Badge "Member Of The Yugoslavian Catholic Union".

[scook17]

Anyone know what this badge/medal/award is? The cross at the top may mean some sort of church award. I assuming this is Czech because of the writing on the top. Of course I could be completely wrong.

Kind Regards,
Shane Cook.

[Al-muell]

The writing is in Polish - no Czech letters here - ussually there's no "Ł" nor there's "cz" in... Czech language (it's not my fault it's spelled this way)

The writing says "Member"
Than there's some shortcut on the medallion - jed jugo slow kat - can be Unity of the Yugoslvian catholicks - I don't know if such thing existed, but many strange things could have happened near the town of Prnjavor...

But seriously I have never seen such badge. If my theory is correct, it would rather be a pre-war item.

[Tombak]

Translation from Polish: MEMBER YugoSlovakian Catholic Union
A very unusual badge. Definitely pre-WW2. Perhaps of a religious association on the territory of Yugoslovakia? The colors (light blue and white) suggest Yugoslavia. But I don't know why it would be in Polish. Perhaps a historian on the subject would know whether a Polish minority lived in any territories of Yugoslavia before the war? It is possible.

[Al-muell]

There used to be quite a large Polish community in Yugoslavia. Heck, during WW2 there were even entirely polish partisan squads as a part of Tito's partisan army. So I see no reason why wouldn't the Polish organize some catholic organisation there?
The origins of polish community there are simple. In austro-hungarian times for some reason (don't remember exacly) some parts of current Bosnia were almost deserted. So, the authorities decided to send there some people who would easily assimilate with the locals. So they took some of the polish inhabitants of the monarchy and moved them there - mainly to the vicinity of the town of Prnjavor. Most of the polish community moved to Poland after WW2 (most of them to the area around the townn of Bolesławiec), but some of them still leave there.

And this wasn't that unusual - e.g. on other ocasion some people from Slovakia were moved to Slovenia. This is still visible if You look at churches in central slovenian towns...