On April 16, 1941, Yugoslav troops surrendered to the Germans. On April 6, 1941, the Nazis attacked Yugoslavia without having formally declared war. At about 7:00 a.m., German bombs fell on Belgrade and other Serbian cities. Bombs fell near the entrance to the Belgrade Cathedral and the Patriarchal Headquarters. On the afternoon of April 6, the Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo (Dožić) was forced to move to Rakovica Monastery near Belgrade, and on April 7, he followed the royal government from Rakovica to Žiča Monastery and further to the Montenegrin monastery of Ostrog. This was during Holy Week. On Easter, the Patriarch served in the Church of the Presentation of Ostrog Monastery. On April 14, the young Yugoslav king Peter II Karađorđević left Ostrog for Greece. The next day, a plane arrived for the Patriarch, on which he was also supposed to go abroad. However, the Patriarch refused, saying: “I shall remain with my people, and whatever happens to them, let it happen to me.” On April 16, Yugoslav troops surrendered. After a week’s stay in the Upper Ostrog Monastery, the Patriarch moved to the Lower Monastery, where he was arrested by the Gestapo on April 25, following a tip from a Croatian who had served at the Yugoslav court and then defected to the Germans. The Patriarch stood for six hours in the snow and rain in only a cassock on the platform in front of the monastery gates, while the Germans plundered the monastery. After that, they loaded the loot into 6 cars. They also took with them to Sarajevo the Patriarch, the Ostrog Archimandrite Leonti, and Dusan Dožić, the Patriarch’s nephew. From Sarajevo, the Serbian Patriarch was transferred to Belgrade, where from May 1 to May 5, 1941, he was in the prison of the former district court on King Alexander Boulevard. Afterwards, the Germans transferred him to Rakovica Monastery, and then to Vojlovica Monastery in Pancevo, where they kept him in custody together with Saint Nicholas (Velimirović) of Žiča. Although Patriarch Gavrilo had idealized Hitler before World War II, while in prison, the Patriarch and St. Nicholas rejected all Nazi offers of cooperation. Source: Monk Benjamin (Gomarteli), “Letopis’ tserkovnykh sobytii nachinaia s 1917 goda” [Timeline of Church Events from 1917]. Part III:1939-1949. |
