History of Kragujevac

WWII and the Kragujevac massacre

Kragujevac underwent a number of ordeals, the worst probably having been the October massacre during World War II. The Kragujevac massacre was the slaughter of 2,300 to 5,000 civilians—mostly Serbs and Roma— by Nazi soldiers between 19–21 October 1941. StanišaBrkić, curator of The Museum of 21 October, published a book in 2007 where he listed names and personal data of 2,796 victims. The killings went on from October 19 to October 21, 1941, in retaliation for a partisan attack on German soldiers. 50 people were killed if a German soldier was wounded, while 100 were slaughtered if a German soldier was killed. Among the killed was a whole generation of boys taken directly from schools. A monument for the executed pupils is a symbol of the city. This atrocity has inspired a poem called "KrvavaBajka" ("Bloody Fairy Tale") by DesankaMaksimović, a well known Serbian poet from the former Yugoslavia.