PLEASE NOTE: This book contains graphic description ... - HUNSOR

piece of land, there are three rows of mass graves of twenty by twenty meters each. They musthave been dug by those who followed, when the enormous pit was full. The partisans tried tomask the noise of the guns and the death cries by sounding the air raid siren. Without guns, itwas impossible for the Hungarians to help their family and friends or fellow Hungarians. Theneighborhood counts five mass grave sites.According to some, there were two thousand Hungarians from Szabadka to have beeninterred beside the old hospital. According to the Priest as many as seven thousand were slain.It is generally known in Szabadka that the executions were led by Strazsakovics Blasko.He is responsible for the death of those massacred innocently.The writer Karoly Dudas and the film maker Zoltan Siflis asked Strazsakovics Blasko tobe interviewed before a camera. Blasko, to mitigate his past crimes, was willing to show his faceand answer questions directly.124Many still believe that he was at the time the military commander in Szabadka, master oflife and death. In fact he was the commissar of the police that had just come into being. As acommissar, he was subordinate to the police commander and his deputy. It is true that his wordalways decided matters.Eugene Nyaradi the police commander, had a Rusyn conscience despite his Hungarianname. His deputy was Tomilica. As a member of the committee for the liberation of the people,he was charged with the task directly by General Ivan Rukovina and Major Pavle Gerencsevics.Their headquarters were the previously mentioned hated and much feared Yellow House.Strazsakovics held the OZNA responsible for the unlawful acts. He, the politicalcommissar of the local police said that he was uninformed of the activities of the OZNA. Hesaid that he did not even know the names of the people involved.Strazsakovics gives the following explanation of his last knowledge of the mass death of theHungarians:"One morning I was going to my office, and I heard loud noise in the building. The guardsaluted and I asked him why all the noise. He said the arrested people were being noisy. I madehim open the door of the hall. As the door opened, the people began to swarm towards meshouting; "Blasko, Blasko, Balazs, help."; all of them wanted to talk to me at once. I knew manyof them, and many of them knew me. There and then I let all go free without asking thecommanders for permission. Later Eugene Nyaradi came up to me saying, "Blasko, why did youlet those people go?" I said to him "They committed no political crime. There was among thereleased Hungarians Anti Odor, commander of a Battalion under the Hungarian Commune. in1919. You were not from here, you can't know these people." He was younger than me, hardlytwenty two; I was thirty at the time. "Most these people would have said in 1941 `you bloodySerb` or `stop kidding me you lingo tongue` as some said such things to me too. We were not todeal with such people.Not much later the town commander, Milos Tadijin, sent for me; he had a colonel calledJovanovics with him. They asked me why I let the enemy go free, when there were some amongthem who had been bemedaled by the Hungarians in World War I. "What do you want", I said,"you could get such medals for a sip of whisky. My father had a sackful of them up in the attic."