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Tuesday, December 17, 2013
JULIAN MALACKO
No, the name says it, but its not in Russia. Its in
the heart of Vojvodina, that would be the bay of
the Panonian Sea, if it would be still existing...
If your palm would be the Panonian Sea,
and so called, the line of your life would be the
river Danube, the center of the space between
the river Danube, or your life line, and the edge
of your palm will make province Vojvodina, that is
divided into three sub-regions: Bachka, Banat and Srijem.
Just in the center of this space, in Bachka, will be
located Ruski Kerestur...
So, with or without geography lessons, now you are familiar with the origins of Julian Malacko.
But, the malicious tongues say that in this area a pumpkin
is the biggest hill, this is not quite correct but
also not far from the truth.
And the images of the Panonian Sea are kept in
the maize fields that stays far after harvesting wheat,
and the Sun is rising each morning from
the sea of green maize and sets in the evening
in the sea of green further, so far the eye
can only see.
Its looks the same, only not the blue water but green maize...
Just to mention that there is something called family karma.
Some believe in it, some do not.
Erszebet Radvany, Hungarian baroness, the grandchild of baron von Tokai, was in her best years to get pregnant when 1848 the Hungarian Revolution devastated the country, the estate of her husband who was killed in front of her eyes.
The manor was set on fire, and when the crowd was occupied by dragging furniture and valuable things around, she gave up of playing hero role and grabbed the first horse to ride away.
At the time her grand-pa baron Tokai managed to get to see if his grand child's family was safe he found only black walls, Erszebeth was nowhere to find but only dead corps of her husband he buried.
Ridding day and night she found herself in a peaceful surrounding untouched by revolution, small town Szombor, amidst Bachka.
After the turbulence of revolution experience she found suddenly herself in the peaceful and sleepy surrounding her tensed nerves hardly could believe that such peace is possible, after scream of the hordes of the revolutionaries that still echoed in her ears. The image of the dead body of her husband, still warm, almost alive, but covered by blood stains, blood was still exceeding into the grass of the meadow in front of the manor: shouting and screaming of the hordes, the flames that were covering and swallowing all what were her belongings just half hour ago...
The problems were not solved but started the new one.
Where to go?
What to do?
How to survive without money and any support there?
There she sold a peaces of jewellery she wore when the crowd broke on her estate, and bought a small house for herself. She was nice and young, the rich merchant Papp found perfect spouse for himself: family story said, from his side the red hair got into family off springs.
But happy days are precious because they do not last. Her husband soon died, she was still young woman, the widow with her daughter, trying to live on her own.
When her daughter married she hoped her daughter will have more happier and peacefuller life. But it was not so. She died when her son was only 4 years old.
Erszebet took care about him, for his father remarried.
When the grandson Ferdinand grew up, he wanted to work instead to get good education on the expenses of his grandma, for he clearly saw that woman finances were on the rocks, so did not want to drag you into poverty.
Ferdinand, called by his shortened name Ferko, left Erszebet's house, but paid respect to her granny by adding her name to his, so Ferdinand Papp Radvanyi started to build his own life...
Erszebet life was marked with catastrophe called the Hungarian revolution.
Ferdinand Papp Radvanyi life ended by being murdered, and marked the lives of his six children in ages of preelementary to babies.
Julian's life was marked, so as his grand grand ma's, by the world wide known catastrophe called Tunguska big explosion. His life could easily end by bullet if he would not have been saved by good man's advice.
In the eve of Julian Malacko birth happened the strange event, the lots of people are still spending the times in discussions what really happened there: over Siberian territory Tunguska, on June 30th 1908, there exploded something that
brought the bright light over the almost half Northern Hemisphere,
so you may find in the evidences, statements given by witnesses, that the people in England for inst. could read papers by night without any other additional light!
Some documentary even showed that the expedition searching for
the answers there, found some metal parts made of the strange alloy,
but this is a different theme...
Julian Malacko was born in Bacz Kerestur on July 4th,1908. Yes, the place had then a different name, being in the different state, namely that belonged to the
Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy...
His parents were landlords: father Janko and mother Hannah, born Papp-Radvanyi had three more children: the eldest was Melanie, then came George, Eugene and Julian was the youngest.
Julian's grand-pa Ferdinand Papp-Radvanyi took his grand-ma family name Radvanyi, to his fathers name to pay the respect to that extraordinary woman
who, after her daughter's death, brought up her four years old grand son Ferdinand, that young at the time of his mother's death...
Julian's mother Hannah was Ferdinand's child;Ferdinand and his wife had five more children...
But Ferdinand somehow shared the men's destiny of Radvanyi-Tokai family.
He was found killed in his orchards on September 9th 1878...
Malacko family lived in the 116, Main street in small house, three rooms only, they had a big garden which was more orchards then the garden. Close to the
house, there was the stale, I remembered only as the empty one, that Julian's father used as the storage for his numberless books.
Two years before Julian was born, his family rented the farm between Bacz Kerestur and Kula, but closer to Kula, then Austrian Hungarian Monarchy. Therefore Julian went to the first grade to Kula, near by city,
instead in his born, small city of 6,000 residents only, Bacz Kerestur.
In the Austrian Hungarian Monarchy state, the official languages were German and Hungarian, but due to closer position to Hungary, in that province,
Vojvodina, was mainly Hungarian language official. So,the school Julian attended from his first day of his schooling on, in the worst tornado of The First World War, was the Hungarian one. Since Julian was of the Rhutenian=Rusin origin, so as his parents, at home the Rusin language was spoken as a mother's tongue.
On his first day at school, Julian’s knowledge of Hungarian consisted of only few
words, but in only three months, he was speaking fluently the official language Hungarian. The other official language, German, Julian was sent by
parents to learn at the private lessons in the late grades of elementary.
After the two years attending the Hungarian elementary school in Kula, family went back to Bacz Kerestur where Julian continued his education in the same
language, as the school he attended in his home town,was also Hungarian. When Julian finished elementary,he was fluently speaking three languages:
Rusin=Ruthenian, German and Hungarian.
Interestingly, Julian attended the elementary school with the students that became famous in his grown -up years; those student continued their education at the clergy schools and became first, the priests and later
on, even the archbishop of Belgrade, Gabriel Bukatko; the other one was Joachim Segedi, who died in his 100 years, had to be promoted as the bishop,for the pope John Paul II signed all documents for it, but the bishop to be Joachim Segedi died only moths prior to the ceremony.
Interesting is that Julian took me to the last, a sort of farewell mess, the archbishop to be Gabriel Bukatko, served in our, the Cyril and Method church
in Zagreb, for the Easter of 1964.
After the mess, the archbishop to be, Gabriel Bukatko invited us for the private audience, at the church room.
I do believe that Julian has seen then, his school mate, for the
last time in his life...
The meaning of the above words were, that to attend
the elementary school some a hundred years ago, meant
to talk the three languages, even at that the early ages of the
elementary school.
Those times were the times of polyglots...
Interestingly, the close small town Kucura had the confessional school whose students attended, learning in his mother language, Rusin. Even today, the
residents from Kucura are speaking their mothers tongue, the most pure Rusin language...
The First World War was still on, when father took
Julian and brought him to Segedin, for attending the
secondary grammar school, that was called, in that
educational system, the Gymnasium. The boarding was
offered in the officer’s boarding school, and
therefore Julian was forced to wear the officer’s cap
of the legal Hungarian Army, although he was attending
the civilian grammar school. The end of the war and
the beginning of the Spanish flue, Julian survived in
Segedin.
He was one of the rare students who survived
it.World wide, the Spanish flue toll was ten milions death.
Almost the whole month, he was with the fever,
eating nothing, just taking water, seeing the images
of the monsters on the ceiling of the small medical
stationary, that was arranged at the boarding school:
the hospitals were overcrowded by the injured soldiers
and sick residents infected by the Spanish flue...
One morning he got up to wash him up, and went to
bathroom. He just leaned over the bath tub when he
started to bleed from the nose, ears, even gum. The
nun who was at the same time the nurse there, seeing
him bleeding, pressed the palms as if she was praying
Lord and said:” Thank you Lord, child, you are saved, you
will live...”- in Hungarian, of course.
The end of The World War I drew the new border lines,
emerged the new states. The Austrian-Hungarian
Monarchy collapsed, therefore, Julian had to move from
Segedin, 1921, to The Kingdom of Slovenians, Croats
and Serbians, to Ilok.
In Ilok he found boarding in the monastery of St. Frances under the supervision of pater guardiano Ferdinand Krcmar.
To Zagreb, Julian moved 1923, where he continued his
education at The First Zagreb’s Gymnasium,
again with the famous student, the famous math professor
Danilo Blanusa who turned life into misery of the students
the technical studies, with poor knowledge of maths.
The other famous mate was the later on the city reporter
Miss Dolezal, the second female newspaper reporter of Zagreb.
This school lasted then 8 years. Julian found boarding at the
Cyril and Method seminary at the Upper Town, the old
city nucleus. There were some 50 students there, from
that number only 10 were the Rusins. The others were
from Zumberak province Croatia and the Macedonian
students from the Yugoslav republic Macedonia; the others
due to poverty, lived there for free...
Julian was paying for his boarding. But the costs in
Zagreb were considerably higher then in the other
cities, so just after a year, finishing the fifth
grade, Julian was forced to move to Krizevci, from
Krizevci back to Ilok, from Ilok to Vukovar, from
Vukovar back to Ilok and from Ilok back to Krizevci,
where Julian graduated secondary schooling 1927.
Julian was learning languages easily; he was always
the best in French. Then, the students attending the
grammar school called The Gymnasium had the privilege
to chose two sorts of education: ‘the classical’ paid
more attention to the social studies and languages
while’ the real’ paid more attention to the math,
physics and natural sciences. The students of The Real
Gymnasium Julian attended too, had the privilege to
choose between one ‘alive’ language instead of the
Latin or Greek. Julian has chosen the French that
helped him a lot when he decided to translate the
comedy by J.B Moliere “The Miser”, make the
performance and from earned money the dresses and the
shoes were bought for the newly established football
club ”Rusin”, 1926.
Julian was the first president of this club.
Julian was very poor when, celebrating 40th
anniversary, 1963, no one from the club came to idea to
invite the first president to attend the celebration!
I recall that, when he still lived in Ruski Kerestur (in the
meantime the city Bacz Kerestur name, was
changed by the Hungarians, into Ruski Kerestur) Julian
has had the honor of the first kick at
the football match. Just to amuse the audience, he was hiding
the ball,behind the players pretended that the ball was
not brought into the court, making us laugh...
Sometimes he even played the first half time, although
he was over 40...
After the graduation, Julian has chosen the electricity-
technical study; due to his good French and the
references of the bishop dr. Dioniz Njaradi, Julian
was accepted at the Ecole de Politechnique in Paris.
But, his father Janko was of the different opinion: he
refused to let son go to Paris, because Paris is the
big city where Julian can be easily lost! Therefore,
Julian who equally spoke German was forced to enroll
the Technische Hochschule in Prag, not at all his
best choice...
Janko Malacko wanted for his son to study geodesy,
while Julian’s uncle from the mother’s side was the
engineer of the constructions, but worked as well as
the geodesists ( In Zagreb, this Faculty is still
called “ Faculty of Architecture, Construction and the
Geodesy”).
Julian had a different plans...
So, Julian was studying the second year at the
Technische Hochschule in Prag but was far too afraid
to admit his father he disrespected father’s wishes...
After finishing two years at the German Technische
Hochschule in Prag, Julian reached out that there is
the same study in Zagreb, so he continued his studies
there and graduated in June 1935 under the number
23rd. His diploma gave him the occupation of the
electricity-machine engineer, while today these are two
different studies...
In waiting for the job, Julian spent the time in
dismantling the second hand printing machines, ( that
were bought by collected money of the Bacz Kerestur
welthier residents: my grenda from mother side donated
for inst 1000 dinars-good shoes price was 3-4 dinars),
and setting it up, 1936.
Thanking him for his charity work by the black
marble board,that was laid down at the entrance
to the printing facility.
This facility was the base of the writing and publishing
culture of the Rusins, editing the newspapers such as
“Ruske Slovo”( “The Rusin Letter”), newspaper for the
youngsters “Mak”, books, annuals, cook books etc.
Julian never told about; he never paid
attention to formalities, but to the essence...
My attention to this marble board drew my mother’s
friend Xenia Venceljovski, by the chance she was
employee at then printing company “Ruske Slovo” for
all her life time. She took me for going through walk,
but when we got close to the building of the “Ruske
Slovo” she left me to wait for her in the yard, until
she wanted to check something up in the office.
Awaiting my ‘aunt’ Xenia I fell down and dirtied my
hands. She took me to the printing facility as it
happened just at their doors, to wash my hands. When
my hands were clean and dry, she has asked me do I
know who set the printing machines up. I
denied. “But how it comes, it says all on the marble
board, see...” I replied:” Yes, I see but I do not
know how many Julian Malacko exists...”
Short time Julian Malacko was jobless, then again by
help of bishop dr. Dioniz Njaradi, he got the job at
“Siemens” d.d, in Zagreb.
There, he was in charge of the electricity-medical
equipments such as the x-rays equipments, UV lamps,
dental equipments etc. In order to do his job well he
had to undergo the special training at the Siemens
facilities in Germany. This was his chance to get more
acquainted with Frankfurt, Berlin, Nürnberg at the
times of the highest peak of the National Socialism in
Germany.
From his training seminars he brought a lot of the
books, encyclopedias, art books such as the Italian
renaissance, lexicons...But as well Leica camera, two
Rolleiflex cameras, microscope...
I still recall the anxiety that caused colored
pictures of the red Nazi flags that from the roof of
three-four stories buildings spread almost to the
ground, shot in the dark night, this atmosphere was
perfectly brought in the movie ” The third man”...
Being in charge of setting it up and maintaining the
x rays equipments, Julian Malacko traveled all over
the former Yugoslavia. In winter and summer, through
the snow and rain, sometimes even riding donkeys, he
actually worked the job of some technician, while for
the expert like him there was no any job that could
use his knowledge and education.
Unfortunately, he was not aware, very probably not
being told of the danger that comes from the exposure
to x rays.He kept telling that they are harmless
but they are not After all,those were the times
before the World War II, now we
are aware of it. Similarly, the people in the USA
watched the explosion of A-bombs as some very exotic
event, looking through the dark glasses, protecting
the eyes, but exposing the all their bodies to the
radiation...
“Siemens” company withdrew from then Yugoslavia,
after WW II and came back after over 50 years, after the
withdrawal. Julian Malacko was told to wait for them,
while “Siemens” will be back. Indeed, they got back
after his retirement, almost 25 years after it. But at
least he had this small satisfaction, that his waiting
on his bosses was not senseless...
World War II brought to Julian a lot of troubles. So
as the WW I, the WW II drew at the spot the new border
lines. Namely, the whole Vojvodina province was
occupied by the Hungarian Horty’s soldiers... Julian
did not feel like that, that he had to take the
Hungarian passport as he, true, had some distant
Hungarian blood that came from his grand-grand mother
Papp-Radvanyi, but he was aware he is Rusin! From the
other side, he could not take the Croatian passport of
the Independent Croatian State, newly established by
Pavelic, while he could not get the documents from
Bacz Kerestur, except in Hungarian, that meant he
accepts the Hungarian statehood. It meant also that
the Hungarians could call him at any time to arms, and
he felt not capable of dieing for the state, he did
not felt, he belongs to.
I recall Julian talking that the Hungarian
ambassador came to his office in “Siemens” to buy the
UV lamps, promising him to get the papers and passport
in no time, certainly not longer then 20 minutes. But
Julian was clever enough to realize that short time
for issuing papers meant as well short time to dieing
at some the Eastern European front for the ideology
that was not his... He made a lot of the excuses such
as he has urgently to travel to Bosnia or Dalmatia, he
had no time now, but later on he will come by... Of
course, he never got there.
Julian became apatrid!
He was not a sole case, therefore The Independent
Croatian State-NDH ordered to all such the cases to
report at the Elementary School of Krajiska street.
Julian understood he might have opportunity to get the
Croatian papers, so he got there to report himself.
In the corridor, he met the man in uniform, and asked him
where he is due to report himself. The person asked
him why he wants to report himself. Julian told he
want to apply for the Croatian papers as he had no
one. The man in uniform pooled him aside and by the
lowered voice told him:” Look, you good man, go home
with the peace of Lord and DO NOT REPORT YOURSELF to
anything, as long as no one calls you or touches you, enjoy
your peace...”
Who knows where would Julian finished if he might not
met this good man in the school’s corridor. Maybe in
some concentration camps like were Jasenovac or
Gradiska or simply shot at Dotrscina...
The person, Julian did not know even his name, saved his life!
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