The Forgotten 500

by Gregory A. Freeman

  “Twenty-five dollars a month, George,” his father said to him in Serbian, shaking his head as if he just could not believe his son was so fortunate. “That is so much. That is enough to keep a family of five in Yugoslavia. You can get a dinner, a very good dinner, for five dinars. The exchange rate is fifty dinars to the dollar, George. Fifty.”

  The son of a Pittsburgh steel-mill worker was going back to his parents’ home country to study and live a life they could have only dreamed of when they set sail for America. The Vujnovich family saw George’s departure as fulfillment of the American dream, the proof that if a poor Yugoslav couple came to this country and worked hard, their children could reap unimaginable benefits. His parents were thrilled to think of him boarding the Majestic, at the time the largest ship in the world, part of the White Star line that had sailed the Titanic only a few years earlier. Like its ill-fated predecessor, the fifty-six-thousand-ton Majestic was a magnificent sight with her three tall funnels and long black hull, the interior filled with stately dining rooms, lounges, and libraries milled of expensive wood and fine fabrics.

  His parents relished the thought that Vujnovich was traveling in comfort, going to a promising future, not as one of hundreds of immigrants packed in steerage, fleeing poverty, war, and hunger.

  The Majestic docked in Cherbourg, France, where the American boys boarded a train to Paris and then on to Belgrade, arriving in mid-September 1934. They found a city that, much like any other European capital, was steeped in a rich and colorful history that included war, occupation by other countries, and myriad hardships. But by the time the Americans arrived, Belgrade was on the upswing, gaining recognition as a cultural cornucopia and a center of higher education. After the occupation by Austro-Hungarian and German troops from 1915 to 1918 during World War I, Belgrade experienced faster growth and significant modernization as the capital of the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the 1920s and 1930s, growing in population to 239,000 by 1931. Located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, Belgrade is one of the oldest cities in Europe and since ancient times it has been an important traffic focal point, an intersection of the roads of Eastern and Western Europe.

  Vujnovich and his companions were amazed by what they found in Belgrade. Their parents had talked a lot about the old country, but most of them knew the tiny villages of Yugoslavia more than they knew the metropolitan centers like Belgrade. The Americans found themselves in an exotic big city and they couldn’t wait to explore. They enrolled in the University of Belgrade as planned and then they immediately set out to confirm every image that Europeans had of wild, ill-mannered Americans. Flush with cash and with very few worries, they ran wild in Belgrade, a cosmopolitan European city that offered plenty in the way of bars, restaurants, and cafés where the young men could spend their money and wile away the evening. A typical night found them drinking wine and singing at a kafana, an establishment common in the Balkans that served primarily alcohol and coffee, often with a live band. Not quite a restaurant but not exactly a bar, the kafana was a perfect place for the boys to drink and flirt with the singers in the band. The Americans would invite a few Serbian friends to join them, and the dozen or so would inevitably create a scene when they went out, even appearing in the newspaper occasionally, such as the time when one of the group stole a hansom cab pulled by two horses. The chase went on until the horses were too tired to keep running from the furious cab driver. Vujnovich enjoyed the good times as much as anyone else, but he was the self-described teetotaler in the bunch, preferring to watch his friends get drunk and foolish while he counted up how many bottles of wine the group had gone through that night.

  The rowdy group of Americans was hard to miss in Belgrade, especially for the other students at the university. They were well liked, though also seen as the bad boys on campus sometimes. The fact that they were from America, not to mention that they had plenty of money to throw around, made them interesting to the other students, and so they had no problem socializing as much as they wanted. Much of their time was spent at the Anglo-American Club on campus, a hangout for American and British students and the locals who found them appealing. The club was located across the street from the old Yugoslav palace, and its comfortable lounges, full of rich wood and luxurious furniture, made a fine place for the Americans to make the acquaintance of any Yugoslavs who might find them interesting. It was there on a November night in 1935, not too long after he arrived in Yugoslavia, that George Vujnovich met Mirjana Lazic for the first time. It was a Thanksgiving celebration and the room was crowded.

  The Americans had invited Mirjana and several of her friends to their club that evening, ostensibly so the two groups could improve their language skills. Mirjana wanted to improve her English and the Americans wanted to improve their Serbian. They had realized that the Serbian they learned around the dinner table back home was a little rough when used daily in Yugoslavia. But both groups knew that there was more at issue than language skills.

  When he first saw Mirjana across the room, Vujnovich had the same reaction as every other young man who met her. She was beautiful.

  He had another reaction, too. He knew from that first moment that she was the woman he wanted to marry. Vujnovich couldn’t settle on exactly what drew him in so quickly. It might have been her blue eyes, her lovely voice, or her quiet, dignified demeanor. He even liked the way she stood. And her dress. And the way she wore her hair.

  That’s the girl for me. I have to get to know this girl.

  Vujnovich fell for Mirjana hard, like nothing he had ever experienced before. He had no idea that, like many of the people in Yugoslavia, Mirjana had already been through a lot in her young life. Her father had been interned by the Austrians in connection with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in 1914, which had set the wheels in motion for World War I. Though he was not actively involved in the assassination, he was in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, at the time of the assassination and was an unabashed supporter of Young Bosnia, the political group responsible for the killing. Her father returned to their home in Novi Sad, a Serbian village on the Danube River, after the war ended and then moved his family to Belgrade for a better job. The family did well in Belgrade and Mirjana entered the university at the same time as Vujnovich. A learned woman already, Mirjana spoke Serbian, English, German, and French, and she taught languages in addition to her own studies.

  Vujnovich immediately struck up a conversation with Mirjana. She found him handsome and interesting, but she thought he had some wild friends. She gave the Pittsburgh boy a chance, drawn by his playful, engaging demeanor. But then he went too far with his American-style familiarity. He offered to take her home that evening and she told him, in English that was crystal clear in both pronunciation and meaning, that such a suggestion was out of line, an insult to a young woman he had only just met.

  “I’m a professor at a high school for girls, and if anyone saw me walking in the evening with a strange man, there would be talk,” she explained. “I don’t want people to talk about me.”

  Vujnovich understood that he had been too eager, falling back on his American sensibilities and forgetting where he was. He was disappointed that he had blown his chance with this beautiful woman and could only watch her march off.

  He would not see Mirjana again for four years. In the intervening years, Mirjana’s mother died and she received a scholarship to study in Cambridge, England, for six months. After returning to Yugoslavia, she settled again in Belgrade.

  By 1939 Vujnovich and his friends had settled down somewhat, becoming more serious students and less the rowdy Americans. So when he saw Mirjana again one night at the Anglo-American Club, he thought he might have a chance to make things right. This time he would proceed very slowly. He spoke to her gently, politely, and briefly, making no effort to monopolize her time at the club. But he watched carefully and, when she showed an interest in ping-pong, so did Vujnovich. When she wanted to play bridge, so did he. They slowly became well ac
quainted and after two months Vujnovich very carefully suggested one evening that he might walk her home. He braced for the same retort as before, but this time Mirjana said yes.

  As they walked slowly for three miles along the Milosavelikog, a large boulevard leading to her home, Vujnovich made small talk until he thought the moment was right to say what he’d been thinking for a while.

  “I remember when I saw you the first time, years ago. It was 1935,” he said.

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. Just as he had suspected for the past two months, she had no memory of their first meeting. “What? I never saw you before in my life, not before a couple months ago.”

  “I saw you in 1935,” he said. “At the club.” He then proceeded to describe exactly what Mirjana looked like that first night—the color of her dress, her brown shoes, how she wore her hair, the way she stood. He said it as if it had been running through his mind for four years, and it had. Mirjana was touched that he remembered. She was moved by how he described this vision, standing there on the boulevard with her. Vujnovich had already fallen in love with this beautiful local girl, and now she was falling in love with the tall, handsome American. They dated through 1939 and 1940, a happy time when there was little to concern them except their studies and each other. Then everything changed in 1941.

  Prior to 1941 it was easy for George Vujnovich and Mirjana Lazic to ignore the gathering cloud of Nazism even though it was just over the horizon from Belgrade. They were young university students and they were in love. For Vujnovich especially, it was hard to imagine that war could intrude on this wonderful time in his life because he came from the American mind-set in which tanks rolling through the streets and armies invading your home were something that happened “over there.” The problem was that Vujnovich was over there. He was in Belgrade, in the path of the advancing German armies, and all signs pointed to trouble ahead for Yugoslavia. Vujnovich was aware of what was happening in the rest of Europe, but he was not involved in politics and found it hard to believe this beautiful city could be overrun. Others around him were more worried. Some of his American and British friends were making plans to leave before things got worse. The assistant professor of anatomy at the university, however, was German and tried to convince Vujnovich that if Germany invaded Yugoslavia, the Serb people should not resist. His name was Mueller. “Go among your friends and tell them,” he urged Vujnovich. “Tell them that the Germans will not be oppressive if they do not resist.”

  Vujnovich did not believe the instructor, and his entreaties made him only more concerned, not less. In the early months of 1941 the dominoes fell quickly, and suddenly German troops were in Bulgaria, Romania, and Austria. Yugoslavia was next in line. As many knew would be inevitable, Yugoslavia went from peace to horror in just a few quick steps. Politicians in the country tried to keep Yugoslavia neutral as they saw Hitler advancing across Europe, but the task became more challenging with each of Hitler’s victories. Unable to compete militarily with Hitler’s forces, Yugoslavia faced two possibilities: Either bow before Hitler, or resist him, relying upon support from Western powers. The decision rested with Yugoslavia’s Prince Paul, who had taken leadership of the country in 1934, after King Alexander’s assassination in Marseille. Prince Paul was a forty-one-year-old cousin of the king and called on to rule the country because King Alexander’s son, Peter II, was only eleven years old. Prince Paul was pressured by his advisers to make a deal with Hitler in hopes of favorable treatment, and he eventually acquiesced, signing the Tripartite Pact with the World War II Axis Powers in Vienna on March 25, 1941. By signing the pact, Yugoslavia officially became part of the Axis along with Germany, Japan, and Italy. But the prince never intended to join the Axis aggression in Europe. Rather he was only trying to spare his country the barbarism he knew the Nazis would bring if the Yugoslavian people resisted.

  The people of his country did not agree with the prince’s effort, preferring to face down the German invaders than join them, even in name only. Prince Paul’s decision prompted massive demonstrations in Belgrade and other cities. When the Axis Pact was revealed to the people, they protested in the streets, chanting, “Belje rat; nego pakt!” which meant “War instead of a pact; death instead of slavery.” Vujnovich and Lazic could see people marching in the streets around the university, shouting condemnations of the prince and showering flowers on the Serbian troops who had been sent to maintain order. The protesters made their intentions clear, that they supported the country’s army but not its appeasing prince.

  Vujnovich watched as his bucolic student life was turned upside down. German-owned shops were destroyed, windows broken in the homes of German residents. Anyone with a German name was afraid to go out on the street. Vujnovich couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. He considered just leaving, heading home to Pittsburgh. He and his American friends thought it was fascinating to see these events unfolding in front of their eyes, but they didn’t feel it concerned them. They were Americans; this wasn’t their war. They just happened to be there witnessing the world change, and they could leave when they wanted.

  But what about Mirjana? He had fallen madly in love with this local girl, and she would not be able to leave the country with her Yugoslav passport. Vujnovich’s American passport was a free ticket home, but he couldn’t bear to leave behind the blond beauty who had captured his heart from across the room at a party and occupied his thoughts for almost four years until he saw her again. So he stayed longer than he should have. Vujnovich was thinking about this at the club that evening when he again ran into Mueller, the assistant anatomy professor who had assured him the German invaders would be benevolent. The warning was more stern this time: “You can’t do that,” the man said, looking out on the broken shop fronts. “You people are going to suffer.”

  Things kept moving so quickly that it was hard for Vujnovich to keep up with each day’s progress. Only two days after the pact was signed, on March 27, 1941, Peter II, now seventeen years old, was proclaimed of age and took the throne as King of Yugoslavia. He immediately supported a group of pro-English officers and middle-class politicians in executing a coup d’état on the same day, and Air Force General Dušan Simović became prime minister. Yugoslavia backed out of the Axis in all but name.

  The new rulers opposed Germany, but like Prince Paul, they acknowledged the overwhelming power of the enemy. They feared that if Hitler attacked Yugoslavia, the United Kingdom, their strongest ally, was not in any real position to help. For the safety of the country, they declared that Yugoslavia would adhere to the Tripartite Pact.

  Westerners praised Yugoslavia as an exception among the neighboring nations who had capitulated and accepted Hitler’s terms, congratulating the country’s people on standing up to resist the German hordes. But the West could offer little other than words of encouragement. The people of Yugoslavia were buoyed by the success of their uprising, but the joy would not last long. On the evening of April 5 Vujnovich was at the Anglo-American Club and ran into Mueller again. The German instructor’s mood was grim, as were the moods of most in the room despite the copious flow of alcohol.

  “Something’s going to happen,” Mueller told Vujnovich. “Something bad. Please tell people not to do these things. Don’t provoke Germany.”

  Vujnovich didn’t pay any attention to Mueller, chalking up the comments to the wine and a dour personality. He went home and went to bed, expecting to go to class the next day. Instead he woke up at six a.m. to his apartment building shaking and the sound of bombs falling. He raced to the window and threw back the curtains, squinting in the morning sun. He was stunned to see planes directly over the city, dropping bombs by the hundreds.

  This American from the south side of Pittsburgh was watching Hitler’s response to the previous weeks’ events. When Hitler first heard of the coup d’état and the country’s attempt to withdraw from the Axis, he thought it was a joke. When he realized the people of Yugoslavia had defied his will, Hitler became infuriated at
the country’s resistance and decided to destroy Yugoslavia, ordering his staff to carry out his orders “with unmerciful harshness.” The German Luftwaffe started by raining hell down on an unarmed, defenseless city. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described what happened next:

  On the morning of April 6 German bombers appeared over Belgrade. Flying in relays from occupied airfields in Romania, they delivered a methodical attack lasting three days upon the Yugoslav capital. From rooftop height, without fear of resistance, they blasted the city without mercy. This was called “Operation Punishment.” When silence came at last on April 8, over seventeen thousand citizens of Belgrade lay dead in the streets or under debris. Out of the nightmare of smoke and fire came the maddened animals released from their shattered cages in zoological gardens. A stricken stork hobbled past the main hotel, which was a mass of flames. A bear, dazed and uncomprehending, shuffled through the inferno with slow and awkward gait down towards the Danube. He was not the only bear who did not understand.

  The royal family escaped abroad. King Peter II went with his government to Greece, then to Jerusalem, the British Mandate of Palestine, and Cairo, Egypt, eventually landing in England in June 1941. There he joined numerous other governments in exile from Nazi-occupied Europe. The king completed his education at Cambridge University and joined the Royal Air Force. For the remainder of the war, Prince Paul and his family remained under house arrest by the British in South Africa.