Astonishing Grace

My name is Viktor T , I was born in 1949 in Zemun, in Serbia. My mother Paulina was a German who lived in the village of Kačarevo, which was then called Franzfeld.

Before I was born, in 1945, the communists assumed power and expelled the Germans. They would get in groups of three and confiscate German houses, saying, “You are of German nationality and according to such-and-such a law all your property is forfeit. Take with you only what you can carry.” Those Germans who stayed behind faced a life of hell in the Kačarevo internment camp. The camp took up a whole street which was fenced in with barbed wire, with guards posted in four locations. If anyone tried to escape they would be shot by the soldiers. The Germans interned in the camp were mostly made to go and work in people’s houses, sometimes even in the houses that had belonged to them before the Partisans (the Communist-led resistance movement that came to power in post-war Yugoslavia) had confiscated them. The Partisan officer would say, “I need three German women to do some work in my house.” And there was no choice but to obey. My family decided to stay and we went through great suffering because of our German roots. My mom was seventeen when she was arrested and taken to the camp. She and her friend Dora got assigned to work for a Partisan officer of OZNA (the “Department for People’s Protection”), called Petar K. OZNA was the secret security agency in Communist Yugoslavia and was extremely brutal. Petar was a Serb from Croatia, from Glina in the Banija region. He was appointed in 1945, when the internment camp for Germans was established, to oversee and investigate whether any SS people might have infiltrated (the SS were the most brutal German military forces, some of whom stayed in Yugoslavia after the war, and the peaceful German folk living in the country had nothing to do with them). He had also been trained at the Russian intelligence school. He had the habit of cleaning his gun. Then he would order my mother to undress. She was raped and robbed of her innocence as a seventeen-year-old. He also raped her friend, Dora.

My mother fell pregnant in 1948. When my biological father saw her stomach swelling he drove her away. Young and frightened, my mother decided to terminate the pregnancy. She went to the hospital in Pančevo and arranged an abortion. But God had a different plan. The doctor had a car accident and the abortion was postponed. When she got home after the failed abortion attempt, her father found out and shut her in her room. He was a committed Christian. Christians consider abortion a sin – murder – and he would not let her go through with it. The Kačarevo maternity hospital had been taken over by the communists, who were hardcore atheists. They would not allow Germans to give birth there and so when the time came she had to go to the hospital in Zemun (a Belgrade suburb). Later, for her own protection because she was German, she married my stepfather when I was two years old. I had no idea he was not my biological father.

My mother, stepfather and I lived with my grandparents. My granddad Peter had intended to stay in Kačarevo because he felt he belonged there, and he worked as the head miller in the mill. But the communists brought a man in for my granddad to train, and then one day told him they didn’t need him anymore. My granddad went to Belgrade and found an attorney with the intention of emigrating to Germany. He began getting the papers together and put me on the list to go with him because he saw the hatred in the eyes of my stepfather towards my mother and me. I remember he kept talking to me about religion. He would say to me, “Vic, don’t you fear anything. Especially don’t be afraid of the dark.” Then he told me a wonderful story that I will never forget: “There was a boy, they killed his whole family, he ran to hide in the dark. He saved himself because the darkness was his greatest ally.” My granddad was the undisputed authority figure and my stepfather did not dare lift a finger against me while he was there. Unfortunately, that only lasted until 1954. I was only five years old then. It was the worst, most hellish year of my life. My mother didn’t let me go to Germany with my granddad. I was very sad about that and cried a lot. That day when my grandfather left, in 1954, I was speaking German with my mom. When my stepfather heard he gave me an almighty blow and said that my mother and I weren’t to speak German. He had been a Partisan, he’d been wounded in the war and had been through terrible things that had affected his personality and behavior. Others made fun of him for having married a German. When my granddad went to Germany, my stepfather told me, “Your granddad won’t be there for you anymore.” I remembered Granddad’s words, “Don’t worry, don’t be afraid of anything, Jesus is always beside you. You don’t see him but he is always with you.”My grandfather really was a wise man. He said whenever things were tough just to say, “Jesus, help me.”One time I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to talk German with my mother. I said something to her without thinking. My stepfather beat me with a wire. That night, to punish me, he tied me to a tree. I spent the whole night outside. I wasn’t afraid of the noises at all, but my hands were numb by morning. From that moment on he beat me and my mother terribly. In that same year of horrors I witnessed my mother being raped by our neighbor.