Belgrade Contemporary Theater at the Red Cross, November 22, 1963. I was the artistic director and followed the course of the play "Goodnight Bettina", when the actor, translator and professor of the Hebrew language, Evgenie Werber, a versatile man, ran into the director's box breathlessly and told me in a dramatic whisper:
"They just announced that President Kennedy was killed in America." Shall we stop the show and announce it to the audience?'
"Why are you getting so excited, as far as I know, you are not related to Kennedy," I said flatly. I didn't think it was the task of the theater to tell the audience any news, even terrible news. "We have no reason to stop the show."
Kennedy's assassination caused a shock throughout the world, including in Yugoslavia. The day of the murder, November 23, was declared a day of mourning, football matches, theater performances were cancelled, life almost stopped. Of course, special editions of newspapers were printed, and radio and television devoted a lot of time to the tragedy in Dallas. As far as I remember, I wasn't particularly shaken, all that was still too far from us who felt so safe in Yugoslavia. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the sensation-seeking crowd got a lot more excited than I did watching the footage of the event, especially Jacqueline Kennedy bending over her husband's body in the car, which is still moving.
WHERE IS JACQUELINE?: By coincidence, Tito visited Kennedy a few weeks before that assassination as part of an official visit to the United States, from October 16 to 20, and before that he had been to Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico. That trip lasted from September 18 to October 25. Pretty tiring for a man over seventy years old.
Jacqueline Kennedy did not attend the reception at the White House that was arranged for Tito by President Kennedy. Kennedy's sister, Eunice, married Shriver, played the role of housekeeper. The excuse was that Jaklina lost her newborn child a few months ago, so she is on vacation. Thus, Tito, who was with Jovanka, did not meet that beautiful woman who filled the front pages of the world's newspapers, one of the icons of that time, and who, to the surprise of the whole world, after the violent death of her husband, married the Greek multimillionaire Aristotle Onassis, who was older than her 23 years old. Onassis hosted the aging Winston Churchill on his yacht in 1960 and on that occasion visited Tito on Brioni.
About the absence of Žaklina during Tito's visit to the USA, Blažo Mandić, a veteran among the intimate associates of the Yugoslav president, his media representative for more than a quarter of a century, a participant in most of his trips around the world, meaning - a completely credible witness, writes in his book "Tito in dialogue with the world" :
"Maybe Jacqueline was already in a new romance, on a cruise in the Mediterranean, or something like that, at least judging by what will be revealed not long after."
As a writer, Mandić is very restrained and discreet. If he writes so openly, the gossip in Washington must have been very noisy and certainly reached the ears of Tita and Jovanka. I wonder if they intimately commented on the situation? Will he remember all that fifteen years later?
An assassination attempt was made on Tito during his visit to America. After Washington, he and his entourage traveled to New York and stayed at the "Waldorf Astoria" hotel. The American security authorities, in the name of freedom of expression, were quite tolerant towards the protesters, who gathered in front of the hotel with the signs "Tito go home!" and "Tito the killer!", so one Chetnik trio managed to enter the building and break through to the living room of Tito's apartment. It was only then that several guards officers confronted them and chased them away. Sailors from the Yugoslav ships anchored in the New York harbor were called to help, and about twenty of them dispersed the demonstrators, which the official security authorities of the USA failed to do, i.e. they didn't want to.
DANGER IN BERLIN: A year and a half after the Kennedy assassination, from June 8 to 13, 1965, Tito visited the (East) German Democratic Republic and spent most of the time in the capital, (East) Berlin. It was a particularly significant experience for me, because it was the first time I traveled abroad with him as a translator. I will quote Blaža Mandić again:
"After the ceremonial signing of the joint statement in the State Council building in Berlin, where the officials drank champagne, everyone forgot about the official translator, Ivan Ivanji. He stood by himself with a glass in his hand. At one point, Tito separated himself from Walter Ulbricht, approached Ivanji and knocked with him: 'Well, how about your health'. Of course, after Tito and the other members of the official delegation approached the translator."
I realized from the beginning that Tito likes to show that he speaks German fluently, so I judged when it was preferable to stay away and when he would give me a sign to come over.
We were all housed in a gated part of the city, even I had a suite with a small pool in a huge bathroom. While Tito was visiting Dresden, I stayed in Berlin and worked on the joint statement of the two presidents. On that occasion, I asked to see the upper floor of Tito's residence as well. There were two bedrooms and two bathrooms, but only one was furnished. I thought it was really nice that Tito and Jovanka still use the same bedroom. Much later, I read that the shadow of discord had already loomed over the two of them, but I had no idea about it yet.
During state visits, some time is usually set aside for the privacy of the chief guest. It is an opportunity for the members of the group that I called to myself the "support unit", the adjutants, doctors, translators and most of the bodyguards, to relax, have dinner and chat in peace.
Berlin was a special challenge for the people concerned about Tito's safety. The East German services were, of course, also mobilized to the maximum, but our security guards believed only in their own assessments and actions, because they had bad experiences. There was a strong Ustasha stronghold in West Berlin. It could not be ruled out that their men and assassins would infiltrate from there. The movement plan of the column of vehicles with Tito also predicted that it would pass under the city railway tracks, those overpasses represented a special opportunity for good shooters.
Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from the fourth floor of a building with warehouses for school books, and after various assassinations there are often imitators who act in the same or a similar way. After the assassination of Kennedy, our people became even more nervous, because there were already plans to kill Tito on one of his trips abroad.
WHAT UDBA SAYS: No one told me this, but based on observation and experience I would say that there are two theories - not to say philosophies - about the behavior of bodyguards. In America, they run next to the presidential car, they are visible and recognizable by the bugs in their ears at every opportunity, even when their boss bajagi talks intimately with his fans. Their presence should have a preventive effect. It did not save John Kennedy, nor after that his brother Robert, nor Ronald Reagan from being wounded. I would say that today's Serbia has taken over such customs, you are almost not a person of importance if next to and behind you are not noticed menacing scowling figures.
It was different with Tito. The bodyguards were not allowed to be noticed, and there were, according to the opportunity, in really large numbers. I've never seen any photos where they recognize each other - a personal assistant is something else, his job is not. I would say that it is the same in Russia. I have never noticed bodyguards near Putin, and there are certainly many of them.
Our security guards told me in Berlin that after the assassination of Kennedy, they staged the entire event, that they carried out a series of experiments and shot from the same height from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot at Kennedy and allegedly fatally hit him with three bullets. The best Yugoslav snipers shot with the same type of rifle at a target that was moving at the same speed as the motorcade of the American president. They repeated that several times. They came to the conclusion that it was almost impossible for even a single bullet to hit him under those circumstances, even that would be an incredible coincidence, but that it was absolutely impossible to hit a moving target with three bullets from that distance. The conclusion of our experts was, therefore, identical to the conspiracy theories in America itself, where doubts arose about the official report according to which Oswald was the lone killer. It was never published "for security reasons", and I am quoting it here only as I heard it during Tito's visit to Berlin.
(New, a significantly expanded edition of the book TITO'S TRANSLATOR will soon be published published by LAGUNA)
