European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

We were friends straight away.

Afterwards we had to help them every day.

Into the forest, delivering food. In the evenings they came again.

That was the way the resistance was organised and kept getting stronger.

Anschluss, persecution, propaganda for resistance

The father, Wasilij, was still young.

He kept saying of National Socialism: “That will be no good.”

Afterwards, the authority was taken over by the Nazis,

they immediately locked up a number of people of the Slovenian minority

and priests. We saw it would not be the way it had been promised before.

It was a time without work and bread.

That helped the national socialists to come into power.

And many let themselves be led by the propaganda

and even believed that everything would be okay again.

That the people would live well – under Adolf Hitler.

But when the first Slovenians were locked up, we already knew my father was right.

The people lost their belief in Adolf Hitler

and the resistance formed against fascism and Hitlerism.

The first deserters from the ‘Wehrmacht’ had already escaped to Yugoslavia in 1939.

After the occupation of Yugoslavia they were arrested or had gone into hiding under a false name;