A journalist told a joke about Tito, ended up on Goli Otok: We were surrounded by the sea, and thirsty for madness

Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito / Photo: Profimedia

Josip Broz Tito is a symbol of a time that older generations will say was much more beautiful than today. The people were happier, there was order and discipline, and everyone proudly worshiped the father of Yugoslavia at that time, which was considered a world power.

Many songs have been written and sung in honor of Tito. One of the most famous songs "Druže Tito ljubičice bela" was composed by the young journalist Jenny Leble two and a half years in prison on Goli Otok, where she ended up at only 22 years old.

Not much was known about Women at that time except that she was from Belgrade of Jewish descent. And not much could be written about the terrible period she spent on Goli Otok.

Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito / Photo: Profimedia

One of the articles about her from 2013 was published in the Serbian newspaper "Politika" in which she worked until she was arrested for a clumsy joke she made against Josip Broz Tito, which she told to the newsroom one morning.

A colleague told her a joke about how Yugoslavia won an international flower contest because a 100-kilogram violet had grown up, alluding to the song "Druže Tito, ljubičice bela, tebe voli omladina cela". After she told the joke in the newsroom, two women came after Jenny Leble, because, as they said, she spoke against Tito and did not report the enemy of the people from whom she heard the controversial joke.

Leble was taken to the UDB Glavnjaca prison, then to the Ramski Rit camp, then to Zabela, Grgur and Goli Otok. In the five prisons, where she was from April 1949 to October 1951, she was asked to change her mind and plead guilty. She was later expelled from the Association of Journalists.

After the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1990, Women published a book called Ljubičice bela, which became a bestseller in Israel, where she lived until her death in 2009. In her book, she described the horrific experiences of the camp, and many did not even know that women had been sent there.

"Only the thirsty know how to appreciate water. "We were surrounded by the sea and thirsty for madness," Leble wrote. "Girls were turning into old women, their teeth were falling out, they got sick when the news reached them that their children, mothers and husbands had given up on them because they had become enemies of the people," Jenny Leble wrote in her book.

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