Huron Expositor, 2006-06-07, Page 13News
Seaforth woman fighting to rebuild
after bomb destroys her Bosnian. hom
The Huron Expositor • June 7, 2006 Page 13
After 20 -year battle with squatters, legal system, war, Vangeloff still wants to go home
Susan Hundertmark
Sitting on a lawn chair in her
sparsely -furnished apartment in
Seaforth, 70 -year-old Nevenka
Vangeloff holds a photo of a pile of
rubble that used to be her house in
Bosnia.
Bombed during the civil war in
Bosnia during the 1990s,
Vangeloff's house was going to be
the place where she retired. It con-
tained all of her possessions and
represented all of her savings.
And, its destruction has been just
one element in a 20 -year battle with
a Bosnian priest, squatters who
took over her house in her absence,
the Bosnian legal system and any
authorities involved in the rebuild-
ing of the wartorn country from the
Bosnian government to the United
Nations.
"I worked all my life and nobody
has had to support me. But, all my
money is gone," she says. .
Vangeloff left her homeland at age
19 when a marvellous opportunity
came her way.
Josephine Baker, a black
American singer who became
famous in Europe during the 1920s
and 1930s after racial discrimina-
tion drove her from the U.S., was
performing in Belgrad, Serbia and
Zagreb, Croatia during the 1950s
and Vangeloff learned Baker was
looking for an employee to work as a
nanny for her children.
At the time, Baker lived in Paris
with her husband French orchestra.
leader Jo Bouillon and together they
were raising 12 children of different
races, whom Baker - an early civil
rights activist - called her "Rainbow
Tribe."
Flown to Paris where she was met
by a chauffeur, Vangeloff worked for
Baker for several years.
"She spoiled ,me rotten - she
bought dresses for me and a white
coat like a princess," remembers
Vangeloff.
"People like Frank Sinatra would
come to visit but I didn't know who
they were at the time. There was
nobody else to speak Serbian with
and I was trying hard to learn to
speak another language but so
many people were there speaking so
many different languages, it was
hard to learn," she says.
For a time, Baker retired from
show business to her 300 -acre
estate in the Dordogne but financial
and marital problems sent her back
into performing and eventually
brought an end to Vangeloff's job.
Vangeloff's next job was at a U.S.
military base in France for a
Susan Hundertmark and submitted photos
Nevenka Vangeloff, 70, of Seaforth, (insert) is taking her case to the federal government again looking for help to rebuild her
home after a bomb destroyed it during the civil war in Bosnia during the 1990s.
woman, Lt. Col. MacAlpine, who
was originally from Clinton, Ont.
and ran the military hospital in
Paris.
But, when political relationships
cooled between France and the U.S.
under U.S. President Kennedy in
the 1960s, the military base closed
and again Vangeloff was out of a
job.
"Lt. -Col. MacAlpine said to me,
`Nevenka, your French isn't that
good. I can't leave you. Would you
like to come to Canada?' And, I said,
Where's that?'"
After living in Paris, the small
size of Clinton, Ont. was a big
shock.
"Even the town I'm born at is big-
ger. I thought, 'Good God, what will
I do here?'" laughs Vangeloff.
She got a job at the Clinton hospi-
tal and became a Canadian citizen
in 1966. She lived in both Clinton
and Windsor for close to 20 years.
The whole time, she sent money
home to her family in Bosnia.
"I always missed them and
thought I'd buy a little home there. I
fixed it, painted it and moved all my
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furniture and possessions there.
There were six trunkloads of cloth-
ing, shoes, furniture and they're
now all gone," she says.
In 1984, she left the house in the
care of her priest and returned two
years later to find that the house
she bought for $21,000 Canadian
had been sold for $3,000 but she
hadn't received any of the money
from the sale.
Her possessions, including pre-
cious keepsakes from her time
working for Josephine Baker, were
gone and she spent three and a half
years going to court in Bosnia to get
her house back.
But, while the courts kept declar-
ing her the legal owner of the house,
continuing and lengthy appeals pre-
vented her from taking possession.
Finally, the house was bombed
during the civil war in Bosnia, evict-
ing the illegal squatters but
destroying the home she'd worked
so hard to get back.
Since then, Vangeloff has, with
help during the past two years from
Kim DePutter a case manager at
the Huron Business Centre, tried to
get some help rebuilding her house
in Bosnia.
"She's a wonderful, wonderful
lady and everything she's worked
for her, whole life has been taken
away from her but she still wants to
move back to retire. She owns the
land and has the deed," says
DePutter.
Ironically, while Vangeloff has
always felt like a foreigner while
living in Canada, it is her Canadian
citizenship that has prevented the
Bosnian government or the United
Nations from helping her to rebuild.
"I am really sorry for her, life is
not fair all the time that good peo-
ple have to suffer," says an email to
DePutter from Semih Bulbul, pro-
gramme officer with the United
Nations High Commission for
Refugees in Sarajevo.
"Compared to the needy people
living here, indeed her situation
seems relatively better...donor orga-
nizations or individual helpers pre-
fer to focus on more needy ones in
Bosnia."
DePutter says after talking to a
See U.N., Page 28
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