1942 children were rescued from Ustasha camps Stara Gradi\u0161ka and Jasenovac and camps in Mlaka, Jablanica and Ko\u0161tarica. The number of rescued children in the Zagreb area is between 6679 and 6733, and the final number of deceased children is between 881 and 904. Data differs between sources. She explains that the death rate among the children depended on the medical condition of individual groups of children that arrived in the transport, as well as on the conscientiousness and care of the doctors, nurses and women who took care of them and the people who oversaw their transport.<\/p>\n

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Children\u2019s concentration camp Sisak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The institutions in Zagreb where the children were placed were the Institute for the Education of Deaf and Mute Children, the State Children\u2019s Home at Josipovac, the City Hospital for Infectious Diseases under the management of NDH, the Hospital for Infectious Diseases, the Rebro Foundation Hospital, the Children\u2019s Clinic at \u0160alata\u2026 The children who died in transport from the camps or in Zagreb hospitals, shelters and families that took them in were buried at the Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb, at Plot 142.<\/p>\n

The grave that was not talked of after the war<\/h2>\n

Matau\u0161i\u0107 quotes the conversation between Du\u0161ko Tomi\u0107<\/strong> (author of the book On the Paths of the Death of Kozara Children<\/em>) and Josip Pavi\u010di\u0107<\/strong>, the Mirogoj graveyard keeper at the time, in which it is stated that the Red Cross, city authorities and other church organizations took care of Plot 142, and that the bodies of children arrived daily in small caskets or wrapped in cloths or sheets. Since it was known those were mostly children from Kozara and Potkozarje, Plot 142 was simply called \u201cKozara.\u201d Pavi\u010di\u0107 explains that this tomb was not talked about after the war, but that later an appropriate monument was erected. Du\u0161ko Tomi\u0107 states that 862 children were buried at Mirogoj, while the List of Victims Deprived of Life (which the Orthodox parish authorities in Zagreb gave to the State Commission for Determining the Crimes of the Occupiers and Their Accomplices in 1947) lists 802 children.<\/p>\n

Dehumanized name of the terrible tomb<\/h2>\n

The name of the tomb of the Kozara children, Plot 142, sounds like a plot of land which, if the real estate agents are successful, will be sold and where one day a family home or offices will be built. Only when one comes to the Mirogoj Cemetery can it be seen, because of the children\u2019s toys, flowers and the monument, that this is a children\u2019s tomb.<\/p>\n