Another sad anniversary has passed since the brutal “roll call of class V3” and the execution of students in Kragujevac. Some have completely forgotten the hero who avenged the fallen students!
Veselin Šijaković killed a Gestapo officer, one of those most responsible for the Nazi crime in Kragujevac on October 21, 1941, when 3,000 civilians were executed, including 300 students!
The Facebook page “Narodna istorija” (National History) published the story of Veselin, who killed the German officer out of revenge.
We translate it in full:
Veselin Šijaković killed a Gestapo officer, one of those most responsible for the Nazi crime in Kragujevac on October 21, 1941. Today, he is forgotten by the state, although the Serbian Orthodox Church awarded him a medal. Serbs do not remember him…
Veselin Šijaković was born in 1924 in Nikšić, where his parents had moved from Andrijevica. World War II found him in Kragujevac, where he was studying at the Military Technical School. When the Germans occupied the building of the Military Technical Institute, they captured all the cadets, including him. Soon, however, they released the Croats, Muslims, and Slovenes, and sent the Serbs to forced labor.
Leader of a Trio
– With two friends, Veselin managed to escape into the forest, where they met members of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, specifically the Jelica Corps, which had already gained fame for liberating Gornji Milanovac, Užice, Čačak, and Požega. They decided to stay with them and were assigned to a unit responsible for sabotage. The unit was composed of trios. Veselin was placed at the head of one trio. And so, his war began at the end of July 1941.
– In the autumn of 1942, the Supreme Command, based on a proposal from the Ravna Gora movement members in Belgrade, decided to liquidate the Gestapo Major who had a crucial role in the execution of civilians and students in Kragujevac. A highly experienced trio was assigned this task. They entered the building in Belgrade where the Major lived, through an open basement window, but a German guard met them on the staircase leading upstairs and killed them.
– In the meantime, the Gestapo officer had moved to Vrnjačka Banja, where the Germans had a strong foothold with about ten thousand soldiers. Šijaković volunteered his own trio for the liquidation of the German officer. In an interview for Istok magazine in the summer of 2005, Veselin Šijaković described in detail how he succeeded:
Veselin’s Confession
– At night, we crept up to the villa where the Gestapo officer lived. We waited in the courtyard for him to arrive from a gathering at a nearby hotel. Around one o’clock after midnight, accompanied by three soldiers, he appeared, staggering, clearly drunk. The soldiers helped him climb the internal staircase and returned to patrol the street. When he opened his bedroom window, our job was significantly easier. For the first time, my hands trembled, so hard that the rungs of the ladder started hitting the wall. I told myself: I guess I’m not meant for tasks like this!
– I somehow managed to climb up and enter unnoticed. I grabbed him by the hair with my left hand, pushed his head against the pillow, and plunged the knife into his heart with my right hand. He roared like a lion! Since he couldn’t move his head, his legs shot up and thrashed constantly! At the same moment, a woman who was lying in the neighboring bed screamed, to my surprise. Confused, I took out my pistol and shot her with a couple of bullets! My comrades, who were waiting in the courtyard, thought the German officer had shot at me because the agreement was not to use firearms, so one of them rushed up the stairs. We collided on the stairs, which I was more falling down backward than stepping down.
– Sirens blared, calling for an alarm, and we fled through the neighboring courtyards. Only then did I realize that I had forgotten to take the German officer’s satchel, which was one of my tasks. I thought I would be punished for it; however, the Supreme Command awarded me the Obilić Medal, which was later presented to me in front of 20,000 fighters by the great hero Jezdimir Dangić, commander of the Drina Corps.
Captured on Đurđevdan (St. George’s Day)
– I was captured by the Partisans on Đurđevdan in 1946 in Ustikolina. They surrounded the house where the three of us and the residents were located. They shot at the house with launchers, wounding a one-year-old child. When I saw that they would kill that family too, I decided to surrender. The investigation lasted three months. The trial was held at the Military Court in Niš. They accused me of fighting against the Partisans, which I denied, because, apart from the day they caught me, I had never fired a bullet at them. Nevertheless, they sentenced me to death.
After three months, they commuted my sentence to life imprisonment, and in 1948, they transferred me to the Jusovača prison in Podgorica. They kept me in total isolation from other prisoners, in the worst conditions, even though I was severely ill. When I was at death’s door in 1952, they released me to die at home. Friends from Belgrade found out about my case and transferred me there, where doctor Dr. Veselin Savić saved me. That same year, 1952, I married Darinka Šaranović, who came to visit me, knowing I had been imprisoned with her brother.
Veselin Šijaković received the Order of Saint Sava, First Class, from the Serbian Orthodox Church for his contribution to Orthodoxy, and a Gramata (“Knight of Orthodoxy”) from the Patriarch Diodoros of Jerusalem for a feat he performed on Easter 2000. Namely, in 2000, he managed to enter Christ’s Cell (in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre), along with the priests, which no civilian had managed to do before. – After praying in Christ’s Cell, he grabbed a 100-kilogram, three-meter-high cross, carried it 20 meters, and handed it over to the priests who were heading towards Christ’s Tomb. The priests could not believe their eyes—that an old man was carrying such a large cross; they told the Patriarch, who invited him as a guest and presented him with the Gramata “Knight of Orthodoxy.”
Veselin Šijaković died on September 27, 2009. He is survived by two sons, Dragoljub and Bogoljub (a University professor who served as Minister of Religion in Belgrade for two terms), and four grandchildren, the post concludes.
Source: Narodna istorija Photo: Wikipedia, Printscreen/ Facebook Narodna istorija
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