CHAPTER I

My Early Life

I was born in the town of Pirava, in Macedonia, in the southern part of the former Yugoslavia, on February 14, 1922. I was the oldest of the seven children in my family, two boys and five girls. It seems that I was quite a smart little fellow.

I do not remember when I started learning my 3 R's -reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic -- since my father, Gligor, was teaching me these subjects before I went to school. He was a poor but clever peasant.

I remember that in the city I was treated like a gifted child. People would stop me on the street and ask me to tell them stories or to count or sing songs, which I learned from my father. Considering my age they found I was a very intelligent and pleasant boy. They enjoyed listening to my songs or tales.

My grandfather, Konstantin, an Eastern-Orthodox priest, was my ideal of a man. He was honest and hard working. In the city there were two priests, my grandfather and another older man. They were ministering to eight villages scattered around our village. Since the older priest was sickly, my grandfather performed many of his duties and worked practically for the two of them, but they shared the revenue equally. I remember that whenever my grandfather would come back from his duties, I was always present when he counted the money collected during the service. Naturally I was always expecting -- and receiving -- my "tip" but only from his part, after he divided the money in equal portions. He was very proud of me, as I was of him. In my childhood I thought of becoming a priest. He died when I was eight years old.

I finished four years of primary school in Pirava. I attended four years of high school in the town of Gevgelija, about 25 km from Pirava. During the following two years I stayed on my father's farm while dreaming of becoming a "progressive" farmer and helping my fellow peasants to overcome the miserable conditions in which they were living. My intentions were really the dreams of a young man with little life experience. The living conditions of peasants were extremely difficult. Since most peasants were living on 2 to 5 acres of land scattered in many little lots, they could not make any progress in their lives. With this in mind, I decided to continue my studies. I was lucky to have a grandmother, who had a little pension after the death of my grandfather. Thanks to her help, I finished the last four grades of high school with excellent results in the city Stip, during World War II.

Like many young people at that time, I was attracted to the communist ideology from the time I was 15 or 16. My father had a great deal of influence on me; he considered himself a socialist. I had read many books on communism, but I was more critical at the communist ideology than my father had been.

Stalin's widespread purge of his close comrades and generals before World War II was my first indication that Communism is not what I thought it to be. For me, the defeat of republican forces (mostly organized by communists and helped by Soviet Union) by Franco's Falangists during the Spanish Civil War was inconceivable. The pact with Nazi Germany was a further shock. Later, I was shocked when the Soviet Union and Germany attacked and divided Poland. The Soviet Union then attacked and occupied the small and defenceless Baltic countries. It also attacked the small country, Finland. It was expected that the Finnish "proletariat" would join the Red Army as a liberator. On the contrary, the Finnish people furiously fought the "comrades", something I could not believe. At that time many outstanding European communists defected from Communist parties.

After graduating from high school I enrolled for one semester in a natural science course at the University of Sofia. Because Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, was heavily bombarded by allied planes, the university was closed and I was forced to leave.

During World War II I was very active in organizing guerrilla warfare and fighting the occupying forces. In spite of my doubts about communism and since western "democracies" seemed unable to defend so many countries from Hitler's yoke, I believed that it was worth fighting on the communists' side against Nazism.

Soon I became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), then secretary of a county committee andhead of the district section for Agitprop (Agitation and Propaganda). Although I advanced rapidly in the party and administrative ranks, I soon became deeply disillusioned with the communist ideology. I found great discrepancies between the communist principles and the reality implemented by the communists.

Eventually, I resigned from all my positions and enlisted voluntarily in the army as a private so as to go to the front against the Germans, with young men whom I had recruited. In order to convince me to continue my duties, the party officials offered me instant promotion to the rank of captain and commandant of the district of Valandovo. I refused the offer. As a result, although still a member of the Communist Party, I was seen as a "deserter" or "opportunist" and was in some way disgraced. Consequently, I was later demobilized without any rank in the army.

The communist idea was very attractive for both credulous young people and the poor (proletariat), who did not have anything to lose in the case of a revolution. As a young boy I was obsessed with the communist ideas about democracy, freedom, and equality and the promise of a life of ease. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", since everybody would be conscious of their common interest and they would not abuse each other -- communists preached. In fact, when I started to make observations and think critically, I found many lies and illusions based on "scientific marxism". I found, and in this respect I was interpreting Marx's Das Kapital, that Marx's assumption about the transformation of human nature from bad to good -- "conscientious", was fundamentally wrong. The idea to change human nature is utopian.

My people, from the Macedonian part of Yugoslavia were feeling oppressed in prewar monarchist Yugoslavia. Therefore, we were inclined to accept any other regime over that of prewar Yugoslavia. Suddenly we found we were deceived by Communist ideology. Besides, the differences between the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Moslem populations were a lasting source of conflict in Yugoslavia. The Communist government tried to suppress these differences by force, by imposing atheism, but the religious conflict has escalated to the point that the Catholic Croats, the Serbian Orthodox and the Bosnian Moslems are now killing each other.

Contrary to the typical opinion in the West, Marshal Tito was, as any orthodox communist leader, a ruthless megalomaniac. He had dealt harshly with his opponents. He imprisoned or executed as "counterrevolutionists" anyone who dared to resist or even to criticize his tyranny; and he suppressed many communists for "deviation from the party line". He imprisoned and executed King Peter's minister of the army, General Draza Mihajlovic, who was fighting against the Germans. Dragoljub Jovanovic, leader of the Peasant Party, minister of agriculture in his first postwar cabinet, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for saying publicly that corn on private farms grew better than those on government farms.

At the end of his life Tito imprisoned even his wife Jovanka for "meddling in politics". Under Tito's rule, especially during the early years, nobody was safe from being arrested during the night or day; individuals might either disappear or be brought before kangaroo courts. In a hunt for "enemies", many were arrested and accused of nothing and everything, or arbitrarily arrested and sent to camps for "re-education", just to frighten the population into obedience.

An exhausting psychological tension persisted amongst the population. The citizens lived under constant fear. Agents of the dreaded security forces (OZNA, analogous to Soviet CHEKA or KGB) had infiltrated all of society. Members of CPY were obliged to be "watchful" and report any "hostile activity". You could not express your opinions even to your close friends or members of your family, for you did not know what was permitted to be said. Or, even worse, you did not know who was collaborating with the government. The distrust among the people created an unwarranted and immense hostility. An atmosphere of homo homini lupus was created.

The citizens, in order to survive, learned not to have an opinion on the issues of the day. You had to sing and show that you were happy when you were often forced to "voluntarily" participate in useless laborious activities. The peasants were expected to sing and dance when they were compelled to enter state farms, as were the youth when forced to participate in building roads, irrigation canals, et cetera. Shortly after it was proved that the projects were senseless or planned improperly and therefore futile. In short, the population experienced a new form of harsh slavery.

Some psychologically weak persons accepted the new code of conduct and agreed to spy on close friends and family members. Some would even witness the court proceeding and to clap hands and shout "down with spies" or "death to reactionaries", and so on.

It was well publicized that the son and daughter of General Mihajlovic were at their father's trial shouting "death to the traitor". The General, divorced from their mother, had been fighting on the monarchist side and the children on the communist. Ironically, after Yugoslavia and the USSR had broken off their so called "fraternal" relations, the son was imprisoned with me in the "re-education camp" on the island Goli Otok.¹¹

While we were critical of the prewar king's privileges, Tito possessed practically the whole country. Meanwhile, the population was living in miserable conditions while he was living in luxury. Besides his huge residence in Belgrade, which was actually a fortress surrounded by innumerable guards, he owned villas and hunting areas all over the country. These were maintained and reserved for him, his lieutenants and his guests. Later, he travelled all over the world as "an emissary of nonaligned nations", in a very luxurious boat "Galeb", with an entourage of 2,000 to 3,000 plus three destroyer escorts. He visited his many friends including Nasser, Haile Sellasie, Nehru, Sukarno, and Queen Elizabeth of England.

He took many trips and they sometimes were many months in duration. At the same time Tito was travelling in luxury the population of Yugoslavia was waiting hours in lines for a loaf of bread or a monthly kilogram ration of meat. Who paid for Tito's and his lackeys' dolce vita? Of course, the Yugoslavian population and, ironically, the Western countries -- the U.S.A., England and France.

Nevertheless, Tito must be given credit for being a wily ruler. After his break with Stalin, he, although a communist, switched to the West. In his country he remained a merciless ruler, while on the international plane he was able to play the "democrat".

In June 1948, Yugoslavia faced a critical situation. Tito had been the staunchest follower of Joseph Stalin and member of Informbureau¹², while he was disgraced by his master. They even accused each other of being an "imperialist agent", "spy", "traitor", "counterrevolutionary agent" and so on.

The people of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were confused since, until then, both Tito and Stalin had lavishly flattered each other for being good communists.

Everybody, especially the members of the Communist Party, had to declare their preferences. The slogan was: If you are not with us, you are against us. I had a great deal of opportunity to directly observe the political and social turmoil in Yugoslavia.

During my army service, my father was robbed and killed by a young man, a member of Communist Youth League of Yugoslavia (CYLY). Later my maternal uncle died in prison as an "imperialist agent". The intolerable oppression intensified my feelings against communism.

After being demobilized, I enrolled in the medical school at Belgrade University. Although the situation in the country was horrible, I was relatively well off as a student since I managed to obtain a government scholarship. I tried as much as possible to avoid political activities, but that was interpreted by some officials as "passivism".

However, I had expressed my thoughts to close acquaintances. I thought communism was attractive only in theory, but in reality, as a political system, it was destructive and immoral. Even this disclosure led me to imprisonment on April 28, 1950 in Belgrade, and to my "re-education" on Goli Otok from June 22, 1950 to September 10, 1953.

This was extremely difficult periods of my life. The procedures used during my incarceration and "re-education" were similar to those used on the heretics during the Spanish Inquisition the 16th century and my incarceration in Canadian mental hospitals in 1971: no charge, no trial, arrest without a warrant, no right to retain a lawyer, the prosecutor did not need to prove the guilt, the accused had to admit his own guilt, unlimited time of punishment, something that I had previously thought impossible.

I was arrested at midnight and brought to a detention centre in Belgrade where I was kept for three months. Later I received a scrap of paper on which it stated that I was to be punished for 24 months.

I was not convicted nor sentenced by a court of law. I was not even tried in a court, nor confronted by witnesses or any evidence of my activity whatsoever. I had no chance to defend myself. The decision for my "punishment" had apparently been made by a "people's committee", a committee which I had never seen.

The policeman who delivered the decision to me said, "you are not a prisoner because you are not sentenced. It is not even necessary for you to stay for two years, but it could be also for longer. It all depends upon you. If you re-educate yourself even in two months, you could go out so early."

There were many intellectuals and members of CPY on Goli Otok. Many were high ranking officers in the Party, Government or Army generals, vice-ministers, secretaries of central committees, etc. There have been many books published in Yugoslavia about Goli Otok describing the inhuman conditions of the camp.

There were some prisoners who had already been in German concentration lagers or in Soviet labour camps, but they expressed the opinion that Goli Otok was worse than the other camps. The conditions included hard work, sometimes for more than 16 hours, starvation, sleeping in constricted wooden barracks 20X5 meters, in which 200-300 of us slept on bare three-story boxes, without heating, with only one blanket for everyone! Thus during the winter we were cold and in the summer hot, as well we were infested with lice and bedbugs. The hygienic facilities were horrendous, we were exposed to skin diseases, dysentery, typhus, typhoid fever, etc. We looked like skeletons and I lost half of my normal weight.

The most disturbing questions were when and how to get out of Goli Otok. The rule of our "education" was accepted by many of us: the more you "fight against the enemy", the better your chances of getting out of that hell. But, again, the question was how to find an enemy in a camp where all of us were interned "enemies". Newcomers were considered enemies. Everybody who had "revised their attitude toward comrade Tito" harassed the newcomers, as we had been tormented by our predecessors, until they, too, admitted that they were enemies and started to praise the leadership "who gave us a chance to harden ourselves in order to convert ourselves to good citizens." Or, as George Orwell would say, "until you tear your minds to pieces and put them together again in new shapes in your own choosing."¹³

I experienced many unsavoury situations during my "re-education" on Goli Otok. One of the inmates, Radivoj Backovic, by chance my roommate from university, had to beat his father "for not being re-educated". The son, as an already "re-educated", tried to "help his father in re-education". Later when I was released, I saw the young Backovic wandering around in a mentally disturbed state. He did not finish school.

Colonel Vlado Dapcevic, brother of General Peko Dapcevic, at that time chief of staff of the Yugoslavian Army, was tortured publicly by his roommates, who plunged him into the ocean until he became unconscious merely because he did not acknowledge Stalin as a traitor, and Tito as a great leader.

Dusan Brkic, a former secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia (CPC), was too old and sick to work as everybody else did. Just to torment him, the authorities made him crush rocks. His personal secretary already "re-educated", was supervising him all the time. Whenever he stopped crushing rocks because of exhaustion, his secretary was there to knock his head against the rocks.

Although I was never told who denounced me for criticizing the communists, from the questions asked I believe that my very close schoolmates did it. On Goli Otok one of my friends had denounced me for criticizing the conditions in the camp, while in fact, he was the one who criticized our treatment. In defending myself, I said that he was the one complaining but, then, I was reprimanded and asked why I had not reported him. On Goli Otok the failure to report somebody who was not in agreement with the authorities was considered "hostile attitude". I was punished for this with three months of additional penalties, i.e. working harder and longer than other inmates, sleeping and eating less than the others, with no right to talk to anybody, and so forth.

After we were released, we were forbidden to talk to anybody about the whereabouts and the conditions on Goli Otok. Jovica Dimitrijevic, a student of chemistry at Belgrade University, was sent back to Goli Otok for telling his wife about the camp. Until then he did know that she was a secret agent of OZNA. It was not pleasant to work in the camp the first time but the second time was much worse. I heard that he committed suicide.

After my release from the camp, I re-enrolled in medical school, but I was forced to pursue my studies under more difficult conditions.

Firstly, since I had lost my scholarship, I was forced to work in order to support myself. My mother was unable to help me since she had to support my five sisters. My brother was employed as a chemistry technician and he sent me some money, but I did not have enough funds without working myself. Secondly, although a "free" citizen, at least once a month I was obliged to report to the authorities about people whom I had talked to and what I had heard. I tried as much as possible to avoid any contact which could provoke political discussions and thereby lead to denunciations.

Nevertheless, I must admit that, four to five years after the dissolution of relations with Soviet Union and Stalin's death, the general situation in the country gradually improved: the peasants could leave the "cooperative" farms, "voluntary actions" were abolished, small private business was permitted and the law was more fairly enforced. The population felt a greater sense of freedom. It was, in fact, a clever move by Tito.

The reason I have discussed my political experience in Yugoslavia in some detail, is that Dr. Dorion, my first attending psychiatrist, used my political views as supporting proof of my "mental disease". Thus, he held it against me that I differed with the government and "did not change my view of the situation in Yugoslavia". He used exactly the same "criterion" as many other incompetent or corrupt psychiatrists still do.

Psychiatrists are commonly criticized for meddling with the patients' political views. One recalls the well-known hospitalization of dissidents in the Soviet Union¹⁴ and of General Edwin Walker in the United States.¹⁵ Besides, history seems to confirm the rationality of my viewpoint. We cannot consider the great majority in former Yugoslavia as mentally disturbed because they hold views similar to mine. The present situation proves that my reasoning about politics was healthier than those of the doctor's, as well my ex-wife's.

My First Marriage

The silliest woman can manage a clever man.

Rudyard Kipling

One of my schoolmates, who was familiar with my situation suggested that her "impeccable" sister, Ljubica, should marry me. I was supposed to move to her home in another city, thereby avoiding the necessity of reporting to the police. Furthermore, she was employed and therefore could take care of my financial problems until I finished school.

I was disappointed from the time I married Ljubica. I learned soon of her adventures with a married man, which she admitted. I warned her not to have further contact with him. I did not move to her place, since I did not foresee a happy future for our marital life, but I visited her about once a month. I stayed in Belgrade and she lived in Skopje, the capital of the Macedonian part of Yugoslavia, about 400 km south of Belgrade.

On the few days when I would stay at her house, Ljubica would find many excuses not to stay at home (because of meetings in her company, overtime work and so forth).

After a while she became pregnant, which I neither expected nor wanted, taking into consideration our unstable relationship. Although I was suspicious about the situation, she carried to term and gave birth to a baby girl.

Even though I was suspicious, I was very concerned about the baby. The baby was born two months earlier than anticipated. When I investigated the matter I discovered, and she admitted, that she had recommenced relations with the man, but she denied that the baby was his.

Afterwards, I was told by the man's wife (who had a child and still lived with him) that her husband had "sex" with my wife during the period when she supposedly conceived our child.

At that point I cut off all relations with my first wife and asked the court for a divorce on the ground of adultery. We were divorced "as incompatible characters".

It is worthwhile to mention that my ex-wife did try to keep me as her husband, despite my firm decision to divorce her. In court she objected to the divorce, and she sent many "emissaries" to me in order to convince me to continue the marriage.

My Second Marriage

I had many chances to marry others after my divorce. Unfortunately, I chose as my second wife Vasilka (nicknamed Kula), who played a ruinous role in my life.

I met her in 1958 at a good friend's home. I told her about my first marriage and I explained that did not wish to repeat such an experience.

She expressed her strong disgust at persons like my first wife. She was very nice to me.

After our first meeting she sent me a message through my friends that she was willing to introduce me to her girlfriends, apparently for serious commitment. I had not met any of her friends. I understood her canny tactic to be a means to get married herself. At the time I regarded it perfectly normal for a girl of her age to contemplate marriage seriously.

I felt she was devoted to me and respected me as well. I lived alone in a little room at the time. She was living with her brother's family and she would regularly visit me or we would go on dates to theatres or the movies.

After I courted her about a couple of months, she became pregnant. (In the medical records she is reported as having stated that she did not have sex before our marriage). In my culture, girls who become pregnant or have babies out of wedlock gain a very bad reputation. I was certain that the baby was mine and I accepted her proposal without hesitation, for which she expressed her great appreciation.

Our relationship was very harmonious until our wedding day. During the wedding she made her first faux pas, exactly the same as my first wife had done.

In our culture, the godfather is a very respected traditional institution. His presence and witnessing is obligatory during formal ceremonies such as weddings and baptisms. Although the communists tried to discourage all religious customs, most of the population followed the traditions. Intending not to be an exception, I advised my future wife about that, and about my formal invitation to my godfather. My wife did not want to wait for him. She was in a hurry to get to the city hall ceremony, apparently not to be late, but in fact it was her whim. Since my godfather was travelling from a distant city, he arrived late, after the ceremony was over. I took it upon myself to excuse us for the undesirable incident. Afterwards, leaving me distressed during the party, she was defiantly dancing with my brother all the time. Her gesture was most inconsiderate. The godfather acted as a refined gentleman. Overlooking our tactlessness, he invited us for a party according to our custom. We accepted his invitation in the hope of excusing ourselves, but at the last minute my wife "felt tired" and decided not to go to the party. Rather she stayed at my aunt's house "to rest". Again I was in a delicate situation. The instances of my wife's unpredictability would not be rare. It was too late when I discovered her penchant for systematically humiliating me.

After the wedding my wife completed her linguistics and literature studies and she moved to her mother's house in a little city, Strumica, about 160 km from Skopje. I completed my medical studies in Skopje. I visited her occasionally until I finished my internship, since I had to intern outside of her hometown.

I was overjoyed when my wife gave birth to a beautiful boy on February 16, 1959.

My wife occasionally exhibited hysterical attacks, but I turned a blind eye to them out of my happiness with my son. I hoped that I could, as a physician and husband, alter her temperament. After I finished my internship, I worked in Valandovo, a city close to where she was working. We lived together with her brother's family and her mother, who also tried on many occasions to restrain her daughter's temper.

She became pregnant again even though I used contraceptive measures. She used to say that she could conceive through the pants. Nevertheless I was again confident that the child was mine.

She was not happy living with her mother, whom she blamed for "interfering" in our conjugal life. She demanded that we move to another city. Since I was a reputable physician, I had many choices of where to work. I chose a coal mining city -- Rtanj, which is now known as a famous resort.

While my wife stayed with her mother until she delivered our second child, I went to work in Rtanj for a couple of months without my family. I met some amicable people among the management staff and patients at the mine. The weather conditions were mild and the city seemed like paradise. I felt like I was on vacation rather than working. I was paid four times more than my previous job. For the first time in my life I worked four days a week and had fewer patients.

When my wife arrived she found nothing was acceptable. She was the one who insisted on moving. Yet she complained of being "far away from her mother", the neighbours were "not nice" to her, and the patients "dirty and simple," and so on. She tried to cause problems with the management, neighbours, and patients. She would even interfere directly with my patients.

The working conditions for physicians in the country were difficult at the time. I was obliged to receive urgent patients at home. Although I reproached my wife many times for being present during my examinations, she would often suggest in front of the patient whether I should send the patient to hospital or treat him at home. Her interference was against medical ethics and was humiliating for me. Besides, she knew nothing about medicine.

It was apparent that my wife was acting at cross-purposes particularly on an occasion when I treated a very sick baby. The baby died in my office while I was giving him supportive medicine in order to send him to the nearest hospital as an emergency case. Since the town was small, the news that a baby had died was soon known to almost everybody. Naturally the parents were very upset and they accused my nurse of "giving the wrong medication".

Shortly after my wife appeared maliciously joyful in the medical building. I heard her haranguing a group of people about how "the doctors should be careful", suggesting that I had given the wrong treatment.

Nevertheless, to satisfy the parents and for my own contentment, I had immediately requested a governmental forensic medical commission, who investigated the case and found that everything was done properly. I was highly commended by the commission, while my wife was terribly disappointed and dejected. At that point, I was wondering whether she was my wife or a mean stranger who would be glad to see me in jail.

In another instance, after I had finished my regular work in the office, I went to visit a very sick patient at his home. My wife knew where I was because I used to tell her whenever I was called for an emergency. A woman with a sick child came to my home looking for me and asked my wife where I was. After she apparently gave the mother a wrong address, the latter was left wandering in the city with the baby for a considerable time. On my way back home, I accidentally met the woman exhausted from carrying the heavy child. and raging at me as if I had been wasting my time. When I reprimanded my wife, she reacted with indifference.

I had tried hard to avoid any dispute in the presence of other people, including my children. My wife however would often blow up, even in front of strangers.

While my in-laws were supportive of me in our disputes, my wife tried to present me to my own people as "nervous" and "jealous".

I never confided my marital problems to anyone except my brother, who was our most frequent and welcome visitor. I was happy to see that my wife was exceptionally kind towards him. He listened to my grievances and I had the impression that he was sorry for me, but he would not intervene in my own domestic relations. At the time I appreciated that he was not meddling in our marital problems. Later, to my deep dismay, from the medical records I learned that he conveyed whatever I had said to him to my wife .

Before our marriage, my wife talked about her "many good" friends. I have never met any of these "good" friends. After the wedding, two women visited my wife at her mother's home. According to my wife, one was an old drunkard and the other a woman of easy virtue, but "with a good heart". And later she could not find decent people for friends.

She would tend to associate with unsavoury men and women. In the mining town where I was working, a woman well known as a prostitute was often in my house, or my wife was at her house. Once I saw a man entering through the balcony to "borrow salt or vegetable", according to my wife. At that point, I contemplated divorcing her. My eldest sister intervened and persuaded me, "for the sake of the children", not to divorce my wife.

In the meantime, she became pregnant for the third time. This time, bearing in mind her attitude towards the "neighbour", I suggested that she abort the baby. She accepted this suggestion without comment.

We went to the gynaecologist for the abortion and he, as he was duty bound to do warned us of the undesirable consequences of such action. I strongly cautioned my wife to abort if there was any doubt about the paternity of the baby.

After pondering for a short time, she got up from the table, and put on her clothes. We returned home without any further discussion.

The baby was born one month earlier than his supposed date of delivery and his physical appearance was not like that of his brothers. However, my wife convinced me that the baby was mine and I was inclined to believe her.

I took into consideration that she, knowing my experience with my first wife, would not repeat the same, which would result in divorce. Besides, she was unable to work steadily. I thought she could not bite the hand that fed her. Now I know that I was born a good cuckold and henpecked husband.

My friends, respectable people, were usually not welcome at our home. My wife would sometimes go to her room when they appeared and not even say "hello".

It was very stressful when we were invited out or when we were expecting visitors. At the last minute she would change her mind about going out, which was an extremely impolite gesture. Whenever we had my friends as visitors I felt like I was sitting on a powder keg, fearing that she would start fighting in front of the people or insult them in some way.

I always made employment contracts which included a clause providing for my wife to work in order to please her. As soon as she would start to work, she would complain about her co-workers or principals or the conditions at work, or that she "was feeling too tired". Most of the time she did not work and she complained that she was "bored".

Our sexual life was not "normal" either. She was seldom not "tired". We would not talk for weeks and sometimes she would try to blackmail me before having sex.

In addition, whenever I was home my wife would find some trivial incident to fight about and would use all sorts of profanity and abuse such "you are crazy", "you are a simpleton", or a "peasant", and the like. In our culture, women who curse are considered very low class. She even displayed this kind of attitude in front of strangers and the children.

I was happy when we did not talk and whenever she was away. I was tired of her, too. I remember, once, after I said good-bye to her and the children who were leaving on a trip to the Adriatic Sea, I felt so cheerful I ran home and almost hurt myself bumping into a telephone pole. My neighbour called out mockingly while passing: "Watch your head, doctor! You will kill yourself out of happiness." (He knew about our bad relationship and was alluding to my happiness because my wife was going far away from me.)

At the last working place in Yugoslavia -- Pleternica, I had enough. I was overworked as a result of covering for my alcoholic colleague who was frequently intoxicated. But first of all, there was my wife who was always dissatisfied and "tired". She made a fool of me from one end of the country to the other. I decided to emigrate, even though I had been making the wages of a specialist.¹⁶ My final choice was between Canada and Australia and I decided to settle down in Quebec City, Canada.

I made a final proposal to my wife: she must either seek a divorce or change her attitude if she wanted to come with me. First, she agreed to come with me in order to "improve our mutual life". When I resigned from my job and the passports were ready, she, as usual, changed her mind. She and my brother then tried to dissuade me from emigrating.

While her family was hailing my decision, my brother and she tried to influence my sisters in order to convince me to stay in Yugoslavia.

When she saw that I was determined to emigrate, she promised that she would have a better attitude and decided to come with me.

Later, when I was waiting alone in Vienna for the visas and my family to join me to go to Canada, unexpectedly my wife and my brother arrived without the children and forced me to return to Yugoslavia for the children. My brother escorted us as far as Zagreb on our way back to Vienna from Skopje, the city where my children were. Both of them used this occasion to try to persuade me to change my mind.

When we stopped in Belgrade, my wife and brother decided that our second child, Slobodan, should stay with my brother, so that perhaps he might adopt the boy. My brother did not have any children. Although I was not happy leaving Slobodan behind, I did not strongly object. After all, my objection would not have made any difference.

At Belgrade railway station, while my wife was sitting unemotionally in our compartment with the other two children, I went to say my last good-bye to my son. Both of us cried a lot.

Before going back to join my family, I stayed for a while in another compartment in order to calm myself down. However when I joined my wife and the other two children, to my surprise, I found Slobodan and my brother crying beside my wife. I reprimanded my brother because he was behaving like a child.

Finally, at the Zagreb railway station, my wife decided to leave our two older sons in my brother's care until we got settled in Canada.

I thought my brother was offering his help because he loved me. Indeed until he came to "help" me while I was interned, I was convinced that nobody had a more considerate brother. Since I held him in such high esteem I entrusted my two oldest children to him until we established ourselves in Canada.

In short, my wife and I did not have a great relationship. However we had three splendid boys I love dearly. I endured their mother's hysterical outbursts and insults for them. They were developing very well mentally and physically in spite of our relationship. The time I spent with my children prior my internment was the most wonderful time in my life. I was very proud of them, and very willing to make sacrifices for them.