European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I never before, nor ever thereafter came across such again.

So, during the actual fighting, Partisan ethics were at their heroic apex; they were pure.

Things happened after the war.

Once it’s all over, when you finally feel that all the bad is over and done with,

that’s when uncontrollable human passions surface;

and of course already the first political reckonings, settlements and everything bad.

That’s why I, even today, while history is revised, always say that it was a clean and pure fight for liberation.

Especially with the Slovenes, in contrast to the French, the Czechs or whoever,

who fought for the uniting of Slovenes into one community. It was pure and ethical.

Later the passion began. It’s when some get weapons into their hands

and also deem themselves as having the power to decide who is the enemy and who to take revenge upon.

Of course things then happen which cause a shadow to fall over even those few ideal

and idealistic aspects of anti-fascism, across everything that occurred between 1941 and 1945.

First combat with German forces

I was so eager to exchange blows with the enemy.

I was in a battalion, equipped with only three machine-guns and rifles, very poorly armed.

The Germans surrounded us with tanks during the night.

It was their mighty army against ours. They waited until morning to attack.

I immediately offered to go, and three more men were equally enthusiastic to go with me up against the German tanks with hand grenades.

We imagined it was just a matter of throwing the grenades, we would simply kill the Germans