My Mom’s Lineage

When I was a kid, growing up in Scarborough, Ontario, there was another young family living a few doors down with their old German grandmother. When the old lady saw my brother and me, she said that we were German. My mom tried to tell her that we weren’t German. We were Croatian.

But the old lady was adamant that we were German.

I come from a line of Croatian peasants. My parents are from a small island called Dugi Otok, off the coast of what used to be Communist Yugoslavia. My dad’s family is from a village called Luka. They were poor farmers for as far back as they know. Just a few chickens and goats, potatoes and grapevines. Everyone made their own wine. My mom’s side was from the village next door called Savar. They weren’t as poor because mom’s father worked in America for several years before WWII and brought all the money home.

It didn’t help that my mother made stuffed peppers for the old lady one day. A recipe she learned from a German woman. No matter what my mother said, this woman kept saying that my mother, brother, and I were German. She said only a German could make stuffed peppers like that. The old lady’s granddaughter kept apologizing to my mother because she couldn’t stop her from saying that.

Fast forward about fifteen years. On my grandmother’s deathbed, she tells my mother a story about a love affair between a boy from Germany and a girl from Austria (my mom calls it Austro Ugaska) around the 1860s.

Zadar is a city on the Dalmatian coast that is part of Croatia. It’s the oldest, continuously inhabited city in Croatia, and it’s adjacent to my parents’ island. At the time, it housed one of the best schools in Europe. And very expensive. The girl from Austria was studying there when she met a boy from Germany. They fell in love, and as sometimes happens, she got pregnant.

During this time, the girl got to know one of the local staff members who worked in the kitchen. This woman was from the town of Preko on the nearby island of Uglan (pronounced Ooglan. You can check all these places on Google maps). Each day this woman would come to Zadar to work in the school kitchen and then go home in the evening to be with her son and husband. It was about a half-hour boat ride.

The two ladies talked often and became friends. A little before the Austrian girl was due to have her baby, she asked the woman from Preko if she would take care of the baby for her. She wanted to keep the baby but also wanted to finish school. Her family was very wealthy, as was the German boy’s. They were blue-bloods and possibly royalty. They would pay for everything. The woman from Preko wouldn’t have to come to work during that time. She could stay home and watch the kids and get paid.

The Preko woman agreed. When Boška was born (pronounced Boshka), she went to Preko with the kitchen lady.

When the Austrian girl and German boy finished school, they both went home. The girl stopped in Preko to see her daughter. She said she would be back soon once she was married. But when the couple got home, both their parents forbid them to marry. You see, they were of different religions. The girl was Catholic, while the boy was Jewish. At that time, as you can imagine, that was quite taboo.

The couple obeyed their parents and didn’t marry. They stayed in touch and took care of their child from a distance.

After a time, the Austrian girl married someone else. She went straight to Preko to get her little girl. But  Boška didn’t want to leave. She adored her big brother and loved the only family that she ever knew. As much as the Austrian girl tried, Boška wouldn’t go. The Austrian mother could see how much her daughter loved her brother and family and how much they loved her. She told Boška that she would always be taken care of and could come back to her mother anytime she wanted. Then she left.

When little Boška grew up, she married my mother’s maternal grandfather Paulo. Her biological parents came from Germany and Austria for the wedding, bearing lots of gold and presents. They arrived on their own to watch their daughter get married, and they danced together all night.

Boška’s mother stayed in touch after that by writing to her regularly. Over the years. Boška had 5 children. The second youngest was my grandmother Marica (pronounced Maritsa). Boška went to church every morning since she was married. On the way home, she would stop at her brother’s place to say hello. She never missed a day because they remained close. One morning, she didn’t show up.

The brother got worried and went to her home to find her in bed. She was sick. He stayed with her all day and all night. The following morning, she died.

The Austrian woman continued to write, but now she wrote to my grandmother and her siblings until WWI broke out. After that, the grandmother stopped writing because she was afraid for the grandkids, in case her letters were intercepted. It wasn’t until I wrote this that I realized that my grandmother had lived through 2 World Wars.

When my grandmother Marica (who is from Preko) told my mother this story on her deathbed, she was living in Canada, near us in London, Ontario. For some reason, she was still afraid to tell my mother and her sister this story, even though it was so many years after the wars and on another continent.

The letters that my ancestor from Austria wrote to my grandmother and her siblings must have been quite powerful.

When she heard the story, my mother wished she could tell that old lady from many years ago that kept insisting that we were of German descent. She wished she could say to her that she was right all those years ago. But she had long since left this earth, as did my grandmother. So it seems I’m not descended from only peasants after all.