Very rarely in the history of mankind did knives meet, intended solely to kill unarmed people. The most common, since the Stone Age, were sacrificial blades, with the help of which they killed people on the altars of various gods. But during the Second World War, a special blade was invented, which for several years of its existence was able to break the records of ancient sacrificial knives. This Serbosek is a knife of Croatian Ustashes, about which we will tell you today.
What did the serbosek look like?
Serbosek called the special form of the blade, worn on the palm. The word itself can be translated from Croatian as “serborez”, i.e. special knife to kill the Serbs. By the way, not only Serbs were killed with these knives, for the sake of their German masters, the Croatian Ustashi slaughtered thousands of Jews and Gypsies in concentration camps.
This is not just a homemade product, produced by some handicraft workshop, everything was official. An order for Serboreza was placed by Ante Pavelic, the head of Croatia at the factory in Solingen. For the Germans, it was not difficult to make such a knife, before that they produced a similar agricultural knife, with the help of which the peasants gathered harvest, or rather knitted sheaves on the field.
The history of the appearance of the instrument of execution.
The first specific knives appeared in Croatia during the Second World War. Then the government urgently needed a weapon with the help of which it was possible to destroy prisoners without spending much time, effort and precious ammunition on it.
History is silent about who first decided to use such blades for executions, but according to eyewitness accounts, Croatian ustashi began to use peasant knives for tying sheaves at the beginning of the war.
The reason here lies not only in the desire to save ammunition or the incredible cruelty of the Croats. Just historically, the Serbs and Croats hated each other, and believed that the enemy is not worthy of dying from military weapons, like a real man. But to kill a peasant knife, the blade of which did not even cut the livestock, but only knit sheaves - it meant to express all his contempt for the enemy.
When the death camps in Croatia were launched, the Pontifer of Croatia from 1941 to 1945, Ante Pavelic, announced a competition to create better and more effective weapons for the destruction of prisoners.
In his opinion, the killing of the Serbs went too slowly, the executioners simply could not cope with their work.
Someone suggested using a peasant knife to kill sheaves, especially as some Ustashi snakes used it in punitive operations against the Serbian people. Pavelych liked this idea, and he gave the nod to the production of this terrible weapon for his executioners.
Until now, few surviving prisoners of Croats recall with horror the bloody amusements of the Serbian executioners. Those staged a real competition, which was strongly encouraged by the government. Petar Brzits was unanimously recognized as the most "skillful" executioner, who slaughtered 1360 Serb prisoners with a Serbosek overnight, for which he received a personalized watch.
The second life of the bloody blade
During the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Serbosek killing tradition was revived by Croatian nationalists. They actively used these blades to destroy the Serbs throughout the country. But the executioners did not take into account that now there is no powerful Germany behind their backs, and the Serbs will not allow themselves to be cut so easily. So Serboseki (or Croatian) actively used by all parties to the combat conflict.
Currently, Serboreza can be found in museums dedicated to the Second World War. Many such blades remain in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Many Croatian nationalists are still trying to get themselves Serbosek, which they considered to be a symbol of the struggle for the freedom of Croatia.
This is the sad story of this seemingly peasant knife.