VICTIM OF COMMUNIST ATROCITIES
On October 24, 1944, the Yugoslav communists cruelly murdered Father Petar Perica, author of the hymns ‘Do nebesa’ and ‘Zdravo, Djevo’
Father Petar Perica, a Jesuit priest, was executed October 24, 1944, on Daksa, an island near Dubrovnik.
Executioners with red stars on their caps – communists, partisans, on the night of October 23-24, 1944, without cause, and without trial, killed 53 prominent Dubrovnik Croats on the island of Daksa near Dubrovnik. Among them were 7 priests, one of whom was Father Petar Perica, who wrote the famous Catholic hymns “Zdravo Djevo Kraljice Hrvata” and “Do nebesa nek se ori”.
Father Petar Perica was born in Kotišina near Makarska in 1881. He celebrated his first mass in his hometown of Kotišina on August 9, 1914, with the motto of his first mass: “Greater glory to the Divine Heart!” As a religious, he worked in Zagreb, Travnik, Split, Šibenik and Dubrovnik. From 1937, he lived in Dubrovnik. He was the superior of the Jesuit community, the administrator of the Church of St. Ignatius, a spiritual director at the Diocesan seminary, the leader of spiritual exercises and popular missions, and the spiritual leader of church societies. Because he was a Priest and raised young people in the faith, he was arrested and taken to Daksa, where he was executed as an innocent victim.
The partisans entered Dubrovnik on October 18, 1944, on Sunday, October 22, after 10 pm, arresting Fr Petar Perica. Hearing the partisans who had come to arrest him at the house of the Society of Jesus, Father Perica said briefly: “Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me. If it is a sacrifice, then so be it, I accept it!”
He quickly got ready, taking with him his religious cross, an image of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and St. Joseph. While getting ready, he constantly recommended himself with short invocations to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and to St. Joseph.
He repeated several times that he was willing to make the sacrifice, asked for forgiveness from the religious brothers present in the house, and said his goodbyes to them all.
According to Don Josip Mužić, a priest and writer from Split, Petar Perica’s martyrdom was prophesied by the famous German mystic Theresa Neumann. Who announced to Petar Perica that he would die a martyr’s death, during a meeting which took place while Perica was receiving treatment in Germany.
His remains, where found and identified on Daksa, and were buried in 2010, at the Boninovo cemetery in Dubrovnik.
To date, 697 victims (369 civilians and 327 prisoners of war) from the Dubrovnik area were killed by the Yugoslav communists after the so called “liberation” in 1944 and are known by name.
The Daksa cemetery is the largest single execution site and has become a symbol of communist terror over the population of the Dubrovnik region.
This crime shows how the Partisans and Communists wanted to decapitate the Croatian people by persecuting and killing their best sons, precisely those who were the bearers of religious and social life. The countless massacres and persecutions of priests, teachers, writers, doctors and other bearers and pillars of society are a burden whose consequences are still felt by the Croatian people today. The saddest thing is that these terrible events and crimes had to be kept silent for 45 years at the cost of imprisonment and even death.