Archive for the ‘serbia & kosovo’ Category
When undertaking Serbian family history research, it is important to understand two facts: that the current and historical borders of Serbia do not coincide and that Serbs have always lived outside the country. Therefore, you should not assume that your Serbian ancestors always lived on the territory of modern Serbia.
During the period within which most Serbian genealogists can hope to make decent progress in their family history research – approximately 1800 to date – the northern boundary of Serbia was formed by the Dunav (or Danube) and the city of Belgrade was therefore a border town. On the other side of the Dunav was Vojvodina, which was part of Austro-Hungary until WW1. Many Serbs, along with peoples of other nationalities, lived in the Vojvodina; they were known as prečani (“across the river”), sometimes translated as the transriparian Serbs. Vojvodina itself was divided into three segments: the Srem, between the Sava and the Dunav rivers; the Bačka between the Dunav and the Tisa rivers; and the Banat, the largest and most populated region which today extends across Serbia and neighbouring Romania.
Serbs also lived along the military border, the Krajina, established by the Habsburgs as a bulwark against Ottoman expansion. The existence of the Krajina explains the historic arc of Serbian settlement across northern Bosnia, Slavonia and the western Croatian-Bosnian border. Serbs have always lived elsewhere across Bosnia and Hercegovina (where they constituted between a third and a half of the population at different times throughout the 19th century) and, of course, also in Kosovo (“Old Serbia”) and northern Macedonia.
Serbia achieved limited autonomy from the Ottomans in 1815 and effective independence in 1830. The new state immediately attracted Serbs from the surrounding and still Ottoman regions of Bosnia, Hercegovina and Macedonia. New waves of immigrants arrived in Serbia periodically, for example in 1875 following an uprising in Hercegovina and in 1910 following the suppression by the Ottomans of an Albanian revolt in Kosovo. Serbs living in Austro-Hungary, such as those in the Krajina, were also drawn abroad – up to 300,000 Serbs and Croats are thought to have emigrated to USA from Krajina in the decade leading up to WW1. On American passenger lists, immigration papers and census returns, they may be described as Austrians or Hungarians after their citizenship in Europe. Their Orthodox religion, if recorded, will help mark them out as Serbs.
The history of the Serbs, even in modern times, is complicated by the kinds of factors mentioned above. It should be noted that in some areas many records of value to family historians were destroyed, deliberately or inadvertently, during, for example, the Balkan Wars in 1912/13, in WW1 and WW2, or during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. As a result, success cannot be guaranteed.
Bluebird Research offers professional family history research in Serbia and across Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia; research may also be possible in Kosovo and parts of Macedonia, depending upon the quality and detail of the background information available. We would be delighted to provide advice and guidance, as well as genealogical research services, and welcome all enquiries.
Metohija is a place name little heard in Western Europe nowadays. As a region, Metohija is now subsumed into what is understood by Kosovo. Until 1968, Kosovo-Metohija (sometimes abbreviated to Kos-Met) was an autonomous region of Serbia. By that date, its population was already at least 70% Kosovar Albanian. Traditional Muslim Kosovar society was patriarchal and standards of education were still low in the late 1960s. There was 20% unemployment and real and relative poverty compared to elsewhere within Yugoslavia.
Unrest in the summer and autumn of 1968 focused, not on independence, but on raising the region to the status of a separate republic within Yugoslavia and culminated in violence in November. The riots were put down and order restored by the Yugoslav state. However, various concessions were made to Kosovar Albanian demands and aspirations. Among these, the autonomous region became a province of its parent republic Serbia, giving it equivalent constitutional status to Vojvodina in the north of Serbia, and “Metohija” was officially dropped from the name in 1974.
Metohija is the western half of Kosovo, containing three of its seven districts. Running from north to south, these districts are centred on the cities of Peć, Đakovica and Prizren. Like Kosovo proper, Metohija is of great cultural significance to Serbs, having formed an integral part of the medieval Kingdom of the Serbs (1217-1459) and being the historical site of extensive Serbian Orthodox monastic lands. However, over the course of the centuries of Ottoman rule, Albanian immigration (and Serbian emigration) meant that by, if not before, the 19th century, Kosovar Albanians formed a majority in the land. Although the demographics of Kosovo are a highly politically sensitive subject, it seems likely that the Serb population is now as low as 6% and declining.
The success of Serbian family history research in Metohija depends, as elsewhere in Kosovo, on two factors: i) the extent and reliability of background information already to hand at the outset (it needs to be as precise as possible regarding place of origin) and ii) the survival and availability of relevant records for the location. We would be delighted to provide an opinion on the prospects of genealogical success, upon request and without any obligation.
It has been suggested that the best way to understand the history of Bosnia is to read Ivo Andrić’s 1945 novel “The Bridge On The Drina”, to which is worth adding “The Slave Girl & Other Stories About Women” and “The Damned Yard”. His imagining of small town and rural Bosnia brings the region to life in a way that no number of political or social histories can. That is the mark of a great writer. As also is the fact that he is even-handed. He writes equally well and convincingly in the voice of the Turk, the Bosniak (often referred to as “Turks”, as per the Serbian vernacular), the Jew, the Gypsy and of course the Christian rayah, the Serbian Orthodox peasantry which constituted the largest population block (although not a majority) in the Bosnian countryside throughout the 19th century.
The eponymous bridge is that in Višegrad and Andrić’s chronicle spans the centuries from its construction in the 1570s to its destruction by retreating Austro-Hungarian forces in 1914. Andrić is particularly good at expressing the puzzlement of the native population, of all faiths, during the times of the Austrian occupation in 1878 and annexation of the province in 1908, at the Austrian compulsion to quantify and order everything, which is utterly alien to the Bosnian mindset and way of life. The strategic blowing-up of the bridge by the departing Austrians seems a senseless and wanton act to the townsfolk. Although this is the point at which the chronicle culminates, the bridge itself was restored and witnessed much else besides in the course of the 20th century.
Several times in his writings, Andrić touches upon the generational succession of families in Bosnia, in particular the dislocation which tends to follow prosperity or aspiration. This is one of the factors which led to emigration elsewhere within Bosnia (to the city of Sarajevo, for instance), or within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or further afield. The small town or village which had been the historical home of a family for decades or centuries could no longer contain it. In the short story “Zuja”, the narrator explains how the large and prosperous Aleksić extended family was scattered over the course of three generations:
“That little clan, which had become affluent, then rich, started, for that very reason, to disperse. The boys, then the girls, went off into the world and few of them returned… and fewer stayed behind to live, work and earn, as their elders had done… The population dwindled and moved away. And so it is today that there are Aleksićes in parts of Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and even far off around the world, but in town there is not a single one of them left.”
In April 1941, a new administration, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska or NDH, was established in Croatia as a client state of Nazi Germany and with it a reign of terror.
Although Istria and parts of Dalmatia including the port city of Split, usually considered Croatian, were annexed by Italy, the territory of the NDH extended across Bosnia Hercegovina and the Srem. This meant that the Ustaša, the Croatian fascist party, were responsible for lands that included, as well as the Bosniaks, an estimated 1.9 million Serbs and sizeable populations of Sephardic Jews and Roma.
Summary executions of Serbs began almost immediately, and mass deportations from 4th June 1941. 180,000 Serbs are believed to have fled Bosnia for Serbia by the end of July 1941 and tens of thousands who stayed were rechristened as Roman Catholics. By the end of 1942, perhaps 150,000 Serbs were detained in death camps on the territory of the NDH, 300,000 had been killed, and thousands more had been sent to Auschwitz.
The Jewish population of NDH in April 1941 was probably between 36,000 and 39,500. They were immediately subjected to plunder, victimisation, arrest and execution. 26,000 died in Ustaša death camps, the most notorious of which was Jasenovac. The camp’s population apparently never exceeded 3,000, as prisoners were usually murdered shortly after arrival. At least 80,000 people – Jews, Serbs, Roma, and communists including Croats and Bosniaks – died at Jasenovac.
There are two websites which contain specific information about individuals at Jasenovac.
The first is the Jasenovac Memorial Site, which has a searchable database of 75,159 names of those killed at the Jasenovac complex. This is a work in progress and the number is that of known victims as at November 2008. The final count will be higher.
The second, the Jasenovac Research Institute, has published a larger database of 597,323 names of Yugoslavs killed in WW2, compiled by Yugoslavia’s Federal Institute of Statistics in 1964.
You should search both these databases if you believe that a relative may have died in Yugoslavia during WW2, or are trying to determine the fate of a missing person.
Except for the two databases mentioned, all the numbers given above are estimates and different sources give different, sometimes wildly different, numbers. The majority cited here are from Yugoslavia As History: Twice There Was A Country, by the US academic John R Lampe, published by Cambridge University Press (2nd ed, 2000).
In nearly all jurisdictions in Europe, vital records of value to genealogists are not held centrally in a single repository but are decentralised. Modern civil registers of birth, marriage and death tend to be held at municipality level; older registers and other public records are usually in regional or national state archives. In this context, the first step in any family history research in Europe is to identify the place of origin and ensure you have the correct starting point for your investigations.
Where two or more places of any size in the former Yugoslavia shared the same name, it was usual to distinguish between them by applying a regional adjective by way of prefix. For instance, there are places called Brod in Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia which are known as Bosanski Brod, Slavonski Brod and Makedonski Brod respectively. Similarly, there are Bosanski Petrovac (in Bosnia) and Bački Petrovac (in the Bačka area of Vojvodina, Serbia). There are other ways of differentiating places, for instance there is also a Petrovac na Mlavi (on the river Mlava, in Serbia) and a Petrovac na Moru (on Sea, in Montenegro).
Of course, locally and in every day speech where there is little risk of confusion, Brod and Petrovac are likely to simply be referred to as Brod and Petrovac, and this also how they may be appear in many documents (such as passenger lists and immigration records) and family papers used in family history. Some care needs to be exercised, therefore, to ensure that the correct place of origin is identified.
Mitrovica is another town name which is not unique. There is a Sremska Mitrovica and a Mačvanska Mitrovica (also known as Srpska Mitrovica), which are located in the Srem and Mačva districts of Serbia respectively but are actually facing each other across the Sava river. There is also a Kosovska Mitrovica, a city in northern Kosovo which is effectively divided into an ethnic Albanian south and an ethnic Serbian north, the two sides of the city being separated by the river Ibar. The city has been deeply troubled since the 1999 Kosovo War and tensions still run high. On the southern side of town, the Orthodox church of St Sava was burnt down in March 2004 (one of 35 churches and monasteries in Kosovo to be destroyed and damaged by Kosovar Albanians in a single week of violence). The Serbian Orthodox cemetery has been desecrated and an estimated 70% to 80% of gravestones vandalised; it can only be visited safely under police escort. Whatever your politics and religion, if you feel any attachment to your own home town, or can imagine the destruction of its cemetery, and if you attach any importance to place, as all family historians do, you will understand the anguish of the Serbs of Kosovska Mitrovica.
Bluebird Research offers professional family history research services throughout Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. The feasibility of research in Kosovo can only be decided on a case-by-case basis: for an opinion, please e-mail us the details you have.
In July 2003, while staying in Timişoara in Romania, I visited the village of Vinga on the main road north to the city of Arad. The most noticeable feature of Vinga is its imposing Roman Catholic church dedicated to Sfânta Treime (the Holy Trinity). The church was built in 1892. What is unusual, beyond its scale in relation to the size of the village, is the fact that it was founded not by Hungarians or Romanians but by Bulgarians. And, of course, that these Bulgarians were not Orthodox but of the small Catholic minority.
The Roman Catholic Banat Bulgarians, such as those in Vinga, arrived and settled in the Banat region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the C18th. They had originated in the Chiprovtsi district in Bulgaria from whence they arrived in Vinga, via the Oltenia region of Romania, in 1741, escaping the Ottoman Empire and taking advantage of the privileges offered by the Habsburgs to colonists in the Banat.
After World War One and the partition of defeated Hungary at the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, the Banat was divided between Serbia and Romania, and Banat Bulgarians found themselves of either side of the new border. Some still remain in villages such as Ivanovo and Konak (both in Serbia) and Breştea and Dudeştii Vechi (in Romania), but many have moved to cities such as Arad and Timişoara, removed to Bulgaria, or emigrated to Hungary and USA.
The Bulgarian population of Vinga has dwindled. According to the 1880 Austrian census, there were 3,543 Bulgarians out of a total village population of 4,796 (74%). At the time of the Romanian census of 2002, this had fallen to 512 out of a population of 6,388 (8%) and the Bulgarians are now outnumbered not merely by Romanians but also by Hungarians and Roma.
As well as Romanians and Serbs, there are Croats, Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks and Ukrainians, among others, on both sides of the current Serbian-Romanian border and the Banat remains a fascinating ethnically mixed supranational region.