Draft:Velimir Djerasimovic

Velimir "Velja" Đerasimović also spelled Djerasimović (Ravni, near Užice, Kingdom of Serbia, 22 May 1906 -- Trieste, Italy, 2 March 2005) was a long-time Serbian schoolteacher at "Jovan Miletić" Serbian National School in Trieste, from 1927 until his retirement in 1976. As a pedagogue, he authored bilingual Serbian-Italian language textbooks for beginners.

Biography

Velimir "Velja" Đerasimović graduated from Gymnasium and Teacher College in Užice in 1926. In 1927, he was sent to work at the Serbian school "Jovan Miletić" in Trieste, where he remained as an exceptional teacher and dean, with some interruptions during World War II, until his retirement in 1976. For years he organized and taught Serbian language, history, science and culture for five decades to Serbian students who lived in Trieste or were passing through as refugees awaiting visas for countries in neighbouring Western counties. He actively participated in the work of the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality of Trieste, in educational and cultural activities and as an official, a long-term councillor and for many years its president.

Post-World War II: The Race for Trieste

Circumstances created by the old Treaty of Nettuno made it possible for Tito's Yugoslav Partisans to put Trieste's Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality (SOCM) under their control by breaking into the rectory of the St. Spyridon Serbian Orthodox Church and killing in cold blood Father Petar Vojinovich and his wife Milka in what became known as the infamous "forty days of Trieste" or the Trieste Crisis in the spring of 1945.

After the crisis, the pre-war teacher Velimir Đerasimović was again appointed to head the Jovan Miletić National Serbian School and as president of the Serbian Orthodox Religious Community.

At the end of 1946, a man whose past is little known, Dragoljub Vurdelja, was among the fleeing refugees from Communist Yugoslavia who ended up under a false name in Trieste where he joined the Anglo-American Allied Military Government as an officer in Risiera di San Sabba. In 1948 he became a member of the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality and initiated the adoption of new statutes in 1950 that enabled him to gain control of the SOCM to the dismay of many members in the community, namely Velimir Đerasimović. In March 1950, the Allied Military Government was then in control of Trieste and they approved Vurdelja's changes to the Muncipality statutes, while local Italians and Triestine Serbs were opposed, to say the least.

In 1951, Patriarch Vikentije of the Serbian Orthodox Church sent a delegation headed by Bishop German Đorić (titular bishop and future patriarch) and theology professor Dušan Glumac of the University of Belgrade, to Trieste. There Veselin Đerasimović met his grace first and explained the entire post-war difficulties then taking place. Đerasimović then took Bishop German to see every major institution in Trieste including Ospitale Generale to visit the sick and pray for their health. They also visited the four Trieste D.P. Camps -- Opicina, Gesuiti, San Sabba, and the newly-built San Sabba Annex.

Politically unstable were Yugoslav-Italian relations from the signing of the London Memorandum in 1954 to the Treaty of Osimo in 1975.

In that period, the SOCM president Dragoljub Vurdelja was promoting himself as an ardent anti-communist, though secretly a spy with a much different agenda, succeeded in removing Velimir Đerasimović, the founder of the Confraternity, from the board of the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality. Vurdelja had Đerasimović "fired from his teaching role" but the "termination" did not last long. The Italian School Commission in Trieste soon reinstated him. To Communist Yugoslavia the perception of the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality under Dargoljub Vurdelja‘s leadership seemed as a hotbed of anti-Yugoslav propaganda, yet it was, in fact, the doings of others who had more to gain than the thousands of displaced Slavs in the Free Territory of Trieste, all seeking political asylum elsewhere.

It was impossible for the communists to take control of Trieste's Serbian community and even for Vurdelja and his kind as the Serbs of Italy were both citizens of Italy and emigrés who fought on the side of the Royal Yugoslav Armed Forces in World War II and not the usurpers, the communists. Still, Yugoslav communists continued to create and raise issues in their relations with Italy and used all conceivable and available diplomatic means to undermine the activities of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Community of Trieste but to no avail. Đerasimović always managed to navigate through political waters with a single focus in mind his school and the well-being of his students while Vurdelja sowed the seeds of discord between 1955 and 1968

In 1955, with the arrival of Father Stevan Lastavica, the new parish priest from Belgrade, Đerasimović got the support of a like-minded colleague for his Jovan Miletić School, though Dragoljub Vurdelja continued to abuse church and school property and use his position to work against the interests of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its people. Through Đerasimović's connections, the Italian authorities told Vurdelja to relinquish his post to someone else. But when Vurdelja resigned as the president of SOCM, he immediately took up the post of secretary on the same SOCM board. Italian authorities were not pleased with his manoeuvre, and neither were many members of Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality (SOCM).

In 1960, priest Stevan Lastavica decided to leave Trieste after five years of clashing with Vurdelja for Canada to be a parish priest at Grachanica Serbian Orthodox Church in Windsor. Vurdelja was about to claim "victory" when the new Patriarch German Đorić took the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality in Trieste under his wing, forcing the removal of Vurdelja altogether.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Velimir Đerasimović persevered throughout those years of harassments from Vurdelja and his cronies and kept actively participating in the educational and cultural activities of the Serbian community in Trieste. After Vurdelja's death in 1971, Đerasimović was SOCM president for many years. A film documentary featured Velja Đerasimović in Trieste in 1987 speaking about the history of the Serbian Orthodox Church Municipality (SOCM).He proudly showed the many Serbian institutions built by Serbian merchants that date back three centuries.

His youngest son professor Mirko Đerasimović collaborated with his father on textbooks of the Serbian language, especially taking care of the Cyrillic alphabet so that it doesn't get relegated to disuse.

Personal

Đerasimović was married to Trieste-born Vera Petrijević, an artist who studied at the Beta Vukanović School of Fine Arts in Belgrade. He met Vera when in Trieste where they were married. They had two boys and a daughter: Italian film actor Ivan and music professor and poet Milorad (1945-2012) and daughter Rada Rassimov, an actress who now lives in Paris.

Death

Velimir Đerasimović died on 2 March 2005 and was buried at the Cimitero Serbo (Serbian Cemetery) in Trieste. He was about to turn 99 when he passed away.

Works

• Serbo-Croato carateri cirillici, Trieste 1977 (primer);
• Serbo-Croatian: corso completo: grammatica conversazioni esercizi...;
• Trieste 1978;
• Serbian church community in Trieste -- more important events around the church of St. Spiridona, Trieste in 1993;
• La Communità serbo-ortodossa a Trieste, 1996.