Imeri Hajrija

Imeri-Mihaljić, Hajrija Hajrija Imeri-Mihaljić, a gypsy, had worked since her youth in Ester Baruch’s house in Kosovska Mitrovica. In early March 1942, the Germans arrested all the Jews of Kosovska Mitrovica, among them Ester Baruch and her two-year-old granddaughter Ester Acević, and interned them in the transit camp in town. Hajrija, who lived in the village of Ade, near Obilić, heard about the internment, and went with her children to visit the Baruchs. The meeting was brief but, in the little time they had, the grandmother handed little Ester over to Hajrija. Baruch told her that if someone from her family survives, Ester should be returned to him or her, but if no one comes back alive then Hajrija should raise Ester as one of her children. Hajrija succeeded in taking Ester out of the camp, carrying her in her arms, and, with her children, they returned to the village. Ester’s name was changed to Miradija and she was raised as one of the gypsy children. After the war, when Hajrija asked about the Baruch family, she was told that grandmother Ester Baruch had perished in Sajmište, and that Ester’s parents had died with the partisans. She told Ester that she was not her real mother and that her name was not Miradija but Ester-Stela Baruch. In 1945, during a quarrel over land between Hajrija‘s family and her neighbors, the neighbor informed the police that Hajrija was harboring a girl in her home. The police came to village to investigate the story. Hajrija told them the truth and a few days later the policemen returned to the village accompanied by Jewish community representatives from Priština, who thanked her for saving the Jewish girl but apologized that they had come to take her away. Hajrija’s crying did not prevent them from removing the girl. Ester, who was taken to a Jewish family in Priština, also cried, refused to eat, and begged them to take her back to her “mother.” Ester was soon relocated to the Jewish orphanage in Belgrade. There, with themediation of one of the nannies from Kosovo who understood the gypsy language, Ester revealed what Hajrija had told her about her past – that her real name was Ester-Stela Baruch, that her grandmother’s name was Ester Baruch, and that her mother’s name was Jaffa-Bukica. Upon hearing this information, the nanny lost consciousness. When she woke up, she exclaimed that Ester was her daughter. Ester refused to believe the woman and insisted that Hajrija was her mother. A few months later, Hajrija appeared at the orphanage in Belgrade; she had come to make sure that Ester was really being taken care of, as she had been promised. When she saw Ester, and saw that Ester’s mother was alive, she disappeared. Ester’s mother kept in contact with Hajrija until the day the mother and daughter immigrated to Israel, in 1948. On August 21, 1991, Yad Vashem recognized Hajrija Imeri-Mihaljić as Righteous Among the Nations.