{"id":1170,"date":"2012-07-20T15:09:13","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T13:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2013-10-18T22:24:27","modified_gmt":"2013-10-18T20:24:27","slug":"svedocenja-preiz-jasenovca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/archives\/1170","title":{"rendered":"\u0421\u0432\u0435\u0434\u043e\u0447\u0435\u045a\u0430 \u043f\u0440\u0435\u0436\u0438\u0432\u0435\u043b\u0438\u0445 \u0441\u0440\u0431\u0430 \u0438\u0437 \u0443\u0441\u0442\u0430\u0448\u043a\u043e\u0433 \u043b\u043e\u0433\u043e\u0440\u0430 \u0441\u043c\u0440\u0442\u0438 – \u0408\u0430\u0441\u0435\u043d\u043e\u0432\u0446\u0430 \/ Svedo\u010denja pre\u017eivelih srba iz usta\u0161kog logora smrti – Jasenovca \/ Serbian survivor testimonies of the croatian concetration camp complex – Jasenovac"},"content":{"rendered":"
Read the full testimonies here (PDF)<\/a>.<\/h5>\n

Mr. George \u017divkovi\u0107
\nConference testimony
\nI can speak either language, but I am going to use English as I
\ncan express myself better in English. And also I want to say
\nsomething to the people that are of the Croatian descent. If I say
\n\u201cCroatian fascist,\u201d if you feel that you are a Croatian fascist, then
\nyou can feel that way. But if you feel that you do not belong to them
\nthen don\u2019t worry about it, for I am not talking about you. I am
\ntalking about the Croatian fascist I lived under and what they have
\ndone to me.
\nLadies and gentlemen, my name is George \u017divkovi\u0107. I came to
\nthe United States in 1949. I was 12 years old. I went to Womeny
\n(spel?), Pennsylvania. First I came to your great city of New York. I
\nlanded in LaGuardia [airport]. There were 73 of us children to be
\nadopted by the American parents, and I was the only Serbian there.
\nAs it happened, a colonel in Emboli, Italy, gave me his last name
\n\u017divkovi\u0107. He was Branimir \u017divkovi\u0107, Yugoslav Royal Army. Some
\nfascist do not like the expression Chetnicks, for to them Chetnicks is
\neverybody that murdered them: the fact is if Chetnicks got to them it
\nis because they killed their [Chetnik] families. But that is the way it
\ngoes.
\nSo let me go on. I got to Pennsylvania, I was accepted by my
\nparents. Marta and Marko \u017divkovi\u0107 who lived in Pennsylvania. I
\nwas immediately accepted not only by Marta and Marko \u017divkovi\u0107,
\nbut I was accepted by their friends and neighbors, my parents and
\ntheir family, which was my uncle John (Jovo) Tomi\u0107 and Dorothy
\nTomi\u0107 and their three children now Doctor Nichola Tomi\u0107, Engineer
\nGeorge Tomi\u0107 and Teacher Caroline Tomi\u0107. I grew up with them. I
\nwas part of the family. I finally had a family.
\nWhen I got here over your city, when I flew over you city\u2015you
\nhave to understand I was only 12 years old kid\u2015I looked down and
\nI said “Dear Lord, don’t ever let war come to this place.” That was
\nmy first thought. Then we got to some school here, in New York,
\nsomewhere. We were housed for couple of weeks. I guess they
\nwanted to fatten us a little bit. Then they took us to different places
\n40 Jasenovac Camps: First International Conference
\nand finally I was brought to Pittsburgh, to the old Alegeny County
\nairport (it was still there). My mom and dad met me there. I call
\nthem “my mom and dad” because they were there for me…
\nBy the way, the first thing my [new] dad Marko \u017divkovi\u0107 and
\nmy mom Marta \u017divkovi\u0107 told me was: “Georgy, learn the American
\nlanguage. You, learn the American history. You learn American
\nculture. You become American first. But do not forget\u2015you are
\nSerbian.”
\nAlso, my mother noticed… I used to run throughout whole house
\nat nights from nightmares\u2015thanks to my fellow countrymen\u2015who
\ncall themselves “Ustashas.” By the way, Domobrani [Ustasha home
\nguard], to me, were not different than Ustashas. They were just
\nanother kind. I have tell you that. I remember them well. Old bag.
\nYou gotta understand one thing, Ladies and Gentlemen, and I
\nam sure you do\u2015when people do something wrong to a child\u2015it is
\nburning my soul. It is there\u2015for ever! I used to run throghout the
\nwhole house at nights screaming my head off. My American mother
\nwould come to me and say: “Georgy, Georgy, you are OK, son. You
\nare OK. You are OK” Also my American mother and my American
\nfather, one night, they heard me, they saw me as I layed down there
\nscreaming and talking in Serbian\u2015because I could not speak
\nEnglish at that time. My mother and my father told me later\u2015they
\nheard me say that time, in Serbian: “Nemojte mi ubiti
\nmajku\u2015molim vas!” (“Do not kill my mother\u2015please!”). [The
\nsurvivor stops for a moment.]
\nWell, I was not always George \u017divkovi\u0107. My misery started in
\nplace called Kostajnica, on the Eastern side of the River Una. It sits
\nright there. It is predominantly Croatian populated. My mother
\nworked there, for people in Kostajnica. She was worked there… as a
\nhouse servant\u2015for guy named Paveli\u0107. [The survivor stresses the
\nname as it was also the last name of the Ustasha fuehrer]. Pajo
\nPaveli\u0107. Zna\u0161 ga, iz Zagreba. (You know him, from Zagreb.\u2015trans.)
\nAnyway, I found that all my miseries started to blank out. In
\n1961 I started to dig. I talked to people. I asked everybody: “Hey,
\ncan you find out something.” And nothing happened. Finally, in
\n1972, I met that gentlemen through my cousin Caroline. He went to
\nYugoslavia. He came back with all the information I needed. The
\nonly thing I remembered\u2015my natural mother thought me\u2015and that
\nwas: Janja Janus\u2015that was her name. She was known as
\nEva\u2015Evica from Kostajnica. Glina kotar (county\u2015trans.)… Selo
\n(village\u2015trans.) Brubanj.
\nWhen I got the facts from this gentleman and [the facts] about
\nmy family\u201527 years later… ‘Cause I knew nothing, OK? I knew
\nnothing. I knew only I was \u0110or\u0111e, \u0110uro Janus… And I finally found
\nthat\u2015during the war\u2015I was maskerading as Croatian. I got away.
\nThat is why I am still here. After the war\u2015when I got to the
\nSerbs\u2015”Janus” did not sound to me as a Serbian name. So, I did not
\ntell them what my name was… So, I told my mother and my father
\nand mother, Marko and Marta \u017divkovi\u0107, until I was 28 years old,
\nand when my first son was Christened…
\nBut anyway, it all started back in 1941 when they bombed
\nBelgrade. I remember the first thing\u2015my mother showed me Nazis.
\nMy mother showed me a picture of a young couple. She was crying
\nand she told me in Serbian\u2015”They killed my sister.” [The survivor
\nstops.] Aparently my aunt. And her family. When Nazi bombed
\nBelgrade.
\nThen I first heard the term “kolja\u010di”\u2015which I do not know how
\nyou express that term in English\u2015I don’t know\u2015massackres?
\nPeople who cut people’s throats? Yeah, butchers. They came into
\nKostajnica, from Muslim side, from Bosanska Kostajnica, over there
\nand started killing the Serbs. And naturaly, in no time at all, my
\nfriends and neighbors, my fellow countrymen, started turning their
\nbacks on me. For some of them could I understand why. I could
\nunderstand because under the Croatian law of that time if a Croatian
\nfamily was to hide me\u2015a five year old Serbian boy\u2015they would
\nkill the whole family and me. That was the law of Ante Paveli\u0107
\n[WWII Ustasha leader]. That’s the law, I think, of Tu\u0111man too. [At
\nthe time of this conference, Franjo Tu\u0111man was then current Croat
\nPresident].
\n[Applause]
\nYou know\u2015if you come with the idea, again, that you can not
\nhold any government job [in today’s Croatia] if you were not\u2015for
\nfour generations(!) of pure Croat blood… It reminds me of my past
\nand I do not like it.
\nAnyway, one night, as my mother worked for this man,
\ndobrovoljac, a volunteer from America [who came to fight for
\nYugoslavia in the First World War]. She was taking care of him. He
\nwas an older man. She was talking care of his house. She had a cow.
\n42 Jasenovac Camps: First International Conference
\nWe lived in a small place\u2015about a size of two car garage. We were
\ndirt poor. We had nothing. We were dirt poor.
\nAt night. Ustashas came at night took him away. My mother
\nheard the commotion. She woke me up… She said “\u0110uro, come on.”
\nShe took me out to a small vinijak (a wineyard\u2015trans.) behind the
\nhouse. She told me to lay down, on my belly, in the rows between
\nthe wines. So I did and she stayed with me for a while. At dawn she
\ndecided to go to the house to get us something to eat. She told me:
\n“Don’t move. Don’t answer anybody. Don’t say nothing. If anybody
\ncalls you don’t answer. Just lay there.” So I did.
\nCan you immagine? At night\u2015and I knew because my mother
\ntold me: “If they catch you they will kill you.” And I did not want to
\ndie. I did not want to die. I was five years old. I did not want to die. I
\nwas not ready for it.
\nHere I am laying down on the ground, between the rows, waiting
\nfor my mother to come back… And they called me: “\u0110uro, \u0110uka
\ndo\u0111i vamo\u2015come here We are looking for you.” And I was
\nworrying about my little heart pounding. I am holding my breath
\nbecause I was afraid they might hear me. And I knew what gonna
\nhappen.
\nSo that time, that went over finally and they started putting a
\nword out that all the Serbs that went hiding\u2015they can come out.
\nThey want to do nothing to them. They want to make them a part of
\nthe Croatian state… And those who want to convert… This is hard
\nfor me to come to grips. And I finally came to it. My mother had a
\ndecision to make. Either to become a Roman Catholic or get us both
\nkilled. So we were converted. And people here, logora\u0161i (camp
\ninmates\u2015trans.) know of, or heard about Croatian priest in
\nKostajnica, Magarac [actually Franciscan Vlado Margeti\u0107]. He
\nconverted us. And, as matter of fact there is a picture\u2015Pete
\n[Makara] has it\u2015there is my mother on his computer.
\nI wanted to tell you. I wanted to show you the book… of when
\nMagarac converted us. But in meantime my mother got a word that
\nmy granfather was burned alive. The Janus last name did not help
\nhim at all\u2015because, apparently he did not want to tell them, he did
\nnot want to deny that he was a Serb…
\nShe got the word and she was sitting there crying… and I was too
\nyoung to understand, to get the grasp. Now, after years of research I
\ncan put it all together. She told me that my grandfather was dead. I
\nfound out 47 years later that Ustashas burned him alive. Why? I
\ndon’t know, but what it is\u2015I found out from a Chetnik from Brubanj
\nthat my grandfather owned a house, on a top of a hill, in
\nYugoslavia\u2015built of a white marble. [The survivor explains, in so
\nmany words that his grandfather was quite rich.] … But my mother,
\nage 12 and my uncle age 14 had to go to other houses to be sluga
\n[servants\u2015trans.]
\nSo, for a while we went to a [Catholic] church. They put us on
\nthe left side. The right side was reserved for the Ustashas.
\nMonday through Friday they were killing the Serbs\u2015men,
\nwomen and children\u2015in Kostajnica. I can point to you places, right
\nnow, in Kostajnica where they buried people. You talk about
\ndesecration! I was there in 1972. Trying to find my mothers
\ngrave\u2015because I wanted to put a marker. Guess what? The
\ncemetery, used to be Serbian cemetery, went from 100% to about
\n10%. Croatians built their houses\u2015in Serbian cemetery, in
\nKostajnica. OK? My mother is laying under somebody’s house or
\nsomebody’s yard. That is a fact!
\nSo, after my mother got the news about my grandfather, her
\nfather, she did not want to go to the [Catholic] church any more. She
\ntought: So, what’s the use? What’s the difference? Her friends told
\nher: “Janja, you have to go to the church.”…
\nOne day I was playing outside in a yard, alone. No-one was
\nthere. Everyone just dissapeared. Like everyone knew what was
\ngoing on\u2015for some reason. I knew where my mother was at. She
\nwas working in the field with some women… And all out of a
\nsudden, this one, I guess our next door neighbor because my mother
\nknew him, in Ustasha uniform, came to me with rifle on his sholder,
\nlike that, and asked me: “\u0110uro, gde ti je majka?” (\u0110uro, where is
\nyour mother?)
\nI said, “In the field.”
\n“Show me.”
\nSo I run ahead of him. There were seven, eight, women in the
\nfield, working. I yelled at my mother: “There is an Ustasha behind
\nme!” When the women heard the key word\u2015Ustasha\u2015they bolted.
\nThey took off. They yelled at my mother: “Come on, come on,
\nJanja\u2015let’s get out of here!” My mother said: “No, I can not leave
\nmy son. I cannot. I will not leave my son!” So he [Ustasha] finally
\ncaught up with us. He took us back. I guess because my mother
\n44 Jasenovac Camps: First International Conference
\nknew him, he let us pack a little bag with some ham.
\nI don’t know how I got to Jasenovac. I know when I got to
\nJasenovac, they put us at some place with some wall.
\nNote: We will stop here, as Mr. \u017divkovic\u2019s statement regarding his
\ntime in Jasenovac was repeated in more detail in his interview.
\nPost-conference interview with Mr. George \u017divkovi\u0107 (at shore)
\nby Nadja Tesi\u0107
\nMs. Nadja Tesich: You spoke yesterday that you spent part of
\nyour childhood in a Concentration Camp Jasenovac.
\nMr. George \u017divkovic: I said\u2015. Yes.
\nMs. Tesich: How much did you spend in the Concentration
\nCamp of Jasenovac? How old were you when entered that?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: I was five years old.
\nMs. Tesich: Five years old and how old were you when you left
\nthe Camp?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Jasenovac?
\nMs. Tesich: Hm.
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: I was only about two to three months there.
\nMs. Tesich: Okay. To establish once again, your name is?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: My name is George \u017divkovi\u0107. In time of
\nJasenovac my name was \u0110or\u0111e [Serbian for George], \u0110uro Janus.
\nMs. Tesich: Okay. Which was the one of your real family?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: It was the name of my real mother. My father\u2019s
\nname was Jovan \u010cizmi\u0107.
\nMs. Tesich: Okay. Now, what I am really interested and this is
\nvery painful, I am aware of that, are there any images that to this day
\nyou associated Jasenovac. If you would, think of one or two images.
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Yes. One particular image was one of the first
\nones I arrived. When we came in, the previous group was empted
\nalready. It was empty. All brick yard and there was wall
\napproximately five to six feet tall, to eight feet, I can\u2019t judge it. And
\none of the particular images that sets in my mind is that woman and
\nher daughter. She was approximately twelve to fourteen years old.
\nThey came in later. They was right in front of my mother and me.
\nThe woman asked my mother if she could help her put up, leg up,
\nher daughter to the wall because her husband and her son were here
\nand her little girl wanted to wave at her brother. My mother obliged
\nthat and the two of them pushed and gave the girl leg up. She looked
\nover the wall, she waved to her brother and then she said to her
\nmother in Serbian: \u201cI see them, mom, I see them, mom. And they
\nwave back to me, oh mom. They are beating him now. They are
\nkilling him.\u201d She just went shocked. She just start screaming. And
\nso, they lowered her and there was, I don\u2019t know how big maybe the
\nwall. Ten to fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, the Ustashas came in
\nand they took away the girl and mother. I didn\u2019t see personally, for
\nexample, as they was walking to this particular, they held us in front
\na, there was a well and on the right there were toilets and the shed.
\nWe was on the left side, right next to the well. We lived out in a
\nnature, under the skies, you know, no food, no blankets, no nothing,
\nno kind of comfort and when they took the girl and the mother they
\nannounced us that we were not allowed to talk across the wall, not
\nallowed to wave to anybody and that we will be strongly punished.
\nStrictly, very punished. So it was, I guess, a couple of days later this
\nthing go around the Camp, everybody was like sardines all packed
\nin and so new lady came in and my mother was talking with her and
\nI asked my mother for some water and my mother said: \u201cNo Georgy,
\nwe don\u2019t have, I don\u2019t have any more water\u201d, and I said: \u201cBut mom,
\nthe well\u201d, and she said: \u201cNo, you can\u2019t have the water\u201d, and they
\nstarted talking about it and I heard them saying, my mother, that
\nlady and my mother said: \u201cThey threw the girl in it after they
\ntortured her\u201d.
\nMs. Tesich: Is there one sound you associate with Jasenovac.
\nSound?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: It was hardly any sound, you know, at least I did
\nnot hear. In Nineteen Forty or maybe Forty One I was, I almost died
\nof fewer. And when I went back to Yugoslavia to see the parts of my
\nfamily and the way I did it, the only way that I knew was my
\nmother\u2019s first name, maiden name, her nick-name and her last
\nmaiden name. She taught me this other things, but I would not
\ncomply, I could not remember all that she taught me. Jana\u2015Janus
\nshe was known as Evica\u2015Eva. She was from Glina, Kotor, a county
\nof Glina, post office Glasni\u0107, selo, village Brubanj.
\nMs. Tesich: Is there anything about Jasenovac that you as a
\ngrown man still dream about or have nightmares about?
\n46 Jasenovac Camps: First International Conference
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: As a grown man I stopped having nightmares. I
\nthank my new parents Marko and Marta \u017divkovi\u0107 and my mother\u2019s
\nfamily, I called them my mother and my father\u2015Jovo Tomi\u0107 and
\nhis wife Doty Tomi\u0107 and their children Nicolas, George and
\nCaroline. They sort of, brought me in and listened to me and talked
\nto me and my parents, my new parents because when I first came to
\nthe United States I would scream my head off and ran through the
\nhouse and my mother, my new mother, would grab me and she said:
\n\u201cGeorgy, Georgy, you are okay. You are okay.\u201d And so, gradually
\nmy parents, after my mother took me to the family doctor and the
\ndoctor told: \u201cMrs. \u017divkovi\u0107, the boy went through trauma and he is
\ngoing to be O.K. and grow out of it\u201d. So she kept working on me,
\nand my father, like, for example, and they would say do I like so and
\nso, and I said: \u201cYeah, I think they are nice people\u201d. \u201cYou see
\nGeorgy, they are Croatians, so and all Croatians are not the same\u201d.
\nOr, these are Germans and whatever. All that people I remember
\nthey were killing Serbs, they were for me, to me, as the little boy
\nthey… So they did marvelous job on me, until Nineteen Eighty Nine
\nall that came back. In Nineteen Sixty One I decided to find my
\nfamily, my natural mother\u2019s family but the irony of it is that in one
\ntime I was in station place called Ilicy. My aunt was in Spainke
\nwhich was only eighty miles away and I couldn\u2019t find it.
\nMs. Tesich: And what happened in Nineteen Eighty Nine?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: It was in Nineteen Sixty One.
\nMs. Tesich: Sixty One? That is when you started searching?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Yes, that is when I started searching. In Nineteen
\nSeventy Two my cousin Caroline, her family, her mother\u2019s side, she
\nwas Bobi\u0107, she went to Krajina to visit her mother\u2019s family. She was
\ngoing all around and her cousin Radenko Bobi\u0107 took her all around
\nwith his car and she being nicely hidey and she told him: \u201cI have a
\ncousin who is in American army and is stationed in Frankfurt\u201d. So
\nhe said: \u201cI am not far from Frankfurt\u201d. So, she gave him my address
\nand one day he showed up in my house and my wife told him I was
\nin the hospital because I had burns on my leg from leaking of a
\nheating pad, chemical burn. And so, I was laying there in a military
\nhospital and my wife sent him to the hospital in Frankfurt and I
\nheard three people speaking Serbian and one said: \u201cWell, I don\u2019t see
\n\u017divkovi\u0107 here\u201d, and I said: \u201cI am in here\u201d, and so from that moment
\non we, kind of, made friendship and one day I was still about how I
\nSurvivor Testimonies 47
\ntried to find my family and everything else and he said: \u201cGeorge, I
\nam interested\u201d, and he went there and came back about three weeks
\nlater and laid papers on my desk, on my table, and said: \u201cGeorge,
\nhere is your information\u201d, because some of the stuff I told him there
\nwas people in Yugoslavia who knew that was me, I don\u2019t know how
\nI remember but I was two to three years old when I was in my aunt
\nhouse, and I told him when he sees my cousins to tell them that and
\nthey said: \u201cYes he was in our house\u201d because they had a little
\nbrother and I guess he died and my mother gave me to them. That\u2019s
\nhow I found.
\nMs. Tesich: Do you think you would have been different person
\nwithout Jasenovac?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Yes, I would have.
\nMs. Tesich: What do you think?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Yes I think I would be very different person.
\nMs. Tesich: How?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: In a way Jasenovac did me harm because that stole
\nmy childhood away from me and the Ustashas. But in a way they
\nalso made me strong and if I didn\u2019t know, which I didn\u2019t, about
\nCroats and Serbs, I didn\u2019t know of any of that, I didn\u2019t know about
\nreligion, I didn\u2019t know none of that. I knew from the time I was a
\nlittle boy that Ustashas will kill me because I was Serbian if they
\ncaught me and that I have to watch out what I said around Croatian
\npeople.
\nNadja Tesich: O.K. Now, you mentioned you would have been
\ndifferent. How? What do you remember.
\nGeorge \u017divkovi\u0107: Before Jasenovac I just remember this little
\nhouse that I was in. I used to call it Vrpolje but it is called Vripolje,
\nno, I called it Vripolje and it is Vrpolje in Slavonia, when I was little
\nboy. That\u2019s another way they knew who I was and with my mother,
\nwhat I remember most, even that we were dirt poor, she used to take
\nme in Kostajnica and there on the bridge there was a setup like a
\nlittle boxes. She would buy me either cheese, sir, cottage cheese, it
\ncomes on a cabbage leaf and also she would buy me a little bit of
\nraisins and she gave me a lot of love but just she had to work very
\nhard in order to keep us alive.
\nMs. Tesich: What did she look like?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: To me she looked like a very beautiful woman.
\nMy mother, that guy Petar Makara, he has on his computer, he has
\n48 Jasenovac Camps: First International Conference
\npicture of my mother. My mother to me looked very beautiful, she
\nwas taller than I was, naturally, I was small. Before Jasenovac if she
\ndisciplined me she disciplined me, you know, either with switch
\nsometime depending of what I did. After Jasenovac, my mother
\nwould never hit me, never did anything. She would say in Serbian:
\n\u201cBog ga je kaznio, ja necu vise\u201d. (“God made him suffer. I will
\nnot.”\u2015transl.) I will never punish him, anymore. She didn\u2019t.
\nMan\u2019s voice: Where is your mother\u2019s grave now?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: My mother\u2019s grave is\u2015. I buried her in
\nKostajnica, in Serbian cemetery St. Nicolas. And the funny part of it
\nis that my mother knew that she was going to be killed. The reason
\nthat I know now as a grown man, because that she one day, she told
\nme: \u0110or\u0111e, if something happens to me the documents are in opstina
\n(commune\u2015transl.) Kostajnica and if I, if something happens to me,
\nif one day the Croats will come to you and ask to burry me in their
\ncemetery you are not allowed to do that. I want to be buried in
\nSerbian cemetery. That\u2019s what for Serbs is \u201cSo, help me God\u201d. You
\nknow, now that I am a man, I understand, and now as a married
\nman, I am married to a German, my wife is a wonderful person, she,
\nbefore I got married I told her my children are going to be christened
\nin Orthodox Church in honor to my natural mother and naturally to
\nmy new mother.
\nMan\u2019s voice: Where is her grave now?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Her grave is in Kostajnica in cemetery St. Nicolas,
\nSveti Nikola, and I went there in 1972 to look for cemetery. My wish
\nwas to put a marker for her one day. I always said it from time I was
\na little boy, from time I remember, from time I got to States, I went
\nfrom hell to heaven, so as far as I was concerned. And I went back
\nto cemetery and I looked for my mother\u2019s grave. It was one tenth of
\nwhat I remembered was one. There was houses. Croatian built
\nhouses in our cemetery. I didn\u2019t know if they dug her up or if she
\nwas in somebody\u2019s house or in somebody\u2019s yard and I told them and
\nthey said no, it was always like that. It was not! It was one tenth of
\nits original size. I went to maticar (registrar\u2015transl.). I don\u2019t know
\nwhat they call in English.
\nMs. Tesich: Mayor\u2019s Office.
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: I went to Mayor\u2019s Office and I took out, I gave
\nhim my ID card and put it on the table and told him I am \u0110or\u0111e
\n\u017divkovi\u0107. Previously I was known as \u0110or\u0111e, \u0110uro Janus and the
\nSurvivor Testimonies 49
\nguy, if he, the maticar (registrar\u2015transl.), the way he said that, if he
\nwould have been here or in Germany I would have brought him
\nacross \u2026.?\u2026 , I swear to God. He said yes, I knew your mother. I
\njust put my hands in my pocket, I just pushed it down as I could
\nbecause for me it was very emotional, just the way he said it. And
\nthen he changed his tune, he started being nice to me and said I
\ndon\u2019t know about it but you can go to Zagreb and ask the people she
\nworked for, and I guess one of the clerks he got to him, apparently
\nhe saw the look on my face, so dark, I understand I become very
\ndark when a dark celo (forehead\u2015transl.) comes across my face
\nwhen some people really get to me. This girl came to me, I went to
\nthe Bank to change some money, someone was running after me and
\nthe clerk said: \u201cMr. \u017divkovi\u0107, speaking Serbian, your mother was
\nhonest hard working woman. You too were dirt poor\u201d, which I
\nalready knew all that but it felt good because this man cared to
\nexplain to me and to, kind of, smooth over what the other guy did
\nnot mind.
\nMs. Tesich: Well, it sounds like you had the mother who loved
\nvery much.
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Yes, I did. I did. And I went to Zagreb from there,
\nthat\u2019s what he told me, he gave me address of the people my mother
\nused to work for, and when I went there this guy\u2019s name was Pajo
\nPaveli\u0107. He told me \u201cI am Pajo Paveli\u0107, when I walked in, \u201cWhom
\ndo I have honor to talk with?\u201d and I said: \u201cYou have honor to talk to
\n\u0110or\u0111e \u017divkovi\u0107, former Janus\u201d, and he said: \u201c\u0110uka\u201d. He looked at
\nme closer and he said: \u201cYes, you look like your mother. You have
\nsome likeness to your mother\u201d. So we went upstairs, him and his
\nsister and he started talking and his sister said to me, and he gave me
\nall kind of information that my family would not give me. You
\nknow, for example, his uncle was my God-father in crkva Svetog
\nPeobrazenja u Zagrebu, pravoslavna crkva (the church of St.
\nTransfiguration in Zagreb, orthodox church\u2015transl.). I can\u2019t
\ntranslate that one. But it is a church in Zagreb, Serbian church. And
\nhe has also a document which I have right now which is in my
\nattach\u00e9 case, which is knjiga rodjenika (registrar of births\u2015transl.),
\nhe took [inaudible] and put my name and date I was born and which
\nI never knew, because when I met up with Chetniks in Nineteen
\nForty Six they, kind of, looked at me and said: \u201cWhat\u2019s your last
\nname,\u201d and I would not tell them Janus because to me it didn\u2019t
\n50 Jasenovac Camps: First International Conference
\nsound Serbian. So I was in [inaudible] and in [inaudible] again. I
\nthought, well there is guy, this big guy with sajkaca (Serbian
\ntraditional cap\u2015transl.) on and this big kokarda (cockade, Royal
\nYugoslav Army symbol\u2015transl.) on his head and he said: \u201cBoy
\nwhat\u2019s your name\u201d. \u201cSir, I don\u2019t know\u201d. And he said: \u201cHow would
\nyou like that to be \u017divkovi\u0107.\u201d I said: \u201cYes, I would.\u201d He was a cap
\ncommander of cap Ebolly. He was the Royal Yugoslav Army.
\nMs. Tesich: So you became \u017divkovi\u0107 because of him?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Yes.
\nMs. Tesich: This is what you told the other day in the
\nconference.
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Yes. So he took me in. And I stayed \u017divkovi\u0107
\nbecause I was adopted. Then the Chetniks put my name in Srbobran
\nfor adoption. My [new] father read that name and he had the son
\nwhose name was George \u017divkovi\u0107, identical like mine. So he talked
\nto my mom and they decided they was going to adopt me. An
\nnormal waiting time at that time was five years to get to the States. I
\nguess my dad knew some people because I was there only six
\nmonths later. I came to New York. I went to Pittsburgh and I think
\nyou got it already on tape
\nMs. Tesich: But there is one thing I do not understand. When
\nyou were adopted, your mother was alive, or not?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: No, no. My mother was killed by Ustashas, I told
\nyou that.
\nMs. Tesich: It\u2019s okay.
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: I was about six years old.
\nMs. Tesich: It\u2019s okay.
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Let me explain to you.
\nMs. Tesich: No. It\u2019s O.K. It comes from the other one. I just
\nwant to clarify. She died actually?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: She was killed.
\nMs. Tesich: She was killed. And when you were in the Camp or
\nafterwards?
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: We was sent to Germany on forced labor. We was
\nsomewhere about one night train ride away from Leipzig. I
\nremember that name, it was burning my mind. And we was there I
\ndon\u2019t know for how long. Maybe six months, eight months, a year.
\nAnd no Germans was atrocious with us and then Nedi\u0107 [leader of
\nthe Serb quisling government under German Nazi occuopied
\nSurvivor Testimonies 51
\nSerbia], he had some kind of a document signed with Germans there
\nto allow any Serb who did not want to stay there to come back to
\nYugoslavia or I don\u2019t know how my mother signed to go back to a
\nhornets\u2019 nest. So when we came there, when we came back my
\nmother knew this woman outside Kostajnica, Serbian woman, friend
\nof hers. She put me with her, I don\u2019t know why. She put me with
\nthat woman and I don\u2019t know, couple of months later, one day two
\nlittle boys of where my mother an I stayed, came up to me and just
\nsaid: \u201cYour mother is dead\u201d. And so, when I got there my mother
\nwas dressed. The women, the Serbian women already dressed her
\nand laid her out on the table. I had to go around and beg candles
\nfrom Croatians for their Easter or Christmas candles because I did
\nnot have any. But any way \u2026 it was a kind of \u2026 I was kind of
\nshocked. It did not hit me until after we buried her. And two weeks
\nlater, at first, the woman said: \u201cYou can stay with us, you can stay
\nwith us\u201d. And one day she said: \u201cI can not feed you. I have two of
\nmy own. You have to go. Go to that house, your mother used to
\nwork for that people. They are friends of yours, you mother\u2019s\u201d, and
\nyou know, six years old, so I went there. The guy had one cow so I
\nwas supposed to take care of that cow, but six years old and I said I
\ncan\u2019t do that. And I stayed there for about a couple of weeks, few
\nweeks, and he pointed out to a house, another Croatian house,
\nexcept that this woman was married to Dr. Tadi\u0107. He was one of the
\ndoctors that got away from the Ustashas. She was Croatian and he
\nwas Serbian. And when they came for him he got away from them
\nand she took me in, because she and my mother were old friends.
\nThey was more classy and more money, you know. She took me in
\nwith her little boy, she had little boy, and when we were in I heard
\nher mother, her mother said in Serbian, in Serbo-Croatian: \u201cBaci to
\nsrpsko govno napolje\u201d. Throw that Serbian shit outside. And she
\nwas saying: \u201cMom do you want to throw your grand-son out too. He
\nis half Serbian\u201d. So, I don\u2019t know what happened but one day the
\ngrand-mother came to me and said: \u201cI have to get you out of here.
\nMy daughter is dead. She died of tifus (typhoid\u2015transl.)\u201d. But I
\ndon\u2019t believe so because two days before that I was running around
\nKostajnica. There was a woman hanging from the tree with a bunch
\nof stuff written on Serbo-Croatian. I couldn\u2019t read at that time and I
\nthought it was familiar, but then again I was not sure. I think it was..
\nI think that they hung her.<\/p>\n

Read the full testimonies here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ms. Tesich: Okay. Now, what I am really interested and this is
\nvery painful, I am aware of that, are there any images that to this day
\nyou associated Jasenovac. If you would, think of one or two images.
\nMr. \u017divkovi\u0107: Yes. One particular image was one of the first
\nones I arrived. When we came in, the previous group was empted
\nalready. It was empty. All brick yard and there was wall
\napproximately five to six feet tall, to eight feet, I can\u2019t judge it. And
\none of the particular images that sets in my mind is that woman and
\nher daughter. She was approximately twelve to fourteen years old.
\nThey came in later. They was right in front of my mother and me.
\nThe woman asked my mother if she could help her put up, leg up,
\nher daughter to the wall because her husband and her son were here
\nand her little girl wanted to wave at her brother. My mother obliged
\nthat and the two of them pushed and gave the girl leg up. She looked
\nover the wall, she waved to her brother and then she said to her
\nmother in Serbian: \u201cI see them, mom, I see them, mom. And they
\nwave back to me, oh mom. They are beating him now. They are
\nkilling him.\u201d She just went shocked. She just start screaming. And
\nso, they lowered her and there was, I don\u2019t know how big maybe the
\nwall. Ten to fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, the Ustashas came in
\nand they took away the girl and mother. I didn\u2019t see personally, for
\nexample, as they was walking to this particular, they held us in front
\na, there was a well and on the right there were toilets and the shed.
\nWe was on the left side, right next to the well. We lived out in a
\nnature, under the skies, you know, no food, no blankets, no nothing,
\nno kind of comfort and when they took the girl and the mother they
\nannounced us that we were not allowed to talk across the wall, not
\nallowed to wave to anybody and that we will be strongly punished.
\nStrictly, very punished. So it was, I guess, a couple of days later this
\nthing go around the Camp, everybody was like sardines all packed
\nin and so new lady came in and my mother was talking with her and
\nI asked my mother for some water and my mother said: \u201cNo Georgy,
\nwe don\u2019t have, I don\u2019t have any more water\u201d, and I said: \u201cBut mom,
\nthe well\u201d, and she said: \u201cNo, you can\u2019t have the water\u201d, and they
\nstarted talking about it and I heard them saying, my mother, that
\nlady and my mother said: \u201cThey threw the girl in it after they
\ntortured her\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[382,1154,1172,122,1016,760,1156,1015,6,759,381,123,195,99,551,538],"tags":[1259,1254,1257,1253,622,946,1252,164,1255,1256,303,1270,1231,871,1267,898,1247,431,1268,1269,1271,1224,368,369,1258,886,1266,924,1264,1262,920,921,1261,1260,524,1265,1263,914,919],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2757,"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions\/2757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dzambas.ch\/dzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}