Posted on 02/26/2006 5:18:01 PM PST by blam
Tito's widow is left to a life of squalor
By Kate Connolly in Belgrade
(Filed: 27/02/2006)
Choked in ivy, its balconies and pillars crumbling, the once imposing villa looks as if it were abandoned years ago. A curtain twitches. A dark-haired woman wearing sunglasses peers out before whipping it back.
She lives in just two rooms of the spacious property and one of those has a hole in the ceiling. The others are uninhabitable due to damp, mould and broken windows.
There has been no heating for 25 years. Water has to be heated on a stove.
Many elderly Belgrade residents in straitened circumstances share a similar fate. But this is the home of Mrs Josip Broz Tito, widow of the former Yugoslavia's communist dictator.
Jovanka Broz, 81, was discovered living in penury after her sister, Nada, wrote to newspapers to complain of the "disgraceful way" the former First Lady was "forced to live".
"Little better than a bag lady," was the headline in one newspaper, amazed to discover that she was still alive.
"This lady used to have such high standards and now everything around her is rotting, even her wallpaper," said Ljubica Bauk, who was Mrs Broz's personal maid for 20 years. She now lives in a cold one-room flat next to her former mistress's rusting entrance gate.
Tito's widow reportedly has three bodyguards supplied by the interior ministry, and a gardener. But they are nowhere to be seen. The garden is a mess of mud and weeds. The Serbian minister of minorities and human rights, Rasim Ljajic, has now taken up her case, forced to act after Macedonian businessmen appeared at her door offering to help.
Such charity from what are now foreigners would have been acutely embarrassing to the Serbian government.
"It's unbelievable," Mr Ljajic said. "She lives in a large house - the so-called "guest villa" - of which she uses only two rooms because the rest are uninhabitable.
"No one, let alone the widow of a former president should live like this. The least we could do is fix the hole in the living room ceiling."
The villa in the fashionable Dedinje district of Belgrade was last renovated in 1961 for Indian leader Indira Ghandi's use when she was invited to Belgrade by Tito.
Mrs Broz was placed under house arrest in the villa in 1977 after being dragged from the presidential home in her nightgown with a few possessions after Tito's aides suspected her of plotting a coup.
Her late husband's family are unrepentant about their lack of intervention in her plight, saying she has brought the suffering on herself and has refused all offers of help.
"I was there when my grandfather kicked her out," said Joska Broz, Tito's grandson from his first marriage to a Russian, Pelagiya Belousova. He runs a Belgrade restaurant and is the spitting image of the dictator.
"He was furious with her because she had meddled in politics, rather than remaining an obedient and loving wife," he said. "After that she cut off all contact with us and rejected all offers of help even though there was no row.
"Even if she was to blame for his rejection of her, there's no doubt she loved Tito immensely, and suffered a lot because of her connection with him."
I wonder why I'm not feeling a great deal of sympathy here. "First Lady" of a communist dictatorship? Say again?
Old commie tugging at your heartstrings story.
is this the yugoslavian version of the bill and hillary story?
She's lucky she didn't meet the fate of Mrs. Ceausescu.
No sympathy here.
Better now than in her afterlife tho.
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The old boy, back in the day. Time just loooooves their Bolsheviks... |
What goes round, comes round.
I thought this was going to be about Michael Jackson's ex-sister-in-law.
LMAO!
First the story quoting the NY Times story about the "inhumane" conditions at the Afghan prision, now this. My my, the "Telly" has veered more than a tad to the left, hasn't it?
LOL! I have to admit I am guilty of the same... must be us Georgians...from Cobb County...LOL!
Yeah the wife of a Croat commie dictator must be real popular in Serbia, my heart bleeds.
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Just...DAMN!!!! |
Nobody is "forced to live" like that. They do it on their own.
Maybe some government cheese with that wine?
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