1942, Croatia (and later in Israel)

By Dani Novak

Only God, the rocks, and the trees bore witness to that moment, when I finally discovered the hole.

An ancient scream ripped through me. Not one of anger or fear but one of relief and freedom. It was at this instant that I knew that in every bone, in every cell of my body, where my lifelong depression started. The scream went on and on.

Imagine me, a man who had always suffered from hopelessness and fear. One day, in a state of deep sadness, I was suddenly transported to a white room, a cozy place with sweet water, warmth and love.

On the left side of this small room, I saw the most gruesome hairy creature that could ever be imagined. But as the monster and I confronted each other, I became so moved that I burst into a joyous song, for I finally understood the root of my grief.

“Mom! Mom!” … no answer … knock, knock, knock … no answer; only the frozen fear of a woman who could not love her unborn child because of her own locked-up grief.

It happened in the spring of 1942, when the Germans invaded Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Near Gospic, Croatia, by a small village named Jadovno, in the deep woods of the Velebit Mountains, is a natural cave – the Sharanova Jama — 55 meters (180 feet) deep.

In three fateful days, 11,000 people were thrown into the abyss without any regard for whether they lived or died. Screams were heard for days. But not one person survived. The local people remained silent, but the stones and the trees witnessed the horror.

Zdenka, my mother, was 22 years old when the local collaborators, the Ustasha, had come to take everyone away. She managed to escape, traveling by train to hide for a year at a Christian friend’s house in a village by the Adriatic Sea. Soon the Germans came to occupy that place too, so Zdenka joined the partisans and hid in the dense forests of former Yugoslavia.

After the war years, my mother moved to Israel and remarried. Soon I, her only child, was born. She never talked about her experiences, but the house was always filled with a veil of indescribable sadness.

On the surface, one could always see a happy child, but Zdenka’s despair was growing inside of me as well, an unwanted companion that had invaded my mind from the time I was about 14 years old. What envy I felt for my 60-year-old father, who had seemed to not have many years left!

One time, I was walking in the woods of Mount Carmel all day, asking the stones, the trees, and the sun to help me release my desolation. Night fell, and it started to rain. Looking for a shelter, I found a small cave by the mountainside. I crawled into the cave and hid in a fetal position, as if I was in my mother’s womb.

Then, in 1993, a year after my father died, my mother and I traveled to Croatia and to the other places in Europe where she had vacationed as a young child. Of course, we did not go to that Sharanova cave because, at that time, I did not even know it existed. My mother never told me much about how she lost every single member of her small family in that hole, but somehow, I always knew.

On the outside, she seemed happy and cheerful, but on the inside, she was still with Mira, her sister, Elsa, her mother, Lavoslav, her father, and Fritz, her beloved husband. Fritz loved poetry and believed in the essential goodness of humanity.

My mother and I traveled together for three weeks, and though I sensed her anger and depression, we still did not talk. A thick wall of denial stood between us. Emotions that were buried inside had to wait to get out.

Almost two years ago, soon after Zdenka died, a powerful inner force pulled me to that place to which I had traveled in Croatia. Without knowing the exact location nor any of the details, I at last discovered the hole. I wrote in my diary:

I was looking for the place where I read that members of my family died … there was a cliff where people were thrown down alive, and they died in terrible agony, and I wanted to find the place and pray for peace and forgiveness.After waking up at 4 in the morning and driving from Zagreb to a small town named Gospic (about two and a half hours away), I asked a young man how to reach the place called Jadovno. It was only a few kilometers away from Gospic, and I found a dirt road through the woods.

After a few miles, I saw a stone structure in the middle of the woods that looked worth exploring. I stopped my car, but assuming that the people were thrown off a cliff, I started climbing up the mountain until it was too cold and dangerous. I started driving a little more, and I soon decided to turn back to the main road.

On the way back, I met three wood cutters. “Do you know of a place where people died 63 years ago?” They told me to return to that stone structure but walk down and look for a hole in the ground.

After my screams, an inner light broke through the veil of darkness, and through me came a most beautiful song that I will never forget. Oh, how I wish I could sing it to you, dear reader, for your soul would be so uplifted, as mine was. I kept singing as I walked all the way to the home where my mother lived. And there I sang to her spirit as the beauty and energy lifted my soul to brilliant heights of joy and inner light.

It was only three months before she died that my mother started to get in touch with her feelings. In December 2003, my cousin found her in her apartment in Haifa, all dressed in black. The shutters were down, and there was no food in the house.

A few days later, Zdenka had a stroke, and she could no longer stop the emotions that had lived inside her for so many years. Finally, she allowed herself to love and to feel. Whenever I came to visit, she would call out, “Dancek!”

The sweetness of her warm love still resonates within me. As I closed her eyes for the last time, her face relaxed, and the room filled with peace.

Dani Novak teaches mathematics at Ithaca College. On his Web site, he has published the book of his mother, Zdenka.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 | Email This Post

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