Movie Dara of Jasenovac was based on a story of Jelena BuhaÄ RadojiÄiÄ. What happend after Jelena and her brother were saved by Diana BudisavljeviÄ?
"They also put me in one house, my boss was an Ustasha, a black legion. There were 12 children in that house. They put me on a chair and I then talked, said I was Croatian, I don't know why I said that, but I told the same story as I told you, only more vividly. They took me to church, Catholic, I prayed all the time in Catholic way to God, I went to church every night.
Boss, the father of the Ustasha, beat me so much that I had bruises all over my back. My mother came and saw those bruises they made with the whip. I was supossed to look over cows, I didn't say I couldn't, I didn't say I was barefoot and I couldn't but I said I won't, and when he heard me say that I won't do it, he came striked me with a whip, beat me and then his wife chased me to beat me. I had no contact with anyone, not even with my brother, even though we are here together, we are not together. Then when we bathe, I will be 13th in a row for a barrel. When I get lice, I get beaten up because I got lice, and in fact that Ustasha's wife went to him there and got them. I am a person who never expresses my desires and emotions, and when it is difficult for me, I always hide it. I never burden someone with my problems, it's probably from my childhood.
That landlady, when I was employed in 1956, I wanted to go there to see how I lived. She talked all day and night about how Serbs were enemies and disgusting. I couldn't wait for dawn to go back, I didn't even say goodbye, I never went back there."
Iām pretty sad to admit that the movie was very disrespectful to the victims of ustashas and its families. My boyfriendās motherās cousin was thrown into a fire when they made them dance kolo around it, they threw her baby into the fire and she jumped with it. Itās all real stuff that happend in that movie, but itās no way to portray that. It just felt forced, like someone just said HERE, here you have the movie for your suffering for the first time stop bothering us, and itās just awful. It was used for political matter by our government like those werenāt real people whose families were wiped out? It would be much much better if they picked one story to focus on and since they picked the story of Jelena BuhaÄ RadojiÄiÄ they could just stick to that, and actually talk to that woman to portray her story the best. They could show how Diana saved all those children and how they destroyed their documents or hid them after the war. All those scenes are real, nothing was made up, but itās just such an awful way to āpay respectsā and i will forever be so mad at them.
I hope Jelena finds her brother from whom she was separated when Diana saved her. I hope he didnāt die not knowing he had a sister out there and i hope he knew who he was.
