The Certificate
A sworn English translation of a Yugoslav birth extract — the one state document in this archive, and the only thing here that confirms Hedviga's birth from outside the family tree.
It was attached to Hedviga's MyHeritage profile the whole time. It is not in the GEDCOM — media does not export — so the first build of this archive said plainly that no civil registration document underpinned anything. That was true of the data and false of the evidence, and this page is the correction.
What it says
TRANSLATION FROM THE CROATIAN ORIGINAL · FEDERAL NATIONAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA · NATIONAL REPUBLIC OF CROATIA · Region: Senj · National Register of Senj Municipality · Reg. number 152/1954
| Child | DEFRANCESKI, IVAN, male — born 17 December 1951 at 11:30, Senj Hospital |
|---|---|
| Entered | 1951 register, page 252, ordinal number 110, on 22 December 1951, on the written notice of the Regional Hospital, Senj, no. 595/51 |
| Father | Ivan Defranceski — born 25.06.1925, Crikvenica; citizenship Croatian/Yugoslav; nationality Italian; profession electro-mechanic; resident Crikvenica |
| Mother | Hedviga, née Blazevic — born 03.08.1926, Senj; citizenship FNRJ; nationality Croatian; profession housewife; resident Crikvenica |
| Issued | Senj, 27 April 1954. Registrar Slavković Krsto, under the seal of the Municipality of Senj |
| Certified | Marijana Čizek, Sworn Translator for the Supreme Court of South Africa |
Four things it settles or opens
Hedviga's birth, confirmed from outside the tree
3 August 1926, Senj. Every other statement of that date in this archive traces back to the same MyHeritage record. This one is a state register entry, written down in 1951 by a registrar who was recording her son's birth and had no interest in her genealogy. Why that distinction is the whole method →
The father is recorded as Italian
Yugoslav civil registration separated citizenship from nationality, and Ivan Defranceski is entered as a Yugoslav citizen of Italian nationality — while Hedviga, in the next column, is Croatian. The tree records no such thing. It is consistent with the de Franceschi spelling the family carries.
They were living at Crikvenica
Both parents are resident at Crikvenica in December 1951, though the birth was at Senj hospital — which is why Ladislava (1948) is recorded born at Crikvenica and the two boys at Senj. The family was at Crikvenica and went up the coast to the hospital. Hedviga →
It is emigration paperwork
A Yugoslav birth extract gets translated by a sworn translator for the Supreme Court of South Africa for one reason: an official application. The extract was drawn in 1954. That is roughly twenty years before Hedviga's recorded arrival in South Africa in April 1975 — so either the translation is much later than the extract, or the family's move out of Yugoslavia began far earlier than this archive assumed. The translation is undated in what can be read here.
What would settle the last one. The original document, at full resolution, to read the translator's date stamp; and the South African immigration file the translation was made for. Open questions →