Svetolik Dragačevac, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetSvetolik Dragačevac
Date of Birth: 15-Apr-1883
Place of Birth: Požega, Zlatibor District, Serbia
Date of Death: 09-Jul-1942
Zodiac Sign: Aries 
About Svetolik Dragačevac
- Svetolik Dragacevac (Serbian Cyrillic: ???????? ??????????; 15 April 1883 – 9 July 1942) was a retired Serbian law enforcement official who sent a threatening typewritten letter to German dictator Adolf Hitler on the eve of the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in late March 1941. A veteran of World War I, Dragacevac served as the police chief of several towns in interwar Yugoslavia.
- At the time of his retirement in 1933, he had been posted to the town of Paracin, in central Serbia.
- On 25 March 1941, at a time of heightened tensions between Yugoslavia and the Axis powers, which would eventually culminate in the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, Dragacevac typed a threatening letter addressed to Hitler.
- Following the Axis invasion, occupation and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Dragacevac was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Belgrade, where he was interrogated.
- During his interrogation, Dragacevac attributed his authorship of the letter to Serbian nationalist zeal and excessive alcohol consumption.
- He was subsequently imprisoned in Graz and then deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he died of peritonitis in July 1942. Dragacevac's memory fell into obscurity after the war and he remained forgotten for decades hence.
- The rediscovery of his defiant letter to Hitler in the early 2000s led to renewed public interest in his case.
- A Serbian-language documentary chronicling Dragacevac's life, and the circumstances leading to his imprisonment and death, was released in 2013.
- A street in Paracin bears his name.
Read more at Wikipedia