European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Male, born on 4 July 1925 in Ponikve na Krasu, Slovenia. Already as a child, Ciril Zlobec, as a member of the Slovene minority in Italy, was subjugated to fascist denationalization procedures: he had to attend an Italian school and he was not permitted to speak Slovene in public. He wrote his first poem, expressing his Slovenian civil rights, at the age of 13. In 1941, Zlobec was expelled from the high school located in the small theological seminary in Koper, when he was caught writing poems in Slovene. He became an activist in the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation in 1942 and at the beginning of the following year he was mobilized to the special battalions (political confinement for young Primorje Slovenians). Upon the fall of Italy in September 1943, he returned home and joined the partisans. He was a fighter, a political delegate, a courier and an informer. He founded Slovene schools throughout the Karst area, he taught, and he gave lectures at the Partisan’s People’s University. Zlobec continued his studies in Ljubljana and graduated as a Slavic scholar. He then worked as a reporter and an editor. He is a poet, a writer and a translator. He served one mandate as the president of the Yugoslavian Writer’s Association. He was elected to the Presidency of the first independent Slovene state at the first multi-party elections in 1990. He is an ordinary member of the Slovene Academy for Arts and Sciences. He has published several collections of poems, two novels and five books of essays and journalisms. 18 of his books are translated into foreign languages. He has received several literary awards at home and abroad.

Male, born on 19th of April, 1924 in Šentjanž (Rečici ob Savinji), Slovenia, Catholic. Prior to WWII, Ivan Srčnik was a member of the SKOJ, the association of young communists of Yugoslavia. Following the German occupation of Lower Styria, he was forcibly mobilized in the German Army in 1942 and sent to the Russian front. He was captured by the Red Army in Bakaleja. At the end of December 1943, he left the POW camp at Kolomina and, as a combatant of the Yugoslav battalion, headed towards Yugoslavia. He fought on the Yugoslav front as a member of the Yugoslav resistance movement up to the liberation.

Lipej Kolenik was born on the 22.9.1925 in Margarethen near Bleiburg/Šmarjeta pri Pliberku. He had his first contact with partisans in spring 1943. He did courier jobs. In August 1943, he had to go to the Wehrmacht; firstly, to be trained, but soon he was transtered to Slovenia and in the end of 1943 to the Italian front. Here he got heavy frostbites on his feet and was moved to several military hospitals, in the end to Klagenfurt. On the occasion of a visit on the farm of his parents, he deserted to the partisans. He was active in various units. In March, he was severely wounded and witnessed the liberation hidden in a bunker, with hardly any medical support. After war he was unemployed and stayed politically active. He was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. He is chairman of the Carinthian partisan association.

Vincent grows up in the Communist working class, his father soon takes him along to different demonstrations. As soon as he can, he joins the Communist Youth Movement. After the defeat (la débâcle) in June 1940 he returns to Nanterre. Upon his return to Nanterre he participates in political actions, as the reproduction and distribution of leaflets and posters. He is part of the « Forces unies de la jeunesse patriotique (FUJP) », the United Forces of the Patriotic Youth, a youth movement of political and religious orientation. In 1942 he goes underground, as he refuses to leave for forced labour in Germany. The character of his activities change, he becomes part of the Francs-Tireurs et Particants (FTP) (snipers and participants) and is responsible for the safety of the comrades that have public appearances. As an FTP-FFI he is responsible for the safety of the Communist mayor, Raymond Barbet, during the liberation of Nanterre on August 21st, 1944 and then assists during the fall of the fortress Mont Valérien. Vincent is demobilised in June 1945. After the war he returns to Nanterre and takes up his former profession as a mechanic in the Simca factory. But he is fired in 1947. From 1954 to 1966 he is head of the department childhood and physical education. In 1966 he begins to work in the office of the Sports and Gymnastics Labor Federation (FSGT) until his retirement in 1980. Throughout this time he keeps up his activities as a local representative in the municipality.Today he is the president of the ANACR section in the Hauts-Seine department. He visits schools together with former deportees to relate his experience as a former resistance fighter.

Carlo Porta was born in Gavasseto di Reggio Emilia on May 18, 1919, into a large family of farm workers who followed the socialist ideas of Camillo Prampolini. At the age of sixteen he was already an active member of the Socialist Party, taking part in the International Red Relief by collecting small amounts of money or goods for the Republican fighters in Spain. After being employed as a factory worker at Officine Meccaniche Reggiane, an engineering plant that manufactured armaments during Mussolini’s regime, in 1938 he is called up for military service. While in the Army, authorities find out about his antifascist militancy: he is arrested and imprisoned in Civitavecchia, Regina Coeli (Rome), Reggio Emilia and Castelfranco Emilia. Perfunctorily judged by the Special Tribunal for National Security, he is sentenced to three years’ confinement in the farming penal colony of Pisticci (Matera), in the region of Basilicata. While in confinement, he meets chief figures of the Italian Communist Party, whose teachings would contribute to mould his political beliefs. At the end of the three years of confinement he returns to Reggio Emilia, but a few months later he is called to the Army again and sent to Albania with the Italian occupation forces. He is in Albania on the 8th of September of 1943, the day of the Armistice: captured by the Germans, he is sent to internment camps in Germany in stock wagons. He reaches his first destination after sixteen days and is interned as a IMI (Italian Interned Soldier) in the marshalling camp of Neubrandenburg. His identification number was 108 481. He is freed only two years later, while in the Wickede camp, near Dortmund.

We protected the partisans so much when we were kids; they were our friends and the Germans were our enemies.

One said: »I´ll do some collecting.« We used the collected money for the ›Rote Hilfe‹ (political help organ).

You would deliberately throw a spanner in the works, as long as you could and as long as you could breathe.

Well, did I kill somebody... We did shoot, but then knowing if we killed them for sure is another story.

That’s what the partisan struggle was about. Fourteen months more or less, constantly: these actions, these deaths.

Jak się jechało na przesłuchanie, jak człowiek nie przychodził, tylko go przywozili do celi.

Tam poszłam do pani, którą raz tylko w zyciu widziałam, miałam tam punkt kontaktowy naznaczony. Ona mi mówi proszę pani, pani moze uratować dziecko.

Nas, jako za młodych jeszcze, do dywersji nie chciano. Nasze władze harcerskie bardzo pilnowały tego, zeby za młodych ludzi nie dawać do dywersji.

There was no real future for us. But that made you stronger to go into the resistance and help wherever you could.

You are young people. Don’t fight with each other. Be collegial. Be friends because you don’t know what the tomorrow will be like.

The Resistance for me was just like going to university. I learned to feel confident throughout my whole life.

I remember Strozzi saying: »War has never brought anything good for the poor.«