The old core of the Croatian village of Kumrovec, which encompasses an area of almost 13,000 square metres, was turned into a museum and opened to visitors for the rst time in 1953 metara, pretvoreno je u muzej i za posetioce je otvoreno 1953. godine Staro jezgro hrvatskog sela Kumrovec, koje obuhvata gotovo 13.000 kvadratnih
connotation and was left forever associated with a man for whom it was performed on his last journey on a blue train from Ljublja- na to Belgrade. When the co n containing Tito’s mortal remains was presented in Za- greb in front of hundreds of thousands of teary-eyed people, they sang spontaneously -“For every good word...Thank you”. Incon- ceivable for today’s times, but everything re- lated to the greatest son of the people and nationality was inconceivable. Presumably that’s why, decades after his death, there are still circulating truths and lies, legends and fairy tales, suggesting that he was not himself at all, but rather a bit Russian, a bit Austrian, a double of the real Josip Broz, who died on some distant front, and so on and so forth endlessly. In Zagorje there is no dilemma in this regard. Tito is theirs and theirs alone; he was born in the small village of Kumrovec, where the River Sutla separates Croatia from Slovenia. A village that probably nobody would ev- er had heard of if not for its famous native, who was even a reason for Richard Nixon to visit. Others generally preferred Brioni, understandably. The house that Tito lived in stands at the very beginning of the Old Village Mu- seum. It was there that he came into the world on 7 th May 1892, born of father Fran- jo and mother Marija, as the seventh child in a large family of farmers. Although that date was written in all o cial books, the whole of the former Yugoslavia celebrat- ed Tito’s birthday for decades on 25 th May, the Day of Youth, which was celebrated by the country with assemblies, relay batons and all the beautifully kitsch symbols of that time. The date was chosen from one of Josip Broz’s fake documents from the time when he had no legal status, and it was on that same date that he survived the German as- sault on Drvar, which provided another rea- son for a celebration. His house in Kumrovac is freshly paint- ed, with pillows strewn on beds and sweet smelling geraniums in the window. A wood- en bed with a straw mattress, an archaic stove, jars, a barrel, a sieve, even a trough,
Mali Joža dosetio se da se niz bregove Zagorja spušta u koritu, jer njegovi roditelji nisu imali pare za sanke Little Joža came up with the idea of descending the Zagorje hill in a trough, because his parents didn’t have the money to buy him a sledge
F or every good word that you said to me, for your every look, for your every laugh, thank you,” sang the baritone quality by the piano, and we stood as though enchanted by those words sung in a dialect that we barely un- derstand. In the Zelenjak Ventek villa, we – a group of Serbian journalists of all ages – stood beside the piano, carried away on the sad melody after having stu ed ourselves well with delicious štrukli and fragrant stru- del... We’d come to discover Zagorje and to trace the paths of Tito’s childhood in Kum- rovec,butthatmomentinthishundred-year- old tavern, nestled in the green hills, trans- ported us to somewhere beyond time. The
owner of the villa sang, and in the song, in perfect accompaniment, he was joined har- moniously by visiting travellers, two elderly Slovenes. There was no longer any doubt that we were in the homeland of Josip Broz, and it even seemed for a moment that the Socialist Federal Yugoslavia wasn’t such an- cient history. And even those of us who were born after Tito’s death were touched by that song rst sung before Yugoslavia, written by po- et Dragutin Domjanić back in the 1930s. It owes its immortality to the fact that, despite sounding like a love song, it is not really ded- icated to wives, nor to girlfriends – but rather to mothers. Nevertheless, it received a new
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