Talk:Petar Brzica/Archive 1

Brzica and rest of Croatian ustase killed 200 people from my village (among them my grandfather too). They are war criminals and deserved death penalty.

Untitled
Call me a revisionist or denier (which I am not), but this whole story stinks of urban mythology to me; the website provided as a reference is very biased in favor of the Serb POV. If this man did exist and commit the crimes that are alleged here, proper, neutral references need to be provided NOW. The claims made in this article and that about the "Srbosjek" are extremely inflammatory, and potentially very slanderous. Mihovil 01:47, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This is true. But on the other side, you have dozens of serbian editors around here, who would reinsert the article the moment it is deleted, as they did with the "Srbosjek". At the moment Srbosjek was nominated for deletion, the author mobilized dozens and dozens of Serbs on the serbian Wikipedia to come to help to vote against the deletion, with wich they succeeded at the end, no matter the given references were all serbian (one of them even linked Bulajic as a "source"), and oh coincidence, supported an pro-serbian point. As I dont have the time to argue endlessly with unemployed serbian ultranationalists who have 24hrs/day to argue/delete/revert/bullshit for their holy cause, I've given it up and decided just to name the inaccuracies and let the readers decide themselves. --Rhun 18:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

This article has to be deleted. It describes a war criminal as a hero.

Just terrible, this guy should be reported and deported from US, the fact he was allowed to stay in US that long is beyond me. What are US authorities waiting for, it is just sick, fact that person was even allowed to settle is in US is quite sickening. Totally angry, someone should act on it, contact FBI and request information on this, if you have contacts in US, you can ask your local congressman to inquire about this particular person and what are US authorities doing about this person. Someone killing even 60 innocent civilians is a true monster, if this evil man killed as stated in this article 1360 persons, this is outrageous and despicable act of most evil person ever to live. That man does not deserve to live, breed same air we all breed, no matter how old he is now, his family should be ashamed of him and his acts, if they aren't they are as sick as he is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.110.78.164 (talk) 14:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

PS, sorry, had no time to red entire article, but war crimes in Jasenovac did happened, not sure how many innocent people got killed, figures I most often hear is 90 000, and I'll go with that, but I wouldn't be surprised if some evil characters did commit acts of genocide and pure evil as described in the article, I do not believe in figure of 1360, but I would be appealed if figure was even 10% of that. It is just sickening, btw I am not a Serb, I have Jewish background and live in London. I am just appalled with any war crime and this just makes me very angry, that US authorities did nothing to act and deal with this person, deport him and make sure he faces justice in Zagreb. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.110.78.164 (talk) 14:52, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Accuracy of the sources
The accuracy of the sources mentioning Brzica is generally disputed and there is reasonable belief that the story of Brzica and the slaughtering competition is more of a nationalistic, hatred-fueled wartime hearsay and creepy urban legend than a historical fact.

Apart from the few references to citations from Howard Blum's book, "Wanted! The search for Nazis", which have only been incompletely quoted on unverifiable, private web sites, as of now, actually none of the authors writing this article has ever gotten hold of or read this book. Most of the other sources on the web mentioning Brzica are either of Serbian origin, accusing their neighbours, the Croats, of war crimes, bloodthirstiness and wartime atrocities, or different versions of this article incorporated into other articles, reports and web sites.

There are numerous sources describing Brzica and this slaughtering contest, most of them offering a different version of the story. In numerous sources, he has been described as a prison guard, a simple soldier, a Ustasha officer, a law student or even a catholic priest or Franciscan monk.

His name has been changed in several sources from Petar Brzica, to Peter Brzica, Pero Brzica or Pero Bnica, and there is no definitive source of his accurate name, "Petar Brzica" being just the most often quoted pick.

His surname "Brzica" in Serbo-Croatian translates to "a quick one" or "a speedy one" (for example, the known cartoon figure Speedy Gonzales is translated "Brzi Gonzales" in Serbo-Croatian), which is suspiciously coincidental to Brzica's alleged fast slaughtering capabilities and winning of a slaughtering contest, very often mentioned by Serbian authors as "speedy slaughter of Serbs" in, a good example being being the article about the knife he allegedly used, the Srbosjek.

The number of his victims has on average been cited as 1360, all of which he allegedly has killed with his hands using a knife often called Srbosjek by Serbs. The time frame of the one-man mass killing has on most sources been given as "a day" or "a single night", both of which do not seem to be really feasible for a average trained man, considering that, for the "a day" time frame he would have to have killed one prisoner per minute, for 24 hours without making a pause. For the "a single night" time frame he would have to have killed 3 prisoners per minute for a night approximately lasting for 8 hours.


 * A night might last 12 hours. To slit a single throat - it cannot take more that 2-3 seconds. So, 1360 slit throats in a single night - is a pretty realistic datum.--71.252.83.33 (talk) 13:46, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Just thought I'd add to anyone curious, that Amazon has 48 New & Used copies of Howard Blum's "Wanted! The Search for Nazis" starting at just 50 cents. I'd recommend it to anyone, it's very interesting. Not sure if I believe all of it though, or all of this tale, for that matter. But I'll just leave it at that. OnTheMantle (talk) 05:26, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Petar Brzica is a known Ustase with several mentions in the state-commission for the investigation of the crimes of the occupation forces and thier collaborators. As for the swift killing and the figure of 1,360 slit throats, the rate of extermination was made possible due to the use of the "srbosijek", which was worn on the gloves. Furthermore, some sources put it as down as 1,400. All in all, there are various sources to this event. The most frequently citated source comes from "the Vatican's holocaust", which is, for itself, contemporary, but contains reliable facts. The account is based on Nikola Nikolic's testimony. There are other sources, more reliable, for the veracity of this account, at hand. Mile Friganovic testified he placed the bets with Brzica, Ante Zrinusic (another Ustase very common in the documentation) and one Sipka. He stated he killed 1,100 people, while Brzica won with 1,360. Tibor Lovrencic testified in the trail of Dinko Sakic that Zrinusic admmitted to have committed this act. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.176.224.2 (talk) 11:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

A myth?
I am not a holocaust-denier, but seriously, we have NO pics of this man, no birth date, no birth place, no background, his name has been re-written like 10 times.

Something really horrible must have happened the night of the slaughter-contest but 1360 people killed in one night, that's just insane to believe in. Isn't that 3 people in one minute or something, for 24 hours?

Where are the eye-witnesses? Where are their statements to this?

It feels like a myth, like Brzica is just a symbol of the evil within the Ustasa, a name to be associated with them to really push it into the people's heads that they were EVIL, EVIL, EVIL... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.216.222.12 (talk) 23:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Brzica is a urban legend figure that was invented for the same reasons as other serb propaganda stories. The purpouse of these articles are indeed to portray Croats as "evil" so the Serbs would look innocent. People still remember the case of Ankica Konjuh and the propaganda campaign by the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society(Milosevic allies) at the begining of the war.--(GriffinSB) (talk) 12:22, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Templates
1) We are having Speedy Peter which is born on unknown date (and year) in unknown place. This is 20 century !!! Everybody is having birth data ?

2) He has become Ustashe Youth member !! When ? Is this 1929 or 1939 or 1941 or 1944 ??

3) Competition in killing greater number of prisoners. Speedy Peter has killed 1360 prisoners. I am interested to hear name and number of killed by person which has taken second place ? Maybe his name is Not So Speedy Adam ?

4) "His name was on a list of 59 Nazis living in the US given by a Jewish organization". Which organization ??? If this is true I am sure that documents abot this exist but they are not in article.

5) He has died on unknown date or maybe he is still alive ! --Rjecina (talk) 22:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Be proactive - try answer your own questions by searching through books and documents —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.217.132.17 (talk) 23:07, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that this person (Rjecina) does not understand very basic notions. Lack of one type of data does not imply inaccuracy of the other type of data: not knowing when Brzica became member of Ustashe youth does not mean that he was not an Ustashe; whether he boasted about killing 1360 prisoners or dr Nikolic claims only half of it (670) - has nothing to do with accuracy nor the accuracy means anything here - we are collecting and representing data leaving it to the reader to interpret it his way.

The only justification for citations is for the last paragraph where I added tag.

Removal (what (s)he is constantly doing) of valid and verifiable citations and references only damages this article.--J. A. Comment (talk) 21:48, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Rjecina, Milan Bulajic (The Role of the Vatican in the Break–up of the Yugoslav State. Belgrade 1993) has one possible answer to your question about who finished second in the killing competition. I have put on record elsewhere in Wikipedia my scepticism about Bulajic. But this is what he wrote:


 * The genocidal slaughterer Mile Friganovic told how Franciscan Pero Brzica, a scholarship holder at Siroki Brijeg monastry, slaughtered 1,350 prisoners in only one night.


 * “[Some of us] waged a bet on who would slaughter most prisoners, and after an hour, I had slaughtered many more than the others. I had never felt such bliss. After some hours I had slaughtered 1,100 people, while the others had managed only 300 to 400 each. Just as I was feeling the greatest ecstacy, I saw an old peasant watching my victims as they died in great pain. His expression shook me, and for some time I could not move. Then I went over and found he was one Vukasin from Klepci, near Caljina, whose whole family had been killed. He said this with incomprehensible calmness, which affected me more than the terrible cries around us [....]
 * I told him to cry “Long live Pavelic!” or I would cut his ear off. Vukasin was silent so I ripped his ear off. Again he refused to cry “Long live Pavelic!” so I tore off the other ear. Next I warned I would cut off his nose. Again he was silent. The fourth time, I warned I would cut out his heart. He looked at me, or somehow through me, and slowly said: “Do your job, child.”
 * This totally bewildered me and I froze at first. Then I plucked out his eyes, tore out his heart and threw him into the pit. After that something broke inside me and I could no longer kill that night. Franciscan Pero Brzica won the bet, having killed 1,350 prisoners, and I paid up without a word.


 * Kirker (talk) 15:28, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Rjecina, witness accounts are relevant, reliable and fully in accordance with Wikipedia policy, they cannot be removed for any of your rather weird reasons, whatsoever. And before you ask again, yes, you are the only one who thinks these quotations are against the rules or biased. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 17:26, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Citation needed
Lets try this:
 * 1 (first citation needed) Question is: when ? and source. It is not possible to say that he has been student and not say year
 * 2 Similar thing
 * 3 He fled in USA. Question is: when ? and source
 * 4 Editor thinking that he has changed identity ?
 * 5 died hidden. Editor thinking that he has died hidden ?
 * 6 which Jewish organization ? --Rjecina (talk) 23:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Expert
Expert is needed in this article because our only data are killings.
 * We do not know is this person is born or it has died.
 * We do not know when he has been on faculty.
 * We do not know when he has become Ustaše member.
 * We do not know when he has escaped to USA
 * We do not know is Brzica has changed identity
 * We do not know which Jewish organization has put him on list of 59 Nazi living in USA --Rjecina (talk) 23:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Translation of name
I removed the english translation of his name (Speedy Peter) because of the fact that it may imply a possible myth or legend about this person. I'll be the first one to admit that there is very little evidence to prove this person even exists let alone trying to prove anything he has ever done. I also don't think it's helpful to conduct original research in order to come to our own conclusions and subsequently start applying attibutes of a myth or a legend based on translation of a name even if it is the case that he was, in fact, just a scary story. We need outside sources for this sort of stuff, we can't conduct our own research and pass it off as meaningful. SWik78 (talk • contribs) 15:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Article protection
Article protected for one month, per this ANI thread. EyeSerene talk 18:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Veracity
Petar Brzica is no myth. His name is not mearly mentioned only in relation to the throat-slitting contest, but also in the State-commission's list of names, in the memories of a Jew witness (Secanja jevreja na logor Jasenovac), and again in the state-commission in relation to another event, of march 1943. All sources name him Petar (or Pero) Brzica, and claim him to be a lieutanet, and a franciscan. As for the event of August 29th, 1942, It is also corroborated by various sources: Nikola Nikolic stats he competed with several other Ustasa on throat-slashing, and won. Survivor Neda Zec recalls Ustasa Mile Friganovic confessing of it, naming Ante Zrinusic, a known and infamous guard in Jasenovac, who also admitted of participating in the event to Ljubomir Saric, who testified in the trail of Dinko Sakic. All in all, Brzica is real, and the contest itself is real, however the figures of dead are contemporary. Friganovic's confession is in this regard not to be considered most reliable, however it has some credibility. The figure of victims taken by Brzica himself moves in different sources between 640 to 1,200 and 1,300, maximum 1,360. Anyhow, such amounts were made possible due to the skill Ustasa developed in slaying inmates, modified by the utilization of the newly-made Srbo-Sjek. The liquidated inmates were new-arrivals (probably of Serbian nationality) who were condemned to liquidation, so they were mustered to liquidation for the officers, who were aided by junior Ustasa in the slaughter. I personally find the incident reliable, while I do question the figure 1,360, although some 1,200 victims appears reliable. As for the quality of sources: I have illustrated proof of various kinds of sources: testimonies to the modern panel of judges in the trail of Dinko Sakic, Croatia, 1998-99, a State-commission that cross-refrences the reports of specialists, confessions of Ustasa, witness testimonies etc, that is corroborated by any other witness testimony that exists. Therefore I question the motives of those who doubt the relaibilty of these sources. 79.181.35.186 (talk) 20:56, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe that we are having better sources nobody will question if this article speak truth or myth ?
 * Article about Avro Manhattan is telling enough about that source.
 * Then we are having Jasenovac Research Institute and genocide denier Bulajić which is member of council of Foundation Jasenovac Donja Gradina. This are very bad sources for any wikipedia article.
 * For me it is interesting that until today all sources minus 1 has been with quotations. I am interesting to hear why quotation from book The Glass Half Full by Alan Greenhalgh has been deleted ?--Rjecina (talk) 03:28, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

United States?
In Rjecina's last edit he brings up a good point. The "Jewish organization" that listed him as a war criminal residing in the US should be easy to find. Also, can anyone actually point to documentation that he escaped to the US? All I've found is The Cellist of Sarajevo, which is fiction. I haven't done an exhaustive search, but everything else seems to point to Wikipedia as the source for this. A ni  Mate  22:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Removal of "See also" and "External links" sections
I removed the "See also" section, as this section title typically serves as a guide to related Wikipedia articles. In this article it was functioning as a section for further non specific citations, and as there was no specificity to what they were supposed to source I deemed them unnecessary. I also removed the "External links" section as the only link was to a self published page hosted by Alaska Communications Systems. A ni  Mate  18:12, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The above is not a reason to remove See also and external links--72.75.20.29 (talk) 00:55, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, they are. AniMate  talk  21:32, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Literature section
Can someone explain the purpose of the "Literature" section? Normally, I'd guess it was a "further reading" section or something of the sort but individual page references are unique. Are they just random citations? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:13, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Fairly certain that's what they are. Actually, they appear to be mentions more than citations. If I recall I tried to remove them at one point, but was accused of whitewashing or some nonsense. AniMate  talk  09:34, 11 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I've removed it. If they are just citations, then they should be used in the article.  Otherwise, it's just basically the equivalent of spam. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:13, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Evidences, Citations, Reliable, Neutral Sources, Anything?
This article is just another mythology. Same as the one about Srbosjek. Some Radical Serbs just need to realize that this is Wikipedia, and I am really surprised this article survived so long. In Wikipedia, you need to represent reliable evidences. And this? This is copied from Serbian forums. I am definitively not the holocaust denier. Croats did horrible things to the Serbs, and truth needs to be told. But only truth. No mythology or propaganda.Can someone finally delete these two articles? Or at least find some reliable evidence? Anyone? --Truthseeker1412 (talk) 00:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The evidence and a list of strong references is given. Making accusations against the editors is at a level of personal attacks. Such 'discussion' shall be removed from the talk page.--Historian35 (talk) 18:44, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I realise that user:Historian35 commented more than a year ago. But I must note that while he was babbling about some accusations (while I only wrote facts), and then threatened me in the same sentence :) And of course, user:Historian35 was banned. No surprise there. I find it funny how at first it seems that this article has more sources...and yet has the same amount of sources. Yes, there were some books added...that use the same sources-from communist Yugoslavia :))) And even more funny is that this article is even shorter than before :))) Having trouble? :)))) I really hope that all mythological communist Yugoslavia nonsense will be deleted from Wikipedia one day. EDIT: also, this article has many misleading sources about Jasenovac...pathetic... So, if anyone denies the existence of SPEEDY (YES, believe it or not, that's the EXACT translation of Brzica name), you will automatically trash him as sick, nazi, holocaust denier...pathetic. So...Speedy (NOT common Croatian name) killing innocent Serbian babies with Serbcutter, also known as farming tool and eating them afterwards..like some sick child horror story.  It's sad how Serbs and communists have so little respect for real victims, like Jews, and constantly make up sick garbage....and everything in order to demonize all historical Serbian enemies.

Edit request from Diomedes78, 1 February 2011
edit semi-protected

Brzica studied to be a priest, but never completed his training. Brzica never held the title "Father". The previous contributor provided no evidence of this title.

Diomedes78 (talk) 03:31, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Removed the entire sentence as it was contentous in a possible BLP. -Atmoz (talk) 15:15, 1 February 2011 (UTC)