Many streets on Drenova are named after toponyms - Frkaševo, Škudarevo, Brca and the like, in addition to the names of the deserving Drenovci. However, one address stands out - Kućina (some write Kučina incorrectly), and it was named after an old house that was probably larger than the others during that time, and after Chakavian as a large house got the name Kućina. The remains of the house can still be seen opposite the entrance to the parking lot of the Central Cemetery, and the street is below the Sportsbook and the market "Barby".
Street Kućina
Our excellent painter and connoisseur of the Drenov past, Alberto Mihich, once worked in the factory ‘Rikard Benčić’. Here he founded and ran an art section that often organized exhibitions. In 1976, one of these exhibitions featured his painting of the House as he remembered it. The original of the painting is in color on the cover (it is computer-coloured), oil on canvas, and the photo is black/white.
Black and white photo of Bertić's painting
Today's appearance of the house from the picture
The house was also mentioned by Ivo Grohovac in the article "How she became a Škurinja" written in 1913.
It is interesting that at the same time there was a house that the people of Drenovci called House, probably because it was small compared to the others. The late Aldo Štefan who lived there was called Aldo z kucica. The house still exists today, it is located next to a cafe in the parking lot of the Central Cemetery. It has recently been completely renovated and here it is in the picture.
At the end of Ivana Žorža Street towards Škurinje, the Orlando Kučića Street begins on the left and connects to the Kućički put.
Who Orlando Kučić was told to me by his now-deceased sister, Mrs. It's Nives Kucic. We met at the Drenova Retirement Club and I must say that with considerable suspicion she agreed to answer my questions about her brother because, as she said, these are things and times that are little talked about today.
Orlando, standing third from left
Orlando above the teacher
But she opened her soul a little bit and said:
Orlando was a year younger than her, born on November 19, 1929. They lived on Boka, and went to school at the Drenova Old School. At the beginning of 1944, Orlando, along with several Drenov boys, one might say, went, as Nives says, into the woods. By all accounts, Ivan Žorž was in the same group. Orlando was a courier and carried information between bases that Nives said had numbers.
One night he helped Orlando carry the wounded. Tired, fell asleep on a wet moss. Soon, unfortunately, he fell ill – he got an inflammation of the bruise, a plaurita as Nives says. My mother cooked hot soup every day, but it didn't help. At the hospital, the Germans asked him to be delivered to them on three occasions with the intention of transporting him to Dachau, but the doctor did not allow him, noting that he was too weak to be transported and that his health condition was critical anyway. He died in the hospital as a boy, at the age of 15. He was buried in the old cemetery of Drenova.
Nives Kučić
And this is how Spartac Črnjarić was told by his mother Agricola, born on Drenova in 1924, so he sent me an e-mail:
Mat said to me:
One Sunday, young men from about 16 flights from Dolnja Drenova go to Lokva -Tito Francetić, Ferruccio Superina, Orlando Kučić and Ivan Žorž. On Lokve they wanted partisans for Učka.
Orlando was ill and died. My mat was at the funeral.
Ivana Žorža Street starts from the stairs opposite the church on Donja Drenova and descends all the way to Ivo Lola Ribara Street and is one of the longest Drenovska streets.
With parents, Stanislava-Slava and Josip-Pepin Žorž
Ivan Žorž, Nini as he is remembered today by members of the Drenov family Žorž, was born on July 10, 1926 on Drenova. How and when he got involved in the defense of his homeland and his Drenova, unfortunately we do not know, and neither do his own, still alive Žorževi. On the web address Archives of Arolsen On September 25, 1944, he was brought to Dachau concentration camp and held under prisoner number 111417. Less than a month after his arrival in Dachau, he was relocated on 22 October to the Neuengamme Camp from Hamburg, from where he never returned.
Documents from KL Dachau
Transcription into the database
I will repeat here what I wrote in the article about Orlando Kučić:
Spartaco Črnjarić, my colleague and friend, sent me an e-mail that his mother, Drenovčanka Agricola Črnjarić, told him:
Mat said to me: On Sunday, young men from approx. 16 flights from Dolnja Drenova go to Lokva -Tito Francetić, Ferruccio Superina, Orlando Kučić and Ivan Žorž. On Lokve they wanted partisans for Učka. Mat says Žoržu doesn't even have a real name Ivan (thinking probably Nina, as they called him). His parents were on the border, his father was a stonemason, he would have known more than them to lead Milivoj Brozina who is his and nan's seed .
Spartaco Črnjarić
Interestingly, the Germans kept very detailed documentation of the inmates. For example, for Ivan, it is stated in one document that he had 850 Italian lira upon his arrival. However, no document mentions the cause or method of death, both for Ivan and for all the inmates.
Transport Liste Dachau – Neuengamme (John 1474)
Archives of Arolsen – The International Centre for Nazi Persecution, formerly the International Search Service (ITS), is an internationally run centre for documentation, information and research on Nazi persecution, forced labour and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and its occupied regions. The archive contains about 30 million documents from concentration camps, details of forced labor and files on exiled persons. The ITS preserves the original documents and sheds light on the fate of those persecuted by the Nazis. The archives have been available to researchers since 2007. May 2019 The Centre uploaded around 13 million documents and made them available to the public online. The archives are currently digitized and transcribed via the Zooniverse crowdsourcing platform. As of July 2020, around 27% The archive has been copied.
The street that goes uphill from the cross in Benaši towards Tonići and Kablari brings me Bruno Francetić.
On the Internet address of the City of Rijeka you will find information on the origin of street names, so for Bruno Francetić says:
Bruno Francetić (Rijeka, 1921) – Kamenjak, 1942) – a Croatian anti-fafist and prominent fighter for workers’ rights. He was a member of the Drenova Skojevska Group.
The Society Without Borders The text of mrs. Elda Bariša Bruno was a barba, my mother's brother. Mrs. Elda remembers Bruno's departure to the Partisans and writes:
And my barba is a scarf for your partisans. It was a dream that day to go up to none and hear the remorse of the bastard and the bastard. When the body's dream starts to come in, the barba is the oprl of the door and on the back I told the nonotu “I will ren and I will never come out again”. In 1942 the first fighter died, Bruno Francetić is called our street after the chem.
A few details of his death can be found in the text published by the ‘Lokalpatrioti Rijeka’ group, which says about themselves:
“Lokalpatrioti Rijeka” is a place that gathers lovers of the city of Rijeka and the Primorje-Gorski Kotar region! It deals with the preservation of Rijeka's identity and multiculturalism as its main value. An independent site primarily oriented to the work of the forum that follows all major events in the city of Rijeka and our region and reveals our history.
Extract from the above text:
On July 5, 1942, Commander 2 was killed. Comrade Nikola Car - Crni Miko of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar Partisan Detachment. On that day, an ambush was set up on Louisiana between Kamenjak and Grobnik in the strength of 140 partisans.... In this action, a comrade was killed next to the commandant of the squadron. Bruno Francetić.
Mrs. Florrick. Elda said the Italians buried all those killed in the action in a common grave in Kozala Cemetery.
Bruno was the first Italian partisan to die and probably the first Italian partisan to die.
If you are heading towards the church from the direction of the town of Drenovski, at the ‘Romano’ café on the left is Stanko Frankovića Street, which cuts down Ivana Žorža Street and extends all the way to Žminj. In this very busy street there is a kindergarten, a market "Brodokomerca", a furniture store and, interestingly, two hairdressing salons!
Stanko Franković, after whom this important street bears its name, was born on September 8, 1919 on Drena as the ninth of ten children of Ivan Franković and Marija born Štefan and the nephew of professor Fran Franković. Early in 1942, he joined the liberation movement, as did many young people from Drenovci.
In the "Zbornik Kastavština" No. 1 from 1978, Mr. Vilim Štefan, in the text "Young Kastav area in the People's Revolution", states, inter alia:
Skojevska grupa Drenova:
Vilim Štefan, Valter Francetić, Bruno Francetić, Stanko Franković, Vence Mihić and Stanko Hlača.
According to Stanko's cousin and cousin who live on Lokva, he died on September 1, 1942 in Tuhobić when their group was surrounded by Italian soldiers.
From Kastav Collection No.1
In the online list of the origin of the name of the street Rijeka, it is stated that he died in the area of Pakleno below Obruč, and the dates coincide.
The main street of Drenovski's new settlement is the street Brothers Hlača. It stretches from the junction with the Drenov Road near the Drenova Community Centre ("Granica" as it was called by the old Drenovčani) to the junction with the Ivana Žorža street at the Drenovska ambulance. In the continuation, it extends into the newly built so-called A road and thus became the traffic vessel of Drenova, because it took on the former role of the Drenova Road in connecting Drenova with the city center and the city with the central city cemetery.
Street Brothers Pants
I would like to meet the inhabitants of Drenova, especially the younger and newcomers (the older people of Drenova know this for the most part), who and what were the brothers of Hlača after whom the street was named.
Kablari, the house of Peršići. On the left, Libero Kukuljan, Franjo Peršić (accordion), Stanko Hlača, Josip Hlača and Bruno Francetić. Before the Second World War.
I will use this article Vila Štefana “Memories of the revolutionary workers and youth movement of Drenova” from the book “Drenova – education and historical development” (Rijeka, 1987).
Already before Hitler's attack on Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, the Italian authorities began to prepare for war and in order to protect their citizens, residents of Lower Drenova, evacuated them by train and buses to northern Italy. Upper Drenova was soon, just a few days after the beginning of the war, occupied by the Italian army, so that after 17 years of such freedom, Drenova fell again under Italian occupation.
The Yugoslav army did not resist, the king fled abroad, Pavelic gave Italy half of Croatia by agreement with Mussolini, Hitler concluded a non-aggression pact with the USSR. In such conditions among the people of Drenova, and especially among the young, raised in the national and anti-fascist spirit, despondency and discontent arose. But not for long. Already at the beginning of July, the first Kosovo unit of young people from Drenovci was founded, from which the first fighters in partisan units are recruited.
One of them was the first of the brothers. Stanko Pants, who died on 15 September 1942 in Modruš in battle with the Ustashas. In retaliation for the increasing departure to the partisans, the occupier also punished innocent people, so on June 6, 1942, at Banovo Križ near Kastav, twelve young men were shot, including Josip Hlača, The other of the brothers. On January 1, 1945, Chetniks invaded Drenovo, arrested and handed over all suspicious people to the Germans. And so is the third and youngest of the brothers. Wenceslaus Pants, arrived in the camp Risiera (Rižarna) near Trieste where he ended up in the crematorium.
Vilim Štefan writes like this:
It was a terrible tragedy for this family, and for all the people of Drenovci. Poor Martin (father) had three baptized and mature sons. One (Pepeta) was shot by the Italians at Ban's Cross, the eldest son Stanko was killed in the battle with the Ustashas, and the youngest Vence, a councilor of Drenova, as a victim of the Chetniks.
Hlala Brothers' Birth House, Kablarska cesta 36Tombstone at the Gornja Drenova Cemetery
Drenova and Drenovčani, preserving the memory of three young patriots, named one of the main streets in their place after them.
If from the direction of Škurinje from the crossroads at the school you go down the street Brothers Pants, the first street on the left is Ružica Mihić Street. It starts at the children's playground above the former shelter, and ends with stairs leading to a large parking lot near the Central City Cemetery. This quiet, tree-lined street rightfully bears the gentle female name of Drenovčanka Ružica Mihić.
Ružice Mihić Street
Interview
As we occasionally publish articles about our streets in our newspaper, I decided this time for this one, since I know Ružica's brother, Mr. Atilije Mihić. At my request, he gladly agreed to talk about his sister.
Tell me a few words about your family. Where did you live?
Rose is the oldest, and I am the youngest child of the seven of us that our parents had. She was born on October 18, 1921, and I was born in 1939, so there is a full 18 years difference between us.
We lived in our house in the hamlet of Tonići in today's Bruno Francetić Street.
Given the big age difference, I don't know much about her life in her youth. I know that she went to school on Donja Drenova, which had belonged to Italy since the Treaty of Rome in 1924, so the school, like all schools in Rijeka at the time, was Italian. Tonići belonged to former Yugoslavia, but at that time Gornja Drenova did not have schools. Later she finished her course for the spike. According to my parents, I know she should have gotten a job, but the war ended everything. And now I have her workbook, but without one day's work experience.
As you say, the war has begun. How and when did Rose get involved?
At the beginning of the war, Drenova had two men who were partisan fighters from the very beginning of the war: my brother Venceslav Vence Mihić, two years younger than Rose and Vilim Štefan who were the bearers and instigators of the resistance to the Drenos. Gradually, many men from Drenova went to the forest to partisans. Women remained and became the bearers of fieldwork.
In “the Kastav Compendium’ No. 1 of 1978 in art. “Women of the Kastav area in the National Liberation Army 1941-1942.” by Milka Milenić-Nežić writes:
Ružica Mihić from Drenova is a member of the SKOJ, then a member of the CCP. Her activity is versatile. He brings and distributes the press, collects and carries food, brings new fighters to berth, goes across the border, works with young people and women. . . . She continued to do so until January 1945, when she was arrested by Chetniks, tortured and abused, and then surrendered to the Germans. She was taken to a concentration camp and never came back.
Rose became actively involved in the resistance very early in 1942, at the urging of her brother Vencet, and worked actively in the field, just as she writes in the aforementioned article. I have to say that she was First woman secretary of SKOJ.
Can you remember how it came about that she was arrested?
I know exactly and I remember every detail even though I was only five years old. In 1944, a young fighter, a partisan from Drenova, was wounded and came home for recovery. The Chetniks, who were already retreating westward, found him wounded, spoke in pain and said some names. In a large raid from Benashi to Kablara, they captured about twenty elderly people. Among them was a woman who denounced my sister. Rose, knowing she was in danger, slept at her aunt's house.
On the very day of William of God in 1944, she came home in the morning when a group of Chetniks appeared with whom was also the woman I mentioned and said: “This is the Ružica Mihić you are looking for.” They ordered her to get ready. Like I remember now: She went into the kamarin to get dressed, two Chetniks after her. One of them nakedly ordered her : “Hurry up, hurry up”, while the other said: “Let the woman get dressed because she goes into the unknown”. I mean, there were people among them.
The Chetniks handed her over to the Germans who took her to St. Matthew, then to Trsat and then to prison in Via Roma. At the beginning of February, she was transported to Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. When the Americans liberated the camp in May 1945, she was still alive. When the Drenovci Marija Tomašić married Fućak, Christina, I don't know her last name even though I knew her husband and children and another woman, who were in the camp together with Ružica, returned to Drenova, they said that Ružica was too weak to withstand transportation home, she had only 38 kg.
The Americans kept her on recovery, but she did not endure it and died in August 1945, at the age of twenty-four, of which we received official notification. Marija Tomašić Fućak brought some small things, mirrors and makeup that Ružica sent to her younger sister, which is why we know that at the time they were going home she was still alive, but too weak to withstand the way to the house. My brother Milutin Milo Mihić He died as a partisan in the battle for the hospital on St. Peter's Mountain, so the war took two children to my parents, and to us, the children's brother and sister.
Logor
Subsequent research at the address Archives of Arolsen We found out that Ružica was staying and, unfortunately, died in the infamous congregation Bergen-Belsen. The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is one of the most horrific sites of Nazi crimes during World War II. She was imprisoned and died in that camp. Anna Frank.
Explanation of condition under which censuses were made
List of Yugoslav women in hospital
List of dead women in hospital
We do not know whether Ružica was imprisoned in Dachau and subsequently transferred to Bergen-Belsen, but according to the documents that they kindly submitted at our request from the aforementioned address, we learned that after the liberation of the camp on April 15, 1945. Rose was taken to a hospital near the camp and died on July 15, 1945. (See pictures). She was buried in the common tomb of No. I 3.
Ružica Mihić's final resting place - Common Tomb No.13
Archives of Arolsen – The International Centre for Nazi Persecution, formerly the International Search Service (ITS), is an internationally run centre for documentation, information and research on Nazi persecution, forced labour and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and its occupied regions. The archive contains about 30 million documents from concentration camps, details of forced labor and files on exiled persons. The ITS preserves the original documents and sheds light on the fate of those persecuted by the Nazis. The archives have been available to researchers since 2007. May 2019 The Centre uploaded around 13 million documents and made them available to the public online. Archives are currently digitized and transcribed through the crowdsourcing platform Zooniverse. As of July 2020, around 27% The archive has been copied.
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