European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

So I went home.

On the first evening the partisans, acquaintances were already there.

After 14 days the holiday was over.

“Well, what are we going to do, mother?” My mother was crying again.

She sprinkled me with holy water.

“Mother, that doesn’t help! I will not go back to the ones that sentenced us to death.”

So I went and the commander of the partisans said:

“We will come and pick you up.

We will bring enough people so your family won’t be resettled or get locked into jail.”

The evening came.

No partisan called up, but the commander had told me I would be gone in the evening.

I went back to Bleiburg and picked up my military equipment.

On the next day I met the commander of the partisans and said to him:

“Why didn’t you come?”

He said to me:

“You know by yourself where you belong.”

That was easily said in those days.

But it was not an easy thing to do.

But the English bombarded Klagenfurt in those days.

When the police came afterwards to ask if I had reported somewhere, my mother said: