Milica Matić

* 1949

  • And you know what I wanted to say here, I am returning to my mother again. She was an illiterate person, but a very clever woman, and she had a healthy philosophy, life healthy. My deceased older brother once wanted to play a joke on my mother and he told her: “Mom, I am getting married, I found a black woman and I am marrying her!” My mother replied: ”My dearest child, she is a human being, black, white, Serbian, Croat, anybody, it is important for her to be a human”. So, I would like to tell whole the world, especially young people, not to divide people by their national belonging, but by who they are, by their character, who can make some evil and who is not. People should be divided, in a way my mother said when that Ustasha told her: “I cannot even touch them…”. My mother was always saying: “I don’t care about the U on his hat. U is Ustasha, Ustasha is the one who is Ustasha in his heart, and what is on his hat, I don’t care about the hat.” So this is what I think, I want all the people to be just human beings, not to ask others who they are or what they are, but for all of us to be humans.“

  • ... how it will be, and she was afraid for a reason because the new war started again, nationalism raising, hatred. In 1991, in the house with my parents lived also two kids of my deceased brother, Đurđica, and Miloš, wife of my deceased brother Milica. My mother was 83 at the time, and my father was a bit younger, he was 79 years old. In 1991 they all become refugees. My brother was working in the gymnasium in Gospic when the war started, but he needed to leave his work when the war started. He helped my parents and the rest of the family sent them to our cousins’ house in Belgrade. He sent his wife and kids to Kikinda, my deceased brother’s wife and kids in Udbina, so in that way all were safe. He returned, didn’t want to be a burden to anybody, and he worked in Gospic half-time. His heart was in bad condition, and his health was not good too, but he went to the Red Cross asking for something to do, he didn’t want to be a burden. And since then he was working with UNPROFOR on the exchange of the bodies.

  • It was around the 2nd of August when in my village Ustashe slaughtered everybody, they killed everybody, and there was a need to escape from the village. People started to move around the village, they needed to escape to save themselves. And they escaped, they took the most important, cattle, cows... My mother had only one cow, and she was taking it with her, and if she had only one small horse... All the villagers were moving toward Velebit Mountain. There they were hiding in the ravines, in Velebits’ valleys, and they there were for around two-three days, it seems like a safe hiding place. There they were milking the cows, giving to the children to eat all that they had taken with them. The rain started to fall, and the kids were frozen and scared, they were hungry and crying. On the morning of the third day, as my mother told me, in the dawn, they heard the gunshots. The panic spread and people started to run away. My mother, with her mother-in-law, moved to the nearby valley, which was a bit further from the previous hiding place. But until the afternoon, Ustashe were everywhere around them, they could hear shootings louder, and they could hear them catching people who were still alive. That’s how the chaos started. Around noon, my mother’s hiding place was also fully surrounded, it was not possible to move somewhere from there anymore. Ustashe made a camp there and collected the people from the woods, some they killed immediately, and some were tied in that camp. There were, as my mother was telling me, around 120 women and children and around 50 men.

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    Delnice, 25.09.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 56:29
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th century
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Milica Matić: remembering the survival of her mother

Milica Matić
Milica Matić
photo: Eye direct recording

Milica Matić was born the 23rd of January 1949 in Divoselo, close to Gospić. She studied Croatian-Serbian language and literature, and later German. She studied at the pedagogical faculty in Rijeka and became a professor. In the interview, she remembers the survival of her mother, who was taken, together with the other Serbian population of the village, by the Ustaša in Jarčja jama. There, they were tortured, slaughtered, and thrown in the cave-pits. Only few people were lucky enough to survive and one of them was Milica’s mother.