Stjepan ŽIVIĆ 

STJEPAN ŽIVIĆ, son of ANTON, born in 1913, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Returned with his family in 1922. Civil servant from Donji Andrijevci, pre-war member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (since 1934). Due to communist activities, he was dismissed from his job in Trnjaci near Slavonski Brod and started working in Žitomislići near Mostar in December 1940. In early 1942 he became a fighter of the 3rd Battalion. He was killed on June 9, 1943, during the Fifth Enemy Offensive at Sutjeska in the Piva Canyon near Čokova Luka, ill from a typhoid fever in the Central Hospital.

An art and culture club in Donji Andrijevci was named after him.

Excerpt from literature:

“In the fight for his idea of ​​progressive and honest people, Štefo Živić was so involved that it could not remain unnoticed by the watchful eyes of the gendarmes and the police. They followed his every step and it is only thanks to his sober resourcefulness that he did not end up in prison. Despite all the precautionary measures, the gendarmes collected more and more incriminating material against him and it was clear to Štefo, especially before the outbreak of the Second World War, that he had to go somewhere. The most critical lessons for him He took refuge in the municipality of Žitomislić in 1940. The enemy found him and put him in prison in Mostar, but he managed to escape with the help of members of the Mostar organization on the loose, so it’s April In 1942, he joined the People’s Liberation Army, i.e. to the partisan detachment near Konjic, where after some time the 2nd cavalry battalion of the 10th Herzegovinian shock brigade was formed. In 1943, he fell ill with typhus and during the V enemy offensive he retreated with typhus patients. At the “Bjela” hill on Sutjeska, he fell and gave his young life in the fight against the occupiers and domestic traitors.”

“… In this crowd I met my great friend Stjepan Živić. He fell ill with typhus near Rama and Neretva. On March 20, I saw him stretched out on a horse in the village of Bijela near Konjic. Then he had a high fever, but he looked like a man, and now he is a living corpse. It looks terrible. His clothes are all torn. He is unshaven, and all his hair has disappeared from typhus. With the last bit of strength he was kicking his legs and arms. Typhus completely crippled him, made him a physical cripple. He dragged himself with a whole mass of wounded and typhus patients towards the bridge. Only severely helpless wounded and sick on stretchers were carried. There were also fewer horses to carry the wounded, because horse meat became the main food. There were no peasants for stretchers in Montenegro, as in Bosnia and near the Neretva. Prisoners – Italians due to typhus and exhaustion became incapacitated, so they could not carry themselves, not our wounded. That is why our fighters carried the most seriously wounded and sick comrades. Everyone else from the Central Hospital, if they could move at all, went alone. Already from Pišće, it was said in the companies: “It is better to get a bullet in the forehead than in the leg.”

This is how it came to be that Stjepan Živić was dragging himself half dead, like hundreds of others. I looked at him and hardly recognized him. We recognized each other more by our voices. He stared at me with glassy eyes bulging from the depths of his eye sockets. He barely manages to say “do you have anything for me to eat, even a crumb of bread.” It’s hard to not be able to help your dearest friend throughout your life. I had nothing to give him to eat. I didn’t have a single grain of grain. I didn’t even have any weed with me. I tried to find some food for him with my friends, but no one had any. “Hold on, Stjepan, friend”, I tried to encourage him. “I would hold on”, he tried to joke, “but these legs won’t hold”. We said goodbye to each other warmly, as if we both had a premonition that this was the last time we would see each other. Stjepan crawled to the bridge, and I to the position. Below, around the bridge, cannon shells exploded continuously.

I was thinking about Stjepan. If he manages to cross the bridge, he will certainly not climb Vučevo. Even if the shrapnel misses him, that last bit of strength will betray him and he will remain forever in Piva Canyon. His mother will never know about his bones.” (from the diary of Vlatko Lazarević).

Additonal reading: brochure “Dve decenije postojanja i rada KUD-a “Stjepan Živić” (1970) (includes a short biography of Stjepan Živić).