European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

Subconsciously, I immediately sensed the pressure of something foreign and hateful and I didn’t want to raise my arm in the fascist salute.

Upon the teacher’s persistence that I must salute, some sort of childish impetuosity, a stubborn anger arose in me.

Nothing could make me raise my arm.

Eventually, because he insisted, I raised my arm, albeit in childish wounded vanity.

The teacher was standing over me and he gave me a hard slap.

That was my first encounter with fascism. I was a six year old fighter.