INSIDE
The University Daily
KANSAN
April 9, 1984 Page 6
W within an interim of darkness, a keeper reviews the keys - lowers the bar - intrudes the cell.
Inside, only the eyes respond. The body is laden — inert.
"Do you wish to review your statement?" intones the voice.
The eyes transfix — search for illumination in darkness, but vision is a hellish dream — another soldier marching, another broken window, another miserable lunatic gesturing from his rostrum.
The memories endure for woman persecuted by Yugoslavian regime
"No, I do not wish to review my statement."
A painting of Galina Kuzmanovic as a young woman.
"Ah, a pity." The keeper retrieves the keys — lowers the bar.
Galina Kuzmanovic, 62, a library associate in Watson Library's Slavic department, recalls her imprisonment under the communist regime of Josip Broz Tito, dictator of Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1980.
The inanity of that daily question was part of her three-year ordeal in one of Tito's camps for political prisoners. Kuzmanovic was 30 years old and had been married for three months when the government arrested her.
Political interrogation in a communist country, Kuzmanovic said, is designed to solicit a confession, even if no crime has been committed.
"The charge against the accused is never given," she said. "If it is the case, Mr. O'Neill will be prosecuted."
Kuzmanovic arrived in the United States 16 years ago, after a brief and dusty stay in Sudan, a North African country where her husband, Bogdan Kuzmanovic, a former KU engineering professor, worked as an engineer.
"When the government of Yugoslavia became communist in 1945, Yugoslavia became a very complicated country and not a very happy one," she said.
GALINA KUZMANOVIC is pleasant, open and receptive, yet she retains a smattering of formality — a hint of Old World grace and manners.
Her coarse red hair is sweep into a carless bun at her nage. Statey pearls and dainty earrings frame a pleasant and aging face. Her voice is delicate and lifting, heavily accented — decidedly European.
In "The Bloodiest Yugoslav Spring 1945 — Tito's Katys and Gulags", Borivio Karapandzich, the author, states that Tito and his partisans murdered at least 250,000 people after World War II. Further estimates show that between 1948 and 1952 in communist countries, more than 700,000 were arrested for suspicion of criminal or political offences, some for no reason at all.
THE LARGEST NUMBER of arrests came in 1949. It was then that Tito broke relations with the Soviets and was confirmed by the Yugoslavian government as secretary general of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Tito and his partisans had fought a long war for power.
Kuzmanovic lived in Belgrade during the struggle for power after the war. She and her family had fled Russia during the Bolshev Revolution and were immigrants to Yugoslavia. Kuzmanovic never considered herself a Yugoslav, yet she held no allegiance to the politics of her native land.
"The seizure of the power was very painful. The communists courted the young people but there were many like them, and they felt that communism and could not accept it."
"I always was for democracy. I
really believe in anything else. I
thought it ideal."
IN BELGRAD, Kuzmanovic became a school teacher. When the war ended, she worked as an accounting agent in Ugoslavian Ministry of Transportation.
Once Tito had established his position as dictator after the war, the state called for free elections. Because many of the citizens were illiterate, they were given small balls with which to cast their votes, by dropping them into a box. One box was for Marshal Tito. The other box was for the opposition, although none was named.
"I was very proud of myself and very hard so I decided to do the right thing. I put the little ball in the box for the opposition and, when I released the ball in this unnamed box, it was an empty box. It was such a sound that everybody knew where I put my vote, so I got my characteristics right away."
KUZMANOVIC ALREADY was marked. She was Russian, at a time when Yugoslavia was struggling for independence from the Soviets.
"It was not a puzzle. You have so many meetings — you are supposed to shout the slogans — I couldn't. It is the way in all communist countries to lead a kind of double life, I think. There is the one way of how you feel, what you believe. That is what you discuss with your friends and family."
"Then there are your official beliefs.
You are afraid of saying what you think."
Kuzmanovic continued to work for the transportation ministry, despite her fears.
"So then you lie."
"I was working and was a good worker with a lot of responsibilities, so it was maybe I would survive because I was loyal. I didn't do anything against the government. I didn't do anything either — politically, I just was working."
FOR FOUR YEARS she worked,
unwilling to leave family and friends.
When the break came between Tito and
Joseph Stalin, a paranoid and fearful
Yugoslavian government began the systematic arrest of political adversaries. In the bureau where Kuzmanovic worked, she said, the employees sometimes would joke when they went to the bathroom.
She remembered them saying, "If I don't come back that means they got me."
One day, Galina didn't come back. "I was called into the personnel office," she recalled. "There were two strange men in there. I don't know if it was intuition or the expression on their faces, or what."
One day, Galina didn't come back.
She knew they had come for her.
She said to him, "Can I have a drink of water?" The men told her that she would receive it at the prison. She was allowed to receive her drink of water for 24 hours.
They drove her to a central prison in Belgrade. She recalls being brash and impolite.
"Being so young, you retain an
element of optimism, even in such cases."
INTERROGATION destroyed her optimism, and finally her resistance. Kuzmanovic invented a crime She was working on with members of the Soviet embassy.
"They were so happy. They just threw the pictures of all members of the Soviet embassy in front of me and I looked at those idiotic faces and I thought, 'Which one shall I choose?' So I just pointed at two of them."
Kuzmanovic had pointed to the faces of an embassy worker and his driver. The interrogators believed her.
AFTER NINE MONTHS in prison, Kuzmanovic was tried among 15 other political suspects. During the trial the prosecutor questioned Kuzmanovic repeatedly about her invented crime. Once when he asked her to describe her involvement with a drug trafficker wearily looked at him and said, "Well, one of them looked exactly like you."
"He sat down after that," Kuzmanovic said with a laugh.
All 16 were found guilty. Kuzmanovic received the shortest sentence eight
"I was somehow hoping that I never would spend eight year in prison. It was probably because I was scared."
She was taken to a camp for political prisoners in Stolac, Yugoslavia.
"When we entered the camp there, the women started right away to beat us. It was a military punishment of sorts where two rows of woman beat the new prisoners. So, that's what we went through. We came out blue and bloody
and then we started our life.
Kuzmanovic was at this prison for about two years, sometimes sewing crude clothing, sometimes crushing stone.
"IT WASN'T AS BAD for the women. I guess that women were not to the point where they could slaughter each other so easily. But the men were
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Some of those people just creeped out of there."
After two years of labor, the policies of the office of state security in the Ugoslavian capital of Beigrade changed. Kuzmanovic was asked to tell her story once more. She was taken at ninth grade as an investigator. She never knew when.
On the train back to the prison that night, she rode on an open car.
"I thought, 'May I try to jump?' I didn't."
"I talked the whole night about my case," she said.
Soon she was released from the prison and made her way back to Belgrade.
"I DIDN'T KNOW any more how much the ticket cost — plus in the station, the electricity went off at night. Well, somehow I managed. When I came to Belgrade I think I was running around the house to the home of my parents all the way."
Remitted with her family.
Kuzmanovic dismissed the memories of
"I just was trying to ignore those three years. My battle is over now. I want to live the rest of life."
Although Kuzmanovic enjoys Lawrence, she will soon move to Florida to join her husband, who teaches at the University of Florida in Miami.
"In Florida, I will swim and I think write, maybe. It has been written about Yugoslavia women in prison camps. I want to write just the facts of how they were. In Yugoslavia, still, there are not books available to the people on them. They lie to cover their horror."
"I will never go back to Yugoslavia.
America is the best place for me now."
LEFT: Vladimir Movchanyuk sits with his daughter, Galina Kuzmanovic. He came from Yugoslavia six years ago to live with his daughter and son-in-law. Movchanyuk, 93, was drafted as an officer for the White Army during the Russian Revolution. Because of a loss of hearing largely due to cannon fire. Movchanyuk and his daughter communicate now by means of pad and pencil.
ABOVE: Galina Kuzmanovic, a survivor of the holocaust of Europe and Marshal Tito's communism, displays her collection of Yugoslavian dolls. She and her husband purchased the dolls in Yugoslavia for their daughter more than twenty years ago. Kuzmanovic's home is filled with mementos from her travels in Europe and Africa.
Stories and photos by Sandi Moles