European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

and threatened to bash me in the face if he heard one more such obscene word.

Even though I was just a child, this was the moment when fascism instinctively emerged within me in the form of identification:

everyone and anyone who spoke the Italian language was a fascist.

So, the beginning was quite traumatic.

On the one hand it was unjust to me, personally, because I was incorporated into the persecution of Slovenes.

Also to my family, which was also exposed to various elements of harassment where they lived and worked.

Introduction

I am Ciril Zlobec,

Slovene poet, writer, translator and essayist, and many-a-thing regarding my age.

Most of all, it was the Partisan movement during my youth that affected the rest of my life.

I joined as a fighter and a coordinator, actively at hand in the Resistance movement for whatever purpose in my field of activity.

This time played a fundamental role in the formation of my personality.

I had no dilemmas when I was faced with the choice of joining the armed resistance against fascism.

Contrary to many in central Slovenia, there was no doubt in my mind whether to join or not.

Although personally, I of course had many doubts.

I had gone to study prior to WWII.

It was my great ambition to get an education because I sensed within myself, already early, the inclination to write.

I even wrote a few awkward verses.

I was aware that I could truly become a poet, in the correct sense of the word, with the appropriate education.