Seid M. BUKOVAC 

SEID BUKOVAC, son of MUNIB, born in Ljubuški on November 29, 1922. He completed primary and Teacher Training School in Mostar, where he lived with his family. A member of the League of Communist Youth (SKOJ) since 1941, secretary of the SKOJ branch at the Teacher Training School in 1942. In the same year, he was assigned to engage in illegal activities in Sarajevo. He organized a boycott of the funeral of 25 German soldiers killed in battles with the partisans near Stolac in 1941 (he justified it with the help of religious elders, claiming that Muslims could not participate in funeral processions with Christian religious symbols), burned the map of the Independent State of Croatia in one of the school classrooms, smuggled propaganda material and Marxist literature through classrooms, organized strikes, and more. Due to his activities, he was arrested several times. He was arrested in Sarajevo along with Mustafa Mujo Balić, tortured in the Sarajevo prison, and later transferred to the concentration camp Jasenovac. The reason given by the Ustasha authorities for his deportation to the camp was that he was “sent to the camp upon the proposal of the Protective Police for the city of Sarajevo and the Military Territorial Command Vrhbosna for a period of 3 years; as a member of the Communist Party, he printed various promotional materials and engaged in anti-state propaganda.” He died of starvation on December 17, 1942, in the III Ciglana camp.

Seid’s father, Munib, gave the following statement on June 28, 1945, regarding Seid’s arrest and liquidation, which was published as “Minutes of the City Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes No. 360”:

“Mr. Munib Bukovac, son of the deceased Salih, aged 59, Muslim, postal worker, born in Ljubuški, residing in Mostar, father of four children, provides the following for the record:

I had a son named Seid, born in 1922, who completed the Teacher Training School in Mostar and lived with me until June 1942. He was appointed as an official of the Cooperative Union in Sarajevo. Since 1935, he had been working for the cause of the movement. Because of this, he was arrested several times during 1941 and 1942 by the Ustasha police authorities until he was finally arrested on August 16, 1942, by the Sarajevo police. I visited him in prison, and on that occasion, he told me that he firmly believed that Zahida Sefićeva Ozerova had reported him to the Sarajevo police because at the moment of the arrest, when he was walking with Mujo Balić, Mirza Bašagić, Salko Hadžiosmanović, Ragib Lizdar, and Huso Teperić, they encountered Zahida, and as soon as she noticed them, she signaled to some agents who approached them and arrested my son Seid and Mujo Balić, while the other three managed to escape immediately. Meanwhile, Zahida disappeared. Based on this, I suspect Zahida, and I can testify to this, as can the aforementioned individuals, of whom only Salko Hadžiosmanović is currently in Mostar, while Huso Teperić is in Sarajevo, and Bašagić is somewhere in the NOV. It is unknown where Mujo Balić is, and Ragib Dizdar has a residence in Stolac.

Seid told me while he was in prison in Sarajevo that the police beat him to extract a confession. For this purpose, they even put a sock in his mouth. After twenty days in prison, all five of them were taken to the concentration camp in Jasenovac. In Jasenovac, under the strictest conditions, he lived for 45 days, where the commander of that camp, Zovko Cvitan from Bijelo Polje, subjected him to starvation, to which he finally succumbed because he was kept alone in a cell for six days without being given any food or drink. This circumstance can be attested by Husto Tepagić, who endured the internment and torture alongside Seid.”

Salko Hadžiomerović, son of the deceased Mehmed, born in 1917, unmarried, a tailor’s assistant by profession, duly cautioned to tell the truth, not (illegible), declares the following:

I know Seid Bukovac well because we were imprisoned together in Sarajevo, and later we were taken to Jasenovac together. I spent (illegible) days in the camp in Jasenovac, and afterwards, I was transferred to Stara Gradiška camp as a tradesman, where I stayed for two years. Seid was behind me for a month, and we were together for a month, after which he died of hunger. There was a Ustasha officer named Cvitan Zovko who performed wonders with the prisoners. In this one barrack where around 150 people died, including Seid, the Ustashe wrote “Pjegavac” on the door of the barrack, and nobody entered the barrack, nor were those people given anything to eat, so they all died of hunger, including Seid.”

According to another statement given by Mustafa Mehičević in Sarajevo (Minutes compiled on May 22, 1945, before the City Commission for Establishing the Crimes of the Occupier and its Collaborators in Sarajevo, number 54555):

“My brother-in-law, Seid Bukovac, 21 years old, was arrested somehow in the autumn of 1942, along with a large group of patriots at the city café in Sarajevo. At the end of 1942, he was sent to the Jasenovac camp, where he was immediately thrown into the “hunger barrack” by a certain Ustasha named Kapetanović, and he died there in the greatest agony. I do not know which agents carried out the arrest or on whose orders, but the reason was his, as well as the entire group’s, illegal work for the NOB, which was betrayed by a certain Sefićka from Mostar. Husein Teperić, an employee of the GNC, who was arrested together with them and sent to the camp, will know the most about all of this.”