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LETTERS FROM A SOLDIER

LETTERS FROM A SOLDIER

Summary/Abstract: Based on about one hundred postcards and letters, which have been saved, written by Osif Kološnjaji from Ruski Krstur, this article focuses on his life and movements since the time he was called up as a reservist of the Yugoslav Army to the Sombor barracks where he remained until the beginning of the German attack on Yugoslavia. In the postcards he sent to his wife Veruna, he not only writes about private matters, but also describes his view of the circumstances in the reservist units, as well as in the entire Yugoslav Army at that time. As a reservist of the Hungarian Army, where he was drafted twice, in 1942 and 1943, he didn't write much. During the second "military training" he was convinced that by the time they finished their job at the tailor's shop they would return home. However, in early January 1944 he was mobilized and sent to the Eastern Front where he spent almost half a year in the territory of northwestern Ukraine and southwestern Belarus. Obviously, he was not allowed to write in more detail in the mail from the front on places and military actions, but he nevertheless gave a lot of interesting information about military operations, the situation in the Army, about his own experiences of the war and the horrors of war, as well as on the Ruthenians and men from Krstur who at that time were with him or not very far away from him. Since he had been wounded in the territory of southeastern Poland and transported for treatment to Austria, he wrote only a few of the last letters and postcards that have been preserved. The letters and postcards make a valuable source material that considerably enriches and illuminates the stay of his fellow citizens in German work camps and their participation in the Second World War in the units of the occupying Hungarian Army

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