Ivan Babejic

Ivan Babejic
BabejicBabejic Babejic
Born	1894 (some sources 1896), Laznica, Homolje, Kingdom of Serbia
night of 4/5 September 1934 (aged c. 38-40), Paljane, near Ćuprija, Kingdom of Yugoslavianight of 4/5 September 1934 (aged c. 38-40), Paljane, near Ćuprija, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Cause of death	Shot; betrayed in the house of an associate faked his death/Unknown
Other names	Ivan Babău;("Mountain Tsar"); "the Dillinger of Homolje"; "Mountain Flower" Floare de la Munte, Robin Hood of Homolie
💼 Occupation
Known for	Eighteen years of outlawry in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
👩 Spouse(s)	Ana
👶 Children	Branko (died aged four - presumably poisoned by opposing force)
Family	Vlach/Romanian (Romanian-speaking)

Ivan Babejić

Ivan Babejić (Serbian Cyrillic: Иван Бабејић; Romanian: Ivan alu Babău; Laznica, 1894 or 1896 - Paljane, 4-5 September 1934) was a Vlach (Romanian-speaking) outlaw, or Hajduk, from the Homolje region of eastern Serbia. Active for roughly eighteen years, he is generally regarded as the best-known brigand of the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia and one of the last figures of the classical hajduk tradition in Serbia. The Yugoslav press dubbed him "the Dillinger of Homolje," while in local tradition he is remembered as Gorski car the "Mountain Tsar" or "King of the Mountains." Among the Vlach and Romanian-speaking population of the Timok Valley he acquired a Robin Hood-like reputation, and songs and legends about him circulated during his lifetime and long after his death.

Name and ethnicity

Serbian-language sources describe Babejić as a Vlach (Vlah) the term used in Serbia for the Romanian-speaking population of the Timok Valley and the Danube frontier. Romanian-language accounts and the communities themselves generally use the term Romanian, and render his name Ivan Babău. He is said to have felt a particular loyalty to his fellow Vlachs across eastern Serbia, whom he is reported to have helped readily, and above all to his native Homolje and the village of Laznica. Local population considered him a freedom fighter because he is one of the rare outlaws who got into the mountains because of unjust treatment by first Bulgarian occupiers then Serbian authorities after his fight and sacrifices in WWI.

The two designations reflect a long-running disagreement over the identity of this population rather than a difference of fact about Babejić himself. This article uses "Vlach" where it follows Serbian sources and "Romanian" where it follows Romanian ones.

Early life

Babejić was born in Laznica, a large Vlach village in the Žagubica municipality in the northern part of Homolje, roughly midway between Bor, Majdanpek and Petrovac. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Laznica was a populous and relatively prosperous settlement, said to have had as many as 7,000 inhabitants.

Local tradition holds that he was the only infant that audibly cried from his mother's womb and the midwife who delivered him, struck by the size of the infant, lifted him up and prophesied that he would become a hajduk. Legends of this kind reaching back to before his birth are characteristic of the way his life was later narrated in Homolje.

First World War

File:Babejic and two recruits in World War I.jpg

Babejic and two recruits in World War I

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Babejić was called up and sent into the Serbian ranks, where he fought the Bulgarians through that first hard winter and into the year that followed. He was taken prisoner, but he escaped, slipped his guards and worked his way home to Laznica. Serbian television accounts hold that the Bulgarians seized him a second time and shipped him off to an island in the Black Sea — a place local memory has never called anything but "Devil's Island." He got free of that too. By 1916 he had gone into the forest he knew so well back in his native Homolje Mountains.

Newspaper reports of the period, suggest he was already living as an outlaw while the occupation of East Serbia held. The occupiers did not treat him as a nuisance to be shrugged off. Whole battalions of soldiers and gendarmes were put on his trail, sent after him and the men who rode with him. Even then, his name carried on as an outlaw and protector during the war period. It must be said that in that period most of inhabitants lived in highland small familes or villages Katun's even trough the winter. They were back to their native village of Laznica only for weddings or funerals or big events. It was estimated that more than 5000 people were living in the mountains in interwar period.

Return to outlawry

After the liberation and the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Babejić was reportedly among the first to surrender himself to the new Yugoslav authorities. Trusting the newly established Kingdom and Serbian authorities completely. His return to civilian life was short-lived.

Two pairs of oxen were stolen in his village, suspicion fell immediately on him, and he was conveniently arrested. Local authorities have never looked kindly on smart and capable war veterans anywhere in the world.

File:Homolie Oxen.png

Homolie Oxen

An account circulated among Romanian communities holds that the accusation was false, that he was imprisoned in the penitentiary at Niš, and that he escaped from it together with a friend named Laza, likewise a Romanian, from the village given as "Manastrita" most likely Manastirica, in the Homolje Mlava area after which the two took to the mountains. Serbian sources consulted for this article record the arrest and the accusation but do not corroborate the details of the prison break, which should be treated as tradition rather than established fact.

From that point Babejić remained an outlaw for a full eighteen years, until his death.

Career as a hajduk

For nearly two decades Babejić effectively dominated the Homolje regional district and remained beyond the reach of the authorities, despite repeated pursuits by the Yugoslav kingdom gendarmerie. He was said to be a terror to anyone who crossed him, and was widely reputed to be a dangerous man, a killer and a robber although, as one local historian has noted, no one ever proved that Babejić killed anyone.

His survival depended on an extensive network of "jataci" meaning harborers the villagers who sheltered and provisioned hajduks in return for a share of the takings or protection.It was estimated that Babejic has more than 400 harborers. Local tradition holds that his most reliable protectors were Vlach women, who concealed him and are said to have borne children while keeping the father's identity secret.

The popular tradition that he took from the rich and gave to the poor is the basis of his enduring Robin Hood reputation in the region.

Names and press coverage

The interwar Belgrade press, which followed his exploits closely, styled him "the Dillinger of Homolje" after the contemporary American outlaw John Dillinger. In popular speech he was Gorski car - the Mountain Tsar or King of the Mountains and, in the version transmitted through Romanian accounts, "Floare de la Munte" meaning Mountain Flower. He was known both for a sharp wit as well as for his capacity for cruelty.

Babejić features prominently in later Serbian retrospectives on interwar outlawry, including the Radio Television of Serbia documentary Trag: Gorski car and the RTS series on hajduks in Serbia and Yugoslavia, in which he heads a roster of interwar outlaws that includes the Barbulović brothers, Obrad Nikolić and Draža Gligorijević.

Haiduc Ivan Babejic in contemporary newspapers

Personal life

Babejić married a woman named Ana from Laznica. The Belgrade weekly Vreme dated the wedding to the time when a German zeppelin first flew over Homolje . The marriage lasted no more than about a year before he left her and returned to outlawry.

As a curiosity Belgrade newspapers Vreme reported 11.10.1931 on his wife Ana asking for a divorce from outlaw in the forest which was unheard of in that era.

File:Asked for divorce from Babejic.png

Asked for divorce from Babejic

Ana married him at eighteen because, in her own words in the petition, he threatened to cut her throat if she didn't. She needed a certificate from the Homolje Regional authority and Interior Ministry formally attesting that her husband was a Hajduk before the ecclesiastical court would grant the divorce and the paper notes she and his own relatives doubted he was still alive. She got the letter as it is confirmed in the newspaper.

The couple had a son, Branko (Brankucu), who died at the age of four. The cause of the child's death is not known; tradition in Laznica holds that gendarmes killed him. What is established is that Babejić separated the boy from his mother and entrusted him to a man in Laznica for safekeeping. He wanted to increase the chances of their survival. But that failed.

Because his only acknowledged son died in childhood, Babejić left no officially recognized descendants.

Death

Babejić was killed on the night of 4 to 5 September 1934 in the village of Paljane, near Ćuprija in the Pomoravlje District, in the house of his jatak Miša Ilić. He was betrayed by men he trusted. A second man present, Draža Gligorijević, escaped. Babejić did not.

The body was taken to Ćuprija and laid out on the vagon at fairground, where it remained on public display for days, because the population refused to believe that the Mountain Tsar was dead and wanted to see the corpse for themselves. The journalist Boda D. Nikolić, writing in September 1934, reported that 4,000 people came on the first day alone, and that over the following five days the number ran into the tens, possibly hundreds of thousands. Gendarms, it was said, were carrying people from Laznica in carriages to recognize notorious Babejic.

A month later Miša Ilić collected the reward of 100,000 dinars that had been offered for Babejić's head. In October 1940, however, Draža Gligorijević was arrested and confessed that it was he who had killed Babejić, and that Ilić had only assisted him in the plot. The examining magistrate did what any investigator would do and brought the two men face to face. Six years after the killing, the captured Draža Gligorijević told the Jagodina investigating judge that he had killed Babejić, and a confrontation took place between the last great Serbian hajduk and Miša of Paljane, the two standing opposite one another. And here is the puzzle that has kept this case alive: what motive does either have to lie in that room? Ilić had already banked the reward, spent it on a house, and lived under gendarme guard for months walking it back in 1940 would cost him the money and his story. Gligorijević, meanwhile, was confessing to a killing while facing a capital sentence anyway, gaining nothing but the credit. As Ilić had reportedly told the press back in 1934, it did not matter who killed Babejić what mattered was that he was killed. Convenient, for a man holding the receipt.

The court never resolved it. Gligorijević, who had spent several years in America and spoke five languages was shot by the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, with some locals saying the reason for shoooting was that in translation to German they took partisan and hajduk (Berg Banditen) to mean the same thing.

The exact circumstances of the killing have never been fully resolved and remain a matter of dispute.

A rival account survives within the Babejic extended family itself. Babejić's cousin Zlata Marković, née Babejić, who lived until 1980s is recorded as having claimed that she saw him alive in Požarevac some ten years after his supposed death.According to her testimony, Babejić by then an old man had bribed officials on both the Serbian and the Romanian side and slipped across the border with his gold, having first staged his own death: the body displayed at Ćuprija, she maintained, was that of a dead priest, dressed and arranged to pass for the outlaw. Her son Janko Marković later told his family that he was told 1957-1958 to go to Negotin fair which was the biggest fair in the region, with distinct instructions to put a spring flower in his hat so his older relative could recognize him in the mass. He nerver went because he was afraid of Babejic and some said he owed him money.

Legend and legacy

Babejić's popularity was such that many people refused to accept his death even after the public display of the body.

They would not bury him. Not really.

The public display of the corpse, intended to settle the matter, did not settle it. Refusal to accept the death of a popular outlaw is a recurrent feature of haiduk traditions across the Balkans, and Babejić's case conforms to the pattern closely enough that the survival legend should be read less as testimony. In its most common form the story holds that he staged his own death, with help of Gligorijevic and Jatak who got the money for his death then he crossed into Romania, and ended his life as the keeper of a small tavern.

File:Babau cu pistolu.png

Babejic with a gun

The legend is not, however, without a documentary shadow. The Barbulović brothers of Petrovac Haiduks who operated in opposition to Babejić did in fact cross the border and are reported to have kept a hotel in Bucharest. The Romanian exile was therefore an established and locally known trajectory. Oral tradition appears to have transposed a documented outcome onto a preferred subject, a mechanism familiar from comparable material elsewhere in the region.

Songs were composed about him, and legends attached themselves to every stage of his life. The wider corpus surrounding Babejić consists chiefly of songs and narrative legends distributed across the whole arc of his biography, from a prophecy attributed to the midwife present at his birth to the unresolved circumstances of his death. The density of legendary accretion at both endpoints is itself diagnostic: birth and death are the points at which oral tradition characteristically supplies what the record does not. In Homolje he is remembered alongside Jovan Šerbanović the region's only People's Honorable War Hero of the Second World War, also from Laznica as one of the two figures who define the district's historical identity. Among the Romanian-speaking communities of eastern Serbia he is an emblematic heroic figure. In Romania itself he is effectively unknown.

Discrepancies in the sources

The record on Babejić is drawn from interwar newspapers, oral tradition and later popular history, and the sources disagree on several points:

• Year of birth Serbian Wikipedia gives 1894 RTS and several regional accounts give 1896.
• Date of death The article on Paljane give the night of 4/5 September 1934; at least one regional account gives the night of 4/5 October 1934.
• Who killed him Miša Ilić received the handsome reward in 1934; Draža Gligorijević confessed to the killing in 1940.
• Was he really dead A rival account survives within the family itself. Babejić's cousin Zlata Marković, née Babejić, is recorded as having claimed that she saw him alive in Požarevac some ten years after his supposed death. According to her testimony, Babejić by then an old man had bribed officials on both the Serbian and the Romanian side and slipped across the border with his gold, having first staged his own death: the body displayed at Ćuprija, she maintained, was that of a dead priest, dressed and arranged to pass for the outlaw.
• Ethnic designation "Vlach" in Serbian sources, "Romanian" in Romanian ones.
• The Niš prison escape Attested in Romanian community accounts; not corroborated in the Serbian sources consulted here.

Books about Hajduk Ivan Babejic

• "Hajduci" Branislav Nušić
• "Haiduks and Serbian Veterans: 1919-1924" Danilo Sarenac
• "Ivan Babejić – gorski car Zvižda i Homolja" (also published as "Gorski car")

by publicist Voja Marjanović from Kučevo Genre: Publicist / Historical Non-fiction Overview: Considered the primary documentary and factual source on Babejić's life. Marjanović compiled police records, archival documents, witness statements, and regional oral histories to trace Babejić's path from a World War I soldier and WWI komitadji to a fugitive hiding out in the Homolje mountains. Editions: The book has gone through several editions (including a third, expanded edition) and has gained great popularity in eastern Serbia as a local bestseller.

• "Kralj Homolja Ivan Babejić – od komite do hajduka"

Author: Vojislav Marjanović Genre: Documentary-literary biography Overview: A concise historical overview exploring how Babejić transitioned from a wartime insurgent against Bulgarian occupation forces into a long-term outlaw hunted by the Yugoslav gendarmerie. It provides detailed accounts of his network of safehouses (jataci), lovers, and collaborators.

• "Homoljski Dilinger"

Author: Milan Janković Genre: Historical Novel Based on the archival research of Vojislav Marjanović, this novel dramatizes the lives of Ivan Babejić and Dragoslav "Draža" Gligorijević (the Resava outlaw). It explores the line between historical reality and regional myth, detailing how Babejić evaded capture for 14 years.

• Book of Marjanović, Vojislav S. (2000). Ivan Babejić Gorski Car Homolja. 3rd edition Kučevo.

• “Hajducs between truth and legend” Author: Dragan Jovašević, published in 1988

Overview: covers the biographies of the last known hajduks in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, among whom is Ivan Babejić.

• "Tajna smrti Ivana Babejića" by Nikodije Spasić: An investigative historical text analyzing the conflicting accounts surrounding Babejić’s death in 1934 (debating whether he died from wounds, betrayal by a accomplice, or suicide).

See also

• Hajduk
• Serbian hajduks
• Vlachs of Serbia
• Homolje
• Laznica
• Jovo Stanisavljević Čaruga
• John Dillinger

References

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