Petar Brzica

Petar "Pero" Brzica was a Croatian Franciscan of the "Order of Friars Minor" who became a mass murderer during the Ustaše regime. He committed his atrocities at the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II. He personally murdered up to 1,360 inmates at the camp.

Background

Before the war, Brzica was a scholarship student at the Franciscan college of Široki Brijeg in Herzegovina and a member of The Great Brotherhood of Crusaders, an organization part of the Croatian Catholic movement. He spent some time studying law in Zagreb where he became a Ustaše Youth member, later becoming a member of the fascist Ustaša government and one of the guards in the Jasenovac concentration camp.
As a member of Ustaša, he held the rank of lieutenant. He won a contest in which he used a curve-bladed knife, also called a srbosjek, to kill newly arrived concentration camp prisoners. Brzica boasted of winning the contest by killing the largest number of prisoners – 1,360 people one night alone. Other sources set Brzica's "record" at a lower number, between 670 and 1,100.