European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Deciding to take part in the Resistance

I was terribly upset then that Ljubljana was occupied. I think the majority of Ljubljana residents were.

Ljubljana was actually on the border of the occupation zone.

The north of Ljubljana was occupied by the Germans,

and from the northern border of the city southwards were the Italians …

not to mention the border of present-day Hungary.

The Hungarians had joined the Rome-Berlin Axis and occupied Prekmurje.

Of course I knew what lay ahead of us.

I knew that, just like German Nazism, Italian fascism had a program to basically liquidate the Slovenes.

For a while I knew nothing of any Liberation Front (LF), maybe I sensed that something was going on.

One day in early autumn I went up to the Ljubljana Castle and looked toward the German border of Ljubljana.

I saw huge billows of smoke above the village of Rasica.

That village was situated on the German side. I don’t know how the news got to Ljubljana.

But everyone around me already knew that Rasica was burning; that the Germans were burning it.

That they had rounded up and taken the entire male population away.

In that moment I said to myself, "I can’t just do nothing."

I didn’t want to overestimate my own powers. After all, I was young and I wasn’t expecting I’d be able to do much.

But considering what I’d read in Tolstoy, I knew that basically every historical action

is the result of the actions of many, perhaps completely insignificant people,

who, together, can achieve something historically significant.

So I decided that I couldn't let myself just stand aside.

So I went straight to the telephone – there weren’t many at the time, but we had one in our home –

and called my friends, who I’d heard whispering stuff. I had sensed it had something to do with the occupier.

I said I wanted to get ‘in’, that I wanted in on whatever they knew about. The very next day I was called to my first meeting.