A memorial service was held on Wednesday for the commander of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, Gen. Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, on the occasion of the 73rd anniversary of his death.
The memorial service, which the vice-president of the Movement for the Renewal of the Kingdom of Serbia Vojislav Mihailović organized for his grandfather, was celebrated by clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the presence of supporters of the Ravna Gora Movement which was founded by General Mihailović.
Academic Matija Bećković has said that “sooner or later” it will have to be found out where Mihailović is buried.
“A journalist told me that there were probably around 15 people in Belgrade who knew where his grave was, but that this was still a state secret. This will have to come to light so that we could come to light as well,” Bećković told SRNA.
Historian Bojan Dimitrijević has said that July 17 is one of the more important dates in the history of the Serbian people in WWII and in general in the 20th century.
“This is a sad date when the leader of the Serbian, that is, Yugoslav national royal resistance movement was killed after a trial that was conducted in June-July, 1946,” Dimitrijević told SRNA.
Dimitrijević has said that on that day /July 17, 1946/ not only Mihailović but other representatives of the Serbian national side in WWII were killed in a still unknown location.
“The past showed us that victors managed to hide this as they were afraid of a cult of Gen. Mihailović and they were aware that he was perceived positively by the Serbian people,” he said.
According to him, this is why victors managed to hide where he is buried despite the fact that a commission tasked with determining the place and time of his execution was active ten years ago.
Dimitrijević has said that “not a single appropriate indicator of that place has been discovered nor did any relevant witness appear.”
“We still feel that that which Udba member Slobodan Krstić Uča wrote, namely, that Mihailović was executed together with others on Ada Ciganlija on July 17, 1946, is the only relevant thing that we know,” Dimitrijević said.
Mihailović was the Army General and the Chief of Staff of the Ravna Gora Movement which he founded in 1941 after Germany’s attack on Serbia, at the beginning of WWII.
The Movement was also called the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland.
Mihailović was born on April 26, 1893, in Ivanjica, and was executed, as chroniclers claim, on July 17, 1946, in an unknown location in Belgrade.
The Church Ružica is the oldest church in Belgrade, with chandeliers made from bullet casings and officer’s sabers.
The church was a gunpowder warehouse which was turned into a military church in around 1867.
The exact year of the construction or who built it to replace a church destroyed during the Ottoman rule is not known, says the church’s website.
Source: srna
Photo: espreso.rs
