The Forgotten 500 (14 page)

A Pittsburgh native of Yugoslav descent, Vujnovich had been visiting Yugoslavia as a student when the war broke out, leaving him trapped behind German lines. He spent the next two years trying to get out of occupied territory and to safety, and if Mirjana’s rumor was true, he knew the danger these Americans were in. He also was proud to know that the local villagers, the people of his family’s homeland, were safeguarding these men until he could get them out.

Vujnovich had grown up as an all-American boy in Pittsburgh, but in the same Serbian-American community that now embraced his wife, Mirjana. Vujnovich’s parents had emigrated to the United States from Yugoslavia years earlier, and like many others from there who spoke no English, they settled in a labor-intensive part of the country—in their case Pittsburgh, with its steel mills. His father had arrived in 1912, immigrating to the United States from his village near Ogalen, close to Za- greb. Used to a hardscrabble life in the countryside, he was being pressured by authorities to join the Austrian army, and chose a new life in America instead. Two years later Vujnovich’s mother joined him. Vujnovich estimated that about half of the south side of Pittsburgh—where they lived—was of Serbian descent, and his father worked in the steel mill with men who had grown up in the same village in Yugoslavia. The neighborhood stores had signs in Cyrillic Serbian and it was as common to hear the Serbian language in the streets as it was to hear English. Vujnovich grew up speaking both languages with his parents and his brother, Peter, and sister, Mary.

When Vujnovich graduated from high school in 1934, he had no notion of even joining the military, much less becoming a top officer in the country’s premier spy agency. His parents wanted him to become a doctor, and though Vujnovich originally wanted to become an engineer, he had to admit that his math skills were not up to par. The binomial theorem was too much for him. So the thought of becoming a doctor started to sound more appealing. There was still a big problem, though. The son of a steel mill worker in Pittsburgh would find it difficult to pay for medical school in the United States, so Vujnovich considered another opportunity that his parents suggested: Go to study in Yugoslavia. Go back to our homeland. See the country where your family comes from. Get to know the country that we left so we could give you a better life in the United States.

The more Vujnovich looked into the idea, the more he liked it. In the Yugoslav system, he would start studying medicine right away instead of first getting an undergraduate degree. And as he talked about the idea with his friends, he learned that there was a scholarship that could make it all possible. The Serbian National Federation, a group organized by immigrants like his own parents, offered scholarships for young Serbian Americans to go back to Yugoslavia to study. The Federation wanted to keep these young American-born Serbs connected to the homeland of their parents, fearing that without a special effort to show them the culture of Yugoslavia the connection would be lost in two generations. In the same year that Vujnovich decided this was a great opportunity, so did eight others from around the country. The Serbian National Federation provided full scholarships for study in Belgrade, transportation across the Atlantic, and a stipend of twenty-five dollars per month. Vujnovich’s parents explained to him that this was an extreme blessing for him, one that he could not possibly appreciate as an American-born young man who had never known hunger.

“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.

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 acquainted 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.”