"My father told me several times that it was the hardest night in his life," Belgrade-based journalist Boško Jakšić told the BBC in Serbian. on the night of June 8, 1943, when the Fifth Offensive, better known as the Battle of Sutjeska, heated up.
His father, Pavle Jakšić, was the commander of the Seventh Banija Strike Division of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia headed by Josip Broz Tito.
The Battle of Sutjeska, which lasted from mid-May to mid-June 1943, along the Neretva, is considered one of the biggest battles fought by the partisans during the Second World War.
"The breakthrough of the partisan forces from Sutjeska is a miracle," Filip Švarm, editor-in-chief of the weekly "Vreme", points out for the BBC in Serbian.
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History and memories
Historical sources do not agree on the exact number of participants in the battle, but there is no doubt that the army of the Axis Powers was many times superior.
Between 17.000 and 22.000 partisans without motorized equipment, among whom there were many wounded and typhus who could not fight, with heavy losses, got out of the circle of about 127.000-150.000 well-equipped Nazi soldiers, their tanks and aviation.
With 7.000-7.500 dead fighters, this is also the largest mass casualty of partisans during the Second World War.
Jakšić, according to his father's story, states that the Germans would stop hostilities in the evening and go to sleep, and would resume early in the morning.
Pavle Jakšić used the lull to send a scout.
"They realized that they were almost completely surrounded and that, bearing in mind the advantage in manpower that the Germans had, they would remain trapped in the ring," says Boško Jakšić.
However, Pavle Jakšić found out that there was another small move through which the partisans could still get away.
"My father judged that the battle would be lost if they waited until morning and, against the orders of the Supreme Staff, ordered his division to move overnight."
To the other commanders, Koča Popović and Sava Kovačević, he "sent couriers to inform them of his departure".
"Koča Popović, the commander of the First Division, went after him," adds Jakšić. The division under his command was the first to break through the ring on Sutjeska.
The rest is history, in which there was no place for Pavle Jakšić, who died in 2005.
Monument at Tjentište
"Here's Jože [Josip Broz Tito], here's me, and these are the models," 92-year-old sculptor Miodrag Živković, author of the monument at Tjentište, tells the BBC in Serbian, while showing photos from the presentation of the model in the space where it is today in a studio in Belgrade monument.
Živković's "Battle on Sutjeska" was staged in 1971.
The model of the monument, which he made in the studio where he still lives and works, traveled to numerous countries and museums.
Today it stands in a separate place in the sculptor's workshop, where Živković continues to create.
He remembers the construction and opening of the monument mostly for the great freedom he had.
"I had unlimited rights to do whatever I wanted," Živković remembers.
This also referred to complete freedom in dressing, even on the most official occasions.
"Tito and I were the only ones dressed strangely [at the opening of the monument]," he says.
"He was wearing some strange uniform, and I didn't have a jacket, I was wearing a sweater and I wasn't wearing a bow but a scarf. And purple pants. And I was allowed to do all that because I'm an artist," Živković laughs.
And why is the original model not in the museum?
"I like it very much and I can borrow it for shows, but I can't give it away.
"And when I die, let them carry".
The 'tsunami that threatened to sink' the partisans
Filip Švarm and Milovan Pisarri agree that, regardless of the difficulty of the battle, the great losses and the fact that many wounded had to be left behind, Sutjeska represents the most important success of the Partisans in the Second World War.
"The fact is that the Supreme Headquarters did not realize the danger of encirclement in time," Švarm says.
"But it is also a fact that they faced a much more powerful enemy, who also had manpower, heavy artillery and motorized transport, which the partisans could not even dream of".
He assesses that the commanders, with difficult communication, in the face of the "tsunami that threatened to drown them", managed to remain united, to get out of the ring and win, without any partisan unit surrendering.
"The price of freedom is always expensive and it is paid in what is most valuable, which is human lives," Švarm concludes.
Pisarri adds that the victory at Sutjeska Tuesday is more significant because it internationally profiled the Partisans as a military force, so the Allies "from that moment on only supported Tito and the Partisans and no longer hesitated about the Chetniks".
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How do countries in the region remember Sutjeska?
The Battle of Sutjeska was one of the supporting pillars of Yugoslavia in the years after the Second World War.
The main reason for this, Belgrade historian Milovan Pisarri explains for the BBC in Serbian, is the fact that all the peoples of the former Yugoslavia fought together against the Germans at Sutjeska.
"The basic stance of today's politics in the countries of the former Yugoslavia is anti-communism and anti-Yugoslavism, and Sutjeska represents the absolute opposite of both," says Pisarri.
After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the countries in the region each took their own attitude towards the memory of Sutjeska and its commemoration.
Pisarri reminds that with Sutjeska, but also with communist heritage in general, "there is a tendency to suppress it, and when it is not suppressed, then it is necessarily nationalized".
While informal currents such as anti-fascist alliances continued to cooperate and jointly commemorate June 16 as the anniversary of the victory even after the war, regional politicians do not meet in Tjentište.
Delegations from the countries of the region alternate and lay wreaths during the first half of June.
Political representatives of Serbia and Republika Srpska have been doing this jointly for several years now, with the participation of the Russian Embassy. This year they did it on June 13.
"In Serbia, you will often hear that it was a Serbian victory, that the most Serbs died and the like. Likewise in other countries of the region," says Pisarri.
However, Zagreb historian Tvrtko Jakovina believes that the main reason for the nationalization of the battle in Croatia does not lie in the number of dead Croats.
"In Croatia, the emphasis is on the fact that it is a 'Croatian battle' only because that is the only way in which that battle can be accepted as something that, well, it would still be impossible to completely reject. That is the only reason," he says. Jakovina for the BBC in Serbian.
Jakovina reminds that the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was founded by a number of high-ranking partisan officers and Yugoslav politicians.
"That part does not suit the HDZ, and it is trying to move away from that legacy," adds Jakovina.
Historians in the region agree that the list of names of the dead unequivocally confirms that most of the dead fighters were from Dalmatia - between 3.000 and 3.500 out of more than 7.000 dead.
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Two years ago, before the 75th anniversary of Sutjeska, the vice-president of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, Ranko Ostojić, proposed that the Parliament sponsor the commemoration at Tjentište.
The Presidency of the Parliament refused to put the proposal under consideration.
"The proposal was rejected without valid arguments," Ostojić told the BBC in Serbian.
"Their explanation is that the Parliament cannot be a sponsor in another country. When it comes to Bleiburg, that's obviously not a problem."
Jakovina reminds that Prime Minister and HDZ Prime Minister Andrej Plenković sent a wreath to Sutjeska last year, which the Union of Anti-Fascists of Croatia "assessed as a microscopic move that those who come to dry and watch carefully".
"I'm afraid I don't have such a refined ear and eye," concludes Jakovina.
This year, flowers were laid on Sutjesko for the first time by the envoy of the President of Croatia, Zoran Milanović June 9, together with the SABNOR BiH delegation.
Podgorica historian Radenko Šćekić also notes that anniversaries and events from the Second World War are not in the foreground in Montenegro.
He says that "World War II is not in the focus of either the media or literature".
"Since 2006, Montenegro has been focusing on Euro-Atlantic integration, so that events from the Second World War are further suppressed; or they are put in the center of attention for a few days, if they are useful for a certain political option," concludes Šćekić.
As the Association of Associations of Fighters and Anti-Fascists of Montenegro told the BBC in Serbian, representatives of the President of Montenegro will go to Sutjeska on June 20, together with members of the Association of Anti-Fascists from Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Due to the corona virus epidemic, the number of attendees is limited, so there will be no mass gathering.
Why is history suppressed Pavle Jakšić?
Boško Jakšić says that his father's attitude towards Sutjeska "significantly helped him to be retired as a lieutenant general at the age of 48, which was not usual".
He states that Pavle Jakšić studied warfare and came to the conclusion that Sutjeska and Neretva were the two biggest failures of the partisans during the Second World War.
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"The partisan way of warfare implies small detachments and great mobility, while here a large concentration of forces was in one place, which put them in danger.
"The father pointed out that the partisans suffered the greatest casualties on the Neretva and Sutjeska rivers, which were declared epic battles.
"He wrote that the war was won and that the victory should be celebrated, but that does not mean that there were no mistakes, and that Sutjeska and Neretva were the biggest mistakes".
According to his son, it was not only his attitude towards Sutjeska that led to the early retirement of Pavlo Jakšić.
The book "Contemporary War", published in 1961 by the publishing house Vuk Karadžić, also helped.
In this book, recounts Boško Jakšić, his father opposed the introduction of national defense and civilian arming, stressing that arming in republics created along ethnic lines is a prelude to civil war.
"It turned into a direct conflict with Josip Broz," explains Jakšić.
In the year he was going to retire (1962), Pavle Jakšić participated in the founding of the Institute of Physics and taught at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade.
And then the years of "complete isolation" followed.
"You are plagued," recalls Boško Jakšić. "The phone doesn't ring for months, no one comes, everyone is shy."
He adds that Koča Popović was one of the few who "wasn't afraid that someone would blame him for coming to my father".
Boško Jakšić says that he was 13 years old when they found "a large eavesdropping device that friends told his father about" in the fireplace of the family home.
"We called the police and they took it away."
Pavle Jakšić was buried under a star in 2005, but not in the Alley of meritorious citizens where he should have been buried as a national hero of Yugoslavia.
"He didn't want to. He himself bought a plot at the New Cemetery and we buried him there," adds Jakšić.
The controversial manuscript about Sutjeska could not be published for a long time. It was finally published in 1990, as part of "Memoirs" printed by the publishing house "Rad".
However, the peoples of the region were already busy with new wars.
"Sutjeska has been issued multiple times today"
Today, thirty years after the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia, "we are witnessing permanent revisionist attacks which try to reduce the partisan struggle to a mono-national perspective and ethnic exclusivity", according to the journalist of the Sarajevo newspaper "Oslobođenje" Đorđe Krajišnik.
In addition, he adds, "the declarative attitude towards events such as the Battle of Sutjeska, which sees the legacy of anti-fascism only as sugar-coated Yugonostalgia and waving Tito's pictures, now also becomes a big problem, which stifles the emancipation of our anti-fascist idea today".
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"I think that Sutjeska, like many other places that are symbols of the anti-fascist struggle of the Yugoslav peoples, has been betrayed many times today," says Krajišnik.
"We can talk about anti-fascism only as Yugoslavian, its violent separation into alleged ethnic peculiarities and exclusivities has led us to the point where both in textbooks and in the public space the cryptothesis about two anti-fascist movements has become home, which opened up space for the rehabilitation of the Quinslingan movements and their leader".
Historian Milovan Pisarri agrees that the nationalization of the resistance movement leads to confusion.
"The revisionists will say that Sutjeska is an example of how the Chetniks were anti-fascists, because the Germans disarmed several thousand members of the Chetnik movement in Montenegro at the beginning of the battle," he says, adding that this is "a typical revisionist approach."
Pisarri explains that the Germans disarmed the Chetniks because they thought they might join the Allies and points out that they were not shot but sent to labor camps, and that some members of the Chetnik movement received decorations from the Nazis after the camps, such as Pavle Đurišić.
"We have nothing of anti-fascism as slogans uttered once a year," Krajišnik points out.
"Sutjeska and her commander Koča Popović have a lot to teach us about the fight for freedom, but we must build anti-fascism appropriate to the challenges of our time on those foundations."
"It should be a place where we will build new movements and discover new ideas, which will begin to bring light into our post-Yugoslav darkness and drive away the vampiric Nazi-fascism," concludes Krajišnik.
The Association of Anti-Fascists of Montenegro and the organization of the same name in Croatia said in an interview with the BBC that "all members of the former Yugoslavia have the right to their future, but we must not forget the past".
For Nemanja and Milena, recently graduated students from Belgrade, Sutjeska is more like something "from the last century".
"It doesn't mean anything special to me, I'm not even sure why that battle is so important," says Milena.
"I heard about it mostly because of the film and Bata Živojinović," admits Nemanja.
June 16 marks the 77th anniversary of the victory of the Partisans over the Axis Powers in the Sutjeska Canyon.
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Participant in the battle, historian and academician Vladimir Dedijer, wrote in his war "Diary" (Jugoslovenska knjiga, 1950) that that day was Wednesday.
"It seems we have finally broken free from the enemy. Aviation is no longer active either. [...] We descend to [the village of] Mrkodol. There we find the Supreme Headquarters. The comrades did not eat anything for 48 hours, because the chamber was lost".
Four days later, Dedijer buried his wife Olga, a doctor, on Sutjeska, who died as a result of her injuries.
"I was clutching her watch that I had brought for Milica [their daughter]. And my tears flowed, one, two - a whole stream".
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