Filip Kljajić (Yugoslav Partisan)

Filip "Fića" Kljajić (2 May 1913 – 5 July 1943) was a Yugoslav Partisan fighter during World War II and political commissary of the 1st Proletarian Brigade. Kljajić was killed during the Battle of Zvornik and posthumously awarded the Order of the People's Hero medal on 25 September 1944.

Biography

Kljajić was born in Tremušnjak,^[1] a village near the Croatian town Petrinja into an ethnic Serb family. Prior to the outbreak of the war, Kljajić was a shoemaker.^[2]

Death

In early July 1943, the 1st Proletarian Brigade, with Kljajić serving as their political commissary (since 1 November 1942),^[3][4] attempted to liberate the occupied Bosnian town Zvornik from the Wehrmacht and the troops of the occupying Independent State of Croatia. During withdrawal Kljajić died of an accidental gunshot, on a hill on the outskirts of Zvornik.^[5] His body was taken to the Bosniak village Liplje on a mountain near Zvornik and buried. Kljajić's body was later taken from that spot by his family and reburied in a family plot elsewhere. A memorial was erected on the spot where his corpse was originally buried. Following the ethnic cleansing of Liplje in 1992 at the start of the Bosnian War, the memorial suffered and became overgrown with shrubbery.

Kljajić's family suffered several losses during World War II. His wife Đurđelina Dinić (born 9 November 1914) was killed 25 May 1943. Filip's brother-in-law and nephew were killed in 1941. On 22 January 1943, Filip's niece Milanka (born 1924), also a Partisan, was killed.

References