AUSTRALIA—Philadelphia Church of God member Vladimir Miletich has traveled thousands of miles in his lifetime, and for many of those miles, he was fleeing danger. Peril has pursued him, day after day and year after year.
He was born in Nova Gradina, a dangerous village. Although his parents were Serbs, along with the rest of the villagers, Nova Gradina was not in Serbia; it was in Croatia. The Miletiches had moved there when the government gave free grants of land to men who had served in World War i.
The third of four sons, Vladimir, was born in 1935. Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Montenegro were all part of Yugoslavia, a country with a turbulent history that was enjoying a relatively peaceful phase. The early childhood days were carefree for him and his brothers as they played with Serbian and Croatian children in their village and in their large and comfortable home.
Then World War ii came. Axis powers rolled into Yugoslavia, the nation was sliced up, and its inhabitants erupted into conflict: guerillas resisting Axis-backed puppet regimes, and civil war among Communists, royalists and fascists. Suddenly, Serbs and Croatians were enemies, and the Miletich family was vulnerable: They were living in enemy territory.
At 5 a.m. one morning, the villagers were awakened by the sounds of roaring trucks and a blasting trumpet. The Ustashi had arrived. The fascist, nationalist, terrorist organization rounded up all the villagers, including Vladimir’s father, loaded them onto trucks and took them away. Vladimir’s two older brothers hid, avoided capture, and joined the resistance movement known as the Partisan Army.
Vladimir’s father, up until then an accountant who had been living in peace, was confined in an Austrian concentration camp named Berg. He managed to eventually escape and make his way home via the Alps. He joined the partisans to help fight and harass the enemy.
Why did Vladmir and his younger brother not relocate away from this vulnerable village? It was because of his mother. The Germans needed her services as a schoolteacher: She spoke fluent German. Thousands of other Serbs were herded into concentration camps, such as the infamous Jasenovac. Thousands suffered barbaric treatment by the Croatian Ustashi. Thousands were murdered. The Miletiches remained in the village in what now was a struggle for survival on a day-to-day basis.
The struggle continued, day after day and year after year. Croatians appropriated the homes of the Serbs, and they needed Vladimir’s mother as a teacher. His own schooling at this time was erratic. He had joined his mother’s class at 6 years of age, but his attendance during war years was disrupted and replaced by an indescribable litany of fear, flight and struggle for survival. Persecution and hatred intensified between all of the groups within this deeply divided country. Persecution against Serbs committed by Croats and Germans was unrelenting.
Describing this whole terrible chapter of Vladimir’s life would require a book, but there is one outstanding incident, which he recalls in terrifying detail.
At some time in 1944, his mother is teaching in another village, where she and the two youngest boys were allocated a small flat to live in. It was a wild, stormy February night with deep snow outside, a night when nobody would want to be out. Amazingly, their father arrives on a surprise visit. He is very serious when he tells them, “Nobody will come out in this weather.” But minutes later, there is a bashing on the door. Three men dressed as Partisans enter the house. Vladimir’s father recognizes them as Ustashi, and while they are served with tea, he finds opportunity to escape from the house.
When the men realize Vladimir’s father has fled, they verbally harass his mother. Vladimir and his little brother, Branko, hide under his bed as the Ustashi continue screaming at his mother, demanding to know where they can find her husband. Still in her dressing gown, she is permitted only to kiss her sons goodbye before being hauled off to the local prison. The boys are left alone in the house without father or mother.
Soon after, their father returns to find his wife gone. But the enemy returns as well, firing bullets through windows. Shattered glass rains down to where the boys are huddled. The Ustashi return, find Vladimir’s father, bind him with wire, and take him to the same prison as his mother. But the house is not empty for long. Two Croation men enter to steal what they can find. The boys cower under the bed. Then, one of the men shines a flashlight onto them. But another miracle comes: One of the men tells the other to leave them alone, and they are unharmed.
Alone and terrified, with snow blowing in through the front door, the house a shambles and his parents captive, Vladimir has decisions to make. He is not even 10 years old. Before sunrise, he carries his brother, still dressed in shorts, to a neighboring house, a house belonging to Croatians. But here again is another miracle: The Croatians take in the boys and give them shelter in the corner on the dirt floor. They are not betrayed to the Ustashi, and they remain in this home for about a week until another miracle occurs: Their mother is released from prison. Their father remains there, where he was beaten and even condemned to execution. Yet amazingly, the authorities change their minds. And again, somehow, he escapes.
This nightmarish pattern of life continued. The family moved from village to village and even fled into the hills to hide, trying to avoid capture and death. In some villages they encounter German soldiers, yet this amazingly turns out to be positive, since the soldiers give his mother favor because of her fluent German. The Ustashi, though, are a constant threat, and the family learns that it can trust no one. At any time, a warning can come and the family will have to flee, making their daily diet one of uncertainty, deprivation and fear. Walking through the mountains at night becomes a new normal.
Food is scarce. When the family can settle for a time and his mother can teach, she is able to earn some money to buy food. The rest of the time, it has to be bartered for or scrounged. At this point, bread is a treat. This food deprivation affected Vladimir’s ability to concentrate and to remember for years afterward.
The year Vladimir turns 10 is 1945, the year that World War ii finally ends. Miraculously, his entire family has been preserved amid the genocide and “ethnic cleansing” in which hundreds of thousands of Serbs died. Europe is in ruins, and Yugoslavia is again carved up as factions and other nations decide its fate.
Toward the end of the year, the king in exile, Peter ii, was deposed by the Communist-dominated assembly, and Josip Broz Tito was appointed prime minister of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia.
After the war, the family relocates to Vrsac, away from Croatia, where Vladimir’s father buys some land and a home. Vladimir continues his schooling and in his teens attends Teachers School to study primary teaching.
In 1953 at the age 18, he obtains his first posting at a mountainous village in Bosnia, more than 400 miles away from his family, where he endured extreme cold, no electricity, low wages and extreme loneliness. He spent all his spare time reading and studying, which resulted in a definite conclusion: He had no desire to remain in a Communist country.
By school holiday time, Vladimir has made the life-changing decision to leave the country. Alone and without telling his parents, he hitches a truck ride, then catches a train to Trieste, in Italy. As the train approaches the town, he knows he must get off so as to avoid questioning. Thankfully, it is nighttime, and for some reason, the train comes to a stop a few hundred yards before the town. He seizes his opportunity, jumps off the train, and climbs over a metal fence into Italian territory. His quest for freedom can continue, but since he left his bag on the train, he is now hundreds of miles from home in a foreign country with nothing except the clothes he is wearing.
He finds himself in a village where he reports to the police and explains his circumstances. Again, he miraculously receives kind favor and political asylum, meaning he cannot be deported back to Yugoslavia.
He is sent to a refugee camp in Naples. He uses his excellent English skills to work as an interpreter there for two years.
In 1959, Vladimir ventures even further from home and leaves Europe permanently. A memorable series of flights takes him from Rome to Cairo to Bombay to Singapore to Darwin and finally to Wagga Wagga, Australia. There he joins hundreds of other displaced refugees from war-torn Europe at the Bonegilla Migrant Center.
Vladimir remembers the food. After enduring years of deprivations, the food sponsored by the World Council of Churches was abundant, healthy and “amazing.” He has very fond memories of the lamb chops.
It was at the migrant center where Vladimir met a woman named Danka. She would become his wife.
Again his English skills prove a blessing and he works as an assistant supervisor, earning a pound a week. He stays for three months in Melbourne, where he hears that Wollongong, south of Sydney, offers many opportunities for employment.
Wollongong proves to be this wanderer’s final stop. Vladimir finds a job in the steelworks and settles into his new life with his wife and even with friends from Italy.
In 1961, he is working an afternoon shift and notices one of the crane operators reading a magazine called the Plain Truth. He is handed a couple of issues, and he still recalls one particular article that intrigued him: “Is the Majority Always Right?” He has always had an interest in religion, and he has his own Bible, given to him by Baptists in Italy.
He asked the operator where he could buy more copies, and he was thrilled to hear that they were completely free on request. This is how his love for the truth began.
Challenges followed. Shift work in a steelworks does not adapt well to keeping the Sabbath day, for instance. But Vladimir chose to keep God’s law, and through several amazing circumstances, he is delivered from the quandary when he is transferred to an office job assisting an engineer: He is able to keep the Sabbath and his job.
His first visit with the ministry is in 1962, and he is invited to services in the Radio Church of God in 1964.
Vladimir and Danka had three sons and a daughter. In the early days, he took them all to services, and the miracles continued: Many times there was only money for the train and bus fares to get to services, but God always provided the means for them to get home. One of his colleagues at the steelworks was Mr. Ron Fraser. Many times their two families headed off to Sabbath services all together on a rattling train.
Around 1979, Vladimir changed his employment and worked as a sales representative for Electrolux, where he continued until he retired. Danka, who was never called, died of cancer in her later years.
But a challenge of a different kind struck in the late 1980s and early 1990s: a spiritual threat. After Herbert W. Armstrong died, the Church’s new leadership introduced doctrinal changes that got increasingly bold and increasingly drastic. Like many others, Vladimir is growing increasingly disturbed. Then another miracle arrives in 1995: a copy of Malachi’s Message.
Before long, Vladimir Miletich experiences one of the greatest miracles of his life: coming into the Philadelphia Church of God.
His widower status changes when he remarries Wendy Bain in 1998. Today, he still works part-time as a school crossing traffic director. He and his wife actively serve the Work.
Mr. Miletich says he is humbled and amazed at God’s preservation of him throughout his life. This senior member in Australia continues to share his experiences, his lessons and his example of steadfastness.