The projection of the film “Two Branko’s Kozaras” produced by the Genocide Victims’ Museum in Belgrade, and the lecture “Kozara 1942” by Nikola Miloševski, curator of this museum, were held in the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, on Friday, November 29th, 2024, starting at 6 p.m. At the beginning of the program, the audience was greeted by Darko Gučanin, director of the National Museum Kraljevo, who pointed out that observing the turbulent history of the Balkans and the Serbian people from the Serbian Revolution to the present, we can see that our people have repeatedly created and repeatedly lost their state and have participated in major, global conflicts.
The common denominator of all these aspirations is the unwavering desire for freedom, the creation of a national state and unification. We are obliged to remember and preserve the memory of the numerous, often unnamed people who invested their lives, whether in battle or as innocent victims, in the liberation and future of the Serbian people. We are also obliged to research, learn about and preserve the memory of their identities, fates and the circumstances of their suffering, all with the aim of establishing the historical truth. The film, the third in a row produced by the Genocide Victims’ Museum in Belgrade, dedicated to the suffering of the Serbian people on Kozara in July 1942, must also be viewed in this light.
After that, Nikola Miloševski gave a lecture entitled “Kozara 1942”, in which he pointed out that during the great German-Croatian offensive from 10th to 15th July 1942, over 40 thousand Serbs were estimated to have died on Kozara, of whom around 12 thousand were children under the age of fifteen. The key state for the extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma was the Independent State of Croatia, founded on 10 April 1941, headed by the chieftain Ante Pavelic, which included the whole of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Srem. Genocide was carried out within this state – the planned extermination of a people, with a defined plan according to which 1/3 of the Serbs were to be killed, 1/3 converted to Catholicism and 1/3 displaced.
After Nikola Miloševski’s presentation, the 23-minute film “Two Branko’s Kozaras” was shown. The film, through the fictional story of the old man Branko, who as a boy hid on Kozara from the enemy, and through archival footage, also tells the story of suffering during the pogrom of 1942. It is the story of a child who, against his will, ended up in the vortex of the most horrific crimes committed against his people in centuries-old history. The film also uses authentic footage from Kozara, which was not shown after World War II. They represent part of the “Picture Book’, or the journal of the Independent State of Croatia, the original of which is kept in Serbia. The director is Ivica Vidanović, the screenwriter is Božidar Knežević, and the expert consultant is Bojan Arbutina, curator of the Genocide Victims’ Museum in Belgrade. The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia and the Foundation of the Genocide Victims’ Museum in Belgrade.