Petar "Pero" Brzica
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| Born | Petar Brzica 1917 |
| Disappeared | 1945 (aged 28) Independent State of Croatia |
| Nationality | Croatian |
| Occupation(s) | Ustaše Lieutenant, Nazi collaborator and war criminal |
| Known for | Mass murder during the Holocaust |
Petar "Pero" Brzica (born ca. 1917)[1][2][3] was a Croatian Franciscan of the "Order of Friars Minor" who became a mass murderer during the Ustaše regime. He committed his atrocities at the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II. He personally murdered up to 1,360 inmates at the camp.[4]
Before the war, Brzica was a scholarship student at the Franciscan college of Široki BrijeginHerzegovina and a member of The Great Brotherhood of Crusaders, an organization part of the Croatian Catholic movement. He spent some time studying law in Zagreb where he became a Ustaše Youth member, later becoming a member of the fascist Ustaša government (1941–45) and one of the guards in the Jasenovac concentration camp.[5]
As a member of Ustaša, he held the rank of Lieutenant.[6][7] He won a contest in which he used a curve-bladed knife, also called a srbosjek ("Serb-cutter"), to kill newly arrived concentration camp prisoners.[8][9][10][11] Brzica boasted of winning the contest by killing the largest number of prisoners – 1,360 people.[12][13] Other sources set Brzica's "record" at a lower number, between 670[14] and 1,100.[15]
Petar Brzica, 25 years old, a Franciscan of the "Order of Friars Minor", a scholar from Široki Brijeg monastery, the Ustaše captain, who, according to the testimony of Ustaše Mile Friganović, in one night, on 29 August 1942, killed 1360 internees...
"“Franciscan Pero Brzica, Ante Zrinušić, Sipka and I waged a bet on who would slaughter more prisoners that night. The killing started and already after an hour I slaughtered much more than they did. It seemed to me that I was in seventh heaven. I had never felt such bliss in my life. And already after a few hours I slaughtered 1,100 people, while the others only managed to kill 300 to 400 each. And then, when I was experiencing the greatest ecstasy I noticed an elderly peasant standing and peacefully and calmly watching me slaughter my victims and them dying in the greatest pain. That look of his shook me: in the midst of the greatest ecstasy I suddenly froze and for some time couldn't make a single move. And then I walked up to him and found out that he was some Vukasin [Mandrapa] from the village of Klepci near Capljina whose whole family had been killed, and who was sent to Jasenovac after having worked in the forests. He spoke this with incomprehensible peace which affected me more than the terrible cries around us. All at once I felt the wish to disrupt his peace with the most brutal torturing and, through his suffering, to restore my ecstasy and continue to enjoy the inflicting of pain.
“I singled him out and sat him down on a log. I ordered him to cry out: ‘Long live Poglavnik [Fuehrer] Pavelić!', or I would cut his ear off. Vukasin was silent. I ripped his ear off. He didn't say a word. I told him once again to cry out ‘Long live Pavelić!' or I would tear off the other ear too. I tore off the other ear. ‘Yell: “Long live Pavelić!”, or I'll tear off your nose.' And when I ordered him for the fourth time to yell ‘Long live Pavelić!' and threatened to take his heart out with a knife, he looked at me, that is, somehow through me and over me into uncertainty and slowly said: ‘Do your job, child.' [Radi ti, dijete, svoj posao.] After that, these words of his totally bewildered me. I froze, plucked out his eyes, tore out his heart, cut his throat from ear to ear and threw him into the pit. But then something broke within me and I could no longer kill that night ... Brzica won the bet because he had slaughtered 1,360 prisoners and I paid the bet without a word.” (Qtd. in The Role of the Vatican in the Breakup of the Yugoslav State, by Dr. Milan Bulajić, Belgrade, 1994: 156-57; from a January 1943, interview with Friganović by psychiatrist Dr. Nedo Zec, who was also an inmate at Jasenovac.)
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| Background |
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| Prelude |
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| Concentration camps |
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| Massacres |
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| Perpetrators |
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| Notable victims |
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| Armed resistance |
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| Humanitarianism |
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| Trials |
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| Bibliography |
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| Cultural depictions |
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| Aftermath |
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| Denial |
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