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After the liberation of northern Serbia, my unit was supposed to go to Kosovo, but Tito explicitly forbade it. The Albanians who were supposed to lead Srem rebelled. If the Soviets had left, today would have been different, says Milan Runic, the only oil tanker, Serbian, member of the Soviet army.
Milan Runić, a former professor and dean of the Zrenjanin Faculty of Technology, although 93 years old, remembers and perfectly conveys some of the most important events in the history of this area.
He was a high school student when the Hungarian occupation forces entered Novi Sad. They broke into the courtyard of their house and their father, who spoke Hungarian and was a reservist in the Austro-Hungarian Army in WWI, saved them from death.
At that time, 17-year-old Runić left Novi Sad and went to Kruševac with his mother. Dozens of German soldiers were killed by partisans during an action. In retaliation, the Germans randomly arrested him and took him to shoot. Runić, a high school student, fled to the village and joined the partisan movement.
In the Red Army by the Russian
Somewhere near Zajecar, he met with units of the Red Army. He was a good student and knew Russian, his aunts were married to white Russians, that led him to join them.
– The boss asked me if I knew trigonometry. So I was in the seventh grade of high school, I said I knew, how could I not know. He says we need tanker trucks, it was a tank division, and you could be a shooter on a T34 tank. They trained me for that in an hour – says Runić.
The first battle in which he participated took place between Čačak and Kraljevo. The Germans tried to cut off the Russian front. He did very well in the tank. The driver was Uzbek, and the commander of the tank, who later died at Avala, after which Milan took command, was Russian. There were also Kyrgyz people in the crew.
He soon received the rank of officer as a tank commander.
Russian saved my life
The memories of one of the few living witnesses to World War II are still fresh. Especially the most beautiful memories of Russian soldiers.
– I have never had a relationship with people like I had with the Russians. There were some Serženci Nataša in the logistics, each unit had the logistics, if they hit the tank, they dragged it to repair it. That Natasha asked the battalion commander to be having lunch in the officers’ canteen. And he was ashamed of the Russians. I was once or twice and couldn’t take it anymore. I went from battle to battle, I didn’t have time to do anything else, remember the tanker.
He adds that the relationship with the Russians and their mutuals was much better than between the people in our units, and he was with the partisans for two months, but he also met them along the way. A Russian also saved his life during the battles for the liberation of Belgrade.
– I got out of the tank and a German fired from the second floor with a machine gun. He threw himself, lay down on me so as not to hit me. It was a sergeant, from another tank. He asked me who I was, who my mother was, who to tell was dead, he thought they had beaten me – says Runić.
Across the Old Sava Bridge just past Zaric
Runic participated directly in one of the most important parts of the operation to liberate the capital, in the action of saving the Old Sava Bridge.
– It was the only bridge we were able to cross the Sava. My tank was the first and there were miners in front of us. That man, Zaric, helped clear the bridge. He came by boat. I talked a bit with him until we crossed – says Milan.
If the Soviets had gone to Kosovo then it would have been different
In the second part of his “Book of Remembrance”, to be published soon, Runić deals specifically with Kosovo and Metohija because, as he himself says, today’s events in the southern province of Serbia are related exactly to what happened at the end. of the Second World War.
– We were supposed to go to Kosovo, my unit, but Tito forbade it. It was my senior lieutenant who told me: “Runic, we cannot go to Kosovo.” We were also not allowed to enter Croatia. He ordered, as requested by those in Srem’s front, to break the front with tanks, so that I would do it, with three tanks, but to return – says Milan.
He was demobilized from a Soviet Army unit in 1946 and, as he says, moved into ours. After that, he was in Kosovo. He says that even then he was a witness to events that affected the current situation in the south of the country, of which little is still said.
– The Albanians who were supposed to go to Srem’s front rebelled there. Not enough is said about the fact that they joined the Italians and Germans en masse.
Goli otok also survived
Due to his political views, he ended up on Goli Otok. After several months of harassment, an officer from Vojvodina, Udba, informed him that he would be transferred above Novi Vindolski, where trees were being felled for the sawmill’s needs. That job saved him.
Upon his return in 1951, he suffered the consequences of the nude islanders label and devoted himself to science. Years later, he received the well-deserved post of dean. Through judicial rehabilitation, the state has somewhat repaired the damage done to its reputation.
However, Russia remembers its heroes, it has decorated Milan Runic up to five times. He received the first veteran’s medal on March 20, 1995, when the Embassy of the Russian Federation celebrated 50 years of victory in the Great Patriotic War.
He regrets that after the war he never met his comrades from Russia and the former Soviet republics with whom he fought for life in freedom.
– He was closer to a senior lieutenant. He gave me an address in Moscow to search. I did that in 1969, I took students to Russia, but it was too late, a war companion from Moscow died a year earlier, still, I saw his daughter, says a former member of the Soviet army.
(Kurir.rs/Sputnjik/Foto:Profimedia)
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