The Ustashi did not commit atrocities only on adult men and women of the Serbian, Jewish and Gypsy nationalities but also on children who were still infants feeding on their mother's milk. It is difficult to find adequate words to express this kind of Ustashi bestiality. Infants were shot in their cribs, babies were foisted on bayonets, slaughtered with knives, razors and axes, burned in their homes, in brickyards and in the Jasenovac crematorium, boiled in soap-melting cauldrons, bound together and thrown into rivers and wells, thrown alive into caves and grottos, asphyxiated in cyanide and poisoned with caustic soda, killed through hunger, thirst and exposure.

The Nazi Fascist horde and occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941 made it possible for violent death of tens of thousands of children in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) to become the greatest national tragedy of the Serbian people.

The Pavelic's NDH, as present events demonstrate, retained the Fascist spirit for a long time, and murdered from April 1941 to April 1945 44,000 children from infants to 14-year old. It is definitely known about 22,000 youngsters what their names were, who their parents were, where and when they were born, where and when they perished, whose hands held the daggers that extinguished their young lives.

The following pages are only fragments from the voluminous documentary material relating to the mass killing of children. When April 10, 1941 the NDH was proclaimed under the auspices of Hitler's Army, a plan for the "definitive solution of the Serbian question" had already been prepared. Official Croats, ministers and functionaries made public proclamations to the effect that the new Croatia decided to remove from its territory all those who were not born Croats. The head of the NDH Ante Pavelic whose word was law, on April 4, 1941 stated: "All the weeds which the hated enemy hand planted will be uprooted from the Independent NDH".

Dr. Mile Budak, Minister for Education and Religion and one of the most influential persons in the Pavelic entourage, on July 8, 1941 in Vukovar: "Some of the Serbs we win kill, others deport, and the remainder convert to the Catholic faith and so transform them into Croats".

Milovan Zanjic, one of the Ustashi legislators, stated at a rally in Nova Gradiska on May 30, 1941: "This has to be the land of Croats and no body else and there is no method that we will fall to use as Ustashi to make this land truly Croat and to cleanse it from the Serbs". Dionisije Juricevic, Chief of the religious section in the Government of the NDH, stated in a sermon in a village called Staza near Sunja: "In this country no one else can live except Croats and whoever refuses to be converted will see what will happen to him."

It is not a sin today to kill even a child of 7 years but who is an obstacle to our Ustashi movement. Do not think that someone in a priest's robes can not take a machine gun into his hands and annihilate everything even in a cradle, everything that is against Ustashi state and authority".

Viktor Gutic, the most notorious representative of the Ustashi NDH, in Bosanska Krajina during May and June 1941 held a series of speeches in Banja Luka, Prijedor, Sanski Most, Kotor Varos, Prnjavor, Bosanska Gradiska, Kozarac and in other places. On May 30, 1941 he said in Prijedor: "These Serbian rabble whom the Turks brought to Bosnia our Croat state will immediately expedite into Serbia, some by rail and others down the Sava river, without a boat. The undesirable elements will be uprooted so that no trace is left of them and all that can remain is a bad memory of their presence. All the Serbian vermin of 15 years and upwards we will destroy and place all younger children in cloisters and make good Catholics out of them".

In circular letter No. 1 sent out by the Directorate for the Revival of the NDH on June 24, 1941 it is stated: "The deportation of Serbs must be ruthlessly accomplished. Arrests and internment must continue night and day. The arrested person must be told to get ready within 30 minutes. The property is confiscated and placed at the disposal of the Directorate. Wherever possible whole families must be arrested. No pity should be shown to the aged, women and children". The first mortal shots were fired by the Ustashi on April 28, 1941 at 234 members of the Serbian nationality from the villages of Gudovac and Brezovica near Bjelovar.

This was the signal which was later used to turn many Serbian villages and towns in Slavonia, Srem, Banija, Kordun, Lika, Northern Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina into execution grounds for the death of children who were still in their mothers' wombs. The Ustashi crime in the village of Blagaj in the environs of Beljun, marked the beginning of genocide in Kordun. From 6-9 May 1941 the killing lasted with 520 men, women and children murdered in the most cruel way. All these victims were killed by being hit over the head.

In mid-June 1941 the Ustashi launched the extermination of the Serbian population in villages surrounding Livno. From Donji and Gornji Rujani, Odzak and Listina alone 218 persons were killed and thrown into the Rzani Dolac pit.

In July 1941 Serbian families were rounded up in Livno and Vrlika with the promise that the Croat authorities will re-settle them in Serbia. More than 300 men, women and children believed this promise but were killed in Koprivnica forest near Bugojno. The Ustashi committed unprecedented acts of brutality before they finally killed their victims. Victims' hands and legs were cut, their eyes gouged. Ustashi severed the heads of small children and threw these heads into their mothers laps. One woman, Dobrila, the wife of merchant Ugljesa Bajl, had a five-month old baby removed from her womb. Ten-year old Vesna Mitrovic was raped by the Ustashi in front of her mother and family.

Similar fates were experienced by Serbian families in the villages of Golinjevo and Celjebic. The former were thrown into pits on the hill called Tusnica and the latter were hurled into a deep abyss called Bikusa in the Liskovac woods.

In this way the Ustashi killed 1,243 Serbs including 370 children in the Livno area in the course of 1941. The summer months of 1941 in Herzegovina were marked by mass Ustashi slaughters of the Serbs in the environs of Nevesinje, Gacko, Bilece, Trebinje and Chapljina at which time 2,291 adults and 567 children were killed. On the night of June 4, 1941 the Ustashi murdered 140 people in the village of Korito near Gacko and threw them into its 30 meters deep. In the area of Trebinje the Fourth Ustashi Regiment committed numerous crimes and threw all their victims into deep pits. In one village alone, Cavse in Popovo Polje, the Ustashi slaughtered 40 children.