European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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In the two years that I was with the Partisans, I came quite close to death several times.
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I somehow had to get used to death becoming a part of Partisan life.
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For each fight there was the success or failure of the encounter.
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It was determined almost exclusively on the basis of the number dead.
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If we fought with the Germans and then figured that five Partisans had fallen,
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so as to find pleasure in the result of the encounter.
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We had to convince ourselves, regardless of how true it was, that we had lost five Partisans while the enemy had lost twenty.
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You had the feeling that the death that swallowed up your colleagues was not in vain.
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Rather it was a mini-contribution towards liberation and the persecution of the occupying enemy,
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freedom and everything we imagined was to be after the war ended.
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I myself was lucky.
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I was an informer, the Germans caught me three times and three times they let me go; all because I wore this…
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I’m an agnostic. I’m not a believing man. But my mother was extremely religious.
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When I joined the Partisans she said to me: Son, I know you don’t pray, but… here, take this little rosary.
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And she put it in my pocket. She was a peasant girl.
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Out of respect to my mother I carried that rosary in my pocket at all times.
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When the Germans first captured me and searched me and emptied my pockets, they pulled out my rosary.
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They were in the habit of believing that all Partisans kill priests and burn churches.
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They were certainly surprised to find a Partisan with a rosary in his pocket.
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Furthermore, it coincided with my forged papers, which stated that I was still studying at the theological seminary.
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