KOSOVSKA MITROVICA AND THE CATHOLIC PARISH OF ST MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR: EVIDENCE FROM THE APRIL 1942 REPORTS

Abstract

in Kosovska Mitrovica, sent at the end of April 1942 to the Ordinariate of the Belgrade Archdiocese. These were, in fact, his reports, addressed to the Ordinariate because, following the occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia/Serbia, the parish had come under its jurisdiction. (The Diocese of Skopje, to which the parish had belonged before the war, was territorially dismembered during the occupation by Germany, Bulgaria, and Italy, and by the supporters of so-called Greater Albania who joined Mussolini’s army). The content of the reports provides key data on this parish during the first year of the Second World War in Yugoslavia (1941-1942), hitherto unknown in historiography.

The letters are of primary importance because they describe, among other things, the wartime reality in Kosovska Mitrovica and its surroundings, viewed through the perspective of a Slovenian priest who then administered the parish. This is of particular significance for interpreting Serbian–Albanian relations of that period, since the descriptions come from a so-called independent angle, with an objectivity that should not be questioned, let alone disputed. They also contain descriptions of the Albanian population, with decidedly unflattering epithets, along with the recording of certain types of crimes committed against the local Serbian population. (“There are now few Orthodox Serbs, for they were killed by the Arnauts [Albanians], others fled, and the Arnauts [Albanians] burnt their houses...”). He further reported that he was unable to visit all his parishioners, stating that it was “dangerous to visit them” because of the Albanians! One of the reasons for his communication was also that the parish was on the verge of closure because its clergy – the so-called Slovenian Lazarists – were not receiving the financial resources needed for their most basic living needs. As a result of the war, monetary transactions in Quisling Serbia had ceased to function.

Finally, the reports give a review of how the parish community changed following the April War of 1941 on the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, so that the majority were Slovenes, along with some sixty Catholic families. It is estimated that the parish had about 1,500 Catholics before the war, who were mostly employed in nearby mines, but by early 1942 they had been reduced by at least a fifth. The decline was primarily due to Croats returning to their homeland, the newly founded Independent State of Croatia. At the time they did not realise what that creation would become, a state that would in time reveal its genocidal nature towards the Serbian, Jewish, and Roma populations.

It remains unclear how the Archbishop of Belgrade, Josip Ujčić, regarded the particularities of the parish of St Michael in Kosovska Mitrovica. He was certainly aware of the interreligious and interethnic dynamics in the town and its surroundings, above all the Albanians’ attitude towards the Serbian population. It is likely that he noticed similarities with events in the Independent State of Croatia, whose regime he appealed against in order to save the Serbian people from its manifold sufferings. Yet with regard to developments in Kosovo and Metohija, he had no one to appeal to...

Our text also comments on the works of the well-known Albanian historian Ali Hadri, a typical representative of the so-called “patriotic historiography” presented under the cloak of “brotherhood and unity” in communist Yugoslavia. In his interpretation of history, Hadri neglected – or deliberately ignored – certain important facts. These included not only the existence of the Catholic community in Kosovska Mitrovica, but also the crimes committed by his compatriots against their Serbian neighbours, with the aim of turning Kosovo and Metohija into an ethnically pure territory, dominated exclusively by the Albanian national corpus (a tendency increasingly visible in the present reality of Kosovo and Metohija, which is why our reminder of the aforementioned reports also carries contemporary relevance).