GOLI OTOK

Goli Otok is an uninhabited island; its surface area is around five square kilometers, lying in the Adriatic Sea, in Kvarner bay, near Senj. The closest mainland village is Lukovo, about three nautical miles away. Despite the strong currents, one could surely swim across. A couple of times, wooden planks were used, but not one escape attempt succeeded, as far as I know, because the farmers and fishermen were intimidated and did not help the weary escapees. On the nautical charts the ample area around the island was declared a prohibited zone. A general in the Yugoslav Army learned a sharp lesson when his ship strayed in the zone, the lesson delivered by a mere captain in the security service. And the general was humble and silent.

Fierce storms frequently tore at the barren land, not allowing any plants or shrubs to take permanent root there. We planted pine trees and acacias, trying to improve Goli's image. Up to that point in time, nothing economically viable had been discovered on Goli. It seems that it was best suited to be a concentration camp.

The camp was open in 1949 and the last Stalinist was discharged in 1956. That was the end of federal authority over the island; after that the Republic of Croatia kept the Croatian nationalists there. When I left the island in 1951, I swore that I would never return. Like many other oaths, I broke this one, in 1990. The novel was already finished, but I was not satisfied. I wanted to revive memory, to feel a rock, to touch a tree. And so I visited Goli Otok in August 1990. It was being turned into a tourist resort. Smiling hosts welcomed me, "Please excuse the state of the island, we're just beginning work on it, next year it'll be better." I joined a group of tourists with a guide. The guide was a former prisoner, a nationalist. He talked of Goli as it was during the time he was there. A harsh, nasty camp but clearly divided, police on one side and prisoners on the other. Not nearly like ours!

"Who was here before you?" I asked him.

"Oh, Russian spies," he said, with a wave of his hand. I left the group and went exploring, first to the tennis court, on the beach. There used to be a pine tree there, in 1950, burned by lightning, with a strong smell of resin. That smell could sadden me any time. Every morning a prisoner would water and roll the court giving the laterite a nourishing chocolate color. Everything had to be spick-and-span for our investigators. In 1990 there was no more pine tree and the tennis court seemed to be covered with stone dust. The island was reasserting itself. The pine trees we had planted had either disappeared or remained stunted because of the bareness of the land and the fierce storms. The acacias had fared somewhat better.

I ran over to the other side, to see Object 101 on which I had worked, with the rest of my barracks, constructed for the worst offenders, the incorrigible ones. I couldn't find it. Our secret police had covered it up - it must be in their blood. I found only a short tunnel with metal rings cemented into the wall. A tourist, a German woman with red hair, had her photo taken, her arms through the chains, her hair flowing over one bronzed shoulder.

A huge water collecting system was in that part of the island in 1990 like an upside down roof. I went to the other side of it and tried to get my bearings. Still confused I stood up on a stone wall, about a meter tall. Forgetting that I was in my sixties and that my body size had doubled since I was last here, I tried to jump from the wall. My leg got tangled up in some stones and I fell face down onto the rocks. The island, as always, had its claim on me.

Some people found me there. We managed to stop my head from bleeding or it just congealed by itself. We left, descending. I glanced at my wrist to see how much time I had lost, lying there. I discovered that my watch was missing. At once, I realized that I should not look for it. It was a good, reliable watch, and I believe that it is still there, ticking away under a rock.

Whose idea was it to put us there? V. Dedijer, a party historian, writes:

" Stevo Krajacic, (Tito's intimate and the Minister of Internal Affairs of Croatia then) told me on 21 of March 1982: 'I traveled with Augustincic (a sculptor) to all our quarries, looking for good quality marble, like Carara marble. This is how we came to Goli Otok, south of Senj. I told Kardelj (Number three in the Yugoslav hierarchy) about it, and he came up with the idea of building a concentration camp there." (V.Dedijer: Novi Prilozi za biografiju J. B. Tita', Rad, Beograd 1984, page 465).

The squirming of conscience and split in the consciousness of our leaders is equally interesting. Again, we return to Dedijer:

"…. One of our diplomatic representatives to the United Nations gave me the following information: 'We, in the United Nations, had spent many years working on the Human Rights Bill. One day, Brana Jevremovich, the Yugoslav Attorney General, came to New York as a representative of Yugoslavia, to work with the committee for human rights. He brought with him an amendment, from Kardelj, to be included in the Bill of Human Rights about the right of every state to legalize concentration camps. The amendment read as follows: <In an emergency situation, every state has the right to imprison, by legal means, for an indeterminate period of time, all its citizens who threaten its sovereignty due to the influence of foreign powers, in the interests of public safety and order.>

This diplomat said, "I was against codifying one of our basic needs like this, I informed Dr. Ales Bebler, the chief of our delegation. He agreed with me, and he intervened with Kardelj to give up this codification which did not seem to be so clever. Kardelj accepted Dr. Bebler's proposal and we managed to escape the shame and embarrassment of introducing the right to open concentration camps into a Human Rights Bill.’" (Ibid, page 466)

What is not known, has never existed. That is what our leaders believed and it enabled them to lecture the whole world on moral issues for forty years.