French version here.
Note that my native language is croatian. However, I
also communicate in English and German adequately.
Firstly, my name is Zvonko - being the short form of 'Zvonimir'.
I was born June 1925 in Osijek, a large town near the
confluence of River Drava in Danube. It was then in Kingdom of
Yugoslavia then but later in what was called Independent
State of Croatia (NDH) until end of WWII. (Later, it became
known as Marshall Tito's 'Federal National Republic of Yugoslavia').
I was 16 years old when the German Armies attacked Yugoslavia on Apr 6th
1941. I remember the day the German Army marched
through my home town Osijek. Many people cheered and some
had an arm-band with a 'swastika' on their upper arm.
Fascinated and mesmerized by this event, I made a paper
arm-band with a 'swastika' at home secretly. Suddenly, my
cousin entered my room and found me with that awkward band
on my upper arm. The same instant, I recognized how
foolish and stupid I was and tore it off. I never wore any
such thing after - I'm still ashamed of it.
(My cousin had left for Israel after WWII and lives in Canada now.)
I graduated from my Gymnasium (Secondary school) in 1942, and
was called to Croatian army service on the side of Germany in October 1943.
I was a teenager without any life experience facing new circumstances. What
would it be like being shot or mutilated or caught as a Prisoner-of-War?
How does one wait for one's own death? How will that death come?
In the years that followed I learned mortal fears, experienced the
instincts of survival, felt death's scythe swish over my
body - survived the intended massacre of croatians. (Did
you believe that 'ethnic cleansing' was new? We had it in 1945 already.)
At war's end it was our aim to surrender to British Army units but
the Croatian Army was stopped by the British at Bleiburg on May 13,
1945 and they turned over all their prisoners to Tito's Army.
Then came the croatian death march, which is a story that I will tell at some other time.
You must remember that this was after the end of the war in Europe, but I was on the wrong side and after was no better than before. During the Croatians' retreat westwards, there were some 1.2 million of people plus their lifestock on the move.
I lost many relatives and close friends of our family who
lived mostly in Croatia. There were some in
Austria too. All of them - who were either detained for
political reasons or abducted to concentration camps for
their origin - died sooner or later during WWII.
Many thousands died and some more never returned to their
homes anymore. Tito's Army or Government did not care at
all for the peoples whom they fought against. Sorry, this
is a rather painful and sad story for me. I hope you will understand.
Remember that prejudice was part of fascists' system but the communists' one wasn't better either. Why was this happening? Oh, how can I answer this? Better put that question to the politicians and economists, leaders and preachers who guided their herds of sheep to an unknown destiny and to new historical catastrophes. Do sheep ask the shepherd where he leads them at any time?
After the war I buried in my subconcious most of my rather
traumatic experiences during those terrible times. I forgot my happy
childhood - I hardly talked to anybody about it. I had many
nightmares too but never did I talk about them, even with my
dearest ones. My wife did learn about few of these deep
buried experiences - rarely we exchanged more than few
sentences about those events in 1945. It was a taboo theme
under the system in Tito's ex-Yugoslavia.
Subsequently, Croatians won their freedom and sovereignty and
the Republic of Croatia is a worldwide recognized state now.
The Croatians have the chance to rule in their own way there
- this has happened after 9 centuries of domination by others.
I believe that you have learned a little about of my life's history by
now. Try to understand the circumstances and events which have stamped
the last years of a teenager. This teenager lost more than half of his
weight and was a human wreck when he got rescued from a marching column on
his 20th birthday. Yes, I have been reborn but my traumatic experiences
made me a more sensible, thoughtful and wise grayed young man.
I was asked before, what did this war lead to. My two word answer is...
irrecoverable waste .. of lives - youths - loves - ideas - thoughts - energies - values - natural beauties etc.
