Years before the war broke out we had the feeling that there are certain
disagreements between the republics of the former Yugoslavia. The more
developed republics expressed their indignation mostly because the profits
made by them were used to help improve the living standard of the poorer
republics. This all, of course, governed by the central authorities.
In 1988 the nationalist rallies under Milosevic started all over Serbia
and Montenegro. They demanded the unification of the two republics and
the "Restoration of the Serbian National Unity".
In 1989 the democratisation process in Slovenia and Croatia was started. In January 1990 the Slovenes and Croats left the Yugoslavian Communist League. The first democratic elections were held in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.
Even before the multi-party elections the flags were waved all around
the country, either with or without the red star. The people elected their
"ideal" leaders. Between the two biggest republics, apart from
the fact that they both asserted nationalist programs, a disagreement rose
on the issue of the borders of the republics. Croatia rallied for its borders
first thought of in 1943 and in fact these were the ones that were
later declared official. First it wanted to proclaim its independence on
the basic grounds of democracy and then to start a co-operation between
the republics on certain issues that were important for each. The Serb
nationalists did not accept this. They in fact felt that they lost positions.
No one can question the fact that during the previous regime Serbians were
in a disproportionate majority in the governing authorities. In the army,
in the police, in the courts they held the leading positions. The new Croatian
system wanted to correct it all and wanted a proportionate representation.
At this point the "Revolution of the Dolts" started. Serbian
paramilitary troops closed highways and other roads. In the Knin area the
first clashes between them and the Croatian police occurred.
Babic and his mates organised a military resistance claiming that the "Croatian
fascists" are threatening to exterminate the Serbian population of
Croatia. The main reason for this came from the Serbian Socialist Party.
Milosevic and his followers sanctified the memorandum of the Serbian Academy.
In this the plan arose that a Greater-Serbia has to be built for the time
has come for this nation to dominate Yugoslavia because their majority
and "historic past" gives them all rights to do so.
We did see that those wearing cockades with their dolt-revolution have
started to redraw the borders in the Serbian populated parts of Croatia.
At once the Belgrade monsters appeared: the Draskovic, the Opacic, then
the Babic, the Martinic and the Hadjic-followers. Map drawings a la Serbian
began. The war of propaganda started and soon turned into an armed conflict
with tragic consequences.
We look at June 26, 1991 as the first day of the attack on Laslovo, when the chetniks of the surrounding villages fired bullets against the Croatian police at the village borders. Our only sin was that we supported the independent Croatia and democracy.
With the assistance of the Yugoslav National Army the surrounding villages grew bold in attacking the neighbouring Hungarian village. From towards Silas, Ada, Palaca, Markusica and Gabos they attacked those with whom they once planned the future of the region. They wanted the wealth of Laslovo, the land, the house, the machinery, the furniture.
The population, like the ancestors had throughout history, rose to defend the village. The examples were set, the men of the village fought in one army or the another: the Austro-Hungarian, Hungarian, in the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in the army of the Croatia, in Tito's army and in today's army of the Croatian Republic. They were always battle-hardened soldier: voluntarily or not, but they took part in all the European wars of our century. The uniform could change, the heart never.
Although the enemy had the majority not only in arms but also men, the brave soldiers and volunteers defended the village and the Southern line of Osijek for 152 days, fighting their life or death war while more than 15,000 missiles fell on the village. Just as Vukovar is the symbol of Croatia, so is Laslovo the symbol of Osijek. While Laslovo was holding the Southern line, the defenders of Osijek could organise the defence strategies of the town.
At the end of August first mainly the elderly, the children and the women left Laslovo. The village could be defended until November 24, 1991. When the resistance was already impossible, and the enemy wholly surrounded the village, escape had to be considered. The only solution was to break through the encirclement. The break-through started at 5 p.m. on November 23, 1991. After a walk of 12 hours, through water reaching up to the waist, through muddy cornfields, at dawn on the next day the defenders of the village reached a free area, Ivanovac, just a few kilometres away, in the direction of Osijek.
The people of Laslovo had to achieve something superhuman. The successful plan cost human life. Ten guardist fell on the battleground, who could not properly be buried because there was no time for a funeral. Seven inhabitants remained in the village, whom we know nothing of. The village has 21 war deads, among them five civilians. Four of our soldiers had been captured, we know nothing of them until this day. Laslovo put up the stoutest resistance. After the successful break-through the trained soldiers joined the defenders of Osijek and went to trench again for the defence of the homeland.
On November 24, 1991 the enemy captured Laslovo and since then there is no connection to the village whatsoever. We could not save anything from the village. The land, the house and the machinery were left there and now we are waiting for the donations of the Red Cross poverty-stricken. The video recordings and the pictures show the evidence of the village being completely destroyed. No one lives there.
About these horrific events Eduardo Flores Spanish journalist wrote
in his work "Dirty War". He was the commander of the First International
Unit, defending Laslovo.
I am now going to quote the part of this book which describes the epilogue
of Laslovo.
"Marin, urpi, Babo, Edward, Cigo and Sÿndor, whom we lost
a month ago, on that November 25, when in a sad fog covered Osijek I swore
on your memory to return to Laslovo, clean the gardens from hatred, plant
new and strong trees instead of those that were torn apart by the canister,
I will live remembering you and I will try to grow up to you, Johnny and
I go down to the banks of the Drava and I can finally cry.
The others are talking...
Ernestinovo falls. The defenders of Laslovo only get to know this when a group of young guardists, who went to Osijek to rest, hardly escape from running into the federal tanks, the three T-55s standing on the main road near the motel. Everything is silent. Around noon the bombing of the Hungarian village begins, the first major offensive is launched from the direction of Palaca, in the sector defended by the Prvi Internacionalni Vod (First International Unit). Marin Galic dies.
At 3 p.m. the last telephone call between Glavas and Pista:
Glavas:" Hold on guys! We will break the encirclement and we'll go
to Laslovo. You'll get munitions. Surrender is out of question!"
Pista: "Are you Ok? Are you crazy? What sort of a surrender are talking of? To whom would we surrender ourselves?"
There are no more telephone talks between Osijek and Laslovo. From Ivanovac
the connection succeeds two more times to the encircled village. Pista
walks around each and every defensive position, and gives two hand-granates
to every soldier. The words of Glavas are in his mind: "Surrender
is out of question". Pista thinks: "O Lord, I gave Death
to them!"
The chetniks of Palaca, through the high-performing loudspeakers of the army repeat without stop: "Surrender yourselves! You will get the treatment declared in the Hague Treaty!"
Nonsense! Everybody in Laslovo knows exactly that on the other side the grinded knives of the slaughterers of Vukovar are waiting for them: surrender is out of the question.
A command is issued to save munitions for no one can be sure whether the troops from Osijek will be able to cut through the enemy lines, and no one can know when the Serbs will be ready to show faces in an attack.
After the first attempt of Wednesday it seems that they will think twice if to attack again. Only in the sector of the F.I.U. their losses were around 11-15 men.
Now they settle to shooting our positions like never before, but the
Croatian guardists are already used to the earth move under their feet,
and the whistle of the high-calibred missiles is not strange for them either.
But these last missile attacks have their effect on them as well. If earlier
two Katjushas beltched forth the fire on Laslovo, then now six, not counting
the trench mortars, and the cannons of different calibres, the numbers
of which were also increased.
The situation is unchanged. The bombing continues, the physical as well as the mental: the shouting loudspeakers repeat the song of the Serbs, "Mars na Drinu" (March on the Drina) many dozen times a day. This is the anthem of the chetniks since the Second World War.
They launch an attack on the 23rd. 28 tanks start from Palaca, on the street named after that village, towards the school. Two of them explode as they strike a mine, a Serbian column attacks the railway station, the defenders retreat to better defence positions. Babo, urpi and Edward die, Cigo later gets wounded. No panic. The Serbs stop, they don't dare continue their attack. They settle to placing their snipers by the dozens in the captured houses and positions. No one knows exactly how many aggressors are stopped by the mines.
The plan of evacuations arises, but only Koco and Pista talk about it. Only the two of them know the time and the place of the meeting, no one else knows about the command of the evacuation of our troops. At 5 p.m., on November 24 Pista is the leader of the first group. They meet at the end of Vendelovo Street and start on their way to the Vrbik, 120 men, all of them healthy and ready to fight to open way for the second group lead by Koco, whose exercise is to carry the wounded and the few elderly civilians who remained in the village. Pista's group is led by a local man, who knows the ditches and the whole area like his own palm, and sometimes they get as close to the Serbs as 10 meters. They reach the Bobota channel, which is rather a river, they cross it and then Pista switches the radio on:
"Horthy is calling the Head [Glavas]... answer!"
"I can hear you, Horthy. Are you alive? Have you crossed? Where are
you?!"
The chetniks disturb the transmission...
"Sokol and Tica are calling Horthy..."
Pista is distrustful, he asks them to identify themselves:
"Horthy is calling Sokol. Tell me which brother of ours died
at the White Barracks?"
"Bruder Breki [Brother Kermit]"
Pista breathes through:
"Lead us..."
The group continues its way. "General Zhukov" joins the conversation.
"Go towards the big light. Ivanovac is Ok."
The big light is the electricity plant between Antunovac and Divos. The first hour of November 24 passed. The guys of the first group reached into safety, to Ivanovac.
Half an hour after Horthy the second group lead by Koco, left, carrying the more than twenty, who are wounded. It is 5:30 p.m., November 24. Even the wounded are silent, no one utters a word, no one groans. There are not enough people to carry the wounded. The painful decision of leaving behind the dead is born, there is no time to bury them. Marin and Petar Duric are left between the ruins of the church, Cigo rests in the cellar where the command of the defence used to work, the others all around the place, mostly where the hostile canisters or bullets killed them.
Koco and his ghost-like company leaves the village, the hostile tanks got as close to them from the Kozarceva and Vendelovo streets as 200 meters. They walk for long hours in complete silence, until they reach the Bobota channel. The soldiers take their belts off, fasten the wounded and carry them to the other bank of the channel.
They are already near Divos when the radio says: "Go towards the big light". It is 5 am past, when they reach Ivanovac, the ambulance takes the wounded, and the others lay down to bed wherever they can find a place in the village. The wounded of the F.I.U.: Aleixandre Fernandez, Ognien Filipancic-Schubert, Géza Szabó and Ciro Nikolac."
A foreign photographer who accompanied the Serb troops after the capture of Vukovar describes the battle of Laslovo as follows:
" Almost all the way through I was close, very close to the chiefs of staff of Zeljko Raznatovic "Arkan" and thus I was convinced of the brutality of the Belgrade criminal's paramilitary troops: they executed many Croatian prisoners unconcerned, in front of our eyes, without showing any signs of emotion. We left Vukovar behind and only the regular troops of the Yugoslav National Army stayed there; before we would have reached Palaca, near Laslovo, the mainstream of the troops, to which we, journalists belonged, crossed Borovo, then turned to Trpinja, then went to Bobota where a talk was held with the local chetniks, from whom some 50 joined Arkan's troops. The next village was Silas and we reached Palaca through Kôrôgy on the afternoon of November 19. On the 20th we got to know that the troops of the Yugoslav National Army cut the main road between Laslovo and Ernestinovo, and dispersed the "ustashas" from the latter village. They encircled Laslovo and I remember Arkan saying that evening that they "will plunge their knife into all the Croatian and Hungarian ustashas and into the fascists of the International Unit". I have had some information about a partly foreign unit fighting on the Croatian side in Laslovo. A reconnaissance unit reported that the "internationals" are right facing us, on the other side of the railway line dividing the two villages. Arkan, looking at a map, gave the command to concentrate the attacks on this sector, to try to capture the foreign volunteers, towards whom he several times expressed more than a mad hatred. We were not allowed to accompany him to the last houses of Palaca, where positions were held next to the railways. We saw many officers of the Yugoslav National Army coming out and going into the house which was reserved for the body of Arkan's troops, and someone even noted that "the army allowed our commander to lead the last attack against the ustashas."
Hours passed and we could only be sure of the artillery fight going on between the Serbs and the defenders of the encircled village. We were locked in a cellar, from where, with respect to "our safety" we were not allowed out, because the granates of the Croats fell everywhere. We saw two ambulance cars arrive, in which six seriously wounded persons were taken away.
Until Friday, November 22, everything remained the way it has been, it hardly changed. Ambulance cars came to take away the wounded, but more and more Serb soldiers arrived to further strengthen Arkan's populous troops. The army only bombed the Croatian positions, as we came to know it, from Markusica, Ada, Silas and Palaca itself, with an uncountable number of artillery batteries. On Friday a talk was held between high-ranked officials of the Yugoslav National Army and Arkan's men, after which we were informed that the first attack will be launched on the next day to measure the forces of the Croats and that they will capture Laslovo the same day. Even in the cellar we could hear the loudspeakers of the Serbs urging the Croats to surrender. The first attack was launched between the road connecting the two villages and the railway station of Laslovo, we did not see it, but from the fierceness of the fusillade we could understand that the Croats do not have surrender in their minds.
The attack was paused that day, because the losses were higher than expected and the Serbs looked surprised at the number of mines planted by their enemies, and these mines were planted right in the direction of the attack. From the point where we were, until six o'clock that evening we saw 29 Serbian corpses, they all died during the first attack. They decided to start an attack on the next morning, this time with tanks and a strong artillery support. They did so. On Sunday, November 24, at 1 p.m. we were allowed to go somewhat closer to Laslovo, but the action was then stopped because the Croats still had many tanks in the village, and it would only be restarted once they are sure of a complete co-ordination with the army troops in Ada and the Vrbik forest, in order to be able to launch the decisive offensive from all three directions.
On Monday, November 25, at 7 am the Serbs launched an attack and at noon Arkan's co-ordinator came to tell us to go and take photos of the dead ustashas and he also said that they captured the whole village. We climbed the jeep and in a total silence - there are no more shots to be heard - we reach Laslovo. Right after the railway lines we turn to the right, and near what once used to be the railway station, towards the left of the road, I spot lifeless bodies. Federal soldiers dig a ditch. Two bodies have black clothes on them, the third is covered by a white flag with a red cross about whom they say he was an "English fascist mercenary", the other two are a Muslim and a hardly 20-year-old local Hungarian boy. We reach Arkan who looks angry, but I cannot find out why. We ask about the prisoners. "There are no prisoners", they say, "they escaped". It seems impossible to me that a whole garrison could escape through the enemy lines, otherwise, we did believe that there are major Croatian forces in the village. Arkan's two hands are holding his head and he shouts hysterically: "Those ... " and starts crying. While standing next to him I can see many Serbian bodies being loaded on a lorry. Some of them are totally torn apart, most presumably because of the mines, but on most of them bullet-shots can be seen. The co-ordinator says: "It's the fault of the soldiers", but I don't understand what he is talking about. "We were convinced that the ustashas are in the village and the attacking three columns shot each other and all the dead whom you can see here are the result of a bad co-ordination with the federals." We count some 50-60 bodies there. We are led somewhere which could have been the basis of the "internationals"; the Serb volunteers pose self-satisfied in front of the captured flags and they say they had liquidated the commander of the international unit, "his name was Edwardo", they add, and point at the Englishman's body. The village is totally destroyed, I can see no unharmed houses, the picture is the same as what we had seen in Vukovar...
Later we are taken to the centre of the village, they show us more Croatian bodies, I can see the corpse of two women and an old civilian man, and seven soldiers. Arkan cannot be seen, and in the air one can feel the atmosphere of defeat, and not that of joy, which would be "logical" after taking this position about which we had heard the Serbs speak as "one of the most battle-hardened positions in Eastern-Slavonia".
More than 54 days passed since the battle in this previously unknown
little Hungarian village in Croatian Slavonia started, and this meant four
months of fear, death and destruction.
Each meeting with any of them in later months makes us ask one question,
which is unsaid, but can be read in the eyes of our friends: Will we return...?
Laslovo has 21 dead heroes, among them 5 civilians:
Drazen Kis (aged 21) died on August 1, 1991
Darko Seklic (29)
August 1, 1991
Rudolf Francic (35)
September 15, 1991
József Kuzman (28)
October 15, 1991
Ljubomir Preradovic (34) November
6, 1991
Árpád Kelemen (19)
November 23, 1991
János Egyed (28)
November 23, 1991
József Pavocsics (22)
December 6, 1991
László Kuzman (24)
January 1, 1992
Mihály Dezsõ (43)
May 17, 1992
József Szolovics (27)
July 1, 1992
Damir Ludas (33)
January 11, 1993
Slobodan Kajtaz (39)
July 8, 1993
Lajos Váci (52)
January 17, 1994
Josip Tóth (52)
November 5, 1994
Drago Takács (35)
May 29, 1995
Civilians:
István Bajusz (70)
August 20, 1991
Lajos Csurman (57)
September 4, 1991
Duro Sukic (67)
September 4, 1991
Dávid Gyökemati (58)
October 2, 1991
Sándor Fekete (59)
November 12, 1991
As soldiers of the Croatian National Guard the following people died in the defence of Laslovo (not local inhabitants):
Samo Pajtler, Zorko Zivkovic, Zdravko Sabljak, Antun Gustin,
Sinisa Fabijanic, Slavko Nemet, Ivica Biber, Josip Bogdan, Sándor
Berente, Marin Galic, Petar Durin, Josip Greksa,
Edward White, Dragan Devetak, Nedan Tutundzic, Ivica Skoric, Stjepan
Jamnic
Four of our soldiers were taken as prisoners, until this very day we have no news of them:
István Kovács
József Albert
István Ember
Vlado Kupresak
Those who remained in the village and were declared missing:
Etelka Bece, Lajos Baronyi, Julianna Bece, Lajos Nánik, Julianna
Egyed, Sándor Fülöp
56 people became disabled. Some 50 people might have ended their life earlier because of the hard life as a refugee and the hopelessness of returning home, and they were buried in different parts of the world.
Those living in refuge are living for returning home, for we owe with this to those who gave their lives for the homeland.
Last updated: March 19, 1998
szentlaszlo@compunet.hu Dorka