We asked for and got war and graves, but did we save a soul?

In a Belgrade suburb, a mother was thinking about whether to let her son sleep. He was released from prison only the other day. She realized that he would get angry if she didn't wake him up and tell him that something was happening outside, there was a crowd, shouting...

The young man jumped up, quickly washed himself, ran straight to the printing shop where he worked until his arrest, entered through the window so that the boss wouldn't see him, he was convinced that the graphic workers knew everything. They knew. During the night, the army staged a coup because the government brought Yugoslavia to the Triple Pact. The other day, Prince Pavle personally visited Hitler, Prime Minister Cvetković signed the document by which Yugoslavia joined the alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan, which waged war against Great Britain, France, Western European countries, the entire democratic world, occupied Poland, France and all other Western European and Scandinavian countries. The Yugoslav army reacted swiftly and arrested the royal viceroys, prime minister and ministers.

"And us, comrades? Have we received any directives?'

"We didn't… We don't know… So what do we do?"

"Let's print a flyer!"

"We can't, for censorship we would easily, but the text must be approved by the Central Committee..."

"Either they will approve it later or they will punish us from the party..."

Young Skojevci are in the early morning March 27, 1941 printed leaflets: they called people to manifestations, demonstrations, rebellion, although people were actually already on the streets. It turned out that the communists launched a rebellion, although their Central Committee had no idea about the plan of the air force officers headed by General Borivoj Mirković to overthrow the government under the regency headed by Prince Pavlo Karađorđević. Churchill would later say that they saved the soul of Yugoslavia.

He was not referring to the people from Belgrade who worked on their own. Many communists acted spontaneously without directives and instructions.

How the communists took over the rebellion

In the early morning of that March 27, the army brought the tanks to the street, occupied all strategic points according to a pre-determined plan, some officers had specific tasks and plans in hand. Already at dawn, the railway station, radio, post office, government buildings, the king's palace, all government institutions were conquered without a single shot being fired.

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On the radio, the lieutenant of the battleship Jakov Jovović read the proclamation of the minor king that he was taking power, and that he had entrusted the mandate to form the government to army general Dušan Simović. Jovović was perfectly able to imitate the king's speech, he practiced it at humorous evenings in officers' casinos.

At the same time, Patriarch Gavrilo Dožić gave a speech in support of the coup from the balcony of the patriarchal palace.

However, around 10 am, the masses on the streets thought they were being led by communists. The putschists, the general staff officers, did not know how to approach the masses.

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Officials of the banned Communist Party Milovan Đilas, Svetozar Vukmanović Tempo, Cana Babović, Rade Končar and others spoke on the streets, in all the squares, in the markets, coming out of the illegal and directly addressing the people. Not a single party forum made a decision about it, but everyone knew what they had to do. KP General Secretary Josip Broz was in Zagreb and immediately left for Belgrade. He praised the printing workers who, disregarding party discipline, distributed leaflets. Most of them will die in the national liberation struggle.

Looking back seventy years

Seventy years ago, in 1954, I was given the task of writing "something" for the newspaper "Omladina" on the occasion of March 27. Devil's job. It was not a round anniversary, all the important people had already said or written "something" about that date, the first being Tito on March 27, 1945 in newly liberated Belgrade.

I managed. I found the worker who initiated the printing of the flyer. That was seven decades ago, I forgot his name, now I haven't been able to find it. I wonder if the sets of "Youth" have been preserved in the National Library, in which what I now recall was published.

Of course, I had other interlocutors about the March demonstrations.

I cheekily turned to Moshe Pijada's office with a request that he "give me something". I was pleasantly surprised that he received me, and unpleasant that he briefly told me that he had nothing new to say about March 27, but, well, he wanted to see a young journalist.

I had better luck with Milutin Doroslovac, who much later became one of the leading writers in the German language as Milo Dor in the field of literature. He, as a Skojevic, was present and confirmed what the mentioned graphic worker told me: the Skojevics tried unplanned, almost spontaneously, and to some extent succeeded in managing the masses. Oskar Davicho told me the same.

Looking back 83 years

I was in the second grade of high school in Petrovgrad, today's Zrenjanin. On March 27th, I went to school as normal, a little before eight in the morning, and found out that we would not have classes, of course, like my friends, I thought it was wonderful. We received tricolor bows, put them on our lapels, and went out into the street to shout "Better war than Pact!", "Better grave than Slavery!" "Long live King Peter!"

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When you're twelve years old, you get infected easily. I shouted at the top of my voice without thinking about the war and the grave. Military music was blaring, a company of soldiers rode by on horses, the elders drank beer and brandy and toasted, we kids were intoxicated by the event.

For the first time in my life, I was late for lunch, but my father did not scold me, just as the CK did not scold the Skojevics who did not wait for the directives.

In less than a year, my parents were dead, I don't know their graves, three years later I was in a camp, meaning a slave. What we prayed for came true.