Sparks of Truth from the Hilly Balkans: Memories from Childhood

I sit in the room. Outside it is quiet and only occasionally interrupted by the chirp of a bird, the sound of leaves rustling: one can smell the divine fragrance of nature. On the television screen flash the images and burst the sounds of war. Explosions! One can see demolished buildings, columns of refugees, hear the sounds of airplane motors, the cries of children; but one cannot perceive the smells of war. That must be experienced and survived.

I suppose that is how it was in 1939, 1940, and the beginning of 1941 in Serbia. People’s memories of the horrors of the First World War were still fresh as the new war approached like a cloud. Those two-and-a-half to three years before Germany attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, I lived in Petrovgrad, today’s Zrenjanin, a little city in the Banat region on the banks of the river Begej. The population was ethnically mixed: Serbs, Hungarians, Germans, Romanians, and Jews. These were the largest groups. They say that only about 3% were Jews, but as they were mostly wealthy people, they were influential. They built a large and beautiful synagogue which the Germans destroyed soon after their troops entered the city (see Figure 1). A local German made use of the materials, building himself a new house. And so the synagogue too experienced the past and present fate of Orthodox churches and monasteries across the Balkans.

I cannot say much about the town or life in it. I was little, and we lived there only a short time. My recollections and memories of the time before our departure are more like snapshots without continuity: a large restaurant with its garden under a grape arbor; the pastry shop on the way to kindergarten where every day they prepared a snack for me, like a banana dipped in chocolate. I walked to kindergarten, “taking” a younger boy with me. We would cross the bridge, not knowing that my father was watching over us. I remember a visit to the Dunđerski family estate, where we were guests for a day. For a five-year-old child from the city, this was an unforgettable experience: the encounters with domestic and even some wild animals without the barrier of a fence, haystacks that served as slides, and finally a small, private, narrow-gauge railroad for the transport of everything imaginable around the estate.

My mother was a teacher and in her class she mostly had children from Jewish families. These children were older than me. I particularly recall two little girls. One I remember because of her childhood bedroom: one whole wall was covered in shelves where her dolls stood or sat. For my birthday she gave me two miniature porcelain dolls. One doll sat on her potty, the other in her play pen. The second girl was my occasional playmate. Her parents had a jewelry store and a movie theater. From her, on my 6th birthday, I received a real Swiss watch, which I wore for years and was very proud to have. I even have photographs in which the watch is visible, but unfortunately the little girl’s name I no longer recall. The two of us often played behind the theater. Sometimes we snuck into the dark theater, until someone noticed us and escorted us out. We watched the Wizard of Oz. We even had our picture taken with a witch’s broom, which served as our transportation as we chased each other around the yard (Figure 2).

My father was an officer in the Royal Yugoslav Army. At the time, he worked as an intelligence officer, and he certainly knew more than most people about what was happening in Europe. As my folks apparently had a closer relationship with the parents of this second little girl, they offered to take her with us to Belgrade, so that at least she would be saved. Tragically, her parents did not want to be parted from her.

One evening—on 5 April 1941—Dad came from the border with a chauffeur and car...