After the exhumation of the remains of two hundred people from the mass grave in Ovčara, more than 50 families are still searching for their loved ones, who, through the testimony of various witnesses, have information that their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, etc. were unfortunately last seen there. VUPIK’s farm turned into a torture and execution site.
Author
Tanja Belobrajdić
Some families supported their claim in the statements of Ovcara survivors, the available data show that thanks to the executioners and/or acquaintance with some of them, seven people were saved from Ovcara (one of them was killed the next day at Velepromet), and one the person escaped certain death by fleeing from a truck while being driven to be shot (later recaptured and taken to Serbian concentration camps), and some families learned of their loved ones’ last moments in a particularly difficult way during the Ovcara war crimes trial. when repentant witnesses described the brutal torture and killing of the wounded, veterans and civilians captured in the Vukovar hospital after the collapse of the city’s defences.
One of such painful testimonies was about the last moments of Damjan Samardžić, the first commander of the Vukovar Fairgrounds, known by the nickname Veliki bojler.
Witness E.Č .: “… From the bus to the entrance to the hangar, Chetniks and reservists were lined up in the courtyard, which had to be passed through. As we passed through that courtyard, we were all beaten. Another group of Chetniks greeted us in the hangar. In the hangar, I recognized some local Serbs who actively participated in the beating of civilians… When we passed the other group that beat us, I recognized Slavko Dokmanović (Vukovar mayor) in the hangar… See while Dokmanović was passing through the hangar, he kicked and kicked anyone he could reach. He was distraught and did not choose who and how to strike. A large water heater. They jumped on his chest with his feet as he lay on the floor, hitting his head on the concrete floor. After twenty minutes of physical abuse, Samardzic’s body remained lying on the concrete. Someone approached him and found that he had died as a result of the beatings he had received. ”
Damjan Samardžić was born on July 23, 1946 in Bogdanovci as the only child of Zora, b. Bekavac and Marko Samardzic. After losing his mother when he was less than two years old, father Marko remarries, so Damjan gets a younger sister, Stana. Damjana was already a child and will remain so for the rest of her life, adorned with a cheerful and cheerful nature. He loved company, had fun, played football, and later was a football referee and hunter. After a short marriage with Sofia from Osijek, Damjan married Nevenka in 1969. Tomaš, who gave birth to their two daughters, Zora in 1970, and Katica in 1972.
In the conversation, Damjan’s younger daughter Katica will remember her father with a smile: “Dad was like that, he never drank, but he loved fun, we used to talk about that type of people that he was a beer drinker. But he was good as bread, never he didn’t come if he didn’t have something for us. Mother and he divorced in 1980 when he started living with Vida Gašpar and with whom he had a son Marko, our half-brother. he also limped, as a young man he jumped from an old iron bridge and instead of in Vuk, he fell on the concrete, I remember a photo of him in plaster, all broken, but he was infinitely charming and people loved him. we resent and miss him terribly. ”
At the time when he moved from Bogdanovac to Sajmište, Damjan Samardžić had been working as a private haulier for years. In the early 1990s, he was one of the active participants in democratic changes, and already at the first signs of war he organized the defence of Sajmište, especially on the part between the two roads to the villages of Negoslavci and Petrovci, known as “Vašarište”. Since Samardzic enjoyed his unlimited trust, the then commander of the city’s defence, Tomislav Mercep, assigned him one of the radio stations, weapons for the defence of that part of the city and mines and explosives that he kept in his house.
After the founding of the National Guard Corps in Opatovac on June 15, 1991, since he proved to be an extremely successful and capable organizer, he became the logistics commander responsible for the procurement of food and equipment for the battalion, and equipment of facilities.
His comrade-in-arms, Ivan Anđelić Doktor, will state: “What Damjan did at that uncertain time, few people would have done, and that should be said. He made a small fair in his house, defended himself and exposed himself and After Damjan was activated in our unit in Opatovac, Vida took over the operation of the radio station that reported the movement of the army and their armoured vehicles. They should be acknowledged for that. ”
Although it is generally known that Damjan got the war nickname, it should be clarified that, joking on his own account, at a time when the defence of Sajmište was just being organized, he as the first commander of Sajmište and his deputy Zlatko Šutković, because of their own bellies, called themselves so, that is, “Large water heater” and “Small water heater”. Taking command of that part of the battlefield, on June 15, 1991, after Damjan Samardzic and Zlatko Sutkovic joined the National Guard Corps in Opatovac, Petar Kacic took the nickname “Middle Boiler” in their honour, and his deputy, then 24-year-old Miroslav Sučić, nickname – “Bojlerčić”.
Damjan Samardzic’s last responsible task was to keep captured, wounded enemy soldiers in the hospital. Namely, as time passed, the defence of the city weakened more and more with the lack of food, medicine and especially, ammunition and manpower, and the number of dead and wounded defenders became more and more difficult to control indignant defenders who wanted to approach captured enemy soldiers. The task of guarding them was entrusted to Damjan as a serious and authoritative man who was respected by the defenders, and he performed this task honourably until the JNA and the Chetniks entered the hospital. When he was captured, his wife Vida Gašpar, their ten-year-old son Marko Samardžić and stepson Zorislav Gašpar were with him in the hospital.
Zorislav Gašpar, for the Zoki family, for the Gašo friends, was born on March 14, 1973, in Vukovar as the first of Vida’s two children. Susac and Dragutin Gaspar. He attended Stjepan Supanc Elementary School, today Antun Bauer Elementary School, and after that he attended high school in today’s Vukovar high school, majoring in electrical engineering. Immediately after high school, he was sent to serve his military service in the then JNA, in Negotin, Serbia, from where he fled in June ’91. and immediately joined the defence of Vukovar, as a member of the National Guard Corps, that is, the 4th Battalion of the 3rd Brigade. In the battalion’s monograph, Gaša’s name will be written: “In mid-September, as the attacks in the Sajmište area intensified, Zorislav borrowed a group of 82 mm mortars. he attacked the part of the city where he also lived, he knew every street and house, he attended the targets so precisely that our scouts guided him exactly where they fell. They did not think that the enemy would listen to all this and that, because many in the city knew him, they would write him the death penalty. He survived the hell of Vukovar and the surrender in the hospital. ”
Vida Gašpar, who is seriously ill today, going on dialysis and hoping to find the remains of her son and husband before she died, said through tears: “I will never forgive myself for being left behind. My son was wounded in the back of the head and came to the hospital.” he and his husband wanted to go to the breakthrough, and I cried and begged them not to go, not to separate. And here, they separated us in the hospital, took them to Ovcara, tortured them there, and then killed them. he wants to say where they buried them so that both they and I can find our peace. I believe neighbour P.C. knows, but he won’t say, none of them want to say, and they were there and they know everything. I can’t see him with my eyes. ” .
When he was captured in the Vukovar hospital after the collapse of the city’s defences, deported to Ovčara where he was inhumanly tortured and then killed, Damjan Samardžić, husband, father and brother, was forty-five years old.
When, after the collapse of the city’s defences, he was captured as a wounded man in the Vukovar hospital, deported to Ovčara, where he was inhumanly tortured and then killed, Zorislav Gašpar, son and brother, was only eighteen years old.
The remains of Damjan Samardzic and his stepson Zorislav Gaspar have not yet been found to be buried with dignity. It is alleged that as the last group of prisoners at Ovcara, after being tortured, abused and killed, they were buried in a canal near the hangar. After some time, their bodies were removed from that canal and moved to another location, which is still being searched for without success.
English Translation, by Ivica Fonti,
taken from Croatian article published in direktno.hr
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