My Life on Three Continents

By Stanislav Fabic

The author depicts life in Bosnia (first as part of Yugoslavia then as part of the independent state/of Croatia), service in the Croatian Navy, training on the Sailing Ship Horst Wessel (now in the U.S. renamed Eagle), life in Titos Yugoslavia and, in 1949, escape to Italy across the Adriatic Sea. Year in Italy, ending with emigration to Australia. After 8 years there, arrival in Berkeley, CA to pursue graduate studies in nuclear engineering, marriage to Barbara (from Kansas) and start of a family. Follows work for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, PA, then in Maryland for the US Atomic Energy Commission. Includes description of many local and overseas trips.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469141886

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Copyright © 2012 by Stanislav FabiĆ.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011963255

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-4187-9

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-4186-2

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-4188-6

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Contents

Foreword

Growing Up in Bosnia (1925-1944)

1925-1935

1935-1940

1941-1944

In the Navy (1944-1945)

SISAK

FATHER’S DEATH

STRALSUND, ON THE BALTIC SEA

SAILING-SCHOOL SHIP HORST WESSEL (NOW EAGLE)

ARRIVAL IN FLENSBURG ON DANISH BORDER

DISPLACED PERSONS CAMPS

Life in Tito’s Yugoslavia (1945-1949)

GOING HOME

INTERROGATION

AT UNIVERSITY OF ZAGREB

FIRST EXPULSION

STUDENT AGAIN

WORK BRIGADE ON ŠAMAC-SARAJEVO

MEETING ON TRIGLAV

SECOND EXPULSION

Exodus (1949-1950)

PREPARATION

FLIGHT TO ITALY

RECEPTION IN ANCONA

INSIDE THE CONCENTRATION CAMP

LIFE IN ITALY

JOURNEY TO AUSTRALIA

Life in Australia (1950-1958)

ARRIVAL

CONCRETE CONSTRUCTIONS

MY SECOND ALMA MATER

BACHELOR OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

FRANKA

THE LAST FLING BEFORE SETTLING DOWN?

THE JOURNEY TO AMERICA

Life in California (1958-1967)

ARRIVAL IN BERKELEY

LIFE AT THE UC BERKELEY

INGALILL

MARRIAGE TO BARBARA

HONEYMOON

LIFE AND WORK IN CALIFORNIA

ARRIVAL OF OUR FIRST SON—GREGORY IVAN

WORK AT KAISER ENGINEERS

OUR FIRST HOUSE

ARRIVAL OF OUR DAUGHTER—KATARINA ROSE

ARRIVAL OF OUR SECOND SON—ANTHONY DAVID

Life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (November 1967-December 1973)

WORK AT WESTINGHOUSE, ATOMIC POWER DIVISION

OUR SECOND HOUSE

THE FIRST VISIT TO THE OLD COUNTRY

CONTINUING WORK AT WESTINGHOUSE

Life in Maryland (December 1973-)

WORK AT THE U.S. ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION

OUR THIRD HOUSE

WORK AT NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

OUR YACHT SEA FIRE

DYNATREK INC.

SECOND STINT AT NRC

THIRD STINT AT NRC

FAMILY LIFE

OUR DOGS

MORE TRIPS

AND SO IT GOES…

Epilogue

VISIT TO RUSSIA (YEAR 2000)

VISIT TO CHINA (YEAR 2001)

MYSTERY SOLVED (YEAR 2002)

VISIT TO ARGENTINA (YEAR 2004)

MEETING OF OLD SCHOOL MATES (YEAR 2006)

ANTE IS LEAVING US (YEAR 2007)

JOSIP (LULE) IS LEAVING US (YEAR 2008)

ONE MORE VISIT TO CEMETERY IN TUZLA (YEAR 2010)

OUR DAILY LIVES (YEAR 2011)

Appendix

CROATIAN PRONUNCIATIONS

ACRONYMS

OFTEN-CITED NAMES OF RELATIVES, FRIENDS,

SOME INSTITUTIONS AND TOWNS

Foreword

My children and grandchildren know I came from a different world, not only because of my name and accent, but also because of the following:

I don’t watch sports or read sports pages, except during Olympic Games.

I listen mostly to classical music, because the popular tunes I do like became unpopular by the mid-1960s.

Until the year 2000, I rarely watched TV except for the news. In my retirement, however, and especially with our new big-screen TV, I started to watch J.A.G., sci-fi series, and Turner Classic Movies.

I follow world news assiduously, in print, on the Internet, and on TV.

I don’t call my wife honey; I gag on that word. Instead, I call her Barb. When she is not mad at me, she calls me Stanislav; otherwise, she calls me Stan.

I don’t eat popcorn in movie theaters and hate listening to others munching it.

I don’t play or watch golf.

In other words, to my grandchildren, to my children, even to my wife, I am an alien, despite having lived in the United States for over fifty years. My wife and children know a lot about me but not everything. My grandchildren know much less.

Having lived or stayed more than six months in several areas of the world (Bosnia, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Australia, and the USA), I have accumulated experiences which should be of interest to my progeny and to my friends. That, in essence, is the main reason for writing this memoir. The other reason is that my wife knows a lot about her ancestors, reaching back many generations, on both her mother’s and her father’s side. I know nothing beyond my grandfather on my father’s side and nothing about my mother’s parents and beyond. I am ashamed that I did not keep better track of my ancestors and hope that these memoirs will prompt my progeny to become interested in their roots.

My original last name is Fabić, where the letter ć sounds like ch in English. When I left my homeland, I decided not to replace ć with ch, letting people pronounce Fabic any way they like. Most people here call me Stan, although all my relatives and friends in the old country call me by my nickname Cico (which sounds like Tzitzo). It surprised me to find that many people in the English-speaking world have difficulty pronouncing Stanislav. Some Catholics in Croatia and Bosnia used to adopt the name of a saint for the first names of their children. The selection rule was that the saint’s name, noted in the calendar, which comes closest to the child’s birthday, becomes the child’s (first) name. St. Stanislav fell on the day before my birth. The middle names were not used in the Balkans.

Several friends in the United States, Australia, and in the old country have told me that I definitely should publish this memoir. They found it to be very interesting and thought that others would too. That prompted me to start looking at it again, eleven years after I first wrote it. It became obvious that during this interval, several interesting events, perhaps worth recording, took place, and that many people previously mentioned have since passed away. That prompted me to add an epilogue.

Please refer to the appendix for proper pronunciation of certain letters in the Croatian

language, for explanation of numerous acronyms, and for listing and explanation of the often-quoted names.

I am very grateful to my wife for attempting to correct my punctuation, grammar, and the use of idioms.

Growing Up in Bosnia (1925-1944)

1925-1935

I know very little of my grandfather Franjo Fabić’s background, except that he was born in 1861, raised somewhere in the vicinity of Karlovac, Croatia, and that he was employed, during the Austro-Hungarian empire rule and later, by the national railways. I know nothing about Franjo’s siblings and about my maternal grandfather, except that his last name was Jurašić (my mother’s maiden name). I believe my great-grandfather’s name was Grga (Gregory) Fabić; he was Franjo’s father. My father, Ivan, was born in Raštelica, Bosnia, in 1895—the same year my mother was born—while Grandfather Franjo was stationed there.

1.%20My%20mother%20and%20father.jpg

During World War I (WWI), my father worked in some munitions factory in Hungary where he learned a trade and became a very good mechanic. He had a sore spot on his left leg just below the knee. This was caused by one of two incidents: (1) by an explosion in the munitions factory and, (2) by a frightened horse that kicked my father as he was steering a carriage through throngs of inebriated crowd of people shooting all kinds of weapons in the air while celebrating Vidovdan (St. Vid’s day, holy to Serbs). While I was never able to discover which story was correct, I am inclined to believe the second, although the first sounds better.

After the end of the WWI, my father settled in Tuzla, perhaps the third largest town in Bosnia located in its northeastern sector. He settled there because, at that time, his father, Franjo, served as a railway station master in Miričina, a small village, only about 20 miles northwest from Tuzla. I still have a photo of my father taken during his early years in Tuzla, in which he had hair and was fairly thin and good-looking, contrary to how I remember him as long as I knew him: bald, fat, and very loving. I don’t know where and how he met my mother, Katarina, who was born and raised in Ogulin, a town in the region of Gorski Kotar, Croatia. In any case, I believe they were married in Tuzla. Their first child was a daughter, Štefica (Stephanie), who either died of some child sickness before the age of two or, as someone told me, she fell out of her baby carriage and died of fright. I have always visited her little grave in the old part of Tuzla’s Catholic cemetery, even though I never knew her since I was born on November 14, 1925, about one year after her death, in a small house located very close to Tuzla’s Gimnazija (a combined middle and high school). Later on, father reregistered that house’s ownership to my name.

My first photo

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From 1918 through 1929, Bosnia was part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Following some unrest and the 1928 shooting in the Parliament of prominent Croat leaders by a Serb representative, the King Alexander renamed the country Yugoslavia (land of south Slavs) and introduced dictatorship. That occurred in 1929, four years after my birth. At that time, the king subdivided the country into nine regions (banovinas) to remove associations with the kingdom inhabitants’ ethnic origins.

According to another photo, which I have misplaced, my father opened his first workshop next to the Bata shoe store, where he specialized in repairing cars; although he also repaired anything mechanical: typewriters, sewing machines, guns, bicycles, motorcycles, etc. In those days, there were no spare parts; they had to be made from scratch. I don’t know whether I was born while his workshop was there or later; in any case, I don’t remember anything about that location. My earliest recollection, when I was about three to four years old, is of a ride in a T-model Ford on some outing toward Serbia; and I was very scared because the skies were very dark. It was raining hard, preceded by lightning and thunderbolts. How do I know it was a T-model Ford? Well, because later, I spent a great deal of time in it, playing with my friends and especially with a little Jewish neighbor girl by the name of Kokica.

On the other hand, I vividly remember my father’s second workshop, located in the backyard of our house on Školska Ulica (School Street) where, on the first (i.e., ground) floor, my father also had a small retail store selling all things mechanical. At the corner of Školska Ulica and the main street, he had the very first gasoline pump in town. The workshop, where I spent a great deal of time tinkering, had all kinds of machine tools: lathe, milling machine, drill, borer, shaper, and grinder, all driven by leather belts connected to shafts, suspended from the ceiling, and driven by a single electric motor. Inside the workshop was also a small foundry since, as I have said, some broken parts had to be made from scratch. My father divided his time between the store and the workshop, where he employed one mechanic and an apprentice, while Mother helped him in the store.

3.%20My%20mother%20and%20I.jpg4.%20My%20mother%20nad%20I.jpg

My mother and I

Next to the workshop was a two-car garage containing a large hole on one part of its floor to allow the mechanic to work underneath a car. Behind the garage, we had a vegetable and flower garden. In front of the garage, there was an enclosed empty space where I played with my friends or where, when the garage was full with clients’ cars, our T-model Ford was parked. Actually, the empty space was L-shaped, its base leg being located between the back of our house and the front of the workshop. It contained a fairly large circular saw for cutting wood. Next to the workshop was yet another enclosed space, also part of our property, where we had a henhouse, the woodshed, and a place where we kept a couple of very large wooden casks in which plums were fermented. Yes, we made our own plum brandy (slivovitz) once a year by renting the still, and at the same time, having one or two fat sows butchered.

Those occasions were a party time: professional butchers would come and make all kinds of wonderful sausages, cold cuts, cracklings, and presswurst while preparing meals for our guests and readying hams and bacon for the smokehouse. Our guests always included our neighbors and a member of the Financial Control Authority who made sure that our newly brewed plum brandy was not for sale. They tasted and enjoyed both the meat and plum brandy. What I most remember of these parties was the evening after the sows were killed, cleaned, and hung up overnight. My duty was to keep the neighboring cats at bay with my air gun that father gave me for Christmas and of which I was immensely proud. Actually, I once got a severe beating from my father because of that air gun. I was standing on the fence between our backyard and the street when some boys came by to look at my air gun. One of them was looking at the bore of the gun that was pumped with air but was not loaded with ammunition. For some very foolish reason, I pressed the trigger; and the blast of air hit the boy’s eye, and he went straight to my father. Although, fortunately, his eye was not damaged, my behind was! That was really a very foolish thing to do; one of many I did later in my life.

Every time Father would get mad enough at me and grab a belt, Mother always interposed between us and, in the process, received most of the blows. I must have inherited my bad temper from my father whom, nevertheless, I loved very much! Because of his temper, he and my mother had a turbulent marriage. I remember the evening when he threw at her the frying pan that contained eggs she has just fried for his dinner. The other time I was belted happened while I was attending a kindergarten run by Catholic nuns. In the class, I drew a sketch of the nun sitting on the night pot and holding hands with a priest. The boy with whom I shared the desk, Branko Perić, grabbed my sketch and gave it to the nun who was our teacher. She looked at it and calmly placed it inside an envelope and mailed it to my father.

I was a fairly good student throughout my adolescence. The school usually ended by 1:00 p.m. and, right after lunch, I had to spend several hours doing homework. Thereafter I often spent time helping my father in the store, either taking care of the buyers or doing various chores: cleaning the store, preparing hunting gun cartridges, or assembling bicycles. Preparing shotgun cartridges consisted of carefully hammering the primer capsule to the center of the cartridge base, poring a measure of gunpowder inside the cartridge, using a small jig to press a paper wad on top of the powder, filling the space behind the wad with gunshot, placing a transparent washer on top of the shot, and finally placing the whole assembly inside a small machine which turned the lip of the cartridge over the washer to seal its innards. The shot (spherical pellets made of lead) came in different sizes, depending on the type of the prey: large size for wolves, intermediate for foxes and hares, and small for birds. There were also specially made single bullets which replaced shots for hunting boars and bears.

Yes, there were bears in those days in Bosnian mountains; while in the winter when wolves were hungry, they would sometimes encircle whole villages and keep them isolated for days. Every peasant in Bosnia owned at least one shotgun, and my father’s store was very busy selling shotguns and ammunition when peasants came to town on market days (every Friday). Father kept so much gunpowder in the store—even dynamite, which he sold to nearby coal mines—that it was scary. Yet I have often seen my father demonstrating pistols that were on sale by shooting them onto the store’s oily wooden floor.

Father liked to go hunting and kept two very fierce hunting dogs in our backyard. They were too fierce for our neighbors so Father replaced them with a housedog. One snowless winter day (a rarity in Bosnia), Father and I went hunting by car and took that dog with us. We must have been more than ten miles away from Tuzla during our unsuccessful hunt. Our dog went into the woods and never came back to us, despite the repeated calls and whistles. After a lengthy wait, we decided to drive back home because it was getting dark and snow clouds looked threatening. We were very sad that we lost the dog since he was such a good company at our home. Three weeks later, during a snowy and wintry night, we heard scratching on our front door. When we opened it, our lost dog came in, looking very thin and miserable. We could hardly believe our eyes. How on earth could he have found his way, over such a long distance and snow-covered countryside? But we were so glad

he did.

New bicycles, which my father sold, always came in parts from Germany or Austria or Italy and had to be assembled. That was my job, including attaching the spokes to the wheel rims, placing the inner and the outer rubber tubes over the wheel rim and centering, and balancing the assembled wheels by tensioning the spokes at strategic places. Of course, Father also sold bicycle parts, such as the outer tubes: Semperit (German), Dunlop (British), or Pirelli (Italian). Father also sold car tires and had a large Michelin sign placed prominently in the store. That sign hasn’t changed over the last eighty years and, somehow, always reminds me of my father and his store. Father also kept on the store wall, a picture of Henry Ford, even at the time when German soldiers were in Tuzla during World War II.

Braco and Father at his Shell gasoline pump

10.%20Father%20and%20Braco%20at%20our%20pump.jpg

Father was very hardworking and very strong. Whenever the gasoline supply arrived by train, it came in steel barrels that had to be transported from the railway station to our pump, usually by horse-driven carriages. I saw father moving those 250-liter barrels from carriages to the filling flange attached to an underground pipe that led to a large underground cistern next to the pump. He would then attach to the barrel a hand-operated pump that forced the gasoline into the cistern. That job had to be repeated for each of the fifty or more barrels. Later, his workshop employees performed that job. I was very fond of one of them named Ferdo. He once became very sick after accidentally inhaling and gulping a significant amount of gasoline while priming the pump by sucking on the pump intake to provide the initial siphon action. Our red-painted gasoline pump had a lighted Shell symbol on its top.

Unfortunately, it was hand operated. Every time some car needed gasoline, either my father or I had to go over to the pump carrying a long handle which had to be screwed onto the pump and then used to pump gasoline from the underground cistern to the car’s gas tank. There was no time limit to the operation of the pump: any hour of day or night, including weekends and holidays. There were many times when Father had to gas up some car that came in the middle of night, full of drunks who always sounded very threatening, and I would stand next to my bedroom window and fearfully watch. Those instances became especially dangerous shortly before the beginning of the WWII when ethnic animosities between the Serb and Croat extremists became more pronounced.¹

My best friend, Stanko Brajković, lived on the upper floor of the house next to ours, owned by an old lady we called Bea who was a Sephardic Jew and knew Spanish. She kept a close watch over Stanko and me, because we were very rambunctious and high-spirited. She often found us playing on the roof of our woodshed or of the henhouse, or sitting high up on the branches of her tree. Stanko was a frequent visitor to our model-T Ford and to our workshop. Stanko’s father, a retired revenuer, was paralyzed and always lay in bed. His other two sons were significantly older; the younger of the two, Ferdo (Ferdinand), was studying surveying in a college, while the older, Miro (Miroslav), was already a lawyer.²

On the ground floor of Bea’s house lived Mr. Giovanni (Ivan) Mott, a chimneysweeper

by profession. I believe he came from the German-speaking part of Italy in Tyrol, hence, the Italian first name. I spent great many hours in his and his wife’s company. I recall that his wife, Kristina, was from Lukavac, a small industrial town in the vicinity of Tuzla. Many inhabitants of Lukavac were German speaking, probably settled there by Austrian authorities to build and run an important chemical factory named Solvay. I still have a photo of Kristina and Giovanni’s wedding at which I participated, dressed in navy uniform as customary in those days for small boys. The wedding took place in Lukavac, and my father served as Giovanni’s best man (kum). I recall a long procession of cars, and my father throwing lots of small coins to children. I also recall when their son, Jakica, was born. When the midwife arrived, I was told to wait outside their apartment and watch for the stork. Well, the stork never arrived but Jakica did, and I often helped his mother by holding and entertaining the baby. ³

On the other side of our house stood a yellow building with a nice carved wood balcony, owned by Mr. and Mrs. Duić. They were both elderly and always impeccably dressed, and their two fierce dogs were also nicely groomed. Since Mr. and Mrs. Duić were long retired, their clothes were not new, yet always clean and well pressed, and Mr. Duić always wore a hat over his toupee. Their daughter, Herta, lived with them and both she and her mother played their grand piano every day. Herta was several years older than me. ⁴

On the upper floor of that house lived Capt. Ninoslav (Nino) Brnetić, his beautiful wife Srećka, and their son Vojislav (Vojo). Nino was in the Yugoslav Army active service and wore an imposing saber. Vojo was maybe two years my junior but we often played together, sometimes in his, sometimes in our backyard. I recall his lovely toy car one could sit in. The other thing I am not very fond of recalling is the time when I played in my backyard with a bow and arrow and accidentally shot one in his direction. The arrow hit him very close to the eye. Everyone got very scared because the eye appeared to be bleeding. Mrs. Brnetić was crying, and so was I, thinking about the punishment that was expecting me! Fortunately, the arrow tip was not sharp and did not result in serious eye damage.⁵

My mother was very sociable and outgoing. She enjoyed the company of several young ladies, some of whom rented a room in our house, and who came from Serbia to teach in Tuzla’s various schools. She also enjoyed going to green-white gala balls sponsored by Croats during the Mardi Gras (fasching) season. Unfortunately, my father’s tastes were quite the opposite. He only enjoyed meeting two small groups of friends: with one group, he played cards; and with the other, he discussed news. The latter group included, beside my father, Giovanni Mott and a Serb gentleman whose name may have been Dr. Djordjević, but I am not so sure. They met in Father’s store every afternoon and discussed news of the day. Father hated ballrooms and social events. He did, however, participate as a fullback, in (only) one soccer game sponsored by Croats, where the team composed of fat players was opposed by the team of skinny players. You can guess on which side my father played. I recall that one member of the opposing thin guys’ team was Mr.Dušek, the owner of a sweetshop.

Father took our whole family to Dušek’s sweetshop every evening while we were promenading in the center of town (Corso). My favorite sweet was a torte called Bohème. My father was thoroughly apolitical. He supported clubs and organizations of every ethnicity. Although a Croat, before WWII, he belonged to the Serbian organization named Sokol whose presumed main purpose dealt with physical exercise. He was also very active in Tuzla’s firefighting organization and made generous contributions to the Croat House (Hrvatski Dom) and to Matica Hrvatska, a Croat publishing house in Zagreb. Perhaps it was necessary for a businessman to please everyone.

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With my father, and grandfather Franjo

I, on the other hand, became involved with Boy Scouts rather early in my life and that involvement lasted till the end of 1940. As part of Boy Scouts activities, I attended month-long summer camps on the Adriatic Coast in towns, such as Budva, Orebić, and Makarska. The rest of the time, I participated in excursions to the mountains around Tuzla, built model airplanes, and played Ping-Pong. I was never involved in group sports such as soccer. What I cherished the most, however, were our frequent visits, by car, to Grandfather Franjo’s farm in Miričina where he retired. This farm had just about everything a young boy could desire: farm animals, a bee farm, a fine river and woods nearby, and railroad tracks only a short distance away. There were so many times I waited, with bow and arrows in my hands, for trains to arrive so I could attack them since I was an Indian! In those days, I read many Indian stories; some from cheap (ten cents) booklets I would devour every time Mother asked me to stir a large pot filled with ingredients to make preserves and jams. Needless to say, several of those burned if and when the story became exciting. Others came from the well-known book by Karl May, which my parents gave me for Christmas.

My grandmother, Rosalija, boiled milk, made cheese, churned butter, baked bread, and cooked wonderful meals. Her maiden name was Varga—a common Hungarian last name—indicating that she may have been of Hungarian origin, as reflected in her cooking. Grandfather was always busy with his bees and with their end product: honey. He wore protective clothing that did me no good; I got stung many times. The farm had neither running water nor electricity. Instead, water came from a well in the backyard, and they relied on kerosene lanterns for lighting. The well was equipped with sort of a seesaw, with a rope tied to a bucket on one end and a large stone on the other. The public well, on the other hand, was located on the other side of the railway track. That well had a more conventional, windup means for pulling the rope and bucket. However, its location was unfortunate since one had to descend about fifty steps over a steep bank to reach the railway tracks, hence the well. The trip back, with water-filled containers, involved climbing those fifty steps. ⁶

A pretty brown-eyed girl with dark complexion, named Ljubica (Violet), helped around the farm and took care of farm animals and milking of cows. Years later, she married my youngest uncle, Vjekoslav, who at that time also lived on the farm. ⁷

When I think about it, looking at the picture of my kindergarten class, several of my classmates went with me through most of the primary and secondary schooling. The first three years of my elementary schooling were spent in the Catholic nuns’ cloister. While it was undoubtedly a very fine school with a strict discipline, my father thought that I ought to be, in the last (fourth) year of elementary school, exposed to the rough environment of public schools as preparation for entrance to Gimnazija. In Bosnia’s elementary schools, unlike in the schools in other parts of ex-Yugoslavia, the students had to learn to read and write in both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets.

In those days, the preuniversity education consisted of four years primary and eight years secondary schooling, the latter either in the real or the classical Gimnazija. The eight years of Gimnazija were divided in two parts. One had