ERASED FROM HISTORY: A thousand women ended up on Goli Otok, and their only “crime” was belief in or love for a son, brother, husband or colleague
These were women who, in the period from 1948 to 1956, were arrested, punished and detained in some of the prisons and camps intended for Cominform supporters
Listen to the story
After the breakup of Yugoslavia, many historians dealt with the topic of Goli Otok, but few focused on the fate of women. One of those who embarked on this endeavour to tell their stories is historian Ljubinka Škodrić.
She earned her PhD at the Department of History of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. From 2001 to 2018 she was employed at the Archives of Serbia, where she attained the title of archival adviser. She specialises in the study of the history of Serbia during the Second World War. She has published numerous works in the field of the cultural and social history of Serbia in the Second World War, as well as in archival studies. Recently, a new book entitled Women of Goli Otok was published by Vukotić Medija, in which she dedicated herself to the fates of women who were imprisoned in the infamous dungeon in the early years of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Ljubinka conveys the voices of more than a thousand women – imprisoned, exiled, shamed – who from 1948 to 1956 suffered repression because of real or alleged sympathies for the Cominform. In addition to those who served sentences in prisons and camps, the book also includes the fates of women who suffered because of the choices made by their closest relatives.
Camps for women
“The story of Goli Otok and of the participants in the 1948 conflict is not finished. The importance of this historical topic exists for as long as there is room for new research, new knowledge and new interpretations. It is precisely here that the significance of Ljubinka Škodrić’s study Women and the Cominform in Yugoslavia is revealed. Female experience during the Tito–Stalin conflict of 1948 has so far mostly been treated in passing, as part of a much larger historiographical problem. This does not mean that women were absent from previous analyses. What we have known quite well until now is that there were camps for women, such as Ramski Rit on the border with Romania or Sveti Grgur, where women were also interned for a period of time. We also know that women’s camps were harsh places of torture and that female interrogators were just as, if not more, severe towards their former comrades. We broadly know that imprisoned women suffered both in the camps and after them. But the topic could not end there,” writes Dr Martin Previšić, Professor of History at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and author of the book Goli Otok – History, in the foreword
“Ljubinka Škodrić does not immerse herself in ideological academic fashions, but rather places female experience as an object of research without the prejudices of the present or the past. She connects the factors that make this topic relevant: she combines the position of women in the new society with how that position was reflected in 1948. She points to the complexity of women’s status, which was determined not only by the ideological framework (‘Cominform supporters’ and ‘Stalinists’) but also by sex and gender. The assault on them in the camps had numerous specific features that left deep psychological, emotional and physical consequences,” Previšić states.
Archival material
Through testimonies, archival material and analysis of consequences that lasted for decades, the book provides a deep and harrowing insight into women’s experiences of one of the darkest periods of Yugoslav history. This is a book about silence, about women who remained silent for years, whose guilt was love for a son, brother or husband. About mothers, sisters and friends who were thrown into dungeons, broken in camps and erased from memory simply because they loved or believed. For the first time, all their names, their stories and their strength have been published in one place. This is not a book about politics, but about pain, shame, silence and a truth that waited a long time to be spoken.
“From the testimonies presented in this book, we can discern that the assault on Cominform-supporting women was not only an attack on real or imagined ideological opponents, but also an attack on women as women. Ljubinka Škodrić connects several themes and presents women during the Cominform period and on Goli Otok both as individuals and as a group; both as victims and as perpetrators. That is why the author connects the fates of Smilja Filipčev, as a detainee, and Marija Zelić, as a UDBA officer. She offers a new picture of that complex relationship and of the position of women in the camp and in the Tito–Stalin conflict, thereby making a major contribution to the broader field as a whole. That is the value of this book,” concludes the professor from Zagreb.
The first women in Yugoslavia to stand up against such terror were Isidora Sekulić and Desanka Maksimović.
“When, in 1949, because of accusations of sympathy for the Cominform (IB), the writer Radovan Zogović found himself under house arrest, of all his party and wartime comrades, only two women had the courage to visit him. Two women writers. The first of them, Isidora Sekulić, feeling the pressure of the surveillance Zogović was under, soon stopped visiting him. The second, Desanka Maksimović, continued the friendship that had been strengthened at that time for years. During the 1950s and 1960s, she herself was under surveillance by the Yugoslav security service because of suspicion that she was sympathetic to the IB. The poem ‘For the Pardoned Prisoners’, which she included in 1964 in the collection I Seek Pardon, can also be read as a dedication to those punished after Tito’s conflict with Stalin:”
I seek pardon
for the prisoners, O Emperor, the pardoned ones
who always look straight ahead,
wherever they may go and walk,
with whom no one wishes to stand,
even when they are declared innocent again,
even when they pay the Emperor his tribute.
In the period from 1948 to 1956, more than 1,000 women served sentences in several prisons and camps under the accusation of sympathy for the IB.
“The topic of Goli Otok and the fate of those punished because of the Cominform, the so-called Cominform supporters, was a kind of taboo, a forbidden topic that could not be spoken about in Yugoslavia. At the end of the 1980s, during the crisis and weakening of the Yugoslav state, this topic became increasingly present in the public sphere; memoirs of former prisoners were published, and certain historiographical, journalistic and artistic works emerged, only for the fate of the Cominform supporters to later disappear from focus due to the hardships caused by the breakup of the country. More thorough research was prevented by the inaccessibility of archival material produced by the security services. My research, in addition to Goli Otok, also includes the fates of punished women in camps and prisons in Ramski Rit, Požarevac, Rajhenburg, Stolac and Sveti Grgur. At the beginning of my research, I started from the premise that it was necessary first of all to determine the number of punished women and more detailed data about their year of birth, nationality, background and employment. In this way, during the research I arrived at the number of 1,080 punished women. These were women who, in the period from 1948 to 1956, were arrested, punished and detained in some of the prisons and camps intended for Cominform supporters. Two groups of women can be distinguished. The more numerous group was punished by the measure of socially useful labour, while a portion of them were also sentenced through court proceedings. From August 1949, this first group of women was sent to the camp in Ramski Rit near Veliko Gradište, then spent some time in the prison in Zabela near Požarevac, and in April 1950 were transferred to the camp on the island of Sveti Grgur. At the beginning of 1951, the punished women were transferred to the camp on Goli Otok, only to be returned to Sveti Grgur again in 1952. On the other hand, women sentenced by courts were detained in prisons in Požarevac, Rajhenburg in Slovenia, as well as in the prison in Stolac in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Škodrić states.
The fates of two women will particularly move readers.
“For the most part, from the moment of arrest they spent between two and three years in prisons and camps, but some women stand out who were detained for many years and offered consistent and persistent resistance to pressures to change their stance. In this group, the fates of two women are particularly striking. One is Branislava Brana Marković, the wife of the prominent communist Sima Marković, who perished in Stalin’s purges in the Soviet Union, and who herself was detained for more than five and a half years. The other is the doctor Stanojka Đurić, a member of the partisan movement since 1941 and a participant in the Battle of Sutjeska, who emerged from the war with the rank of lieutenant colonel. She was sentenced in a court process to 15 years in prison and spent more than seven years in prisons and camps. According to available data, she served the longest sentence among the punished women,” the author of this compelling book notes.
“Of great importance were the published memoirs of some of the punished women. Particularly noteworthy are the memoirs of Ženi Lebl, Milka Žicina, Smilja Filipčev, Vera Cenić (a stage play about her was produced in Vranje) and Eva Grlić.”
MEMOIRS OF A WRITER FROM VRANJE: What the reception looked like and why they had to remain silent
The writer Vera Cenić was born in 1930 in Vranje. She was the first woman Doctor of Sciences from Vranje; the first woman Doctor of Literature from Vranje. She spent her working life in education as a professor of language and literature at the Teacher Training School and at The Ivo Andrić Pedagogical Academy in Vranje, the forerunner of today’s Faculty of Education. She was one of the most distinguished professors, synonymous with beautiful and vivid exposition, whose classes were remembered and carried as a great value. Part of her youth, as a student, she spent on Goli Otok, sentenced to so-called socially useful labour.
“The loss of hope for many punished women began with their very arrival on the island, when they were met by a gauntlet. A mass of women of strange and crazed appearance, shouting incomprehensible slogans, striking, spitting and beating the newcomers, certainly represented a shock, but also a warning sign meant to prepare them for everything that would follow. The new detainees, beaten, bloody and filthy, were then further humiliated by insulting and crude hair-cutting with livestock shears. It is rare to find a memoir of detainees that does not emphasise how disfigured and mutilated they were by this cutting, since ‘anyone who got hold of the shears cut, preferably as grotesquely as possible’.”
Đina Markuš described how part of the hair was cut down to the scalp, while uncut tufts were left behind, alternating in this way. Vera Cenić recorded something similar:
“Here and there she leaves a tuft, elsewhere she cuts down to the skin with blunt, creaking shears.”
Vera wrote how, upon her return home, her family welcomed her ceremoniously, while her father said:
“My soldier has returned, our soldier…”
Despite the joy of returning and reuniting with her family, contrary to expectations, she refused to tell them what she had endured. In addition to personal difficulties in speaking about the camp torments, most of them had been warned that these were topics that must not be spoken about in freedom. Some of them, when telling relatives and friends about these experiences, would play louder music in the flat as a precaution. However, this did not help when some who were present in those gatherings were later arrested and revealed information about those conversations.
SPECIAL
ERASED FROM HISTORY: A thousand women ended up on Goli Otok, and their only “crime” was belief in or love for a son, brother, husband or colleague
PHOTO CREDIT: Vukotić Medija, provided photographs
These were women who, in the period from 1948 to 1956, were arrested, punished and detained in some of the prisons and camps intended for Cominform supporters
Listen to the story
After the breakup of Yugoslavia, many historians dealt with the topic of Goli Otok, but few focused on the fate of women. One of those who embarked on this endeavour to tell their stories is historian Ljubinka Škodrić.
PHOTO CREDIT: Vukotić Medija, provided photographs
She earned her PhD at the Department of History of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. From 2001 to 2018 she was employed at the Archives of Serbia, where she attained the title of archival adviser. She specialises in the study of the history of Serbia during the Second World War. She has published numerous works in the field of the cultural and social history of Serbia in the Second World War, as well as in archival studies. Recently, a new book entitled Women of Goli Otok was published by Vukotić Medija, in which she dedicated herself to the fates of women who were imprisoned in the infamous dungeon in the early years of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Ljubinka conveys the voices of more than a thousand women – imprisoned, exiled, shamed – who from 1948 to 1956 suffered repression because of real or alleged sympathies for the Cominform. In addition to those who served sentences in prisons and camps, the book also includes the fates of women who suffered because of the choices made by their closest relatives.
Camps for women
“The story of Goli Otok and of the participants in the 1948 conflict is not finished. The importance of this historical topic exists for as long as there is room for new research, new knowledge and new interpretations. It is precisely here that the significance of Ljubinka Škodrić’s study Women and the Cominform in Yugoslavia is revealed. Female experience during the Tito–Stalin conflict of 1948 has so far mostly been treated in passing, as part of a much larger historiographical problem. This does not mean that women were absent from previous analyses. What we have known quite well until now is that there were camps for women, such as Ramski Rit on the border with Romania or Sveti Grgur, where women were also interned for a period of time. We also know that women’s camps were harsh places of torture and that female interrogators were just as, if not more, severe towards their former comrades. We broadly know that imprisoned women suffered both in the camps and after them. But the topic could not end there,” writes Dr Martin Previšić, Professor of History at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and author of the book Goli Otok – History, in the foreword
PHOTO CREDIT: Kurir/J. S.
“Ljubinka Škodrić does not immerse herself in ideological academic fashions, but rather places female experience as an object of research without the prejudices of the present or the past. She connects the factors that make this topic relevant: she combines the position of women in the new society with how that position was reflected in 1948. She points to the complexity of women’s status, which was determined not only by the ideological framework (‘Cominform supporters’ and ‘Stalinists’) but also by sex and gender. The assault on them in the camps had numerous specific features that left deep psychological, emotional and physical consequences,” Previšić states.
Archival material
Through testimonies, archival material and analysis of consequences that lasted for decades, the book provides a deep and harrowing insight into women’s experiences of one of the darkest periods of Yugoslav history. This is a book about silence, about women who remained silent for years, whose guilt was love for a son, brother or husband. About mothers, sisters and friends who were thrown into dungeons, broken in camps and erased from memory simply because they loved or believed. For the first time, all their names, their stories and their strength have been published in one place. This is not a book about politics, but about pain, shame, silence and a truth that waited a long time to be spoken.
“From the testimonies presented in this book, we can discern that the assault on Cominform-supporting women was not only an attack on real or imagined ideological opponents, but also an attack on women as women. Ljubinka Škodrić connects several themes and presents women during the Cominform period and on Goli Otok both as individuals and as a group; both as victims and as perpetrators. That is why the author connects the fates of Smilja Filipčev, as a detainee, and Marija Zelić, as a UDBA officer. She offers a new picture of that complex relationship and of the position of women in the camp and in the Tito–Stalin conflict, thereby making a major contribution to the broader field as a whole. That is the value of this book,” concludes the professor from Zagreb.
Desanka Maksimović; PHOTO CREDIT: Ljubivoje Ršumović
The first women in Yugoslavia to stand up against such terror were Isidora Sekulić and Desanka Maksimović.
“When, in 1949, because of accusations of sympathy for the Cominform (IB), the writer Radovan Zogović found himself under house arrest, of all his party and wartime comrades, only two women had the courage to visit him. Two women writers. The first of them, Isidora Sekulić, feeling the pressure of the surveillance Zogović was under, soon stopped visiting him. The second, Desanka Maksimović, continued the friendship that had been strengthened at that time for years. During the 1950s and 1960s, she herself was under surveillance by the Yugoslav security service because of suspicion that she was sympathetic to the IB. The poem ‘For the Pardoned Prisoners’, which she included in 1964 in the collection I Seek Pardon, can also be read as a dedication to those punished after Tito’s conflict with Stalin:”
PHOTO CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot
I seek pardon
for the prisoners, O Emperor, the pardoned ones
who always look straight ahead,
wherever they may go and walk,
with whom no one wishes to stand,
even when they are declared innocent again,
even when they pay the Emperor his tribute.
PHOTO CREDIT: Wouter Doornbos/Shutterstock
In the period from 1948 to 1956, more than 1,000 women served sentences in several prisons and camps under the accusation of sympathy for the IB.
“The topic of Goli Otok and the fate of those punished because of the Cominform, the so-called Cominform supporters, was a kind of taboo, a forbidden topic that could not be spoken about in Yugoslavia. At the end of the 1980s, during the crisis and weakening of the Yugoslav state, this topic became increasingly present in the public sphere; memoirs of former prisoners were published, and certain historiographical, journalistic and artistic works emerged, only for the fate of the Cominform supporters to later disappear from focus due to the hardships caused by the breakup of the country. More thorough research was prevented by the inaccessibility of archival material produced by the security services. My research, in addition to Goli Otok, also includes the fates of punished women in camps and prisons in Ramski Rit, Požarevac, Rajhenburg, Stolac and Sveti Grgur. At the beginning of my research, I started from the premise that it was necessary first of all to determine the number of punished women and more detailed data about their year of birth, nationality, background and employment. In this way, during the research I arrived at the number of 1,080 punished women. These were women who, in the period from 1948 to 1956, were arrested, punished and detained in some of the prisons and camps intended for Cominform supporters. Two groups of women can be distinguished. The more numerous group was punished by the measure of socially useful labour, while a portion of them were also sentenced through court proceedings. From August 1949, this first group of women was sent to the camp in Ramski Rit near Veliko Gradište, then spent some time in the prison in Zabela near Požarevac, and in April 1950 were transferred to the camp on the island of Sveti Grgur. At the beginning of 1951, the punished women were transferred to the camp on Goli Otok, only to be returned to Sveti Grgur again in 1952. On the other hand, women sentenced by courts were detained in prisons in Požarevac, Rajhenburg in Slovenia, as well as in the prison in Stolac in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Škodrić states.
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Women of Golog otoka; PHOTO CREDIT: Vukotić Medija, provided photographs Sudbine
The fates of two women will particularly move readers.
“For the most part, from the moment of arrest they spent between two and three years in prisons and camps, but some women stand out who were detained for many years and offered consistent and persistent resistance to pressures to change their stance. In this group, the fates of two women are particularly striking. One is Branislava Brana Marković, the wife of the prominent communist Sima Marković, who perished in Stalin’s purges in the Soviet Union, and who herself was detained for more than five and a half years. The other is the doctor Stanojka Đurić, a member of the partisan movement since 1941 and a participant in the Battle of Sutjeska, who emerged from the war with the rank of lieutenant colonel. She was sentenced in a court process to 15 years in prison and spent more than seven years in prisons and camps. According to available data, she served the longest sentence among the punished women,” the author of this compelling book notes.
“Of great importance were the published memoirs of some of the punished women. Particularly noteworthy are the memoirs of Ženi Lebl, Milka Žicina, Smilja Filipčev, Vera Cenić (a stage play about her was produced in Vranje) and Eva Grlić.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Ivan Batinić / Alamy / Profimedia
MEMOIRS OF A WRITER FROM VRANJE: What the reception looked like and why they had to remain silent
The writer Vera Cenić was born in 1930 in Vranje. She was the first woman Doctor of Sciences from Vranje; the first woman Doctor of Literature from Vranje. She spent her working life in education as a professor of language and literature at the Teacher Training School and at The Ivo Andrić Pedagogical Academy in Vranje, the forerunner of today’s Faculty of Education. She was one of the most distinguished professors, synonymous with beautiful and vivid exposition, whose classes were remembered and carried as a great value. Part of her youth, as a student, she spent on Goli Otok, sentenced to so-called socially useful labour.
“The loss of hope for many punished women began with their very arrival on the island, when they were met by a gauntlet. A mass of women of strange and crazed appearance, shouting incomprehensible slogans, striking, spitting and beating the newcomers, certainly represented a shock, but also a warning sign meant to prepare them for everything that would follow. The new detainees, beaten, bloody and filthy, were then further humiliated by insulting and crude hair-cutting with livestock shears. It is rare to find a memoir of detainees that does not emphasise how disfigured and mutilated they were by this cutting, since ‘anyone who got hold of the shears cut, preferably as grotesquely as possible’.”
Đina Markuš described how part of the hair was cut down to the scalp, while uncut tufts were left behind, alternating in this way. Vera Cenić recorded something similar:
PHOTO CREDIT: Vukotić Medija, provided photographs
“Here and there she leaves a tuft, elsewhere she cuts down to the skin with blunt, creaking shears.”
Vera wrote how, upon her return home, her family welcomed her ceremoniously, while her father said:
“My soldier has returned, our soldier…”
Despite the joy of returning and reuniting with her family, contrary to expectations, she refused to tell them what she had endured. In addition to personal difficulties in speaking about the camp torments, most of them had been warned that these were topics that must not be spoken about in freedom. Some of them, when telling relatives and friends about these experiences, would play louder music in the flat as a precaution. However, this did not help when some who were present in those gatherings were later arrested and revealed information about those conversations.