Petar Brzica was a fascist and World War II 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". Some time he spent studying the law in Zagreb where he became the Ustashe Youth member[1] and later a member of the Croatian fascist Ustaša organization and one of the guards in the Jasenovac concentration camp. As an Ustashe he held the rank of a lieutenant[2][3]. He is known for having killed an inmate by beating him to death, along with Jozo Stojcic and Hirschberger Nikola, on March 1943, upon the event of Ivica Matkovic's release of administrator role, between 19 to 25th of March[4].Yet Brzica is more notorious for winning a bet in which a curve-bladed knife, also called a srbosjek, was used to kill newly-arrived concentration camp prisoners [5][6][7][8]. He won the bet by killing the largest number of prisoners, possibly between 670[9] and 1360[10] people.
After World War II he fled to the United States. Yugoslav authorities were never able to capture him and he most likely changed his identity and died hidden. His name was on a list of 59 Nazis living in the US given by a Jewish organization to the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the 1970s. As of 2008, it was still not known what had become of him.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Špijun u mantiji by Siniša Ivanović, Nova knjiga Belgrade, 1987 page 78
- ^ Sećanja Jevreja na logor Jasenovac by Dušan Sindik, Savez jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije 1972 - page 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 (Lo http://www.jasenovac-info.com/cd/biblioteka/jasenovac1946/jasenovac-1946_en.html ), p. 73. The names of his leauge-fellow, Ante Zrinusic, also there. Of Ljubo Milos and the wolfhound lo Djuro Schwartz, "in the Jasenovac camp of death", p. 300
- ^ State-commission, p. 50
- ^ Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia by Barry M. Lituchy Jasenovac Research Institute; First 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 in: Avro Manhattan, "Vatican's holocaust", p. 48 and Taborišče smrti--Jasenovac by Nikola Nikolić (author), Jože Zupančić (translator) Published 1969 Založba "Borec" - page 293
- ^ Nedjo Zec quotes Ustasa Mile Friganovic, here: The Role of the Vatican in the Breakup of the Yugoslav State, by Dr. Milan Bulajić, Belgrade, 1994: 156-157; from a Jan., 1943, interview with Mile Friganović by psychiatrist Dr. Nedjo Zec, who was also an inmate at Jasenovac. http://www.jasenovac-info.com/cd/biblioteka/wschindley-jasenovac_en.html
- ^ Witness Ljubomir Saric quotes Ustasa Ante Zrinusic Dinko Sakic trial, Ljubomir Saric testimony,15.4.1999, at: http://public.carnet.hr/sakic/hinanews/arhiva/9904/hina-15-g.html
- ^ Taborišče smrti--Jasenovac by Nikola Nikolić (author), Jože Zupančić (translator) Published 1969 Založba "Borec" - page 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 - ^ The Glass Half Full by Alan Greenhalgh ISBN 0977584410 page 68
See also
- Assassins au nom de Dieu by Hervé Laurière, Éditions La Vigie, 1951 page 145
- Für die Richtigkeit: Kurt Waldheim by Hanspeter Born, Schneekluth, 1987 page 65
- L'arcivescovo del genocidio: monsignor Stepinac, il Vaticano e la dittatura ustascia in Croazia, 1941-1945 by Marco Aurelio Rivelli, Kaos, 1999 page 101
- A History of the Holocaust by Saul S. Friedman, Vallentine Mitchell, 2004 page 241
- Smokescreens: Who is the Whore of Revelation? - A Biblical and Historical Answer by Jack T. Chick, Chick Publications, 1983 page 28