Mustafa H. ALIKALFIĆ

MUSTAFA ALIKALFIĆ, son of HASAN, born on February 18, 1898* in Mostar. Professor at the Teachers’ School in Mostar. Prominent antifascist, NOP activist, president of the National Liberation Council (NOO) of Mostar in 1943. Employed as a history and geography teacher at the State Teachers’ School in Mostar, lecturer at the Muslim Craft Association Itihad and the Cultural-Educational Society Gajret, where he was also a member of the board of directors. Active in several societies in Mostar: he served as the president of the Muslim Burial Society Rahmet, and during the war, he was involved in the subcommittee of the Merhamet society in Mostar, which worked on caring for Muslim children who had fled from eastern Bosnia. Over 200 Muslim families from Mostar, Blagaj, Bijelo Polje, and other surrounding areas took in these children and cared for them until the end of the war in 1945. In his role as the president of the NOO in Mostar, he worked on collecting weapons and materials, hiding underground members, distributing propaganda materials, and more. On April 29, 1944, he was dismissed from service by the Ministry of Education of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). He was accused of working for the NOP and imprisoned in the basement of the Bishop’s Palace, which was one of the torture sites in Mostar. In October 1944, he was sent to Jasenovac, where he was killed in 1945. From a Ustasha document, we learn that he was “sent to the camp based on the proposal of the Ž.R.O, for a period of 3 years; maintained connections with partisans.” He was the father of one child.

Omer Šaput, the brother of the slain Safet Šaput, gave a statement on October 19, 1945, which was published as the “Record of the City Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes of the Occupiers and their Collaborators” regarding Safet’s arrest, in which Mustafa Alikalfić is mentioned. All those arrested went through a similar ordeal.

“On March 24, 1944, in Mostar, there was a Ustasha protective police force from Sarajevo that carried out a series of arrests in collaboration with the Mostar police. (…). These arrests were carried out by agents, namely Jakupović, the head of the protective police force in Sarajevo, agent Hafizović, Sušić Pavo (illegible), and agent Cvitanović from the Mostar police. Sušić Pavo, in particular, was very cruel, and the others more or less as well. I think all the agents are now in fugitive. In Mostar, they kept several detainees in prison for another month, where they were subjected to horrific torture and terror. They were subjected to three days of hunger, given salt, beaten with fists, feet, batons, thrown into the so-called ‘tram,’ and after a month, they were transferred to Stara Gradiška, a large penitentiary. There were 12 men and 4 women from Mostar in the group. From Mostar, there were Professor Alikalfić Mustafa, Zajko Mehić, Omer Mesihović, Lazo Radišić, Hadžiselimović Arif Sabitage, Dušan Čulajević, Bučuk, Osman Novo, my brother Safet. I don’t remember the other names at the moment. The women included Fatima Balta, Fahira Ćišić, Dika Hadžič, and Bera Ćemalović. (…)”