European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I presented myself at the end of 1942.

They advised me that winter was nearing and that it’s pointless because the leaves will be falling and camouflage will be more difficult.

They told me to come back in the spring and that they’ll be delighted to have me then. So I returned home.

Who knows if it was just a call of fate, but in February 1943 the Italian army found this group and slaughtered them all. Each and every young Partisan.

Then they brought the corpses to the cemetery in Stanjel and forced the locals to come and look at the dead Partisans.

They wanted us to get the impression that the resistance movement was over. They crammed us into that cemetery.

Just to make a stronger impression they partially stripped the dead bodies and turned them over in various ways, displaying even their genitals.

This dishonor to the deceased was an outrage to me, considering my classical upbringing straight from the theological seminary -

that one must respect the dead akin to how they are respected in literary sources such as Homer etc.

It only reinforced my attitude: I would go to all ends, upon first opportunity, to find the next group that forms, which surely would, and I would join the Partisans.

Only a month later I was confined. They threw me out of bed in the middle of the night.

They packed me into a truck and carted me away, along with all the other youths born in 1924, 1925 and 1926.

They drove us to various regions throughout Italy. I was sent to the Abruzzi

and I had to spend all my time there until the capitulation of Italy.

I was surrounded by farmer boys, all relatively awkward in the Italian language,

even for simple communicative purposes, and it was I who accompanied and brought the entire unit back to the Primorje region and directly to the Partisans.

Three hundred young men.

First contacts with fascism

The first time I ever entered a school building presented me with my first personal contact with fascism.

I was six years old and the teacher demanded that all newcomers greet with the characteristic fascist raised arm salutation.