When I was growing up, as a kid, our mater familias, was my (second-cousin) aunt. For reasons that are too complicated to explain she was the center of my mother’s family. She was a dentist with an established practice before the World War. She married an engineer, and they were a standard East European affluent middle class urban family. They survived the German occupation of Belgrade, Serbian collaborationist right-wing regime, Communist take-over and when I was a kid they lived in a very big and plush apartment in downtown Belgrade. They were the first people to own a TV. My father and I would walk bristly in the afternoons of the Summer 1960s to watch Wilma Rudolph and Valeryi Brumel and various javelin throwers break world records at the Olympics in Rome.
At several annual occasions, either Slava (Serbian celebrations after one’s patron saint) or Orthodox Christmas, my aunt would throw big dinner parties, for about 10-12 people. She spent some time in France and had the French approach to dinners: beautifully served, with white tablecloth and starched napkins, deserts and cheese at the end. I think we, including myself as a kid, learned how dinners should be served from her. I still do like it that way. I hate when hosts play “democracy” and ask everybody to bring whatever they want to eat, or they deliver some mediocre half-cooked food. My aunt treated dinners as serious affairs.
My aunt and her husband and their son remained part of the urban bourgeoisie. They did well and no one ever discussed politics during these dinners. I did not notice that until years later, but the absence of politics did not bother me when I was a child.
Only from time to time, and this very seldom, would the conversation mention that the four sisters had a brother. Like all young kids I took the dead as having been dead forever; in other words of never having existed. But as I grew older and perhaps asked my mother, I figured out that there was an unmentionable brother: there were four sisters and a brother. But where was the brother? Why almost no one ever said a word about him? Even his name was rarely pronounced.
Who was he? Like many young people in the 1920s he chose a military career. He became an officer in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He swore the oath of allegiance to the King, as every military officer would. But in secret, he was a Communist at the time when the Communist party was banned and its members killed, exiled or jailed. When Germany attacked Yugoslavia in 1941, he fought bravely. For some reason his regiment did not surrender, and he did not end up in the German POW camp (not annihilation camp) as majority of Serbian officer corps (including my father) did. He joined Tito and Yugoslav Communists who fought against fascists and “domestic traitors”. He fought for four years and his military knowledge probably helped him advance in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) ranks.
In 1945, Yugoslav partisans, helped significantly and crucially by the Red Army (a thing often forgotten today), liberated the country. Partisans were now in power. My cousin remained an officer, a Yugoslav People’s Army officer now—although I do not know at what level—probably a major or a colonel.
In 1948, Stalin decided (for reasons that have forever remained obscure) to excommunicate Tito and Yugoslav Communists. Communist Party members, and especially those in the military and the security services that were the backbone of the regime, were asked to declare themselves whether they supported Tito or Stalin. It was far from clear that Tito would win, and even less clear that Tito was ideologically right and Stalin wrong. Some either declared themselves for Stalin, or were seen to be likely to support the Soviet Union, or were simply accused to be pro-Stalinist by others envious of their jobs. They were thus jailed.
About 10,000 people, all Communist Party cadres, ended up being imprisoned, including most famously on an island in the Adriatic, called Goli Otok which in Croatian/Serbian means “naked island” giving the idea about the physical landscape of the place. Many were subjected to the usual Gulag-like torture except that this time the Gulag-like torture was applied to the Stalinists (or those accused as such).
My cousin for the reasons I do not know—and I am not sure my aunts knew either--- ended up on the Island. It was said, under the breath, that he was particularly harshly treated because having once violated his oath to serve the King, his second oath to serve Tito and Yugoslavia was considered by those who accused him of betrayal, to be equally superficial or artful. He was, of course, considered a traitor. Which for an ideological delit d’opinion is a total nonsense. But this is how people thought then and how they think today.
HIs wife was a Slovenian (Communist) lady with whom the family remained on very good terms throughout. Once, around 1950, when Tito visited Ljubljana, she threw herself—prostrated herself—in front of Tito’s car to attract the attention to the fate of her husband. She was, of course, lifted up and picked up by the security services and told not to try it again. (Nothing else happened to her.)
My cousin was released in 1951 or 1952. He soon died from pneumonia or whatever weakened his body during the prison time. The traumatized family thought that politics should never be mentioned or much less discussed. I do not know where he was buried. I do not think anyone knows. He remained present only in half-hushed conversations. He became a true non-person, even in his own family.
As a Yugoslav, I am familiar with your family’s story. You have written it beautifully, and I found it very touching.
As a leftist myself, I have always felt ashamed of that part of Tito’s legacy—Goli Otok. In the West, Goli Otok, along with the Soviet gulags, was often used as a powerful example in anti-communist arguments, presented as evidence of an inherent lack of democracy and respect for human rights under communism.
For a long time, I didn’t know how to reconcile this with my own political beliefs.
Then I emigrated to Canada and learned more about McCarthyism in the United States. I realized that it was happening during roughly the same historical period. In a strange way, that helped me put things into perspective—not to excuse Goli Otok or what happened there, but to understand that communism was not alone in having dark chapters in its history, or in failing to live up to its own ideals.
Beautifully written. Thanks, Branko. Almost a century on, it hurts to read.