Monday, March 5, 2007

Serbian King Buried in U.S. May Be Returned Home

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 5, 2007

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., March 4 (AP) — King Peter II, Yugoslavia’s last monarch, who was exiled from his homeland during World War II, ended up in a tomb inside an ornately decorated church outside Chicago.

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Royal Archives, via Associated Press Crown Prince Alexander in 1955 with his parents, King Peter II and Queen Alexandra. The prince is seeking a reburial for his father.

Peter II personally chose the spot, St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery. But his son, Crown Prince Alexander, has upset some Serbian-Americans by planning to take his father’s remains back to Serbia.

“The plan is — and that is a solid plan — that he’ll be brought here,” the prince said in a recent phone interview from his palace in Belgrade, the Serbian capital.

He had not set a date for returning his father to Serbia, which once formed the core of Peter’s kingdom, but he said it would be soon.

Peter II was 11 years old when he became king in 1934 after the assassination of his father, Alexander I. During World War II, Peter refused to ally Yugoslavia with the Nazis, prompting Hitler to invade and drive the king into exile. After the war, Communists seized control and confiscated his wealth.

He later devoted himself to visiting exile communities in the United States and elsewhere, often helping to raise money for charities. He died in Denver in 1970, at 47.

Peter II had asked to be buried at St. Sava because of the hundreds of thousands of Serbs living in the Chicago area. He also cited admiration for Illinois as the home of Abraham Lincoln, according to newspaper accounts at the time.

“I want to rest near my freedom-loving people,” the reports quoted his will as saying. “I must always share their destiny.”

More than 10,000 people attended his funeral, and several thousand still visit the brilliantly frescoed church annually to see his tomb.

Some Serbian-Americans think he should stay there.

“It was his own request,” said Alex Colakovic, sales manager at the Serbian Social Center near Chicago. “I’d rather have him stay here.”

Metropolitan Christopher, the head of the Serbian Orthodox church in the Midwest, spoke lovingly of the king. But when asked about the possibility of a reburial, he would say only that the issue had prompted concern among Serbs.

“The monarch is a symbolic representation of the life and values of Serbians,” Metropolitan Christopher said.

Prince Alexander said that principle also applied to people in Serbia.

“If you visit Arlington Cemetery, you have heroes there, and they belong there,” the prince said. “In Europe, you have heads of state and kings and queens who are buried in their own country. Isn’t that normal?”

The prince, who advocates a restoration of the Serbian monarchy in a British-style parliamentary system, returned to Serbia in 2001, after Yugoslavia had split into several independent nations following a civil war.

Prince Alexander said reburial in Serbia, at the royal family’s century-old Mausoleum of St. George near Belgrade, would correct a historical mistake.

“We are now going in a complete circle and making things wrong into right,” he said