The Anteski Family And Their History

The Anteski Family

1. The Anteski family origin

2. The escape to Tetovo

3. The birth of Risto

4. Risto and Dostana have children

5. Ljubica Anteska and her turbulent life

6. The post W.W.II happening

The Family Anteski come from the village of Lesnica, in Kichevo region, which is in the western part of Macedonia. Despot Anteski, who was born in the year of 1799, was a wealthy landowner with many woods and vineyards. In 1836 his son Tomo Anteski was born, and later on he had another son whom he named Trifun Anteski.

Tomo and Trifun, after having a wonderful childhood and having grown up to be strong young men, went to Belgrade to earn some money for their families, as it was a custom in those times. They left behind their wives and Trifun's children in the village, but asked Angja, a cousin who was very famous for her beauty in the village, to keep company with their wives. In those times Macedonia was under the rule of Ottoman Turk Empire. The Turks had people who were loyal to the king running every village, city and county in the occupied territories. As the older members of the Anteski family told it, one day the the Turkish mayor, whose name was Sejmen, tried to take Angja away by force, but Tomo's and Trifun's wives killed him and buried him as far away as possible from the house where they lived. They immediately called for Tomo and Trifun to come back home so that they could escape getting caught for murdering the Turkish mayor. When Tomo and his brother found out, they came back to their wives and as quickly as possible, ran with their families away from the village, thus avoiding getting killed and having their children massacred.

They escaped to Tetovo, which was 160 kilometers to the north, but under the rule of a big Turkish Vizier, who is almost like a ruler of another state. They felt pretty secure being far away from the place where they might have been killed for protecting themselves. Tomo, as a hardworking young man, earned a nice piece of property and built a big house for his family and they started a new life. His only son was soon born, and they gave him the name of Ante. Ante Anteski became a famous craftsman and trader in Tetovo and his shop was famous even as far as Istanbul (Constantinopole) and Solun (Thesalloniki, Greece). But he was most famous for making Macedonian traditional garments because only the richest families in Tetovo would buy clothes from him. When the time came for him to get married, Ante asked Pera, whose Christian Orthodox family was very famous for engineering and building houses. Her family built a fortress and a church, in which they were allowed to celebrate their family name. Both the Fortress and the Church exist today and remain unchanged from the past in the old part of Tetovo.

In 1893 Ante and Pera had a son whom they name Risto (my great grandfather), but unfortunately Pera died while giving birth. Ante got married again to Trpana, a widow from a good family, who had a child of her own. The child died after a bad year of epidemics that struck the city. But Trpana took care and loved Risto as her own child, and Risto after growing up, as a sign of love and respect, admitted he had no other mother but Trpana. Risto finished high school in Tetovo, but traveled around Macedonia to seek the best higher education he could get. He became a teacher in 1913 after graduating from Belgrade University.

As a college student, Risto first met Dostana Janakievska Dimoska (my great grandmother), who was born as a Macedonian in 1893 in Sretkovo, a village near Tetovo. Her family moved to Belgrade when she was six years old. She also went to the Belgrade University, where she received a scholarship from the Serbian princess Natalija (Nataly) to go to any college in Vienna, Austria. But a misfortune struck the family, when her father died the day she was about to leave for Austria. She had to stay and work as a teacher in order to support her younger brother Dushan, and her mother. World War I broke out, and Risto soon left to fight in the war. He fought in different fronts throughout the region, but ended up going in Solun (Thesalloniki, Greece) to join the English and French forces. There he met again Dostana, who had joined the forces as a nurse to help the wounded. They got married in Solun that same year in a small church.

In 1918, after the war ended, Risto and Dostana returned to Tetovo and started working as teachers. In 1921, Risto got promoted as a superintendent of all the public schools in the city of Tetovo. In 1922 another promotion came along, and he became a superintendent of the schools in the whole region, which consisted of many other villages. He was very active in his job and built new schools and initiated a fund for the poor students. Because of these actions he became the mayor of the city of Tetovo. He improved the city itself in many ways: by building new buildings, opening a large library, improving the streets and building a bridge, which was named after him. Dostana also got promoted as a principal of a local high school. The family Anteski gained a good reputation in Tetovo.

Risto and Dostana had four children: Jelica (1918), Ljubica (1922), Milka (1926) and Mile (1930). The four children were provided with a good education by their parents and all of them have university degrees. Jelica has graduated with a degree in teaching English, and got married and lived in Serbia with her husband Stanimir Lukic. They did not have children. Mile, lived and worked in Tetovo, where he married Pijada and they had two children: Lile and Vesna. Both of their children lived in Tetovo in their youth, but now live in Skopje and have children (who are my cousins: Dani, Marin and Katerina). Milka became a professor in a high school in Gostivar, a city near Tetovo, and after that she lived in Belgrade where she worked as a lector for the Yugoslavian Federation until she retired.

Ljubica Anteska (4/10/22 - 9/5/98), my grandmother, after graduating from high school, got ready to go to Belgrade to go to study law in Belgrade University. But World War II started and she returned to Tetovo. In 1942 she met Shaip Mustafa Krashnica, an Albanian intellectual who was very active in the student activities for a better future. Because he was one of the rare Albanian intellectuals at that time, he organized the building and funding of many schools for the Albanian youth. He was also active in the anti-fascist movement in Macedonia, and because of that he was imprisoned and sent to a Bulgarian concentration camp for 6 months. He returned back to Macedonia in the spring of 1942 and worked as a judge in a Tetovo court. He married Ljubica (my grandmother), and kept fighting against the fascists, which was the reason for his second imprisonment by the Nazis. After four months spent in a prison in Tirana (Albania), he returned to Tetovo, and with his wife and his infant daughter Teuta (1943--my mother) went to Prishtina (the capital of of the Kosovo region). The Nazis continued to look for him and, and one day the Germans entered his house and because they didn't find him, they took his wife and daughter to prison. Ljubica and Teuta got very sick in prison, which was the reason for their release. Shaip was soon found by the fascists and taken to various concentration camps. After the war is over he was released and went to Skopje, Macedonia's capital, and met his wife again after a long time. He became the public prosecutor in Skopje's court. He also got very active again in Prishtina (Kosovo), where he became the judge of their highest court. On May 2 1948, Shaip's and Ljubica's second child was born in Skopje, and they named her Edita. In 1962 he worked in Skopje in the the famous clock tower as a lawyer up until 1964 when he got cancer and died.

Ljubica did not remarry and had two children to take care of. Teuta, as a teenager, lived in Tetovo, where she finished high school. She came to Skopje to go to college, and she got a degree of law. Since 1967 she has worked as a journalist in the Macedonian National Radio. Now she is internationally famous not only for her job as a journalist but also for her work against war and discrimination. Teuta founded the Movement for Peace and Civil Initiative of the Republic of Macedonia in 1991. She is also active in many non-govermental organizations in Macedonia that strive to make a better future for mankind. In her life she has received many awards, one of which was the award for Important Leaders of Non-govermental Organizations, which was given to her by the American Institute of North Carolina. Teuta married Dragan Cuckov on July 1, 1973. Four years later, on the same date of their anniversary, they had a child (my sister) whom they named Natasha for an interesting reason. When she was born, Natasha appeared to have a mark on her forehead in the shape of the letter "H". In Macedonian "H" is pronounced the same as the English "N". So they decided to give her the beautiful name Natasha. In 1981, I was born. I was born on the same date one year later as the death of Marshal Tito, May 4.