Baba Anujka, born Ana Draksin and later known by the surname di Pištonja, lived for most of her long life in Vladimirovac, a village in the South Banat region between Vršac and Pančevo. She worked as a folk healer and was consulted by villagers for roughly half a century. In July 1929 the Pančevo District Court sentenced her to 15 years in prison. At that time press accounts gave her age as 90 or 93, and the court proceedings were reported in Austrian and Serbian newspapers.
The retellings of her life, from a local author's book to newspaper features, disagree on dates, ages, numbers and even the year of her death.
Accounts give her birth as 1837 or 1838 and say she came from a family of Romanian origin, said to be wealthy cattle owners, who moved to Vladimirovac when she was a child. Index.hr, citing earlier press accounts, reported that she grew up on a large estate in the village. At about 20 she was married to a much older and well-off farmer from the Pištov family, whose name gave her the later surname di Pištonja. Index.hr reported that they had eleven children and that ten of them died. Her husband died in the 1850s, according to the same account, and she stayed on in the house.
Index.hr attributes part of this to what she herself said at her trial. Her husband's given name and the names of the children are not on record.
After her husband's death she turned part of the house into what Index.hr called a laboratory. She became known across the district as a vračara, a healer who gave advice, sold remedies and preparations, and solved the family problems brought to her. Kurir wrote that she also ran a tavern in the village and used a network of helpers in nearby settlements. One of those helpers, a woman named Ljubinka Milankov (spelled Milanov in one account), found customers by listening to talk in the village.
Index.hr and Kurir say that most of her clients were women and that some came to settle quarrels inside their families. Some, the articles add, came to find a way to have a relative excused from military service. The same pieces say that people of rank visited her, but they give no names.
Index.hr reported that she was arrested in 1914 and tried at Bela Crkva, and that she was not convicted. The paper attributes the account to Austrian and Serbian newspaper reports from 1929, and it states that the authorities of the time had paid little attention to the rumors about her before the arrest. The details of that trial are not on record. Whatever its exact form, it ended without a conviction.
The case that ended her practice began in the village of Ilandža in late December 1927. A well-off widower there, Gaja Prokin, died. Kurir gave the date of his death as December 29, 1927. Investigators from the Pančevo District Court arrested her assistant, Ljubinka Milankov, who, according to Index.hr, admitted her own part and that of her employer. Kurir wrote that the inquiry then reached other deaths in the district.
Index.hr, which draws on the book by the chemist and local author Šimon Đarmati, says that the inquiry uncovered several more deaths in the district. Of these it names two, those of Nikola Momirov and Lazar Ludoški, and states that only these two cases led to charges against Baba Anujka at the trial. The years and villages of the two men are not given.
Kurir marks parts of its own account as local legend, and it does not say which deaths the court tied to her.
She was tried at the Pančevo District Court with her alleged accomplices. Kurir states that on July 6, 1929, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison, in the words of the paper, "15 godina tamnice." Index.hr gives the same length of sentence and says that two women described as accomplices, Stana and Sofija Momirov, received life sentences. Index.hr says that Baba Anujka denied the charges to the end and that she turned on a witness in the courtroom.
The offence of which she was convicted is not on record, nor are the court's reasoning and the exact charge wording. The age given for her at the trial varies between 90 and 93, and Index.hr itself gives 1928 and 1929 as the conviction year at different places. The 1929 date rests on Kurir's specific report of July 6.
Whether the sentence was appealed, and what any higher court decided, is not on record.
The accounts split over what happened next. Index.hr reports one version in which she was released after eight years because of her age and died two years later at 100, and quotes Đarmati as saying that she died at the age of 100 of senile dementia. It gives a second version, attributed to the paper Alo, in which German occupation forces freed her in 1941 and she died at home aged 104. Kurir repeats the claim about 1941 and says it comes from unverified sources. Telegraf, writing in 2020 about the sale and demolition of her house, gives her years as 1838 to 1938. The year of death is therefore not settled by the record.
Đarmati told Index.hr that he doubted she went back to her old trade after prison, while noting that unverified stories say she did.
Her house in Vladimirovac was sold for about 8,000 dollars and was later torn down, according to Telegraf in August 2020. A new building stands on the plot, and the paper said that the heirs live abroad. Đarmati said that the loss of the house was a loss for local history, since a museum there could have drawn visitors.
The number of deaths attributed to her varies by source. Index.hr says that she is credited with at least 50 and perhaps as many as 150 deaths, and Kurir uses "dozens" in the text under a headline that says "hundreds". Telegraf says more than 150. None of these figures comes from a court finding. Index.hr notes that families often refused to cooperate with the police, which is given as the reason so few cases could be taken to trial. Index.hr names two deaths, those of Nikola Momirov and Lazar Ludoški, as the cases that went to trial.
Other items in the retellings, such as a first death dated to 1878 and a claim that her followers were killed in 1945, are not supported by anything that can be checked and are claims, not findings.
Much of the local story comes from Šimon A. Đarmati's book on the woman from Vladimirovac, published in 2007 under a title that Kurir gives as "Baba Anujka: vračara iz Vladimirovaca". The later newspaper retellings draw on it and on his interviews.
1837 or 1838: born, according to different accounts.
1850s: her husband dies.
1914: arrested and tried at Bela Crkva; not convicted.
December 29, 1927: death of a widower in Ilandža, which brings investigators from the Pančevo District Court.
1928: arrest of her assistant, who admits her part.
July 6, 1929: sentenced to 15 years by the Pančevo District Court.
1938 or 1941 or later: the year of her death is given differently by different accounts.