Good luck..I’ll need it..

So I was completely shot down by Jennifer Wilson, the obscure little travel writer from Iowa who shipped her whole family over to Mrkopalj for a year and wrote about it. All because some great grandparents 100 years earlier had emigrated from there. I read the book and i’m still not sure what her point was. In one hundred years’ absence what did she hope to find? She did a lot of describing her daughter’s perpetually tangled hair, the ice cream painting her kids’ faces, the state of the rooms she and her family reside in during their stay, and the constant state of inebriation of their landlord and various town residents.  Regardless, she talked to some older folks I need to get in contact with about the very time frame in Mrkopalj I am most interested in. So I jotted her an email with the bare bones of my family history and with my intent, requesting some of her company in person at her convenience to hear more of what she learned..only to receive an icy polite brush off in response wishing me "luck" on my quest, signed impatiently with her initials without even a polite indentation to indicate signing off. And this from someone I am likely related to a few times "removed".

Hmph!

Not that I really need her help. I actually DO have active family members in Mrkopalj and she really only had a headstone she only located at the end of the book. Whatever.

I did make contact with a Croatian historian in Ohio who sent me the name of a couple of good books and some very helpful links on the history of the region during WW2. So far the only thing I have ascertained for certain is that absolutely nothing was certain during those days! Germans, Italians, Croats, Serbs, Partisans, Communists, Nazis, Ustasha, Chetniks, NOVH, NOVJ, Muslims, Catholics, etc, etc, etc. I need a big white board and lots of colored markers to keep all of this straight! I’m telling you, every time the wind blew in another direction, so changed the local political climate!  Complete with lots of cross blaming, underhandedness, suspiciousness, paranoia, whistle blowing, executions, bombings, hangings, deportations, etc. Cruel, bloody, violent, difficult to unimaginable extremes. 

I have a lot to learn.

Hopefully not everyone I will reach out to will give me the cold palm.