The Relays of Youth and youth rallies were once the first association with Youth Day. Celebrations and running took place from Vardar to Triglav in honor of the lifelong president of the former state, and many who remember those times recall them today with undisguised nostalgia.
Josip Broz Tito was born on May 25, 1892, while his son Miso Broz saw the light of day a day earlier, but almost half a century later. He lives in Zagreb, and the most beautiful greeting for his 85th birthday was sent to him by his daughter Sasa Broz, a recognized Croatian theater and television director.
“My hero… Happy birthday, dad, I love you to the moon and back,” Sasa Broz wrote on Instagram, alongside a portrait of three generations. Next to the prominent director, the photograph features her father Aleksandar Miso Broz and daughter Sara, a young Zagreb artist.
The younger son of the lifelong president of Yugoslavia saw the light of day on May 24, 1941, in Zagreb. The name Aleksandar was given to him at birth, but during the war he also received an underground name, Miso, which he later continued to use.
His mother Herta Haas was one of the four officially recognized wives of Josip Broz. The Slovenian woman of Jewish roots and the future Marshal met in 1937 in Paris, and became a couple two years later. They started their life together in Zagreb, under false names. Their extramarital relationship lasted until the beginning of the Second World War, when they had to separate. She was already in an advanced stage of pregnancy.
Tito, the general secretary of the then-underground Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), had to move to Belgrade a few days before Miso’s birth. A few days after his departure, Herta gave birth to a son. She saw Tito only once more.
Although the rules of the revolutionary life at the time dictated that a mother, if she was underground, should hand over her newborn child to a family for care so that neither would be exposed to the risk of arrest, Herta refused and initially took care of her son herself. In the beginning, she was helped by her mother Priska and Tito’s friend Vladimir Velebit.
When she was threatened with the danger of arrest, in November she gave her six-month-old son into the care of a family. As he himself then became an underground member, and one of the youngest at that, he took on the underground name – Miso. Herta was arrested, and in 1943 she was exchanged for captured German officers. Until the very end of the war, Miso did not know his real parents – he saw his father for the first time in April 1945, and his mother in May of the same year.
After the liberation, Miso Broz lived in Belgrade, in the immediate vicinity of his father. He completed elementary school and gymnasium in the capital of Yugoslavia, and then moved to Zagreb, where he graduated in law. After his studies, he got a job and worked in the economy, first in the machine tool factory “Prvomajska”, where he became the head of the Export Department and director of foreign trade. Later, from 1983 to 1993, he was the director of the import-export sector at the oil company INA.
After the independence of the Republic of Croatia, he moved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first as an advisor, and then as a minister plenipotentiary at the embassy of that country in Russia and Egypt. His last duty was as ambassador to Indonesia from 2004 to 2009.
With his wife Mira, he has two children, daughter Aleksandra Sasa and son Andrej. Sasa Broz attended the School for Classical Ballet and Rhythmic Gymnastics. She continued her ballet education in Moscow, but after completing her postgraduate studies and suffering a serious foot injury, she ended her career and returned to her hometown, where she enrolled in theater directing at the Academy of Dramatic Arts.
In her marriage with actor Ranko Zidaric, she had a daughter, Sara, who chose another type of art for her life’s calling – fine art. The young academic painter uses the surname of her great-grandmother Herta Haas.
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Source: Žena stil Photo: Instagram, Privatna arhiva