JAKOV FINCI GIVES TESTIMONY AT SAKIC TRIAL (1)

ZAGREB, March 22 (Hina) - During the trial of Dinko Sakic, accused of crimes against civilian populations in World War II, witness Jakov Finci testified before the panel of judges in Zagreb on Monday. After being arrested as a 19-year-old boy in Sarajevo, Finci was taken to the Jasenovac concentration camp in early March 1942. At the beginning of April the same year, he was transported to Stara Gradiska but on 23 September, 1944 he was taken back to Jasenovac, where he stayed until the prisoners' break-through on 22 April 1945. At the start of Monday's main hearing Finci did not give a usual brief statement, saying that he adhered to the statement he gave during the investigation. Therefore, at the proposal of the president of the panel of judges, County State Attorney Radovan Santek questioned the witness. During his testimony, TV cameras filmed Finci from behind for security reasons so that reporters could not see his face, which was not the case with the first witness, Dragan Roller. Finci said he had been arrested in Sarajevo on 14 February 1942, because of his Jewish origins adding that was the reason for the persecution of his family, which was killed. His father had been arrested earlier and killed in the Krapje camp. During 1942, his mother and sister were also arrested and deported to a German camp where they died, while his brother, who was a partisan, was killed by Chetniks. According to Finci, he was transported to Jasenovac by train along with some 300 people and nobody except him survived. There were two wagons carrying mainly Jewish women and children and one wagon with men, including several Serbs from Mount Romanija. "I was never given a decision on why I had been arrested. I was never questioned in a court," Finci said adding he had learned about his three-year prison sentence in the camp's writing-room. From his second stay in Jasenovac, when its commander was Dinko Sakic, Finci remembered a muster and the hanging of three inmates, who had been previously tortured. According to Finci, present at the hanging was the defendant Dinko Sakic who held a speech saying that "not a bird can escape" from the camp since it was "hermetically sealed". According to the witness's recollection, before the hanging one inmate said "good-bye my children", to which Sakic replied: "Why didn't you think of the children before." "Eight days afterwards, a 20-year-old Jewish tailor was hanged on the same spot because he had made a cap for an Ustasha soldier without permission. Sakic was not present at this hanging, but I am sure that, as the camp's commander, he knew about it," Finci said, adding in April 1945 inmates carried out a break-through from the camp on the same spot where Sakic had made his statement on the camp being "hermetically sealed". Finci also remembered inmate Albert Izrael, who remained hanging for two days after the hanging. After his arrival at Jasenovac, Finci worked as an undertaker. He remembered that together with other inmates he had buried about 3,000 people in ten days. Those people "were either killed or died due to sudden changes", Finci explained. Upon the prisoners' arrival at Jasenovac, gold and jewellery would be taken from them, and their personal belongings would be confiscated in the tunnel of the brickworks. Those who had beautiful suits were forced to take them off and were given rags to put on, Finci added. A special part of the testimony referred to autumn murders, committed after autumn farming works. In October 1944, a mass killing of inmates was carried out according to lists over twenty days. The killing was discontinued for a while, only to resume after about twenty days. It lasted another 15 days, when Sakic was no longer the camp's commander. About 2,000 people were killed then, Finci said. "Execution lists would be made in the writing-room by day. By night, the inmates would be taken to the warehouse, where they would be stripped naked, tied by wire, and taken to the bank of the Sava River, where they would be lifted by derrick, their stomach would be slit open and they would be thrown in the Sava," Finci said. According to Finci, five or six people from a shoemakers' group, to which he, too, belonged, were executed. He remembered the Levi brothers, Samuel Altarac, Rafael Finci, Jozef Papic and several Serbs. The witness also spoke about the killing of Dr. Mile Boskovic, although he was not present at it, and about a "muster" following the execution of the prisoner Wollner, who was killed by drunken Ustashi in Bosanska Dubica, where they had taken him to play the accordion for them. Word went around that on that occasion Sakic demanded to be given a list of prisoners and that 25 inmates, Jews, were taken away, as well as that Sakic personally shot two inmates dead, the witness said. "Upon my arrival at the camp I heard that Dinko Sakic was in the court-martial that sentenced Boskovic and that he killed him personally," the witness said, adding that Sakic had said "You have conducted yourself well during the investigation, turn around, you deserved to be shot by me and not to be hanged." The others from the Boskovic group were hanged, according to Finci's knowledge. Commenting on the food, Finci said it was extremely bad and after the Boskovic case it became even worse. For two months we used to get turnip soup and rotten sauerkraut without bread, he said adding that after some time the food improved. The packages which inmates received from the Red Cross, the Jewish Community in Zagreb and families helped us. I received packages twice a month. Mainly dried food and fruit. There were people who got nothing. Many people died due to malnutrition, Finci said adding the inmates used to steal food, although the punishment was death. "Ustashi used to kill a prisoner for one potato," Finci added. The witness said he had contracted typhus, typhoid, malaria, pleuritis and dysentery, while in Jasenovac he had caught cold several times. "Ustashi acted the same way in Stara Gradiska and Jasenovac." There were beatings, harassment and killings every day. I remember pathological persons for whom a day could not pass without beating somebody. Those were professional Ustasha thugs, and among them was an inmate-informer, Stevo Basic. They would walk through the camp and beat people with no reason, Finci said. Speaking about the camp commanders, Finci said he remembered Ljubo Milos and Miroslav Filipovic Majstorovic in Jasenovac, and Mile Oreskovic, Nikola Gadzic, Stjepan Bosak and Jozo Stojcevic in Stara Gradiska. During the two and half years of my imprisonment in Stara Gradiska I did not hear of Dinko Sakic. I do not know when he became the commander of the Jasenovac camp, since I found him (at this post) in September, and he was the commander until mid-November 1944. I heard that Sakic had earlier headed the general department and that he had been promoted to a commander. The general department kept records on inmates. Data on their arrival at the camp, release and other things. I have not heard about Sakic since his departure from the camp, Finci said. The witness remembered that Luburic had arrived at the Jasenovac camp in early May to organise its destruction. "At the time Luburic organised the exhumation and burning of bones of inmates in Jasenovac and at Gradina", Finci said adding that on 21 April 1945, the female section of the Jasenovac camp was destroyed and that about 800 women were taken to Gradina. According to Finci, about 1,500 inmates participated in the escape from the camp, and about 70 remained alive. (hina) ms/rml