Jama/The Pit

Ivan Goran Kovačić (1913 - 1943) was one of the greatest Croatian writers of the 20th century. He was born in Lukovdol (On March 21st, 1913), a town in Gorski Kotar, a mountainous region of western Croatia, and his middle name Goran stems from that.

During World War II, he found himself joining the Partisan forces, and he did so along with the poet Vladimir Nazor in 1942.

His most famous work is Jama (The Pit), which ranks among the greatest Croatian poems ever written. He penned it during the war, while in service near the city of Livno. The poem was written out of intellectual and ethical responsibility that condemns fascist attrocities done by his own nation - The Croatian Ustase, which somehow corresponds to (documented) genocide of Serbian people in Lika, Herzegovina and elsewhere. There, Ustase were killing Serbs and pushing them in pits and caves. Ivan Goran Kovacic was killed by Chetnik forces in an east-Bosnian village of Bunovo (On July 13th, 1943).

The work is a great example of anti-war poetry. Its message against torture, mass murders and war crimes is universal, and it should be translated to every language. Jama was studied in elementary school all over Communist Yugoslavia. Sadly, not so in modern independent Croatia, where it was simply discarded in nationalist hysteria that covertly denied anything connected to antifascist movement.