And we sat in one of the horse carts. When it was the turn for one of the Ustashas to look at our pass, the Passierschein, he asked: “Why didn’t you report when you got there?” He also called Osijek, to check, and he didn’t get a connection, it used to be difficult to get a connection, it was that rotary phone, so he gave up trying. If he had gotten a connection we would have been done. And that Ustasha looks at it and tells us to get down, but there comes our guardian angel, a German with the iron badge, I guess he was a member of the special border police: “Was ist das, was ist das?” Because we now once closed the line that was sown for us and it bothers him like a cockroach, how can he not do that? And he comes and takes our Passierschein and ignores the Ustasha because he was the boss. He looked at the pass and saw the stamp and the date, a real german signature. He returns it and says “los”. F**k it, I wrote that “los” in my memoir, and I won’t forget it for the rest of my life. He saved our lives in the end. He told the peasant to flog the horses, and he did, while the Ustasha kept trying to explain himself, but he didn’t listen to him so we left. And we crossed the bridge, although it was raining, the weather seemed clear to us. You can imagine the feeling of moving into freedom, and you move to a country that is under the Germans as well. But it’s still something else, now you won’t be a nuisance in that new country, you will be a nuisance with rights. When we went across the hill, the Croatian peasant went back with his horse cart, and we went to the place where we had to register; we slept there and waited for our Belgrade trip. So, right now I am sitting here thanks to that German, who liked order and didn’t like turmoil. Yeah, many things happened…
My father always kept my school drawings and he carried them into refuge with us, so the policeman had a look through them and asked: “And who drew this?” In those drawings, there were various motives, and among them, there was a drawing of a Croat with turkeys, and it was written “Croat”. My name was also written in Latin, as well as the maximum grade assigned by my teacher. There was also a map of Croatian banovina, which at the time was only one year old. The Jugoslav government had to enable that to Maček, and Croats were proud to have a territory named specifically after Croatia, and it was the only republic with such a name, since all the others, even in Serbia, were mainly named after rivers and other geographical notions. So the policeman is looking at the drawing and says: “Who drew this?” and I say: “I did”. He was very surprised because even today, let alone back then, folks usually get surprised as to how a human being can draw someone just like that, and it is sometimes valued more than knowing how to play football, tennis, music-because drawing, that was miraculous. At that moment I sensed that he was smiling because he said: “I have a son your age”. So also a ten-year-old, and I guess that he was also of my father’s age, so he made a decision to let us go on and leave Vinkovci.
Yeah, it was Sunday, we said goodbye to my grandma and aunts, and my father was terribly afraid that the news would spread that we were running away. Suddenly the house was full since neighbors and acquaintances came, and my father was going out of his mind. And so they came, they had good intentions in saying goodbye to us, but we wanted to keep our departure a secret. It was raining when we started going, we had one suitcase and a bag, and it was only allowed to transfer 250 dinars, whereas my dad’s salary was a thousand dinars. Therefore, he could only transfer a quarter of the salary per person, which means 500 dinars for the two of us. He hid something extra in my hat because you couldn’t survive for a long time with just 250. My father didn’t mean anything bad by it, he just wanted us to have some money until we can stand up on our feet.
Borivoj Dovniković was born on the 12th of December 1930 in Osijek. He was an artist, animator, film director, caricaturist, and graphic designer, known under the artistic name of Bordo. During World War II, with the proclamation of NDH, because the starting of the persecution against Serbs, Borivoj and his father escaped to Serbia. After the escape, he spent the war years between Šabac and Belgrade, in refugee camps. He assisted to the arrival of Russian troops and partisans in Požarevac. After the end of the war, Borivoj enrolled to the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and started his artistic career, being one of the key figures of Animated films and a caricaturist for the newspaper Kerempuh. He died in Zagreb on 8 of February 2022.
