European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

My mother came from Styria and my father from Carniola. They both met in Ljubljana.

I was born 19 April 1924 in Recica near Savinja.

Then we moved. As far as our residence is concerned, we moved from

Sentjanz, Radmirje, Menges, Luc and we ended up here in Kropa.

On 10 July 1942, I was mobilized to the German Arbeitsdienst, the German labor service.

I was mobilized into this service, which was a sort of  paramilitary type.

I was in the Arbeitsdienst for six months.

Then I returned in December 1942. By the time I got home, the call-up for the German army was already waiting for me.

„The women gave so much“

Maybe my sister had a harder time than I did, as she was always in the mountains with all the boys, but they all truly loved her.

I know that when she came back to Maro during the summer they would all come to visit her.

She got married with the commander of her unit and they moved to Genoa, but they still had a house in Maro,

and when they came back a lot of people would go and see them.

Women were so respected at that time.

When I went to the mountains, all the boys from Reggio would come and ask me if I had seen their parents.

They listened to whatever news I had. You could say I brought life back to them, small as I was, looking like a gipsy and always dirty.

Honestly, you washed yourself in a ditch when you stopped, and at times you even ended up drinking from the same ditch.

You were so thirsty that you would drink water wherever you found it, even from a hole in the ground.

I always say that we were born old, but we also grew day by day.

You might have forgot about the things of today, but then you’d start thinking about what the future held for you,