Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin

Who was Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin?

Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin was a Serbian Chetnik military commander. He took part in the Balkan Wars and First World War and afterwards served as the president of the Association of Serb Chetniks for Freedom and the Fatherland in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Beginning in 1941 he collaborated with the Italians under the awareness and condonation of supreme Chetnik commander Draža Mihailović until the Italian capitulation in 1943. In the spring of 1942, he was appointed by Mihailović as the commander of Chetniks in Dalmatia, Herzegovina, western Bosnia and southwestern Croatia. In October 1942, Trifunović-Birčanin and his subordinate commanders, Dobroslav Jevđević and Petar Baćović, were responsible for the killing of over 500 Bosnian Muslim and Catholic civilians in the Prozor region in October 1942. He died in Split on 3 February 1943.