THE FIRST SERBS SURVIVED IN AMERICA WITH FOLK SONGS: Immediately after its founding, the newspaper “Srbobran” entered many Serbian families in the USA

AS THE EDITOR OF “Amerikanski Srbobran” I prepared the first issue at the beginning of April 1993. Instead of my name, I put that it is edited by the Board. Jovan Bratić, the previous editor, was not satisfied with my decision, but he agreed because he thought that I was doing it for political reasons, that is, so that I would not get myself into trouble in Serbia. This wonderful man did not know what kind of rebel had moved into the premises of the Serbian National Union, in the office on the sixth floor.

Uncle Jova was very surprised when I told him in the late autumn of 1994 after returning from Belgrade that I had organized an exhibition of our paper at the Kolarč University in the famous Small Hall and presented it to the citizens of Belgrade.

– Has anyone come to listen to you?

– There was not enough room in the hall for everyone who wanted to hear the story of our Ban Srbobran.
– So how did my former fellow citizens react, if they are still alive after all these wars and changes?
– Okay! The exhibition was down in the hall for people to see the pictures as they walked down the street by the door.
– And the comments?
– Well, some listeners were only dissatisfied when I said that in the so-called Republic of Užice, that is, Užice free from the Germans, on October 7, 1941, the anniversary of the October Revolution was solemnly celebrated, and our “Srbobran” was somehow on the front page at that time. framed in black, was the first to inform the world about the massacre of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia. In America, Serbs with tears and candles in their hands are commemorating hundreds of thousands of murdered Serbian people, among them a large number of priests and Bishop Platon, while in a corner of free Serbia they are calling for Stalin… Admittedly, not even Stalin on that October day on Red Square , some ten kilometers away from the German tanks, is not the monstrous Stalin of previous decades…

– Well, our “Srbobran” also supported the then heroic struggle of the Russian people.

– But he did not celebrate the October Revolution. Big difference.

And on the occasion of the centenary of the publication of “American Defender of the Serbs”, Patriarch Pavle, who awarded him the Order of Saint Sava of the first order, President Vojislav Koštunica, and Crown Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević congratulated him on his anniversary.

The first issue of “American Serbian Guard” saw the light of day in Pittsburgh on January 18, 1906. The three Pittsburgh rivers, which bear Indian names, Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio, did not flow much, and the official organ of the Serbian Orthodox Association of Srbobrana (today the Serbian National Association) became a member of many Serbian families in America. In one picture, published in the newspaper, one can see one such multi-member Serbian family: ten children are standing next to their parents, the mother hugs her small, eleventh child to her chest, and the father holds, probably just arrived, the number of our newspaper in his lap.

Who were those Serbian immigrants to Eastern America a hundred and more years ago? The first Serb arrived in Pittsburgh from Gomirje in 1886, and the first Serbian woman two years later. Božidar Purić, poet, diplomat, wartime president of the royal Yugoslav government in London, and later in America for a time and editor of our newspaper, touchingly described those early Serbian settlers during the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Serbian National Union (1951):

“When our first emigrants left their villages and mountains for the world, they took with them the only treasure they had: the memory of folk songs and centuries-old stories, by the fire, about bravery and heroism. Most of them came with an Austrian passport, in a cold and then incomprehensible foreign land they were warmed, like the flame from the home hearth used to be: only Serbian warmth. Head and feet in the new world, and heart with relatives. They send their earnings, and through our poor villages the stone houses of those who had their own in America are noted. They came mostly illiterate, in the painful school of life they earned diplomas that the universities will hardly give to the younger generation. Little by little, they got back on their feet, started to organize their lives, today at an enviable height, when their common home, the Serbian People’s Union, celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. With a future for everyone and with far-reaching possibilities. And with the younger generation who will be the eternal link between America and the old part.”

And here is what, first on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary, and then, expanding earlier memories during the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Serbian National Alliance, the founder of the Alliance and the first president, Sava Hajdin, wrote about the organization of American Serbs in Eastern America:

“The first attempt to organize Serbs in the eastern part of America failed after the insane demonstrations of Croats against Serbs in Zagreb, 1886. Those violent demonstrations by the Croatian masses against the Serbs, harangued by the Croatian clergy, stunned all Serbs in America. Instead of condemning such outbursts of their brothers in the old region against the Serbs, the local Croats started telling us stories that we are not Serbs but Orthodox Croats, that Serbs live in Serbia and that there are no Serbs in Croatia…”.

And when the Serbs finally founded their S.P.S. in 1901. Srbobran, something happened that Sava Hajdin considered worth preserving from oblivion: “Since we founded the Alliance, we put an inscription in Cyrillic on the Alliance office. After a few days, overnight, someone destroyed our inscription, probably thinking that in this way they would destroy our will to organize and gather. Serbs and Serbian ideals were not found on a piece of wood but in our fiery young hearts. Such an insidious fight against our work gave us even more will to continue the work of organizing the Serbs”.

One can only assume the anger among the enemies of Serbia and Orthodoxy (the greatest degree of tolerance was expressed among the American Croats of that time in the acceptance of Serbs from Croatia as “Orthodox Croats”) caused by the appearance of the Cyrillic alphabet not on a “piece of board” but in a Serbian newspaper.

Immediately after its establishment, “Srbobran” entered many Serbian families
in America

Although Savo Hajdin does not hide that among the founders of the Alliance “they only had one slightly more literate man”, Velimir Hajdin, a former scribe from Ogulin, they “immediately saw” that they needed a paper if they wanted to expand the Alliance. At the time, the newspaper “Sloboda” was published in San Francisco, and its editor Spira Galović was offered to move to Pittsburgh and be an organ of the Alliance, but he refused and recommended that Dmitri Šaban, a Serb from Montenegro, who published the newspaper in Colorado “Serbs,” he called. Šaban advocated for the harmony and brotherhood of Serbs and Croats, but after the Francoist demonstrations in Zagreb, neither Croats nor Serbs approved of such writing. Realizing that he had “started on the wrong path”, as Sava Hajdin testified, he soon “avoided useless work”, started publishing a paper only for Serbs, and then accepted the offer of the Alliance and moved to Pittsburgh in the fall of 1901.

According to Sava Hajdin, Šaban was an “excellent man in every way”, for a small reward he “worked day and night”, he had a sense for propaganda and started contributing to the founding of new federal societies, but “after two years of hard work, he fell ill from tuberculosis”, he had to go to Montenegro for treatment, so he stopped publishing the paper and donated the printing press to the Association. He was replaced in the editorial position by Velimir Hajdin, who distinguished himself not only by his literacy but also by his modesty, but in addition to his editorial and typesetting work, he had to work in a factory in order to survive (the Federation paid him only eight dollars a month). After Saban’s short-lived return to Pittsburgh to his former post, and then his final departure to the old country, where he died, things went downhill with the paper, until at the fifth convention in Harrisburg, 1905, it was decided that the Union should start its own paper.” American Serbian Defense”.

TOMORROW: “AMERICAN SERVANT” DEFEATS BILL CLINTON

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