
Discretion is advised.
One of the most brutal poems ever written was about the Serbian genocide of WWII. Below is a gut wrenching excerpt from the poem "Jama" or "Pit" by Ivan Goran Kovačić (a half Croat half Jew) about the Ustase victims immense suffering.
"Blood is my daylight and darkness too.
Blessing of night has been gouged from my cheeks.
Bearing with it my more lucky sight.
Within those holes, for tears, fierce fire inflamed.
The bleeding socket as if for brain a balm –
While my bright eyes died on my own palm"
Ivan joined the Partisans to fight against the Ustase. He was killed by the Chetniks (a Serbian guerrilla group.)
Many victims in Ustase run camps did in fact have their eyes plucked out of them while they were still alive which is a fate too gruesome for us to imagine.
His death is described as follows: “Like in an ancient tragedy, the one who is most opposed to evil will most cruelly die from evil. The poet who raised his voice against the Ustashian killing of Serbian people had his throat cut by Serbian Chetniks….A few reliable witnesses confirm that Goran survived the hell of the fifth offensive, but when he returned to help his ill, left-behind, friend, Dr Simo Milošević, the fascists killed both the Croatian poet and the Serbian scholar without distinction. Fascism did not look on poets or scientists anywhere in the world as being of value.
Thank you for signing. Ivan would be proud.