detail from: KRK Art dizajn

MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD

SIMO JELAČA

A column of refugees set off into the unknown, through deep snow, in bitter cold. The first few nights we slept in Grmeč, where my father managed to make us a kind of shelter out of coniferous branches. When the column of refugees moved on, we could not carry the bedding we had brought from home, so everything was left in the huts. The suffering began. We were hungry and it was very cold. During the escape from the German attack, we spent the nights sleeping under the open sky in deep snow. Only on some nights in the Lika region did we manage to spend the night in someone's sheds and stables, under a roof. Our escapes lasted a full nine weeks, until mid-March, when the winters in the Bosnian mountains were brutally cold. We walked through Krnjeusa, Bosanski Petrovac, Marjanovića Do, Smoljani, Sanica, Mrkonjić grad, Rore, Mliništa, Prekaje, Tičevo, Mokronoge, Drvar, Martin Brod, Kulen Vakuf, Donji Lapac, Srbac, Doljani, Prkose, Vrtoče, Plitvice Lakes. We walked through the mountains of Grmeč, Klekovača and Šator as well as Oštrelj and Crni vrh. We reached central Bosnia and returned, walking through deep snow. During those nine weeks, the six of us, together, ate only three barley and oat loaves. And we also ate fresh cow intestines, which our mother had just washed in an icy stream.

***

In the refugee column, through deep snow, in the bitter cold. hungry, naked and barefoot, we moved slowly, like half-alive corpses. Mother carried little Rada, and Marija, our oldest sister, carried me, who was about three and a half years old at the time. The hardest part was crossing Mount Šator. The mountain was completely covered in ice, the trees were bare, there were no passable roads, and the partisans found themselves surrounded by the German army. The only way out was over the frozen Šator Mountain. The partisans cut the ice with bayonets and moved forward, and the column of refugees followed them, step by step, up the mountain. Many mothers left their children in the deep snow, unable to go any further. Marija carried me on her weak back, a thirteen-year-old girl. She asked my mother if she could leave me too. And when our mother gave her permission, she lowered me behind a fallen beech tree into the deep snow, from behind which I could not get out. I cried and begged Marija to take me with me, promising to buy her a green skirt when I grew up. Marja cried too. After a while, when they had already moved away, Marija took pity on me and came back for me. When she lifted me onto her shoulders, I hugged her even tighter than before. We both cried, and I held her tightly around хер neck, begging her not to throw me away again. And many years later, when I graduated from faculty, I bought Marija a green skirt and a refrigerator with my first salary. That story was published by Novi Sad Dnevnik in its New Year's issue for 1963/64. It was written by journalist Gordana Arok, to whom our neighbor Vera told the story.

Moving on, so tormented, when we found ourselves in Mrkonjić Grad, the Germans captured us and took us to be shot. They took us out to a clearing, not far from the forest, near the village. And when the partisans heard about the crimes, they attacked the Germans with all their might and managed to free us, while the Germans lined us up in a firing line. The previous group of those who had been shot earlier lay dead in front of us. Some were still moving in the bloody snow, and some were still bleeding. We children were already used to those scenes and did not react with fear. We were completely numb, we felt hunger and winter most of all. We all walked like ghosts.

My brother Jovo's feet froze, so the bone fell out of his big toe, which he simply pulled out and threw into the snow and continued on.

And when we found ourselves near the source of the Una River, the partisans were distributing bread to the refugees. Indescribable crowds of hungry people formed. The stronger ones pushed me until I was exhausted, and they pushed me behind the front door of the house where the bread was being distributed. That's how Maria lost me and thought I was gone forever. And she started calling me in a panic. Luckily, she found me when the whole column had passed and saved me again. Nearby, behind that house, we crossed the source of the Una, over a wooden beam that bent underfoot, we saw some mothers throwing their children into the water. Maria carried me with her eyes forward, not looking at the water. She no longer allowed herself to lose me.

All these places and events left deep scars in our memories, and Maria remembered them the most. Mother endured all this suffering silently, heroically, with the drive that only mothers can have, when it comes to moments of struggle for the survival of their own children.

***

In mid-March we found ourselves at the Plitvice Lakes. The snow had begun to melt and it wasn’t as cold as it had been. The forests were still bare, and below the house where we had been staying for a few days, we could see Lake Kozjak, a beautiful green-turquoise color. In areas where the sun had difficulty reaching, there was still snow and ice. The refugees were dragging themselves everywhere, like ghosts, their clothes torn, many of them looking completely lost. They were looking at the sky and talking incoherently. They didn’t know where they were or how long it would take. They walked like half-alive people, walking towards death with slow steps. Our father was with partisans. He didn’t know about us, or whether we were alive, or, if we were, where we were. Only occasionally did he manage to spend the night in our house. One night he dreamed where we were and where the road to us was taking him. He decided to look for us, according to his dreams. He baked three loaves of bread and prepared what was left of his food. He had no one to consult with, he set off along the paths solely according to his dreams. And the journey, on foot, took him three days. Along the way, he spent the night in the barns of abandoned farmhouses. The journey led him to the Plitvice Lakes and he found us. What joy he brought to us children when we saw him and after we had eaten our fill of the food he had brought us. Soon we all set off home, the way he had come. My father replaced the exhausted mother and Maria, carrying us weak ones. Our return journey took four days, we walked more slowly than our father had walked on the way to us. We were exhausted, cold and sick, we could barely move. Mother told father about all the suffering we went through. We children were silent and walked without feeling, but we only knew that we were going home.

Upon returning home, typhus broke out in the village and not long after, our youngest sister Rada died. She was not even two years old. Our father had to make a coffin for her funeral himself, and no one else was there to attend the funeral except us, the children and our parents. There was no one in the neighborhood yet, that was how it was at that time. My brother Jovo and I were both suffering from typhus. We had almost nothing to eat in the house, and enemy soldiers often suddenly burst into the house, with rifles pointed at our mother, asking for food. Since we ourselves had almost nothing to eat, the Germans did not believe our mother, they hit her with rifle butts, angry, thinking that she was lying to them. So tortured, she soon died, and we children were left alone in the house, while the partisans held our father as an interpreter for English and occasionally for German. He knew these languages because he had previously spent nine years in America working for a German. When my brother and I were recovering from typhus, we often stole ammunition from German soldiers while they cooked food in our orchard and handed the bullets over to the partisans. We counted the Germans when they came to our house and told the partisans how many there were and in which direction they had gone.

***

I had almost nothing good to remember from my childhood. I grew up without a mother, whose appearance I unfortunately don't even remember, I went hungry and barefoot and in torn clothes. I looked after pigs since I was six years old, which were always hungry and would enter the neighbor's fields causing damage, so those neighbors would always yell at me, and I had the impression that everyone hated me.

I worked with my father when I was so small and weak. I was only seven years old. I led the oxen while we plowed, and my father held the plow and always yelled at me. I couldn't do anything to the oxen. They were hungry, so they grabbed every blade of grass and simply threw me from one side to the other. The whole time we plowed like that, I cried, and my father cursed. I prayed to God that I too would die, just as my father prayed that his ship would sink in the Atlantic when he returned from America.

I couldn’t even go to school with other children my age, because of plowing and other field work. They only allowed me to go to school after Christmas, when it snowed, and my teacher Nada Prodanović didn’t call me a regular student until spring. Still, I finished the class with excellent results, so she didn’t let me repeat the year, as my father insisted. However, it happened many years later that at the train station in Bosanska Krupa I met my other teacher, Milan Potkonjak, and when he heard that I had received my doctorate, he cried with joy and shouted at the top of his voice:

-“I am happy, my student has become a doctor of science!”

To which I replied:

- “But you were my teacher.”

***

So, although I did not have the childhood that children in a world without wars have, I remembered the events and people as they were in my youth. I experienced some of the childish antics that characterized us as children. When I was old enough, I herded cattle in the woods with boys a little older than me. We enjoyed picking wild berries and mushrooms, but we often exposed ourselves to dangers such as catching and killing poisonous snakes and entering caves. We boys always had rifle bullets, which we stole from the German army, so we sometimes put them in the fire, and then we would hide behind rocks and listen to the bullets shoot. However, we were never sure if they all exploded. While herding cattle, we usually competed in “wrestling”, “throwing stones over the shoulder”, “climbing”, “snapping”, playing “rotten mares” and the like. We had a bull named Dikonja, who was considered the strongest bull in the village, so we enjoyed it when he defeated our neighbors' bulls. And we liked it most of all when our bull defeated a Muslim bull. Occasionally we stole other people's fruit. It seemed to us that it was sweeter than ours. At home, we did not tell our parents about the dangerous things we did in the fields and forests. We knew how to distinguish good from bad, so we always presented ourselves to them in the best light.

Gavre Jelača, the oldest man in our area, lived by the Ciganovac stream, and was known for being very lazy. During the hot summer days, he would constantly lie in the orchard, and when he came to visit someone, he would sit for several hours and talk very little about anything. He had lived and worked in America for 30 years, but he had brought nothing back from America and had not learned English. We boys often laughed at him, joked about him and made fun of him. We mocked his word “šerap” (shut-up). Gavre would shout it at every childish arrogance and that was all he said in English.

My brother and I got along best with Dušan’s sons: Jovo (we all called him Braco), Trivo, Predrag and Nenad. Braco was the oldest and was very skilled in technology. He knew how to fix a threshing machine, ride a motorcycle and make tambourines and sleds, everything anyone could imagine. Predrag and Nenad were twins, but they did not look like each other. In terms of age, the two of them were between my brother Jova and me. Other boys from Jelača my age were Dule Jankov and Slobodan Ilijin (Boćo). Our uncle Dušan (all the children called him ćić Dušan) had bees and collected honey, which he gave us as gifts for the winter. One summer, while he was collecting honey, we boys were constantly hanging around him, dipping our fingers in the honey, and it happened that Nenad fell into the honey pot. He fell into the honey with his butt, and ćić Dušan pulled him out of the pot and shouted:

- "Lick your butt, kids, lick it."

When I finished elementary school, our uncle Đuro, who was colonized in Mladenovo, came to visit us, and it was already the beginning of September. Đuro asked our father to take me to his place, where I would continue my education, and so that I wouldn’t be late, I enrolled in the eight-year school in Bosanska Krupa, where I only attended for one week.

I went to school in Mladenovo completely barefoot, even when the frosts began, I had nothing to wear, until my elder brother Vojo Agbaba brought me sandals. I had no food allowance, and Uncle Đuro died two years after my arrival, so at the age of fourteen I had to go to work as a laborer in a peasant labor cooperative, where the manager Svetko Maleš paid me half my wages, even though I met all the standards, telling me; “You’re small, you should eat less.” I never forgot that to him, and I once had to refuse to let him enter my laboratory, where I worked as a technician. When I finished eighth grade, at the age of 16, I weighed only 33 kg, I was constantly hungry until I came to Novi Sad, to my sister Marija's.

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