European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Especially now that I understand who I am as a painter.

Above all I’m a landscape painter, because it’s my world.

Before the war, I’d cycle out of Ljubljana to find some motif to draw and paint.

At first we received a sort of ‘lascia passare’,

Later they abolished it.

Then they prohibited bicycles and I couldn’t go anywhere anymore.

I took a wheel from my sister’s bicycle and had a colleague attach it to my bicycle.

and inspected me and discovered that all I had were flowers and let me pass on through.

But when I reached today’s Presernova Street and passed by the Italian police,

Then the so-called ‘quaestors’ arrested me and confiscated my tricycle and took me to the police.

Then they put me in a police car, a policeman on each side of me.

I felt so ashamed to be taken home in such company. They drove me home because I admitted where I lived.

“Does she live here?” - “She lives here.”

They then left and the next day I got my tricycle back.

But I wasn’t permitted to ride it anymore because after my little adventure, tricycles were also banned.