Parishioners of the Catholic parish in
Drvar went on a pilgrimage near
Knin on 26 July 1941. The massacre occurred in village of
Trubar, 18 km from Drvar, where local Serb rebels (either
Chetnik or
Yugoslav Partisan) stopped a train at Vaganj station, separating and killing the pilgrims who were returning from Knin on 27 July. Murdered pilgrims, among whom was a German Roman Catholic priest,
Waldemar Maximilian Nestor, were thrown into the pit of Golubnjača. Shortly afterwards massacres occurred in surrounding villages. Some sources cite over 300 fatalities, yet many of the bodies that were thrown into deep caves, have yet to be fully exhumed. One of the witnesses of the massacre was a Partisan, Stevo Babić, who wrote that a group of rebels had executed train passengers at Golubnjača. According to Croatian scholar Blanka Matković, the
Yugoslav Partisans were responsible for the massacre. ==Exhumation==