Ante Vrandečić (1919-1944)
I knew that my father was named for his uncle. His other brother told me about him, and he was telling me that he became a prisoner of war and that they lost his trace. Back then, I didn't dare to ask on which side he was fighting, and when I would have dared to ask, it was too late.
Today, thanks to the increasing digitalisation of older sources and their publication on the Web and the Web being indexed, I accidentally stumbled upon a record about him in a three thousand pages long book, Volume 8 of the "Victims of the War 1941-1945" (Žrtve rata 1941-1945).
He was a soldier in the NOV i POJ (Yugoslav partisans), became a prisoner of war, and was killed by Germans during a transport in 1944. I don't know where he was captured, from where to where he was transported, where he was killed.
My father, his namesake, then moved to Germany in the 1970s, where he and my mother built a new life for themselves and their children, and where I was born.
I have a lot of complicated emotions and thoughts.
- Source: Page 79 in https://www.muzejgenocida.rs/images/ZrtvePub/Hrv.pdf
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