Udba secret police file as a historical source – The Vujičić case

In early May 1941, three Serbs were killed by a group of young Ustasha militiamen assigned to the local headquarters of the Ustasha movement in the Croatian city of Karlovac. The affair, known as »the Vujičić case« after its best known victim, attorney and politician Milan Vujičić, was hushed up at that time, but the case left a deeper imprint on historical studies than some of the larger atrocities committed during the period. The case was reopened in early 1947, upon the extradition of Vladimir Židovec to Yugoslavia. Židovec was the secretary of the local Ustaša HQ at the time of the crime, and afterwards a diplomat in the Independent State of Croatia (ISC). Subjected to harsh interrogation by the Yugoslav Udba secret police, Židovec offered to collaborate and authored a lengthy but tainted testimony. He claimed that his antagonist and formal local superior Ante Nikšić, afterwards an ISC diplomat and minister of the interior, initiated the crime. In spite of various important deficiencies of the inquiry, the thesis that Nikšić had instigated the murder of his personal friend Vujičić has been reiterated over the years. It has been incorporated into reference manuals as a proven fact, and has even been contextualized on a larger scale. This article therefore strives to reconsider the case on the basis of some new elements. While offering no final answers, it points to various incongruences of the present interpretation.