While the short tale about the famous actor is itself a small historical record, especially for him and one little Serbian village half an hour away from my current location, I have to say that this post is a little bit mistitled even though De Niro's story has several connected points with what I want to write today. Instead, it will be about my grandfather and his war stories I listened to yesterday for the first time. Actually, my mother told me all this before, but yesterday, during our annual dinner, he was in a great mood to tell them himself, and this is my attempt to write them down while they are still fresh in my memory.
But, for a moment, let's get back to the title story. Not too long ago, I read in a newspaper article* about Robert De Niro and his European travels he did about 40 years ago, more or less in the time when I was about to be born. Back then, these kinds of tourist destinations were extremely popular among young Americans—if you were young and adventurous, you didn't need much money to visit most of Europe, traveling by foot and hitchhiking, meeting local people, living their lives for a summer, getting lots of experience, and filling your memories. In the case of a 25-year-old actor at the beginning of his career, this probably has more importance than with other people. Well, unless young De Niro was on some mission of seeking his ancestors, this is exactly what he was doing back then in the sixties when he ended up for a week or so in Čokot, the neighboring village where my mother was born and where my grandfather still lives in his nineties, enjoying life the same as when he was much younger. Yesterday he visited our house for a small celebration, and I took the chance and asked him whether this story was true and interpreted by the newspaper like it really was. To my surprise, he confirmed everything and also spiced it up with the fact that the family where De Niro stayed are actually our distant relatives living not so far away from my grandfather's house. He remembers the actor clearly, as he helped them to collect some vegetables and accompanied them to free markets where they all have been selling tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and other food and vegetables. He said that De Niro, in his short visits, even picked up a little of the Serbian language and bonded with locals very well. Well, I am not going to spread this story any further; I just like to add that after last night I admire him even more. The other day I stumbled on a midnight projection of his masterpiece"Midnight Run" and enjoyed the movie again for the umpteenth time.
Ok, let's get to the history part and some half a century before De Niro's visits. Both of my grandfathers were about the same age when the Second World War happened. They both stumbled through this part of time in their early twenties and experienced it very differently. My father's father at the time was in the army when Germans captured his whole unit and transferred them all into a military camp in Germany. He was forced to do labor work the whole war there, and I hate myself because I didn't write down his stories, especially once, long ago, when he eagerly told us all his adventures, especially those in the days when the war was finally over and how he traveled back thousands of miles on foot along with thousands of people trying to cope and find their way home. Ironically, despite avoiding military fights during the war, my mother's father experienced it in an occupied country and was faced with imminent death a couple of times, and not only by Nazis! Obviously he managed to go through it; otherwise this blog would be just another 404 page. Following are his war stories that shaped his personality more than even he is ready to admit.
First World War**
However, in order to even try to understand his behavior, I feel like I need to add a couple of history facts first. After the First World War, Serbia was kind of a pillar of a new, fresh country where Serbians, Croats, and Slovenians joined and created the first monarchy of Yugoslavia. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed in 1918 and exterminated by communism after the second war. The Serbian monarchy inherited it, and it was ruled by King Peter I and later by his son Alexander I. Despite being doomed to imminent collapse due to a vast amount of differences, the kingdom actually was pretty respectful in those days of Europe for its part in the First World War and many battles on the southern front, especially in Macedonian Greece. My great-grandfather took a big part in this war and was in the same lines with the king himself during their winter retreat at the beginning of the war. That was one of the most horrifying moments in the violent history of Serbian wars, but after many months and years of coping with the invasion of German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian armies, at the end our exiled army survived and returned to the battle by forming, to be proved later, a long-lasting alliance with French and British divisions, allowing them to finally move toward the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the very end of the first great war in Europe. However, even though the Serbian royal period between two wars flourished with the rise of democracy, free thought, and educational and civil rights, my grandfather didn't like it at all. When I asked him why, he told me just one story from his youth, describing maybe even better how old-fashioned tales from the 19th century were still there, opposing all the progress happening, especially in big cities. In the fall of 1935, after finishing elementary education in his village, he was so eager to move to a big city and start gymnasium—the best high school possible at the time (the same one I spent three years in during my teenage days, 50 years later). Yesterday, I swear that I saw a sparkle of a tear in his eyes when he was remembering how brutal was a man from the school who literally kicked him out of the school to the street, saying that he is not welcome simply because he came from a village with a big country estate and his place is not in the school, but rather his part in this country is only in the field doing hard labor in the cultivation of food. If you were a woman, it was even worse; there was only one school in the entire city encouraging young girls toward further education, but the quality of the education given there was questionable and not comparable to a gymnasium. My grandfather's disappointment rose even more later when he realized that living in the village had no benefits at all. All food manufacturers were at the mercy of greedy bargainers and dealers without any fair market or developed economics in the system. The villagers were simply second-class citizens.
Later, in the dawn of World War II, things were getting even worse. The rise of communist thought, brought initially from Spain and their civil war and also from the east and the first communist country established in Russia, polarized people in Serbia to the bone. The German occupation of 1941-1944 not only gave our grandfathers another wave of German and Bulgarian armies but also a full civil war between royalists and communists and their resistance movements. It was next to impossible to cope with all that if you were just a 17-year-old boy like my grandfather was.
Family photo taken in Čokot, Radovan Lazić - upper, left
I asked him what his most painful experience from that time was, and in the next half hour, he opened his heart and told us everything his young soul had to do in order to survive, and with an occasional wiping of a tear or two from his left eye, I finally learned how he eventually grew into a strong father figure and local community leader. Like today, back then Niš was one of the biggest cities in the former kingdom and as such was targeted by allies and their air force from time to time. Being just a couple of miles away from the main German command, Čokot was a natural point in air defense, so they spread heavy artillery in the fields in order to defend from allies' planes. One of them was settled in the yard where today is my grandfather's house. German soldiers slept in a nearby shack on, at the time, state-of-the-art air beds and shared local life with villagers. According to my grandfather, compared to Bulgarians that came later, they were all civilized men and paid for all the food they needed.
Also, there was one more important target in the village, and that was the national railway passing by on its way from the north toward Greece to the south, and Germans used it very often for deploying tanks and heavy vehicles and armory to the south fronts and even further to northern Africa. The local resistance was using that fact to stop the convoys and demolish the rails every now and again when they got informed of some important train passing by. In lack of people, for some tactical revenue, and to better protect it, Germans deployed young boys down the line in order to alert the army of possible attacks. During one night in 1942, my grandfather was one of them, and only by chance did he avoid death, as only a couple of hundredmeters to the north, resistance took action, and as a result, the whole train derailed that night. Germans killed on site all deployed boys along the line in retaliation. 1942 was especially cruel, as this was the year where fighting started to be more intense, the captives from the local Nazi camp performed a prison break that year, and it seemed that German command started to take resistance more seriously. Unfortunately, civil war also became more intense, and royalists, people who were basically leftovers from the dismantled Serbian army, and the communist movement started to fight each other with the same or even worse cruelty compared to all the German and Bulgarian occupations and their retaliations performed against both civilians and the resistance. Those years were the dark side of the whole Second World War in this neighborhood.
Air battle over Niš***
Faced by the fact that he almost lost his life, my grandfather chose to go low profile and continue cultivation labor with his father, going to the field, seeding crops, collecting food, and trying to live a normal life. It turned out that during the war this was not really possible. Even on the field they had that one experience where they just barely escaped and saved their lives when resistance started bombarding the German army from the neighboring hill. When they came back tomorrow, the sight was scary; blood and dead bodies were everywhere. I can only imagine how scenes like that leave a permanent mark on any witnesses, especially among young people and children. Anyway, in later years, the war started to fade out, and the winner and loser could be easily recognized. Communist resistance won their fight with royalists, and Germans started evacuating and leaving space for the chaos in the last years of the war. Like Germans before, communists saw the potential in all young boys in their early twenties and recruited them for the time that eventually came after the Germans officially withdrew. The young boys living in villages were easy targets; they were already bitter and disappointed in royal democracy before the war, and many of them saw their chance to get a more important role in the new society. Once again my grandfather was in mortal danger, and this time from upcoming communists. They were cruel. Even more than occupying armies. Especially toward those who were labeled as a threat for what they had in mind. In a moment I thought I saw fear in my grandfather's eyes when he told us what happened in the fall of 1945. In order to justify the full dismantle of the royal family and democracy, they organized a census. You can only imagine how elections were back then with no help of modern technology and no mass media to explain both sides. There were two wooden boxes, one to support royal democracy and the other to support communism for future state government. There were also rubber balls you had to put in one of those two boxes. You voted in a way that you had to put your hand in both boxes and leave the ball in one. Needless to say, official results showed all the royal boxes pretty much empty. Sadly, the truth was completely different, at least at the voting point where my grandfather was appointed as a monitoring agent. The voting day was coming to the end, and my grandfather and his peer associate started to feel some anxiety and fear of the final result. They chose to vote at the end of the day, and when they pulled the hand out of both boxes, it was more than obvious that the royal box was full of balls, while the communists scored almost nothing inside. They already received threats from the headquarters before the census, and what they did is maybe something you do only when you are faced with the most horrifying future. Instinctively, an hour before closing, they locked the door, broke the seals, and moved all the 'royal' balls into the communist's box. Then they reopened the voting again. The last remaining hour brought dozens of now balls into Royal's box, but the 'official' results were that more than 95% went to the new regime. Two things happened tomorrow. My grandfather learned that most of the other box keepers in neighboring villages were killed on site for the full royal boxes, accused of fraud, and persecuted without any trials. The second thing he realized was that he not only again kept his head on his shoulders but he was also commended and later became a mayor of his village, responsible for all big decisions, mostly by following orders from the 'above'.
The birth of communism in post-war times gave birth to the upcoming Cold War between the Soviets with their socialist allies and western countries. At the end of this war, my grandfather witnessed the air bombing of the city not only by the Germans but also by allies as well, even after the Nazis retreated. And even one real air fight that lasted pretty much about half an hour or so. In November of 1944, just about four weeks after Germans retreated from the city, over the western parts of the city of Niš and not far from the Čokot suburbia, happened perhaps one of the first US-USSR air 'encounters', and, as it seems, this one was one of the real and severe air fights with significant losses on both sides. In short, US fighters attacked a Russian convoy and killed many Soviet troops, including their general, who were progressing toward the north front. Soviet planes soon after attacked the US fleet in retaliation, and in the aftermath, Americans were forced to apologize in an official manner on the highest level. At least that is the official story. The main participants were the US Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the Soviet Yakovlev Yak-3. According to one eyewitness, and I am quoting the Wikipedia article, which you can find referenced, 'Soviet fighters flew over the old city fortress at an altitude of only 20m and attacked the Lightnings from below in a steep climb'. The final number of fallen crafts and deaths varies according to who you are asking—Americans, Russians, or Serbian witnesses from the ground—but they all agree that it ended in more than an ugly result with multiple aircraft fallen to the ground. The worst statement was that up to ten fighters ended in flames and were crushed.
Monument risen in memory to 'US-USSR Niš incident'****
The rest is the modern history of the 20th century. Communism lasted much longer than anybody anticipated, and the reason is no doubt the nuclear-based cold war with strong roots originated right there in World War Two. My grandfather was more or less satisfied with the new government. He recognized all its flaws and good sides, but from his point of view, especially thanks to those decades of prosperity back in the 60s and 70s and the fact that common villagers were treated better than in royal times, he enjoyed half a century in peace without any conflicts or wars. The only conflict he had in those times was, in fact, that he was a truly religious person, and religion of any kind was a major nemesis in all communist societies. Even though he never hid his religious personality, he managed to deal with this duality in his life during the entire communist era. Despite all the obstacles in the way, he even managed to play all the way and rebuild a small church in the village without being punished or suffering any major consequences from 'comrades in headquarters'.
We can only try to understand those violent times and how blood, animosities, war, and death can affect children, especially those who spent all their teenage years in dark shadows of our history books. Yesterday, by wiping the final tear, my grandfather finished his tales with these words: "Every night when I lie down in the bed in my dark room, there are only two of us, me and the god, and I always pray that I made good decisions before."
R.I.P. Radovan Lazić, September 21st, 2015.
Image and article references:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000134/
*
http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/Drustvo/I-Robert-de-Niro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Yugoslavia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_army's_retreat_through_Albania_(World_War_I)
**
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Campaign_of_World_War_I
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_battle_over_Niš
http://zmilan.blogspot.com/2012/05/military-sidetrack.html
****
http://www.juznevesti.com/Drushtvo/sovjetski-vojnici.html
