ZAGREB, May 20 (Hina) - The main hearing in the trial of Dinko Sakic, war crimes suspect and commander of a Croatian World War Two concentration camp, resumed at the Zagreb County Court on Thursday with the testimony of 77-year-old
Mara Cvetko. Cvetko was detained at concentration camps in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska between December 1942 and late March 1945. During her detention at the Stara Gradiska camp, Cvetko said she was stationed in the women's section, where conditions were better than inside the Kula tower, where the Orthodox faithful, the Jews and the Romany were imprisoned. She stressed Ustashi officials would not come to see them and that they enjoyed a "somewhat better treatment." There had been no mass executions until the summer of 1943, only single ones, the witness pointed out. Upon arriving at the Jasenovac camp, at one time commanded by the defendant, Cvetko said she was sent
ZAGREB, May 20 (Hina) - The main hearing in the trial of Dinko Sakic,
war crimes suspect and commander of a Croatian World War Two
concentration camp, resumed at the Zagreb County Court on Thursday
with the testimony of 77-year-old Mara Cvetko.
Cvetko was detained at concentration camps in Jasenovac and Stara
Gradiska between December 1942 and late March 1945.
During her detention at the Stara Gradiska camp, Cvetko said she was
stationed in the women's section, where conditions were better than
inside the Kula tower, where the Orthodox faithful, the Jews and the
Romany were imprisoned. She stressed Ustashi officials would not
come to see them and that they enjoyed a "somewhat better
treatment."
There had been no mass executions until the summer of 1943, only
single ones, the witness pointed out.
Upon arriving at the Jasenovac camp, at one time commanded by the
defendant, Cvetko said she was sent to hard farming labour. She
heard the Ustashi at that time executed a group of women who worked
in economy in the village Mlaka.
Given her youth and weak condition, she was protected by other women
inmates who would do chores in her stead. After a while, they
managed to commit her to an Ustashi hospital, whence she was
returned to Stara Gradiska, where she "broke rocks" in punishment.
She then saw a group of women taken from the Kula tower to be
executed.
When the Stara Gradiska camp was about to be closed down, "famine
took over", Cvetko said. Due to a railway transport breakdown,
inmates could not receive packages from home. They no longer
received food from common cauldrons, but were given "pieces of
food". "We barely managed to stand up," Cvetko said.
Upon being transferred to the Jasenovac camp, Cvetko said she did
house work for Ustashi families, worked in storehouses, and groomed
cattle.
She recalled when she found a piece of bread by a road. "I wanted to
eat it, but we had a rule saying that all food had to be brought to the
camp and shared," Cvetko told the court and burst into tears. "If
there hadn't been friendships and mutual helping, I would never
have survived."
After being released, Cvetko said she was haunted by the thought why
it had been her, and not another woman to have survived. "Those who
remained at the camp were not numbers, but people I loved."
Recalling the hard times and her friends who had "stayed" at the
camp, Cvetko burst into tears several times during her testimony.
Describing the daily selections of women at Jasenovac, the witness
said while choosing, the Ustashi would openly tell the women they
were being taken to be "slaughtered."
She singled out the time when to avoid going to labour, she hid in a
room with corpses of women who had fallen to illness and
starvation.
The witness also recalled a transport of some 20 high school girls
from Zemun who, she heard later, were executed.
Speaking about how Ustashi soldiers treated women inmates, Cvetko
mentioned instances of abuse and executions during her first stay
at the Jasenovac camp. She recalled when an Ustashi solder ordered a
female inmate to bring him corn. "When she departed, he went after
and shot her."
During her second stay at Jasenovac, there was a group of young
soldiers and a company from Varazdin. "They treated us better," she
said, adding she later found out some were killed because of that.
During 1944, Cvetko said she had not witnesses any killings.
Asked by panel of judges president Drazen Tripalo if there had been
rapes at the camp, the witness said she did not know about any, but
added that female inmates would say "that happened as well".
Cvetko's suffering did not end with her release from the Jasenovac
camp. The communist authorities of the Yugoslav federation
arrested her in 1949 and imprisoned her in a camp on island Goli
Otok, where she was detained until 1952. "I don't know when I was
skinnier, at Jasenovac or in Goli Otok," she told the court.
The main hearing in the trial of Dinko Sakic, accused of war crimes
against civilians, will resume on May 24, when witness Zdenko
Schwartz, from Israel, should testify.
(hina) ha jn