On 27 July 1941, a Yugoslav Partisan-led uprising began in the area of Drvar and Bosansko Grahovo.[3] It was a coordinated effort from both sides of the Una River in the territory of southeastern Lika and southwestern Bosanska.[4] It succeeded in transferring key NDH territory under rebel control.[4]
Parishioners of the Catholic parish in Drvar went on a pilgrimage near Knin on 26 July 1941. The massacre occurred in village of Trubar, 18 km from Drvar, where local Serb rebels (either ChetnikorYugoslav Partisan) stopped a train at Vaganj station, separating and killing the pilgrims who were returning from Knin on 27 July. Murdered pilgrims, among whom was a German Roman Catholic priest, Waldemar Maximilian Nestor, were thrown into the pit of Golubnjača. Shortly afterwards massacres occurred in surrounding villages.[5][6] Some sources cite over 300 fatalities, yet many of the bodies that were thrown into deep caves, have yet to be fully exhumed.[7]
One of the witnesses of the massacre was a Partisan, Stevo Babić, who wrote that a group of rebels [clarification needed] had executed train passengers at Golubnjača.[8] According to Croatian scholar Blanka Matković, the Yugoslav Partisans were responsible for the massacre.[unreliable source?]
The Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced in November 2015 that exhumations of bodies from the pit of Golubnjača were carried out and that these are the bodies of pilgrims killed in July 1941. Bodies were buried in priests' tomb in Banja Luka. Franjo Komarica, Bishop of Banja Luka, requested from the Office an investigation of the crime.[9][10]
^Dizdar, Zdravko; Sobolevski, Mihajlo (1999). Prešućivani četnički zločini u Hrvatskoj i Bosni i Hercegovini: 1941-1945. Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest. ISBN9789536491285.
