Father Petar "Pero" Brzica (born ca. 1917)[1] was a Croatian Nazi collaborator and war criminal. Before the war he was a scholarship student at the Franciscan college of Široki Brijeg in Herzegovina and a member of The Great Brotherhood of Crusaders.
He spent some time studying law in Zagreb where he became the Ustashe Youth member and later a member of the Croatian fascist Ustaša government (1941-1945) and one of the guards in the Jasenovac concentration camp.[2] As an Ustashe he held the rank of Lieutenant.[3][4][5] While he is known for having beaten an inmate to death in March 1943,[6] he is notorious for having won a contest in which he used a curve-bladed knife, also called a srbosjek, to kill newly arrived concentration camp prisoners.[7][8][9][10][11][12] Brzica boasted of winning the contest by killing the largest number of prisoners - 1360 people.[13][14] Some other sources set Brzica's "record" at a lower number, between 670 [15] and 1100.[16]
See also[]
- Ivica Matković
- Ljubo Miloš
- Miroslav Filipović
- Independent State of Croatia
References[]
- ↑ Jasenovac: The Jewish Serbian Holocaust (the Role of the Vatican) in Nazi-Ustasha Croatia (1941-1945) by Milan Bulajić, Svetlana Šarčević and Jelena Popović, Fund for Genocide Research (2002), p. 215
"Petar Brzica, 25 years old, a Franciscan [priest] of the "Order of Friars Minor", a scholar from Široki Brijeg monastery, the Ustasha captain, who, according to the testimony of Ustasha Mile Friganović, in one night, on 29 August 1942, killed 1360 internees..." - ↑ Špijun u mantiji by Siniša Ivanović, Nova knjiga Belgrade, 1987, p. 78
- ↑ "Sećanja Jevreja na logor Jasenovac" by Dušan Sindik, Savez jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije 1972, p. 154
"Then the Ustashe butchers came: Ljubo Miloš along with a wolfhound and Ustashe lieutant Pero Brzica who started from the left flank of the human formation/interrogating what were the occupations of these people." - ↑ State Commission of Croatia for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and their collaborators
- ↑ Jasenovac information site
- ↑ State Commission, ibid., p. 50
- ↑ Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia by Barry M. Lituchy Jasenovac Research Institute (1st edition), New York (2006)
- ↑
"Another historian, Teophilo Gardini, reports a very strange contest of "Serbian throat-cutting" - won on August 29, 1942 by a certain Petar Brzica, a former Franciscan of the Široki Brijeg Monastery" - ↑ Dr. Nikola Nikolic testimony, see Avro Manhattan's Vatican's holocaust, p. 48
- ↑ Taborišče smrti - Jasenovac by Nikola Nikolić (author), Jože Zupančić (translator), 1969, p. 293
- ↑ Nedjo Zec quotes the Ustasa Mile Friganović (The Role of the Vatican in the Breakup of the Yugoslav State, by Dr. Milan Bulajić, Belgrade (1994), pp. 156-57) from a January 1943 interview with Mile Friganović by psychiatrist Dr. Nedjo Zec, who also had been an inmate at Jasenovac
- ↑ Witness Ljubomir Sarić quotes the Ustasa Ante Zrinušić at Dinko Sakic's trial on 15 April 1999
- ↑ The Glass Half Full by Alan Greenhalgh, p. 68 (ISBN 0977584410)
"Wherever they went they experienced similar cruelty from the Ustashe guards. They heard stories about the fierce butcher, Petar Brzica, who boasted that during one night alone he killed 1,360 prisoners." - ↑ Jasenovac: The Jewish Serbian Holocaust, ibid., p. 215
- ↑ Taborišče smrti-Jasenovac by Nikola Nikolić (author), Jože Zupančić (translator), 1969, p. 293
Tisto noč je ustaš Pero Brzica v hitrosti in spretnosti svojega krvniškega posla prekosil vse ustaške klavce. Sam je namreč zaklal 670 internircev jasenovškega taborišča. Med seboj so tekmovali v klavskem poslu Brzica, Bonzo, Šipka, Zrinušić in še nekaj drugi klavci, ki pa so za Brzico znatno zaostajali - ↑ "Nedjelja", Zagreb, October 19, 1942, referenced in Sângeroasa destrămare: Iugoslavia by C.I. Christian, published by Editura Sylvi (1994), p. 170 (ISBN 9739175015, ISBN 978-973-9175-01-2)
The original article can be found at Petar Brzica and the edit history here.