Marko Gojević
Marko Gojević was born in 1959 in Kijevo, in the Dalmatian hinterland. During the Second World War, his father was first a member of the Croatian Home Guard, and later a member of the Ustaše forces. At the end of the War both Marko Gojević's father and mother ended up in Bleiburg. Having managed to escape the Bleiburg massacre, his father spent five years in hiding in various parts of Croatia. The village that Marko Gojević grew up in had an almost exclusively Croat population, whilst the neighbouring villages were mainly populated by Serbs. That was one of the reasons why a police station was established in Kijevo at the very beginning of the war in the 1990s, in April 1991. Despite the fact that before the war he lived and worked in Rijeka, Marko Gojević returned to Kijevo and became a member of the reserve forces of MUP [Croatian Ministry of Interior] in Kijevo. The village was under a blockade and finally in July Milan Martić issued an ultimatum to its inhabitants: the village would be attacked and the elderly, women and children should be evacuated. Buses were organised and some of the inhabitants fled. Kijevo was attacked on August 26, 1991. In the village of Glavaš, where Marko Gojević was, only four people were left. They managed to get out. A rescue operation was organised, to get the member of the MUP forces and of the Croatian National Guard out of Kijevo, where they had found themselves encircled. Marko Gojević participated in the rescue operation. Kijevo and the nearby Croat villages were burnt down. He was the commander of a mountain raider squad until its abolition in 1992, when a new division in the Croatian Army was formed - the home guard, and within it the Independent Homeguard Company Kijevo. He participated in many actions on the mountain of Dinara. As the commander of the Independent Homeguard Battalion Knin he was in regular contact with General Gotovina. He participated in Operation Storm and he was a highly positioned officer in the Croatian Army. After the war, he received the rank of major but due to bureaucratic procedures he did not acquire any other right. Despite his wish to continue actively working in the military, he was forced to retire in 2002. Today he lives in the village of Glavaš.