Nikola Zagorac

Nikola Zagorac was a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church and parish priest at Lički Petrovo Selo, born on 9 September 1910 at Brezik, near Gospić, and killed in 1941. He is honoured as a new martyr.

He finished the seminary at Cetinje in 1932 and was ordained in 1933. He was for a short time parish priest at Udbina, then moved to Lički Petrovo Selo. He was arrested just as the Independent State of Croatia was proclaimed. There are several testimonies about his death, which do not agree with one another. According to the first, he was killed in the churchyard together with 43 other Serbs. According to the second, he was killed at a sawmill near Bihać together with 700 other Serbs from Lički Petrovo Selo. According to the third, near the Plitvice Lakes the Ustaše killed a priest, whom they took up into the bell tower and threw through the opening; as he fell they shouted: "Make the sign of the cross with three fingers"; when he fell they ran up and pierced him with a bayonet. The family of Nikola Zagorac, his wife and two children, was taken by the Ustaše to the camp at Jasenovac in May 1942.