Yes you did but I have been told it may start with "to my son in-law". This could be significant in my search if this is true - thanks - Andy

Yes, "zet" is son-in-law.

Thanks Sergej - this may be significant for me in my search and also adds to the mystery......Andy

Hello Sergej.Still chipping away and making very slow progress. Looking again closely at documents I have. I can now trace grandads movements from his leaving Yugoslavia, the camps in Italy, Germany and the UK. Could you please help in translating the attached cut from a photo. You may have seen this before but not sure.I have tried without success to translate this through online translating machines but fail.
Regards - Andy

Could you provide me with a better high resolution scan. THis one is too small.

Hi Sergej - any idea what this translates from the card. It is written above Culumovic Maksim.

НaРЕДНИ К The K is only just readable but I'm sure its last letter.

Thanks - Andy

narednik - sergeant

Thanks Segej - Tried everything with that and I kept coming up with "Harem".
Could have a breakthrough. I have been contacted by a man in Texas, USA. He regognises photo's from my blog and says his mother has same photo's of her family. She is a cousin of Draza Mihailovic and it is her father pictured with grandads wife when he was a child.
Andy

Andy,

Good to hear Keep it up and I am confident you will have success.

Hi Sergej - Unfortunately nothing certain as yet from the elderly lady in Texas.
Much of my research as been focused on Brdjani villages in Bosnia after a surviving cousin of one of grandads friends said that he thought grandad had been living in Bosnia. Resettlement documents mention jalce province but when i took mother there she said it was not the village she had visited twenty years prior - mountanous terrain - the village she recalls was on flat, agricutural land.
Grandads mother was Petra Lukic. LDS records indicate - Jelena Lukic - Birth: 06 APR 1909 Brdjani,Srbija, Radojko Lukic - Birth: 1898 Brdane,Srbija.
Could this be coincidence as the village mother recalls as being tiny with maybe 20 - 30 dwellings.
Andy

It could be. You should be aware that in Serbian the spelling is important. You should check with google earth to see if you can find the place and then see if someone made pictures that fit the description. You could also write those archives there with the letter templates we have on site. And see if they have any data for you.

Hi Andy,

there is many villages with Brdjani name in Serbia. I am not sure but for two reason i think that Maksim was born in Serbia. First one is that he was memeber of the 2nd corps of Ravna gora( He was not memeber of Chetniks in Bosnia). There is Brdjani place in Serbia near Gornji Milanovac town, which is near Cacak, and Maksim´s was photographed near Cacak with his brigade. Milanovac´ area is agricultural.
Here is the web sites:
http://www.gornjimilanovac.org.yu/en/index.html
http://www.fallingrain.com/world/YI/2/Brdani12.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gornji_Milanovac
http://www.togm.org.yu/galerija/galerija.htm

See pictures maybe your mother will recognise area.

Second reason is that Maksim´s wife lived in Bijelo Polje in Montenegro, and Bijelo Polje is quite far away from Jajce, approx. 350 km.

But everywhere on the Maksim´s documents writes Jajce,not Milanovac or Cacak.

Hi Brane,
Thanks again and I too think the village of my search is in Serbia.
Resettlement documents all spell the village differently - Brdjani,Brdani, Brzani. These would have been written by English perssonel and probably there own spelling of what grandad was saying - he could not speak English. Despite the spellings all say Serbia as location. Grandad always said Serbia it was his friends surviving cousin that said he thought that he had lived in Bosnia. Jalce is recorded but I am not sure now if this is accurate. When he died it was his friend who wrote my parents how to get to the village. When he looked at the documents he immediately said that they were not correct but did not elaborate. I guess he gave the directions from personal knowledge and not the paperwork. Jalce is totally wrong terrain. The village parents visited was not in mountains and agriculture including tobacco growing was evident.
Someone on my behalf has telephoned most Culumovic in Bosnia with no sucess, most were happy to talk but none recognised the name Maksim in family trees.
I have also been told from someone who studies handwriting that grandad may not have been familiar with Latin alphabet.
Another thing I recall is that he said he had been in Belgrade in 1941.
He also spoke of visiting Herci Nova on the coast. If around Jalce these would have been great distances to travel.

May I take this opprtunity to thank all the team at Rodoslav for their ever help and support at what at times must have been a dead end route. I started my search with nothing, only a name and birth date and slowly the pieces have come together.
My search for the village of my grandfather began in Serbia, then Montenegro, then Croatia and then Bosnia before full circle back to Serbia. All this time you have offered patience and support.
Thankyou Brane for finally putting in the pieces which have now it appears have found the village north of Cacak.
Photographs of the area are correct and mother instantly recognised the town of Cacak even pronouncing it correctly in Serbian.....
I can only guess that Jalce on paperwork was there to mislead all those years ago as it still misled me in my search.
My search for family history can now begin with a concrete base .....thank you all so much.
Andy

Makes sense, there were a lot of divisions that emerged from the Cacak region. You could now write the archives there with the template letter and see what they come up with.