Petar Brzica
Petar Brzica (translation of name on english:Speedy Peter) was a fascist and World War II war criminal. Before the war he was a 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 after - a member of the Croatian fascist Ustaša organization and one of the guards in the Jasenovac concentration camp. As an Ustashe - he held the lieutenant rank[2]. He is known for having a slaughtering bet, in which he killed about 1360 concentration camp prisoners, using a curve-bladed knife, nowadays often called srbosjek[3][4][5]. Some other sources are claiming lower numbers of the Serbs slaughtered (670)[6] or mentioning the slaughtering bet without the number of the Serbs - killed by Brzica.[7]
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, Brzica has remained unrevealed.[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. - ^ Wanted! : The Search for Nazis in America, Howard Blum, Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co. 1977
- ^ The Glass Half Full by Alan Greenhalgh ISBN:0977584410 page 68
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 by slitting their throats with a specially designed knife called 'the Serb Cutter'. Women prisoners found themselves used mercilessly as sex slaves and the guards were in the position of being able to satisfy the most perverted urges with impunity. - ^ Smokescreens by Jack T. Chick, Chick Publications 1983, page 28
- ^ 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 - ^ 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