My father was born in 1899 in a town called Nagybecskerek. I was born in 1929 in Veliki Bečkerek, but six years later I went to school in Petrovgrad. Six years have passed again, I was transferred to Novi Sad, and my parents are from the city named Grossbetschkerek were taken by barges down the Begej, Tisa and Danube to Belgrade and to their death. I returned to Petrovgrad from the concentration camps in September 1945. When I later visited my hometown, I went to Zrenjanin.
Nobody can call me anti-anti-fascist and I don't have to prove it. However, regarding the initiative to rename Zrenjanin to Petrovgrad, I have to disappoint my friends and like-minded people from my hometown, because I could never relate to the name Zrenjanin, and even less to the name Petrovgrad. I would like to see the name Bečkerek back. I feel like a Bečkerečan, which I guess means that I belong to a species that has not yet died out. At the same time, of course, I understand that the generations born in Zrenjanin feel they are from Zrenjanin and that they do not want the name of our town to be changed. However, I do not accept the bizarre anti-communist argument that Zrenjanin should be renamed Petrovgrad.
MY CITY
Ten days ago, I participated in the promotion of Tibor Varadi's new book "The Road to Yesterday" at the "Žarko Zrenjanin" City Public Library in Zrenjanin. When we two "old Bečkerekans" talk or correspond, we call the city Bečkerek.
On that occasion, I stopped for a lesson in front of the library. In the building where it is located, before the war there was an inn called "Šoljom", where my grandfather often visited. On the right is the Catholic church, behind it the house where its cantor Imre Lang lived, with whom I learned to play the violin. Further to the right is the town hall, and a little further, halfway to the right, the building where I attended four grades of elementary school. Right across the street is the National Theater building where I saw the first performances with Milan Ajvaz, Rahel Ferrari, Tomislav Tanhofer. To the left of it is a building that is now a bank, and once housed a hotel, a cafe and a cinema, which until 1918 were called "Roža" (the Hungarian word for rose). After the First World War and after the Second World War, the official name was "Vojvodina", but we dinosaurs persistently said "Roža". When after the war (when I say war I mean the Second World War) I agreed with Todor Manojlović where we were going to meet, we would say - in "Roža".
Halfway to the left is the building where I started high school. To the left opens the street that leads to the building where I grew up, which I used to go to and from school every day, go to the parks on the other side of Begei to play or just ride my bike. This is my city.
The name of my city may change, but it is impossible to change my feelings towards it, and even less so, the older I get. It's my hometown. The homeland can change, you can get a new passport, a new citizenship, but never a new identity, never a new homeland.
THE PROBLEM WITH MONUMENTS
I would like to see a new monument erected to Žarko Zrenjanin in the city that now bears his name. This existing one was built in 1952 on the central square, but was already moved to another place in 1962. Monuments are a pain. At the beginning of the last century, there was a monument to the insurgent Hungarian general Erne Kisch. It was removed in order to erect an equestrian monument to King Petar Karađorđević, which was demolished by the German occupation authorities, in the same place. After the war, the monument to Žarko Zrenjanin stood there for only ten years, and now King Petar stands there again.
The monument to Žarko Zrenjanin is three meters high and represents him as a hero. I would like it to be made realistically, in life size, so that we recognize Žarko as the teacher, the man he was. My uncle Beba's sister (doctor Milana Stajić) met him as a child when he was visiting his sister in Vršac, who rented a room in Beba's grandfather's house.
Žarko was only one year younger than my mother, three years younger than my father. I could almost imagine him as a relative, I certainly think of him as an ordinary man who was made a hero by a set of circumstances, and not as some mythical, supernatural figure. I would not order a monument that would show him with a rifle or a bomb in his hand, but as a thoughtful man, a teacher who founded a national university in his native Izbište near Vršac, opened libraries and reading rooms in villages, collaborated with pedagogical journals and believed so strongly in his ideals that he gave his life for them. And that is heroism.
I would most like to see a monument to Žarko Zrenjanin in the park that we called Chokliget (in Hungarian "grove of kisses"), where his image would stand among young people, such as his followers.
However, I don't insist that my hometown keep his name because I'm fundamentally against cities being named after people. You can count on your fingers serious cities in serious states that are named after some people, as is the case with Washington. Is this in contradiction with my beliefs as a certified Titoist who has not changed his position? It's not. I didn't like the names of cities like Kardeljevo, Rankovićevo, Titograd, Titovo Užice.
ORIGIN OF THE NAME BEČKEREK
I'm in favor of Bečkerek, even though I know it's hopeless, but I guess I can say it.
It doesn't have to be Veliki Bečkerek, although there is indeed Mali Bečkerek, a village in Romania with about 2.360 inhabitants whose name is written in Romanian Becicherecu Mic, which the Serbs there translate as Mali Bečkerek. To distinguish ourselves from him, we can omit that our Bečkerek is big. It's not that big.
The name Bečkerek was first mentioned in a document in 1326, but it is certainly much older. Checking something in the inevitable google leads to unreliable, but sometimes entertaining data. What I like the most is that Evlija Čelebija noted in his famous travelogue in 1651 that the name of the town of Bečkerek means "five melons". There were certainly orchards in these parts of our country at that time, there are still today, but why exactly five? I think that the word Bečkerek comes from two Avar words, "stone" and "shrine".
In the 600.000th century, when they ruled our region, the Avars were polytheists. In the early Middle Ages, they ruled an empire that extended not only to the northern part of the Balkans, but also to the whole of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Austria and part of Poland. After the Avars, but with their support, came the Slavs. The Avars retreated, today there are close to XNUMX of them, mainly in the Russian region of Dagestan, they speak their own, Avar language, but that is no longer our topic.
I wanted to say that Bečkerek, as the name of our city, is at least 700 years old, and maybe even 1.500 years old. Zrenjanin for 72 years, Petrovgrad was only six years. (Petersburg is 315 years old, Washington is 228 years old). Of course, those numbers mean nothing, but Bečkerek is by far the oldest of all the mentioned cities. Someone will say: so what? Well, nothing, just for the record.
Maybe now I resented both those who passionately argue that the name of the city of Zrenjanin should not be changed, and those who would like to return the name of Petrovgrad. To quote Martin Luther's words as they are often quoted, although he didn't actually say them: "I stand there, I can't help it, God help me, amen."
