On this day in 1991, Stjepan Penić, the first Croatian journalist killed in the Homeland War, was taken from his home in Dalj. His fate and his message of forgiveness still resonate today.
Exactly 35 years ago, on August 6, 1991, Stjepan Penić, a journalist for Croatian Radio Vukovar and a correspondent for Glas Slavonije, was taken from his home in Dalj. He became the first Croatian journalist killed in the Homeland War, and the circumstances of his death remain harrowing to this day.
Penic bravely faced the arrival of Serbian paramilitaries and the JNA in Dalj. He was aware that as a journalist, he posed a threat to those who had occupied his town. Just before he was taken for a second time to the so-called "informative interview" at the local community building, which had been turned into a prison, he told his wife words that reveal his greatness.
"They will kill me because they know I will write down everything they did to us, but I forgive them," Penić told her, according to his wife's testimony.
He never returned from that interview. According to witness accounts, Vaso Glodić and Mirko Đurić led him out of the building. Glodić took the journalist to a nearby football field, where he brutally took his life, first slitting his throat, then shooting him in the head. His body was set on fire a few days later, and the charred remains were found on August 18, 1991.
Despite the unimaginable pain, Penić's family did not respond with hatred. In an interview with the Franciscan monthly Veritas, his wife, speaking on behalf of herself and their three daughters, addressed their former neighbors and her husband's killers:
"We do not hate you, and we forgive you all."
In doing so, she echoed the act of forgiveness her husband had made before his own death, leaving a legacy of humanity that transcends the horrors of war.
Penic's kindness and professionalism were best reflected in his relationship with young journalists, for whom he was a role model and mentor. One of his students was Siniša Glavašević, the legendary Vukovar journalist whose wartime reports became a symbol of the hero city's resistance. Glavašević, unfortunately, shared his teacher's fate and was also brutally killed during the war.
