PhDr. Veselín Starčevič

* 1931  †︎ 2020

  • “The battalion was led by a pre-war officer, I think he was a captain in Yugoslavia, and once our unit ran into the Germans. But before that, the brigade officer’s deputy ran into the Germans. They had horses and instead of turning the horses around and fleeing they just got off of them and ran on foot. Their pockets were full of gold that they had collected.”

  • “Later I also served in the city, we also served in the prison. Those with lighter chargers, and so on. So we were there and the relatives would come and bring food, and we had to inspect it to make sure there weren’t any files or weapons, and then we would give the food to them. To the prisoners. They weren’t huge [the charges], later most of them were acquitted by the court.”

  • “Then I left with my father, he was appointed officer in Novi Pazar. It was something like the administrative centre of the former Sandžak. I left with him and then he was appointed leader of the militia for Montenegro and he asked me if I was going with him. I said no and I stayed in Novi Pazar. I stayed in Novi Pazar for three months.”

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    Praha - Klánovice, 29.07.2016

    (audio)
    délka: 02:46:20
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

It has been a bitter life but I don’t regret anything

Veselín Starčevič 1945
Veselín Starčevič 1945
zdroj: archiv Veselína Starčeviče

Veselín Starčevič was born on 15th October 1931 in the town of Meljak in Sandžak in former Yugoslavia. His home region is now a part of Montenegro, which is why he used to be referred to as a Montenegrin, even though he considers himself as a Serbian national. His family owned a farm, his father was the president of the local left-wing agrarian party. Veselín went to elementary school at the time but his education was interrupted by the war. In 1942, Meljak was bombed and so was the Starčevič household. Veselín‘s father was a member of the local partisan movement (the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia) and in 1944 he went back to organize a guerrilla. His very young son Veselín went with him to join the partisan troops, he was later a member of the 5th and 3rd Sandžak brigade. He served as a connection with the partisans and fought against Serbian police and German units around Sandžak and Serbian Užice. In January 1945, after the liberation of Yugoslavia, he and his father left for Novi Pazar where he inspected meals brought to the imprisoned Nazi collaborators. Later he went to Belgrade, where he was supposed to join either the police or military force of the Yugoslavian state, which he declined. Instead he took the opportunity presented by an internship programme for young Yugoslavians offered by Czechoslovakia in 1946. He got to Avia in Čakovice and studied to become a lathe operator. Unlike many others, Veselín Starčevič never came back to Yugoslavia and after another internship in Marienbad he studied history at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University, graduating with the title of PhDr. Later he worked as a professor at several universities. As of 2016, he lives in Prague. Veselín Starčevič died on 27 May 2020.