European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

My family wanted me to stay at least a full day. No. I couldn’t wait.

For me, joining the Partisans felt like discovering America.

I wanted to become an active fighter and not just a sympathizer.

The mood after the fall of fascism – formally on July 25th and later September 8th -

when Italy acceded to the unconditional truce,

and which was when we arrived after a few days of travel from the Abruzzi to the Karst,

the atmosphere was already in full swing.

People were gathering and cheering about liberation, convinced that the war was over.

So my comrades and I, we were anxious and eager to seize the day that we, too, would become fighters, before the war ended.

It was a total illusion that with the capitulation of Italy, Germany would fall as well.

Partisan „hero“ Janko Premrl (Vojko)

The anti-fascist disposition was in our blood.

Hearing the first news that some opposition had arisen somewhere -

especially once these news came to the Slovenians in the Primorje region, which belonged to Italy –

we all were automatically for the Partisan movement.

Not only were we inclined to it, indeed we experienced it extremely naively.

It was a romantic view of unconquerable Partisans,

the same Partisans who suddenly show up first here and then there, un-capturable!

The first Partisans were in our eyes according to our hopes and aspirations. They did not conform to reality.

Already in 1942 there were posters hung all over the Primorje region,