European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

My second encounter was about two years later when my father took me to Trieste.