European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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They told me to come back in the spring and that they’ll be delighted to have me then. So I returned home.
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Who knows if it was just a call of fate, but in February 1943 the Italian army found this group and slaughtered them all. Each and every young Partisan.
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Then they brought the corpses to the cemetery in Stanjel and forced the locals to come and look at the dead Partisans.
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They wanted us to get the impression that the resistance movement was over. They crammed us into that cemetery.
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Just to make a stronger impression they partially stripped the dead bodies and turned them over in various ways, displaying even their genitals.
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This dishonor to the deceased was an outrage to me, considering my classical upbringing straight from the theological seminary -
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that one must respect the dead akin to how they are respected in literary sources such as Homer etc.
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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.
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Only a month later I was confined. They threw me out of bed in the middle of the night.
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They packed me into a truck and carted me away, along with all the other youths born in 1924, 1925 and 1926.
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They drove us to various regions throughout Italy. I was sent to the Abruzzi
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and I had to spend all my time there until the capitulation of Italy.
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I was surrounded by farmer boys, all relatively awkward in the Italian language,
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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.
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Three hundred young men.
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First contacts with fascism
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The first time I ever entered a school building presented me with my first personal contact with fascism.
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I was six years old and the teacher demanded that all newcomers greet with the characteristic fascist raised arm salutation.
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Subconsciously, I immediately sensed the pressure of something foreign and hateful and I didn’t want to raise my arm in the fascist salute.
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Upon the teacher’s persistence that I must salute, some sort of childish impetuosity, a stubborn anger arose in me.
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