S L O V E N I A N P H O E N I X by John Corsellis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/
1 Dedicated to the heroes of this story
Prof. Bozidar Bajuk Director Marko Bajuk Sister Jane Balding BRCS Major Paul Barre UNRRA Dr Barton UNRRA CW Baty Dr Franc Blatnik Florence Boester UNRRA Joan Couper BRCS Colonel Douglas Dodds-Parker MP Lieutenant-Colonel Dufour Prof. Kajetan Gantar Colonel Hall Father Janez Hladnik Margaret Jaboor UNRRA Monsignor Joze Jagodic Joze & Marija Jancar Dr Janez Janez Major Jarvie UNRRA Prof Jeglic Franz & Mrs Kremzar Joze Lekan Dara Lieven UNRRA Dr Valentin & Mrs Mersol Miss Mitchell UNRRA Dame Iris Murdoch UNRRA Captain Nigel Nicolson OBE David Pearson FAU France Pernisek John Selby-Bigge BRCS John Strachan FAU Dr Edward Vracko Group Captain Ryder Young UNRRA
2 3 4 5
John Corsellis
2008, Cambridge: photograph by Matt Kirwan, UK Press Photographer
6
John Corsellis
1945, Austria: oil painting by refugee artist Frederik Jerina photograph by Matt Kirwan, UK Press Photographer
7 S L O V E N I A N P H O E N I X
by John Corsellis
INTRODUCTION
Today's million and three quarter Yugoslav refugees were not the first from that country. Already in 1945 thousands fled the Communist take-over and escaped into Austria and Italy. 20,000 were committed Catholics and democrats from Slovenia, then the northernmost province of Yugoslavia. 11,000 of them were in uniform. They were sent back, forcibly repatriated, by the British Army three weeks later and killed by the Communists.
6,000 were civilians, who were also due to be sent back, escaped the fate of their soldier relatives with a few hours to spare. This book describes their extraordinary courage: how they recovered with astonishing speed from a devastating double trauma, picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and got on with living: how they created a community life of outstanding quality, educationally, culturally and socially, in the camps where they survived for the next three years; and how they resisted rigorous and increasing pressure to accept "voluntary repatriation", and eventually emigrated to North and South America, mostly under a scheme they themselves initiated.
The story is remarkably well documented. Two diaries cover the period: one written by a 38-year old social insurance clerk who fled with his wife and two small children, the other written from the contrasting view-point, of the people running the camps - the British Army, the Red Cross and Quaker relief workers, and UNRRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The latter diary is of particular relevance for today because of its portrayal of, and critical comments on, UNRRA. This was of course the first agency to operate in the name of the United Nations, and was the precursor of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which leads today's humanitarian effort for refugees all over the world.
The first diarist was Franc Pernisek. I remember him well. He was tall and lightly built with a thin face and a Harold Macmillan moustache. He held himself stiff and upright with a formal manner, took life very seriously and seldom smiled, but when he did it was with a shy and engaging warmth. He now lives in retirement in Argentina, a widower with his daughter, son and seven grand-children nearby.
I was the second diarist. The refugees arrived in Viktring, in 8 southern Austria close to the Yugoslav border, on the 12th May and I joined them a week later to assist the Canadian major and British Red Cross sister who were already establishing order in the primitive camp. I was in khaki with an FAU/Red Cross shoulder flash to indicate I was in the Friends' Ambulance Unit and was working under the coordination of the British Red Cross.
The FAU were young pacifists doing alternative service under Quaker auspices in wartime. On going abroad I had told my widowed mother I would try to send her fuller and more frequent letters if she would preserve them as a diary. I wrote with all the cocksureness of a 22-year old "expert" on refugee care, who had already worked in three busy camps in Egypt and Italy and spoke enough Italian, German, French and Serbo-Croat to communicate direct with the refugees and avoid dependence on interpreters. I often used the letters to voice my fury at what I considered the insensitivity of colleagues; but I avoided subjects my mother might find too distressing and was inhibited by the army censor reading over my shoulder. My youthful enthusiasm contrasts with the maturity and passion of Pernisek's diary. I transferred from the FAU to UNRRA at the end of 1945 and continued with the Slovenes until July 1947.
I draw heavily on both diaries and on a wealth of other primary sources: the Red Cross sister's diary for the first three weeks, the memoirs of the British Red Cross Assistant Commissioner for Austria, reports, official correspondence and memoranda and, most importantly, accounts from a whole series of former refugees on how they escaped, lived in the camps and finally emigrated. They tell their stories with such vividness that I use their own words to let the reader see the same events through a variety of eyes, some contemporary, others at a distance of fifty years; and I myself perform three roles: diarist, interviewer and commentator.
To start with a brief historical background is needed, to put the story into perspective. Slovenia is a country of fertile plains, hills covered with vines and fruit trees, forests and spectacular mountains: the size of Wales and not unlike the Tyrol in appearance. Until the end of World War I it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It then became the northern province of the newly formed kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and since 1991 it is an independent country, member of the United Nations and candidate for full membership of the European Union.
Yugoslavia's first twenty-three years were overshadowed by mistrust and hostility between Serb and Croat. Then in April 1941 the Germans and Italians invaded, overran and dismembered 9 the country. The young king and ministers escaped to London and established a government-in-exile, while a Colonel Draza Mihailovic of the Royal Yugoslav Army led armed resistance at home. The Soviet Union was at the time allied to Germany, so that the Yugoslav Communists denounced the Allies' fight against the Germans as an imperialist war. Three months later the Germans invaded Russia and the Yugoslav Communists executed an about-turn, denounced the Germans and started their own resistance movement. The two resistances, Communist and Royalist, were soon engaged in a bitter civil war.
Britain had to decide which side to support. The dilemma was described by Professor Foot, army officer turned Oxford historian1. He wrote that Britain was committed by the Atlantic Charter to the policy that, once Nazism had been broken, people should be free to choose the form of government they wanted: but at the same time was determined, if rival movements existed in an occupied country, to back whichever showed the greater promise of throwing the enemy out fast. At the time, he added, it was far from clear that to take the second line might simply be to substitute one tyranny with another; and also that wars were not necessarily two-sided affairs, 'us' against 'them', but were often polygonal, citing Spain after 1936 and the German and Russian invasions of Poland in 1939. He continued:
Yugoslavia provides a still more intricate example of a many-sided war: Croatia was set up as an independent state, under the dictatorship of Ante Pavelic and his Ustashe, who were inclined to massacre anybody they could catch who was not both Croat by race and Roman Catholic by religion...
The rest of Yugoslav territory was divided up between four neighbour powers - Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary. Within it, and in Croatia as well, there emerged two rival guerrilla organisations: Chetniks, owing allegiance to the exiled king and his government, and Partisans, run - under the cover that it was a national army of liberation - by the Comintern. Chetniks and Partisans seldom co- operated, and might shoot each other up; neither had much use for Italians or Germans, except for periods of local understanding at times of crisis; neither cared for Hungarians or Bulgars.
Britain's response was to attach liaison missions, first to the Chetniks alone and later to both sides. British military
1. Foot, M.R.D. (1984), SOE, An outline history of the Special Operations Executive 1940-46, (BBC, London) pp. 152-3. 10 intelligence in Cairo then reported to Winston Churchill in London that it was the partisans who were showing most promise of throwing the enemy out fast, and persuaded him that support should be switched to them alone.
When Foot wrote his book in 1984 he considered Churchill's decision right. Recently released SOE files caused a former SOE liaison officer with the Chetniks to challenge this. Captain Michael Way Lees, another soldier turned historian, maintained2 that the report which led Churchill to make his decision was neither truthful nor objective, but biassed, selective and specially distorted in favour of the partisans so as to blacken Mihailovic. He claimed it was in fact written by a James Klugman who had made no secret of his membership of the Communist Party at Cambridge before, and in London after, the war, but in spite of this held in Cairo in 1943 the key and confidential post of officer in charge of Special Operations Executive (SOE) activities into the Balkans. Professor Foot3 had described him in his book as one of two known Communist moles at SOE's headquarters in Cairo and Bari, adding that "he acquired a post from which he could exert leverage".
A third historian Richard Lamb concluded, in the light of newly opened archives, that Lees had established his case,4 quoting Churchill's comment of December 1945:
During the war I thought I could trust Tito ... now I am aware I committed one of the biggest mistakes of the war.5
When war ended in May 1945 Tito controlled most of Yugoslavia and the British Army started to occupy southern Austria. A separate section of the Army called Allied Military Government or AMG, responsible for the civil administration of the country, feared that disastrous epidemics of typhus or cholera would occur if large numbers of displaced persons were allowed to surge home uncontrolled, and set up a special DP or Displaced Persons and Prisoners of War branch to control them. AMG invited the British Red Cross Society to help, and the BRCS invited the Friends Ambulance Unit or FAU to share the task; and this was how I got involved.
2. Lees, Michael (1990), The Rape of Serbia, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York) 3. Foot, op. cit., pp. 146 and 46. 4. Lamb, Richard (1991). Churchill As War Leader (Bloomsbury, London), p. 254 5. Sunday Telegraph, 29 July 1990, quoted in Churchill As War Leader, p. 273 11 The story of the 6,000 Slovene civilians has an epic, heroic quality. Franc Pernisek begins it by describing the situation in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, on the 4th May 1945.
12 P A R T 1 : F L I G H T
C H A P T E R 1
4 - 12 May 1945
The German collapse in early May 1945 heralds for the rest of Europe the return to peace, but Ljubljana remains a divided city. Many await enthusiastically their liberation by Marshal Tito's partisans, but others are appalled at the prospect of life under a permanent communist tyranny, after four years of Italian and German oppression.
Those who openly opposed communism prepare to leave, and in this chapter Franc Pernisek starts his diary with a report that the partisans, and not the Allies, will be liberating the country. He prepares to leave home with wife, daughter aged ten and son aged five. They join the column of fugitives, walk for two days, secure a lift on a lorry up the mountain, walk through the tunnel into Austria, retrace their steps to avoid capture and escape again, this time over a mountain pass, and reach Viktring.
Marian Loboda, at the time a ten year old schoolboy, complements the Pernisek diary with his own account of family life under German occupation and their flight into Austria. Magdalena Simenc follows with her memories of how she, then eight years old, fled with her grandparents by ox-cart from the hills north-east of Ljubljana. The Bajuks, father and son both teachers, then tell their story, and Magda Vracko describes how her father the judge leads a group of students over the mountains, followed by the stories of two medical students, Joze Jancar and Marija Hribar.
The last contributor is a member of the anti-communist militia. His unit also escapes into Austria and is told to camp in the field next the civilians. 13 Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta: Sion deserta facta est: Jerusalem desolata est. Isaiah 64.10
A wild beast is most dangerous when about to die
The Pernisek diary6:
Friday 4th May 1945 The German army is retreating; it has relaxed combat readiness but the Gestapo continues with its persecution and the prisons are full of our people. A wild beast is most dangerous when about to die. Because the Slovenian National Council was proclaimed yesterday, the Gestapo surrounded the People's Printing Press and people have not been allowed to leave the building. Liberation Front sympathisers in our block of flats are happy and proud of approaching victory, and the whole house is full of the smell of freshly made pastries. Their women have been baking all night preparing for the arrival of the partisan army.
In our clean, white Ljubljana there is a strange atmosphere. The usually empty streets are full of people, who gather in small groups and talk in subdued voices. Our people are very worried by the disturbing news that the international communist brigade which goes under the name of the Yugoslav army has landed in Rijeka and is advancing towards Trieste and Ljubljana. The partisans are coming down from the mountains and the first refugees from Rakek have arrived in Ljubljana.
The fateful 5th of May. I went to work in the morning. Nobody was really working. We're all living in the expectation of important events. A British army arrived in Trieste: there it remained. There won't be any help from that source. I went and saw some well-informed friends who said the domobranci7 had been told to retreat, and civilians
6. Pernisek, Franc (1985). 'Pred stiridesetimi leti: Odlomki iz dnevnika slovenskega begunca' [40 Years Ago: Excerpts from the Diary of a Slovene Refugee], published serially in Duhovno Zivljenje, Buenos Aires, May 1985 - February 1990. 7. the National Guard, Homeguard or Slovene anti-communist catholic militia., 14 at risk to escape to Carinthia because the partisans controlled the road to Gorizia8. What we feared most has happened. I hadn't considered flight because I'd such confidence in the British and was convinced they'd liberate us.
The hardest moment in my life faces me: to tell my wife and children that if we want to stay alive we have to leave home, all our possessions and our homeland, and go abroad to an unknown future. The future will be terrible. In resignation I pray God to help me.
This morning I told my wife and children we must go abroad, to Carinthia in Austria. Our hearts were torn with sadness and fear. I left it to my wife to decide whether to stay at home with the children or come with me, but she said, "wherever you go, we all go. Whatever happens to us, we'll be together. If you go on your own, we'll probably never see each other again. And if we have to die, we'll die together".
It's three o'clock. They told me trains for refugees would start leaving from two onwards. Departure is bitter. We don't know if we're leaving home for a few weeks or months or perhaps for ever. With suitcases in my hands, a rucksack on my back, children at my side, I'm standing in front of a small statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus over the entrance of the house, and I pray to Him and His Mother, "Jesus, guide and take care of us, stay with us, help us, that the foreign yoke be not too heavy for our shoulders". Weeping bitterly, we cross the threshold and leave home. Neighbours watch and show no surprise.
Crowds of refugees wait at the station. The railway staff are unfriendly. There's no train and they don't know if one's on its way. From the station we went towards Jezica, hoping to get to Crnuce and from there a train for St. Vid and Kranj. The German guard wouldn't let us cross the bridge, so we went to St. Vid where the same thing happened. We turned back and met some friends and retraced our steps to Jezica and waited there till dark.
8. town over the Italian frontier
15
Here the Perniseks joined the main body of refugees heading north towards the Austrian border, the only route still open:
The bridge is open. On the other side at Crnuce a big crowd has already collected. A good friend lets us put our luggage on his cart. What luck! We wait until a column is formed. It's dark but we can recognise each other. They're all acquaintances, all good people. Everyone keeps silence, our hearts full of sorrow. There are flashes and the roar of guns from Ljubljana; every salvo increases our fears. We want to move away as quickly as possible.
It's pitch dark, eleven at night. The column starts to move. First the people from Polje, then carts from Ljubljana and after them the people from Ljubljana walk three abreast: then those from Ig, Smartno, Sticna and Dolenjska. Slowly we march along the road to Trzin and Cerklje, our first destination. Like a funeral, but this massive cortege has no hearse. The procession is sunk in sorrow and prayer, and even the beasts of burden are silent. Ljubljana is left further and further behind and the sound of the guns grows more and more distant.
Sunday 6th May. We reach Menges at one in the morning and rest a few hours, and after holy mass push on towards Cerklje. It's a lovely day, unusually warm, and our road takes us through the most beautiful parts of Gorenska. At Komenda we come across the first signs of the partisans' savagery: the Mejac homestead is burnt out and its silence accuses the perpetrators of arson and murder. How mighty and proud it stood when I last saw it.
We reach Cerklje around ten next morning. A magnificent spring day, the bells ring out. The village is decked with flags, a band plays joyfully: a free and united Slovenia is born! The people are on their way to holy mass rejoicing. The festive mood is brutally interrupted by the arrival of a long procession of exhausted and sorrowing refugees. The bells stop ringing, the band falls silent. People stand thunder-struck and ask themselves what this all means?
Our column was the first to reach the village and stop in front of the church. We are asked: where do we come from, why and where are we going? We answer 16 briefly. The church fills with locals and refugees. At mass the priest explains the tragic reason for our presence and asks the villagers to be hospitable: it's probable that within hours or days they'll be in the same plight.
People cry during mass. Afterwards they invite us into their homes and press food on us. After refreshment they invite us to stay longer to rest. Some decide to come with us. We try to convince them to remain at home, not to act rashly, but to no avail. Those who don't come say they'll follow shortly.
Monday 7th May. In the morning we start walking towards Suha. An uninterrupted flow of refugees swells the column. The countryside is magnificent, the children are thrilled by its beauty and beg us to stay as the communists won't come to such a splendid place. Poor children!
At Suha they welcomed us kindly. Each house took someone under its roof, gave us food, mostly produced by the local domobranci, and provided us with comfortable accommodation. In the afternoon we lay down a little in a meadow and the children played by a stream. My wife thought over the situation and cried. In the evening we gathered in the church and sang the litany in honour of Our Lady. Our first May devotions in exile. The news spread over the whole of Gorenjska like lightning: the people are fleeing from the "liberators" coming down from the forests. New streams of refugees come from all sides, converging on the road to Kranj and Trzic.
Tuesday 8th May. I hurry to Trzic to find out what's happening. The people there are afraid; a third of the domobranci troops and their general headquarters are in Kranj and have been ordered to retreat. Slovenian chetniks offered me a lorry to carry some mothers and children to Ljubelj, told me where we should wait and drove me there.
Wednesday 9th May. In the afternoon we learn Germany has signed an unconditional surrender. We're ready to leave for Austria, but there's still a long way in front of us. We don't know how far south the English have occupied Carinthia, some say Villach or Klagen- furt, others that the partisans are in Carinthia on the Austrian side of the Ljubelj pass. We must 17 hurry.
The chetniks picked us up as promised and we loaded the lorry in a hurry and were off. At Trzic we had to wait four hours, and then went forward very slowly as the road was blocked. Deafening explosions around us sounded like the day of judgement, and soldiers were throwing away weapons and ammunition into the deep stream. In a nearby rivulet there were great heaps of abandoned weapons, ammunition boxes and other military equipment.
At three we reached St. Ana near Ljubelj. The Germans were in a terrible hurry and pushed everyone out of their way and we had to wait. Slowly the stream of fleeing soldiers and people became less and we were able to drive through the tunnel into Carinthia.
There were two ways of reaching Austria: by a tunnel through the Karawanken mountains or a steep road over them, the 1,543 metre high Ljubelj or Loibl pass. The 2 km long tunnel was being dug on Hitler's orders to give his panzer divisions speedier access to the Adriatic. The giant civil engineering firm Universale was using slave labour from the notorious concentration camp of Mauthausen - French, Polish, Russian, Belgian, Italian and Yugoslavs.
In May 1945 the tunnel was unfinished but passable, and was indeed first used by the panzer divisions in the opposite direction to the one intended. Today it carries tens of thousands of German and Austrian tourists to the luxury ski resort of Zelenica. Andre Lacaze, in his memorable book The Tunnel9, describes the sufferings of the slave workers, the brutality of the SS and the obstinate refusal of the now prosperous firm of Universale to pay any compensation to the few surviving former slaves.
Pernisek continues with his account:
We reached the inn at Podrid and met with refugees who were returning and reported there were partisans at the Borovlje bridge who had captured some of our people. Shattering news, the women and children were crying, we were thunderstruck. More and more refugees returned with the same story. As we knew nothing about the next part of the road or the distances, we returned to Ljubelj and St. Ana.
9. Andre Lacaze, The Tunnel, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1980 18 Fortunately the road and the tunnel were free and we returned by the same short route without difficulty.
We're at Ljubelj again, but where now? We can't return home, for there Communist rule, the mob and death await us: we're overcome with horror and mortal fear. Fifty metres from the road stands a lovely hunting lodge belonging to Baron Borna, and we go and see it, taking the family with us. It's completely empty, but beds are made up in all the bedrooms. It was the staff quarters for the nearby concentration camp10 who had had to leave in a hurry only a short while ago. In the kitchen there were still unwashed dishes, pots and pans. We've beds and a roof over our heads for tonight.
Thursday 10th May. Ascension Day. We spend it on the balcony of the lodge in fear, sadness and prayer: it's a beautiful sunny day, but there are no warm rays in our souls. The church of St. Ana is closed, so we're without mass. More and more groups of refugees are arriving, mixed together with detachments of retreating soldiers, and among them the good people who welcomed us so kindly and gave us hospitality a couple of days ago. On the road to Trzic they were attacked by partisan snipers shooting from the houses or throwing hand grenades from the nearby hills, and they had to leave behind their carts with all their belongings, so that all they possess now is the clothes they wear. They say there are huge crowds of refugees and soldiers in front of the tunnel. At the moment the road over Ljubelj pass is open only for German soldiers who are hurriedly retreating. The first detachments of the Prince Eugen division which occupied the Balkans have been seen arriving. Tonight we're not alone, the lodge is full of refugees, many of them priests.
Friday 11th May. The morning sun gave our souls a first ray of hope. The domobranci of Rupnik's11 shock-troop battalion are arriving up the hill, and these lads will save us. If anyone can, they will drive the partisans away from Borovlje Bridge and open the road. We depend on them not only for our hope but also for our very lives. More domobranci
10. a sub-camp of Mauthausen concentration camp. 11. Colonel Vuk Rupnik, son of the Chief of the Administration for Ljubljana Province and former Mayor of Ljubljana, General Leon Rupnik. 19 units arrive and we start to live again. By midday couriers brought the news that our soldiers had indeed chased the partisans from the bridge and the road ahead was safe and clear. So the last battle of World War II took place at the bridge, between Rupnik's battalion of shock troops of the Slovenian National Army and the extreme southern appendage of the Soviet Red Army - the Slovenian partisans.
Dr. Mersol was with us at the hunting lodge and some domobranci came to fetch him by order of the Slovenian National Council because they needed a good interpreter for a meeting with the English. With him went our fellow lodger, Father Odilo - a sign that "ours" had already made contact with the English army.
Dr. Valentin Mersol will appear again. Son of a railway level- crossing keeper, he had attended as the first Rockefeller fellow from Slovenia the prestigious Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore and acquired there fluent English. He was a specialist in infectious diseases and one of Yugoslavia's leading doctors. Short and unimpressive in appearance, balding, with a round face and rimless glasses, he spoke precisely and dealt with British officialdom with infinite patience and a tentative smile. He was accompanied by his wife and four children. Mrs Mersol had a nervous manner but was equally capable: daughter of a distinguished writer and literary critic, she was a doctor of philosophy and spoke and wrote six languages including English. Father Odilo Hajnsek was a well-known Franciscan friar who also spoke English.
The representatives of the Slovenian National Council, with Dr. Mersol as interpreter, went to Klagenfurt and asked to see Field Marshal Alexander or the general in command locally to explain to him that the domobranci had indeed fought in self- defence against the communist partisans, but never against the British or Americans. They didn't get beyond a staff captain but were also received by the head of the Department for Displaced Persons and Prisoners of War, Allied Military Government, Carinthia, Major William Johnson, as Dr. Mersol recorded:
We told him a great number of Slovenian civilians and military had fled to Carinthia, because of communists and the atrocities committed by them during the war, and in their name we were asking to be put under the British protection and given food and shelter and the means to survive. Major Johnson told us the military were of no concern of his, but Military Government 20 would gladly receive the civilian refugees and help them. They were to assemble at the field near Viktring next to the military camp. He himself would go there as soon as he could, or send another officer to take charge of the civilian camp. The same morning we went to the British military command headquarters to discuss the fate of the domobranci, and were admitted by the adjutant Captain Hornby who told us we could give the domobranci the "go ahead" and the military command would receive them.
Meanwhile the main body of refugees were held up on the Slovenian side of the frontier, as Pernisek recorded:
So the road is now open, but not the way through the tunnel or over Ljubelj. Young SS men with loaded guns are standing around the mouth of the tunnel and only letting their own troops through. In a way this German retreat is something majestic: although beaten and humiliated, they are retreating in the best order and discipline.
We wait half-dead on the mound around the church, ready for the order to go. The sun scorches fiercely. Our souls are filled with darkness and bitterness although everyone tries to bear his pain bravely. No one swears or grumbles; one hears rather words of acceptance of God's will and prayers for God's help. We are left totally to ourselves, without any organised leadership.
We keep on waiting and waiting, but around eight in the evening our convoy of carts is ready to move. Our men look at the SS guards threateningly and approach them nearer and nearer. Some domobranci arrive, take in the situation, take their guns from their shoulders and make ready to fire. The Germans see the seriousness of their situation and the officer in charge orders the civilians to be let through. The convoy starts to move, escorted by domobranci. The road winds steeply uphill in serpentine bends of varying severity. The horses whinny, the carts groan, all the men push the carts to help the beasts which have difficulty climbing the hill.
St. Ana now lies far below and the whole valley is lit up by a huge conflagration: the concentration camp at Ljubelj is on fire. We are overcome by horror at the sight of the dark red flames and their 21 blood colour reflection on the rocks. The higher we go, the darker it is and the more frightening the sight of the burning valley. We hear repeated explosions. How we'd have suffered if we'd still been at St. Ana's!
Andre Lacaze records the burning of the camp in his book, The Tunnel, "it had been bombed and set on fire in the course of a bloody battle between the partisans and SS .. for possession of the tunnel and Route 333. Nothing was left of the camp."
Pernisek continues:
Around midnight we reach the pass, and the road goes immediately steeply downhill on the Carinthian side. We're in Austria. We all have to hold the carts back. The children have been brave up to now. My five year old son Sinko is even now courageously descending into Carinthia. My daughter holds chaplain Burja's hand and chats with him.
The deep darkness is lit up by flares which the soldiers let off into the air, which have a fairy- like effect in the already beautiful scenery around us. The descent is somewhat less steep now and the people start reciting the rosary. The children are dead tired and falling asleep; we don't dare put them on the carts as the descent is too steep to risk it. We carry them ourselves. They are today our sweet, though heavy, burden.
Saturday, 12th May. Dawn breaks, the first day of the "three wet saints", the feast of St. Pancras12. The morning is grey and it's starting to rain. We are stuck on the road to Mali Ljubelj13: the whole area is jam-packed with German soldiers, Vlasov troops14 and refugees. We run into a German transport detachment who are swearing and beating their horses to make their way ahead of everybody. They're well fed but still they steal from the refugees the few belongings they have, especially bicycles. Our people are trying to fend them off by brandishing sticks.
We leave the carts and look for a spot where the
12. The Slovene St. Swithin's Day. 13. little Ljubelj or Loibl 14. Members of the anti-communist "Russian Liberation Army" led by ex-Soviet General Vlasov. 22 family can rest a little, while the drivers and the transport animals are also resting. The soldiers sit on the grass in groups, trying to get rid of the fleas. We go further up, not wanting ourselves to be infested at this early stage of our exile.
The road through Mali Ljubelj is less difficult, only the last part is quite steep. Everywhere on the verge there are heaps of abandoned weapons, ammunition, military equipment, cars and animal carcases causing a foul smell. By early afternoon we surmount the last portion of the mountain pass and start to descend towards Borovlje, advancing step by step, so crowded is the narrow track. A German tank detachment is close behind us.
In Borovlje we meet an English tank detachment and the soldiers look at us with curiosity. They try to be kind, but we cannot understand each other. After a short rest we push on towards the bridge crossing over in the direction of Klagenfurt. The road is wide and made of concrete and extremely hot from the sun. On the other side the English soldiers are disarming everyone including our domobranci, who up till now have been watching over us and protecting us faithfully. God is kind; we're already a week on the road and not even a few drops of rain have fallen.
At around nine in the evening we arrive and English soldiers direct us to the plain of Vetrinje, which is one huge camp. German soldiers, Vlasov troops, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, soldiers and civilians, military baggage, horses, all crammed together with no room to spare. Our column is directed to a wheat field.
Vetrinje, a new station on our Way of the Cross. Here we are. What next? My wife looks at me hopelessly, the children ask for food, it's a long time since we last ate. Where will we sleep? What shall I tell them? How can I console them? "We love Jesus and he loves us. Now we're like Lord Jesus who had nowhere to lay his head. Let us trust him." For supper we had our bitter tears. Exhausted, we flopped down. After a walk of thirty hours we slept well under the open sky and on the hard bare ground.
Pernisek gives the most detailed account of the escape into exile. Marian Loboda complements it. He was of a different generation, only 10 years old in 1941, and his family were not 23 town, but country, people. He describes life under the Germans as he remembers it 50 years later:
On Palm Sunday in 1941, on the way to Mass in my native village 12 km from Ljubljana, I saw black planes with white crosses hover like falcons over their prey and release bombs we could hear a long way off. The war had started for us, and a couple of days later a column of German troops on motorcycles appeared in our village, young lads in dark brown uniforms, very friendly and cheerful, throwing sweets and chocolates at us children. A week later others appeared, in green uniforms with shining black boots and caps from which shone silver-plated skulls and crossbones, who were more sullen and didn't smile. My mother and I lived with an uncle, who was secretary of the local municipality and director of several catholic organisations in the village as well as of the Slovene Popular Party. Despite his hatred of the Germans he remained as administrative secretary of the municipality, to continue helping people.
I was attending fourth grade at primary school. When classes which had been interrupted by the war started up again, we were surprised by the arrival of a young blond teacher who didn't understand a word of Slovene and spoke to us in German. After a few weeks we were understanding quite well, and one day I returned from school singing at the top of my lungs a German song we'd learnt that day - I think it was the march of the SA. I can still feel the formidable box of the ears which welcomed me home. My uncle then gave me a long sermon on how the Germans were torturing and killing our people, forbidding us to speak our own language, banning our papers and books and every day causing us all kinds of evils. I should be ashamed I couldn't see all this and could sing that song with such enthusiasm. Today I think, what would have happened to me if that man hadn't shown me what was wrong in my behaviour. They treated us children at school very well and although we didn't learn much we had a lot of football and physical training, including the exercise I most enjoyed, throwing hand- grenades. Fortunately my uncle and mother were busy telling me repeatedly about the other face of the Germans which I couldn't see for myself.
One Sunday afternoon when we children were playing at the edge of the wood we were surprised by a man with 24 a big beard, a cap with a bright red five-pointed star and an enormous rifle. He introduced himself as a partisan and said they'd soon throw the Germans out of the country. He then told us with threats we must not tell anyone we'd seen him. We couldn't understand why they were so afraid of the Germans if they were going to throw them out at once. We soon became familiar with ever more frequent visits of these armed men in the village, specially at night. They came for food and clothing and, if anyone refused, took them by force. Panic soon spread with news of the first assassination of a peasant who'd refused to give them the food he'd saved for his own family.
A German soldier of Slovene origin from Carinthia was engaged to a girl from my village. One day two partisans ambushed and killed him as he was returning by bike to his quarters in the next village. Within a week the Germans shot ten young Slovenes on the same spot. We were all outraged, both at the Germans' brutality and at the lack of conscience of the partisans, who knew of the reprisals the Germans had already announced would take place should their soldiers be attacked. The so-called fight for freedom had cost eleven innocent lives without anyone being able to understand why.
One night in May 1943 we were woken by heavy blows on the door. My mother opened it and was met by guns pointed at her. They said they were from the Liberation Front - partisans. They turned the house upside down, stole what they could and tied my uncle's wrists and took him away. He was never seen again, but we learnt that they killed him after some days of torture in the mountains not far from our village. We never found where he was buried. Less than a month after this terrible kidnapping a German military truck with a police squad appeared in front of the house early one morning and gave us half an hour to prepare for departure. My principal worry was the twelve rabbits I had to leave behind. The officer leading the patrol, with tears in his eyes, helped me cut some fodder and feed them before climbing into the truck and setting off for the concentration camp.
On hearing what had happened, the husband of an aunt of mine who worked for the National Bank of Pensions in the city of Kranj told his German chief. He then 25 learnt that the German police in our village had received a denunciation that my uncle had joined the rebels voluntarily, and this was why we'd been sent to the concentration camp. After a couple of months of enquiries the police decided the denunciation was false and we were set free. As we lacked the most basic security at home and continued to be threatened by the partisans we moved to the city of Kranj. Here a detachment of the Slovene anticommunist guard, the domobranci, employed my mother as cook.
Early in May 1945 we were told we'd probably have to retreat into Austria for a fortnight in view of pressure from the troops of the Russian Army, and we'd then return with the Allies. On the 9th May we set off for the Austrian frontier. We were among the last to go. There were no partisans in sight, only some pro-communist civilians who shouted curses at us. Just before reaching the frontier we were attacked by mortar fire, several animals pulling the carts were hit and killed and we had to leave behind all our belongings and continue the retreat on foot. I was lost in the confusion, went through the Ljubelj tunnel holding the hand of one of the domobranci and only met up with my mother again by chance. On reaching the bridge over the river Drava [Drau] in Carinthia, a huge mountain of pistols and automatic rifles caught my eye. I jumped to help myself, heard a shout in English of "no!" and caught sight of an English soldier who signalled to disarm me. He was a youngster, shabby but with a friendly expression. This was my first contact with the victorious allies.
The Simenc family, whose story follows, were also country people. Magdalena was eight and had been living away from home on her grandparents' farm for six years while her mother looked after the younger children and the ailing other grandmother. Her three uncles had all been conscripted, one by the Germans - later severely wounded - and two by the partisans: one of whom worked for them as a cook while the other, Uncle Miha, hated what they were doing and moved across to the domobranci as soon as he could. Two aunts were living and working at home but the grandparents were hard pressed to keep the farm going and Magdalena had to do her full share. Writing fifty years later she describes how the family reacted on 8 May 1945 in Vrhe, their remote farm up in the mountains north-east of Ljubljana:
I remember as if it happened yesterday, the sun was shining after lunch when Uncle Miha came up from the valley with the news, "you've got to go, all the 26 others are going. They don't know where, but until things settle down, probably two weeks". Everyone fixed their eyes on the ground as if there'd been a death in the family. If life wasn't safe in the valley, how could it be up here, with the woods only a stone's throw away and the nearest neighbour hardly within hailing distance?
My 60 year old grandpa dragged the big rack-wagon out to the front of the house and fixed two big nets to both ends, with hay for the oxen, and in between the women loaded bedding, clothes and provisions - mainly provisions; I remember flour, a big sack of dried fruit and a barrel of fat. I stood and watched and went for a few of my own things: the others were astonished an 8 year old understood the situation so well and hadn't packed any "useless rubbish".
A yoke of well-fed, well-trained oxen were brought from the stable, given water as before any job and attached to the heavily laden cart. Grandpa knelt, crossed himself with the words, "let us go in God's name" and cracked his whip. The oxen strained as if set to ploughing. Grandma and my two aunts followed in tears, and I with them. Where the track curved past the first clump of trees we paused to look back -for grandma the last sight of the farm she'd worked at for 35 years.
Grandpa went to say goodbye in a house in the next village and by the time they'd comforted him his footsteps had grown markedly unsure and he had to ride on the cart for the rest of the day, while the others walked to spare the animals. At the next cross-roads we took leave of the vet, one of our few regular visitors at the farm. More and more acquaintances or strangers joined us on the way with horse-drawn carts, handcarts, bicycles or just packs on their backs. A larger group had already gathered at the first major village where the roads from the neighbouring valleys came together. They were asking, "you too? Where now? For how long?", and no one knew the answer.
For our first night under the sky I slept in the hay on the wagon. So far I'd enjoyed the "outing" - something really new; normally we never left the farm apart from the Sunday walk to church, an occasional wake and the yearly visit to the sewing woman. Next morning we set off north and at every cross-road 27 there were more crowds who didn't know each other but had the same destination: wherever life was safe.
Suddenly we were in the middle of a column of German soldiers, cars, tanks and carts mixed up with civilian refugees; the defeated army was in a hurry and insisted on priority and we were forced off the road. The soldiers looked in scorn at our oxen and asked how far we were going with them. Grandpa still spoke a little German, as an Austro-Hungarian soldier of World War I. Now we could only move at night and the further we went, the greater the throng of refugees.
Suddenly I heard, "Daddy is coming!" He'd caught up with us on his bicycle, a full rucksack on his back, not far from Bernik, northwest of Ljubljana where the airport is now. We passed many sites of fires and everywhere it smelt of burning, and we often had to ask the houses that were still standing for water for the beasts and ourselves. Most had pity on us, but some felt our flight was unnecessary.
The nearer the frontier the greater the crowds on the road. At that time it was still not metalled, which was fortunate as our beasts certainly couldn't have managed asphalt as they were accustomed to stones and mountain tracks. Pauses for rest were impossible as everyone moved forward periodically and we wouldn't have been able to rejoin the column. Then the whole mass got stuck, with our wagon in the middle, and we were terrified when we heard shots from behind and from the hills. People seized anything they could carry from the wagons and rushed up the hill towards the Karawanken, and I was told to hold on tight to a member of the family. So a lot of fully loaded wagons were stranded on the southern side of Loibl and later taken over by pursuing partisans or the locals.
The valley grew narrower, the path steeper. As we approached the entrance to the tunnel, which had been dug by Mauthausen concentration camp prisoners, a munitions truck caught fire and exploded with a deafening report which terrified everyone. At first civilians weren't allowed through, and many decided to take the track over the pass. A few turned back and were captured by the partisans, and later sent to prison or executed.
28 Eventually on Friday night, after a long wait, we were allowed through the tunnel and this saved our lives. It was already dark when we entered the black, black hole and followed the person in front as best we could. I held tight to father's bicycle. The water which dripped from the filthy roof often reached our knees, and in between we clambered over rocks. Children and grown-ups were crying on all sides, terrified whether we'd ever get out alive, because the 1,400 meter long tunnel could have been mined, as the partisans were also active in Carinthia.
We reached the other end at dawn and then, with no time to dry ourselves or change clothes, we at once started off downhill, always at the trot. The wounded and sick who came or were carried with us were groaning and crying - we carried the dead too, and they weren't buried till we reached Viktring. Shots were heard from the valley. Horses were grazing in the meadows, and we passed many animal corpses.
When we got to the bridge over the Drau we met our first British who were disarming all who crossed, so that guns, pistols and piles of ammunition lay by the side of the road. I remember late that evening when we were dead-beat a rider appeared out of the darkness high on his horse and promised to arrange transport if we waited. Some were for, some against, but eventually all agreed not to part company with the main group. Those familiar with the area knew Klagenfurt wasn't far off, and we now know the decision probably saved our lives. Many who trusted such strangers - probably partisans - disappeared without trace. The whole journey of little more than 100 kilometres, which took us four days, can be done today in an hour and a half. All I can remember of arrival at Viktring is of someone spreading a blanket on a pile of straw and my lying down. Later I was told I asked for water but fell asleep immediately.
Next day there was suddenly a cry of, "here's Uncle Miha with the wagon!" Impossible! We refused to belief it, till we actually saw him. He'd been with the domobranci who were fighting a rearguard action between the fleeing refugees and pursuing partisans, and so had passed the wagon and beasts still waiting by the side of the road. The oxen followed like never before and together they overcame all 29 difficulties. It's difficult to imagine, a wagon with metal-bound wooden wheels and a span of oxen on the old Loiblstrasse and over the pass, with gradients of up to 25%, continually up and down hill, and only a hand-brake.
The tunnel was even more terrifying for the Bajuks - Bozidar and Cilka and their four boys, the youngest only 18 months old, and Bozidar's sister, his mother and 60 year old father. They left home with one bicycle and two prams on the 6th May, the day after the Perniseks. Bozidar was a teacher of Latin and Greek, his father "Director Marko" a headmaster and former inspector of schools. They walked, got lifts on farm carts and with a German army lorry-driver and finally improvised their own transport by taking over an abandoned horse and cart. Bozidar continues:
We reached the tunnel entrance. Lord, what crowds and chaos, what traffic! Tanks, carts, cars, lorries, people on horseback, columns of soldiers, people on foot, civilian refugees, all swarming forward, pushing their way towards the tunnel - the soldiers, specially the Germans, screaming while the refugees were silent, thoughtful, worried. We spent all next day, the 11th, on the level ground in front of the entrance, where there was pandemonium, people growing more and more neurotic, the crowd thicker and thicker. Every now and then they'd come and tell us we'd soon be moving through, but it never happened. Planes circled overhead and people grew panicky. On top of mental trauma we suffered the most acute physical discomfort. Starving and out in the intense heat, our bodily strength was totally exhausted, and I had to go up and down the hill for water and fodder for the horse.
We lit a new fire and the women sat around on planks of wood, sheltering under blankets with the children on their laps. Soon we were all nerves again. Time to be off - but only a few metres closer to the entrance, and then more hours staring into the black hole which grinned at us in the glow of the fire opposite. Columns of tanks, lorries, artillery and men on foot passed us. Father baked a few potatoes.
We were terrified at the thought of another night in the open and stood wearily in columns, exhausted, hungry, sleepless, cold, waiting to move through the tunnel which now loomed like some mythical monster, pitch dark without any lights (someone had cut the 30 wires), puddles a foot deep, potholes, crowds and files of people, little children - how will our cart pass between this Scylla and Charybdis? Our horse became more and more unmanageable for lack of food and bit everyone within reach.
An hour past midnight things at last started to move and we pulled into the tunnel. The darkness was terrifying and we were surrounded by carts piled high and half-starved horses. The batteries I'd brought let us down and I made paper cones to put round candles. In this way the women would have some light when every ten or twenty paces we came to a halt and stood for ten minutes or more in mud, puddles and darkness. Every so often columns on foot thrust past or jammed against us, and heavily loaded refugees brushed their wheels and prams against our clothing. Columns of German tanks pushed through the mud and forced their way between lines of Russian horsemen, with dreadful oaths and yelling. At times four columns were fighting through simultaneously, amidst the cries of the women and the children. There were very few lights to show the fugitives the way, and at any moment carts could stop and the deaf, dark walls echo bewildered screams of women and children who huddled close to the side from fear, to get away from the horses whose masters shouted to make them stop. The tension became more and more unbearable and resembled a precalculated, intentional madhouse. I pressed my lips tightly and prayed God to give me strength to endure to the end this Way of the Cross. After three hours in the two kilometer long tunnel, we at last saw a bright ray of morning light and the shape of the exit, and breathed a sigh of relief - rescue from an apocalyptic trial.
Outside it started to rain and the next worry was how to get the cart down the steep hill without brakes. We were shocked to learn that danger had followed close on our heels all the way from Ljubljana, with partisan attacks from all sides from Trzic to Ljubelj and the last column of refugees forced to abandon their possessions and flee for their lives.
Our horse became unmanageable and kicked, reared and bit ever more furiously while the cart kept sliding down the hill on one side or the other, towards the precipitous edge or into the roadside ditch, so that I had to lift it by the back spring every twenty paces and straighten it to the middle of the road. 31 My arms were giving way and blisters bursting.
Messengers brought bad news and urged the columns to hurry, with many more refugees and domobranci behind and the bridge over the Drava staying open only till nine. With a heavy heart and a lump in my throat I couldn't hold back the tears: never mind I'd lost everything, what hurt most was having to flee from my own brothers, my own country - and because of my own country. Silent, as if aware of this fateful decisive moment, in a slow funereal march we moved into Austria across the bridge, while its wood beams made a sorrowful rumbling noise. Behind us misery, death, hatred: in front uncertainty, but lit with optimism and a determination to save ourselves and live.
I went ahead by bike to see where we should go and how much further it was. Animals were slowing down, people wavering and turning off the road onto the grass verge to spend the night. I was afraid for them and urged them to keep moving. Mentally and physically exhausted, we noticed lights at the top of the hill but didn't know what they meant, and there was no guide, nobody to give us directions. I stopped the column and went ahead; from the fires we could hear shouting, yelling and singing.
Is this a military camp, are those refugees, is it our camp? Army vehicles with strong headlights drove towards us, blinding me. People came up and showed us the way but we were faced with the worst moments of the day. In the darkness it was like being blindfold and I was more feeling my way than walking alongside the cart. I took the reins as my father's eyes had given out, only distinguishing faint dark outlines, which the far-off lights and fires made even more mysterious. We guessed we were passing a graveyard, houses, a church.
We came upon a monstrous red light on the tarmac road, and the two British soldiers standing in front realised we were Slovenes. We turned off into the camp and stopped when we heard familiar language. Again bitter disappointment: from all sides only shrill shouts, close to swearing, from our own people who'd already settled - and we were now in their way. I stopped and tried to calm myself. Never had I been so close to a complete breakdown, shaking, dizzy as if drunk. I didn't realise I was exhausted and 32 hungry. I got out matches, lit up the ground and found we were in a field with very young corn. We made a simple camp, left little Andrej sleeping in his pram, settled on the ground at one end of the cart and tied the horse to the other end.
In contrast Majda Vracko, then 16, remembers the flight almost like an extended school excursion. It is her father whom I remember vividly, Edvard Vracko, short, with a sharp nose and three days' growth of beard - razor blades were in short supply - highly articulate, energetic and aggressive. He was to play a prominent and controversial role within the Slovenian community. Majda recalls:
I lived in Ljubljana with my family, the oldest of six children. My father was a judge in the appeal court and openly against communism, so when it looked like the British were not going to come right away, but after a week or two, everybody thought it best that people who were outspokenly against should hide away for the interregnum. My mother and father were debating because she had had an operation in March and was sick afterwards and so couldn't go: and my two younger sisters were four and five years old. That was difficult. But they thought it best for my father to go, because you never know what people will do.
Then I decided very bravely to go with my father, and my mother said right away, "wonderful, go. I'll worry much less about him if he has at least somebody with him." So she packed a rucksack and put all kinds of things in, and I took pyjamas out and a few other things, saying, "Mother, why do you do that? I'm not going to need that. We're going to sleep outside, probably close around here somewhere in some woods, and then we'll come back." And the only thing I took was food, and that was good because we really didn't get any till we reached Vetrinje.
The Vrackos left Ljubljana a day after the Perniseks, on the Sunday, delaying their departure still more to attend mass:
First it was just the two of us, then a friend decided to go and she'd a friend, a boy who was blind, and she asked if he could come, and on the way five or six different people joined us. Three were law students who knew my father, one the son of a judge who also knew him, and another was a friend who was alone and said, "can I come with you?" and 33 brought someone else, so we were about twelve and we stuck together and my father was the natural leader. Father and I had bicycles, the rest were on foot, but I never used mine except to carry my rucksack.
We left after ten o'clock mass, got to Kranj by night-time and stayed there overnight and the next day. The following day we moved on. My mother's family come from there but their home had been burnt down by the Germans: my grandmother was tied to a tree and had to watch while their house was burning, and they had a mill also which was burnt, and then she was put into a concentration camp with some of my uncles and aunts, so they were not back home. They all returned later, but I didn't get to see any of them.
Then we went to Trzic where my father's cousin lives. She said, "my! You're so young! What are you thinking? You'll be on the road, you'll get dirty, stay here. I've lots of room, I can hide you". She had a daughter of my age and said, "you can wear her clothes". I said, "no. I'm going with my father." So we went on to Sveta Ana15 a little below Ljubelj, where all of a sudden they said, "civilians, stay behind, the tunnel isn't open. Germans are guarding it." We arrived on May 10th, which was a holy day of obligation, and went to church at Sveta Ana and after that found we couldn't go through so we stayed in some barracks the German soldiers had left. There we found some crumbs of hard bread and biscuits.
They were the barracks of the SS guards of Mauthausen sub-camp.
It was at the Yugoslav end of the tunnel. There was also a small hunting lodge of one of the rich people, and the people were all over there. This was Thursday, and we couldn't go through. Friday we tried, and then Saturday all of a sudden somebody said it was opened, and we started again. But in the meantime - it was really naive - I found a first-aid kit and I was so proud, because it was a beautiful leather case with all the little compartments with aspirins and all kinds of things. So I was very happy and I don't even remember I was hungry though I don't know what we ate. Somehow, something.
Saturday the tunnel opened but was flooded, the water
15. St. Ana 34 up to my knees, and since that other friend of ours was blind and it was dark it was very difficult. He was holding my bicycle which was painted white. We made it, and then on the other side we were resting for a little, walked down the hill and slept somewhere outside. There was nothing, not even any hay.
When we crossed the Drava bridge a bunch of partisans were laughing because some domobranci had to throw their guns away. It was weird, they didn't talk or anything - just ha! ha! ha!, which I thought very strange. We couldn't walk very fast because there was a procession of people with horses and wagons, people on foot with bicycles and small children. One child was born on one of those wagons, right there. Mostly I remember German officers on horses with whips, whipping people so that they had room to go faster, since the roads were completely clogged; and that made me so mad I could just jump on one of them. And there were dead horses and cows with swollen stomachs.
When we came to Zikpolje there was an old shack where they had some hay, and it was getting dark and father said, "let's ask the people in the house nearby if we could use that for sleeping" and they said yes; and we all squeezed in and used whatever we had, clothing to put under our heads, there were no pillows, nobody got changed into anything, and our spirits were high because the group was very interesting. There were a few university students, one training to be a priest, and we were debating about philosophy, Thomas Aquinas and all such high subjects so we forgot how dreadful it really was! The next day the woman said we could use her water and we had to pump it, and we divided - the girls were washing the shirts, the guys were washing their socks, and they came out so hard that when they were hanging they had the shape of their shoes because they obviously didn't rinse them! That was our first wash.
Then we thought we'd go on and on - we didn't know that Vetrinje existed - and all of a sudden something opened in front of us, and there were thousands of people already there. When we were waiting, we didn't know some people left through the tunnel before us, we thought we were the first to go through. People went there even already on Saturday, and we didn't get there until the next Saturday. My 35 father met School Director Bajuk and a few others right away and they said, "come, go to the factory, that's for young people and families", and we stayed there.
The next account is from an engaged couple who got married a few months later. Joze Jancar and Marija Hribar were both medical students and came from neighbouring villages in the hills south-east of Ljubljana, she the daughter of a successful farmer and he the son of the village organist: he was also area leader of an organisation for young Catholic workers and so an obvious target for the communists. He had been held for several months in Gonars, the notorious Italian concentration camp for both catholic and communist Slovenes, where many died of starvation. Forty years later they recall:
Joze: The message was, anyone who doesn't want to wait for the partisans should go to Klagenfurt. There was panic, "who's going? Who's not going? How will we go across? With whom? Who'll protect us?" because we'd heard they were shooting already, there were fights. I went home on Sunday and to mass. People were standing and asking me, "what do you think we should do?" and I said, "look. I can't advise anybody. I'll tell you what I'm doing, but don't take any notice. I'm going."
I had to go or I'm finished. In Gonars I was told by the partisans I was a marked man, so why should I wait? Then I went home where my sisters Mara and Paula were. Father said, "what shall I do? I'll go with you." and I said, "you were at home, have you any enemies that would really harm you?" and he said yes, but I said, "would they shoot you?" "I don't think so." My parents weren't involved in anything, father did his job, mother did hers looking after the children. I was very pleased they didn't go because later I saw the tragedies - old people not able to do their job, not able to learn the language and sitting and waiting for the next day to come. It was tragic, better they stayed at home even if they suffered.
Then mother said, "what about the girls?" and I said, "I can't say anything, because I don't know where I'm going, what'll happen to me." Mother was crying, and then picked up a can of fat and gave it me, and I threw something - trousers and something - in a bag, and went with a bicycle to see Marija. They asked, "what'll we do?" I said to Marija, "I can't tell you" and her mother was crying. "Don't go" or "Go", 36 everybody was in disarray and then Marija said, "yes, I'm going with you." So there was to-ing and fro-ing and messages, "the partisans were already in Ponova Vas." God, what will happen? Then the decision was made not to go to Ljubljana on the main road because they were afraid they'll cut it, so we went in a big circle over the little mountains behind there to Ljubljana. Again people were meeting, talking.
"We" was myself and my two sisters. My third sister stayed at home. I was the eldest. Ana had always stayed at home while the other two had been in Ljubljana. They went because I went, they weren't threatened. They knew what the communists were doing, witnessed it, read it, were told. One wrong step, and atrocities were in the direct experience of the community. We'd made no plans as we were told, "don't do anything because the Eighth Army is coming and you'll be all right." Then suddenly a message at the last moment, the Eighth Army is not coming. So it was just grab and go, the decision was split second. The two girls got a hitch into Grosuplje on a farm cart and I went to Marija's house by bike.
Marija: And do you know, next day was my birthday, to which Joze and his sisters were coming! And there he appeared on the doorstep and, "we have to go." I said, "what do you mean?" "the Russians are in Belgrade and the partisans around, and the English aren't coming to our part of Slovenia. You want to go, or not to go?" I didn't know, just in five minutes you had to decide. So anyway I said, "all right, we'll go." We only thought we were going for a fortnight to Austria, and never thought it'd be for the rest of our lives.
At that time there were living at home my father, mother, youngest sister who was 8, another sister who was 18 and a brother France, who was 13. Tone was in Ljubljana in the civilian police. Earlier he was in a concentration camp in Perugia: something happened, somebody was killed, Italian, I don't know, anyway the Italians came to the village. Our house was the first one, so they brought all the men from the whole village into our garden and took them all away, my brother aged 20 included, and he was in the concentration camp until the capitulation of Italy, and with him went about forty or fifty from around there. I remember we were sending parcels every month or two and we got news reasonably regularly. 37
Then the partisans came one night and plundered, took everything from the house, clothes - even my little sister's muff and a little fur collar to go with her coat I bought her for Christmas - and the food and everything. That was their normal way, how they got their stuff. I had another brother who was also in concentration camp, in Gonars. He was about 18. We were six children, three boys and three girls.
Not far from us, next to my uncle's was a little house - I don't even know who they were - four adult people and four children, all killed one night by the partisans. What was the reason? I mean if they'd committed I don't know what crime, they didn't deserve, all those people, to be killed.
Joze: In Gonars I was warned the partisans had tried to kill me. One walked past and said, "you're very lucky to be here today" and I asked why and he said:
Because we were waiting for you in a maize field, four of us, and had orders from the commander of the unit to take you and polish you off, and also, if we could, the priest who was with you. You were walking up and down before the 10 o'clock mass, and coming very near us. We couldn't decide, should we grab you or not, and then someone said, 'watch it, Italians are coming.' A patrol was coming along to church.
And that saved me - as close as that, a matter of metres. People still don't understand what communism was about, how it was propagated and how 97% of Slovenes were anti-communists and catholics and 3% communists before the war. These incidents show why you were frightened and take the weapon, whoever gives it you. And also you see how the communists ... how you can control a nation with fear.
Marija: We arrived at Ljubljana, and do you know where we landed? In the slaughter-house! There was a big courtyard and we slept there, Mara, Paula, Joze and me. Then we started going towards Kranj and Trzic on someone's cart. Suddenly towards Trzic we came to a standstill because they couldn't all go through the tunnel. I think it was Germans going through and Cossacks. Then suddenly they began shooting behind, saying partisans were down there. 38 Anyway we started going quickly then, really rushed, we were so frightened we just pushed through. I'm sure other things were going through, carts and lorries, but we were on the side. I remember a horse walking near me, and it was about a foot of water. I told you about my lovely new suede sandals, that's all I was worrying about, that they'd be ruined!
Joze: Some people had torches, but we were holding on to whatever we could get hold of, and I was falling asleep. I never experienced it before, walking, and water was dripping from the tunnel, we were wet but this didn't matter. We were walking in complete darkness and it was pretty crowded with people pushing behind us. The tunnel seemed unending and people were shouting in all languages, it was frightening, but anyway we said they couldn't overtake us so we were more or less safe, there inside. On the other side it was already dusk, we were looking for somewhere to sleep. We went into a farm house and slept in a little room there, and the next thing I went out to check and somebody came along and said, "watch it! There are partisans in it." They were asleep, so I said, "I'll keep an eye", and fell asleep too! The only casualty - my bicycle in the morning was gone.
Marija: We went all morning, we were tiring quite a bit, and in the early afternoon met the first English soldiers. This was, when I look back, one of the great disappointments of my life. We were so pleased, "oh good, we're safe now" but then they were stealing the watches. That was like when you find out that Father Christmas isn't any more! They just asked, "what time?" they weren't rough or anything.
Joze: We were among the first to arrive at Viktring. So far as food was concerned, we had something - everybody was sharing a bit of everything. Then, the third day, Mersol was looking for me, I was looking for Mersol and found him. He said we had to do something, "for the people now there's nobody. If anyone is sick, who's looking after them? Alright, we must find a room somewhere." And he started to organise a sickbay with Marija and Mara16, and when Dr Janez came back, he threw away his uniform and came with us, and he was delousing people, using DDT. We all had lice, Marija had, I had. It was unbelievable
16. Joze Jancar's sister. 39 how well Mersol organised the thing, before anybody, you know - he had some medicines with him and we were organising first aid if somebody got hurt. We occupied the school, and this was our sickbay, and we started. And people were coming right away.
The Jancars were among the first to reach Viktring, Uros Roessmann among the last. In 1945 his family was living in a village four kilometres due east of Ljubljana. His father was chief bookkeeper in a nearby paper mill and a member of the local village administration, and left for Austria with his wife and two daughters. All three sons were with the domobranci. One died fighting the partisans in September 1943 but the others escaped with their units into Austria. Uros, then aged 20, was with the rearguard covering the retreat of the soldiers and civilians through the Loibltunnel:
Viktring was very impressive - a huge collection of wagons and people parked all over a very large field - probably 20,000 or 25,000 people, just the Slovenians - and the next field full of German army; within a day or two they moved them on. I was eager to find and join the family. When I got to them they had already the fire going and Mother was cooking something and I was very glad to eat again. It was probably the 13th or 14th May. Everybody tried to get organised; we had that wagon, but nothing to cover it, and when it rained there were six of us trying to fit under it and of course it didn't go, so we were all wet! Everybody tried to get some shelter together. Some got into the woods and peeled the bark off the trees and then made tent-like structures. Others had some material from the German army and used that as tenting, or just blankets were strung up. Of course they leaked pretty bad when the rain started.
So far as food was concerned, some people brought their own supplies. The group that came from our village, from Polje, had a common store. They loaded a wagon with some flour and beans, and for four or five days there was enough, so that they cooked sort of a common soup so that everybody got something. After that ran out everyone had to depend on their own sources, but by then there was some sort of supply. My family were with a village group - maybe a hundred people, several families and five, six wagons. So they all pulled them together in one place, and the encampment lasted until the end of June, six weeks. Particularly in the group our 40 family was in, they had a common organisation and everybody looked out for everybody else; that went on quite well, so that nobody was really hurting too bad.
My sister's child got severe diarrhoea and was taken to a hospital in Klagenfurt for three days, and my sister went and stayed with her. I don't remember who brought her back and took her over, I think a British ambulance. Our father got in touch with the Austrian owner of the large monastery next the camp and he said, why don't you move into a corridor inside the monastery? So we picked up our stuff, gave the wagon to somebody and moved with all the belongings into a passage behind a stairway, so we were out of the weather after about two weeks in the field.
And the stairway behind which we settled led to an officers' mess for the British troops, and the cooks noticed of course these strange people there, and all of a sudden there was a large tin of marmalade and some tea and powdered milk, and they were really nice and helpful. First they gave us food and then felt they could use some help with the dish-washing, so my brother and I were employed as dish-washers for a while, and they provided us with food and all kinds of help. The British NCOs in the kitchen were nice people and very kindly and helpful; we had a very good relationship with them. They knew there was storage in the same building for furniture that the Germans had prepared for the bombed-out people, and they dragged out some mattresses and we actually got upholstered chairs and had a fairly nice apartment in the end of the corridor.
There was a master sergeant of the British unit, a Guards' brigade, who was very unhappy and told the people there to throw us out, saying it's against the regulations. But the people who worked in the kitchen said, "he's a master sergeant, he's a monkey, he sleeps in a tree and we don't obey him". So we were sort of privileged.
So the Perniseks, Simences, Bajuks, Vrackos, Jancars and Roessmanns arrived safely, with 6,000 fellow Slovenes. The camp made a strong impression on visitors. For the intelligence officer with the British Brigade of Guards,
41 Captain Nigel Nicolson17, it was "a sight one had not seen since the early films of the Gold Rush", for the British Red Cross nurse, Jane Balding18 "like some fantastic film" and for two Friends' Ambulance Unit officials from London HQ19:
A quite astonishing camp. .. A fantastic shanty-town built of bark, branches and every conceivable material. It resembled nothing so much as Epsom Downs on Derby Day and presented a frightening picture of dirt and disease from the outside. Inside however, the camp was remarkably well-kept by the refugees themselves, most of whom seemed to be engaged industriously in building, cooking, laundry or some similar occupation.
I was more prosaic in the letter-diary20 I sent my mother:
The camp is on the edge of a wide plain and consists of a large field surrounded on three sides by small streams and further large fields and then rapidly climbing pine-covered hills on one side, the latter developing into quite respectable mountains. On one side also is a large and attractive monastery planned round three courtyards, and beyond that up a hill a textile factory which during the war was turned into an aero-engine parts factory and is now occupied by some 600 of the refugees - mainly women and children. Most live in the open in the field, using for shelter what material they can find - some have tents made from sacking, gas capes, overcoats and blankets, some have shacks made of wood and bark, some live in their carts with material stretched over the top.
17. Nicolson, Nigel, in report written shortly afterwards, quoted in Tolstoy, Nikolai (1986), The Minister and the Massacres (London, Century Hutchinson), p. 147. 18. Balding, Jane from unpublished diary quoted in The Minister and the Massacres, p. 289. 19. FAU Archives, Friends House Library, London. 20. Corsellis, John, letter-diaries to his mother, in author's possession. 42
C H A P T E R 2
13 - 27 May 1945
Three aid workers describe the emergency camp at Viktring. Major Paul Barre, who was sent by the Displaced Persons Branch of Allied Military Government to take charge, and the two relief workers sent by NGO (non-governmental organisation) aid agencies to help him: the British Red Cross nurse Jane Balding and the Friends Ambulance Unit (Quaker) worker, myself. Joze Jancar, the 19-year old Gloria Bratina and Franc Pernisek then describe camp life, the Chief of Staff what the domobranci were doing, Marko Bajuk the speedy opening up of the schools, and Franc Pernisek the spiritual support the refugees derived from masses and devotions in the nearby church.
A rumour spreads that the British are sending the domobranci, not to Italy for their own greater safety as promised, but to Yugoslavia and death. The Balding and Pernisek diaries recall the terror that ensued, as do the schoolboy Marian Loboda, the two girls Majda Vracko and Marija Plevnik and the local Austrian parish priest, Pfarrer Josef Mussger.
The engineering student Ivan Kukovica and the 16 year old convent school girl Pavci Macek finally describe what happened to the 11,000 domobranci and 600 civilians who were sent back.
43 Go down to Viktring, there's a mob of people, we don't know what they're doing, who they are. Find out and let us know.
When Major Johnson, head of Allied Military Government Displaced Persons Branch for Carinthia, told spokesmen for the Slovene civilian refugees in his office in Klagenfurt on Saturday the 12th May that he would send an officer to take charge of their camp at Viktring, he was in fact desperately short of staff. So it was the more fortunate that he sent them Major Paul Barre, a 38-year-old Canadian from the Royal Montreal Regiment who had substantial previous experience of civil affairs administration as Allied Military Government Provincial Officer in the Italian city of Ferrara and who possessed just the right qualities for handling the crisis he was soon to face: humanity, patience, courage and decisiveness.
Johnson briefed him with the words at the top of this page and Barre was in Viktring on the Monday. He has described21 the methods he used - essentially a "refugee-centred" approach. Regrettably few AMG and UNRRA officers did this. Most made little effort to respond to the wishes of the refugees:
When we got to Viktring we found thousands of these Yugoslavs, mainly Slovenes. My job was to ascertain their arrival, why and the circumstances. It's very simple, they were chased out. They realised if they stayed they'd either have to accept communism or suffer the consequences, and felt they'd rather abandon their property and leave with the clothes they were wearing and a few possessions they could carry and their wagons, horse, cow, sheep and whatever, and march into Austria. You can imagine the mental conditions these people went through, going into the unknown. We found them establishing themselves on the ground as best they could. Tethered to their wagons were their animals, and they slept under the wagon, and that was the only protection they ever had. What little food they had they shared among themselves.
I felt it'd be better and easier to administer this thing by getting all the people from Hampstead, we'd say, grouped together, and all the people from Snowdon grouped elsewhere, each group representing their locality at home. They'd know each other fairly well
21. Barre, Paul H., recorded interview 11034/3/1, Imperial War Museum London Department of Sound Records, p 1. 44 and get along with, protect one another. And then we got them to organise a council of their own group, and each group elected a president or secretary, a headman, and this headman would then report to our committee - the top people among the Yugoslavs or Slovenes I could find there. And there was a Dr Valentin Mersol who spoke perfectly good English and who had studied medicine in the USA, through whom I could administer or help administer the camp. It was obviously impossible for me to visit every family and listen to everyone's sorrows and demands, so we had to organise a chain of command like the army does. That worked out very well.
In time we were able to improve their lot by adding a reasonably good supply of rations: we found stationery and an old typewriter, an old radio they'd listen to at night from the BBC, translate into their language, type out and post wherever they could: so that next morning the people could read the events of the night before and keep up. The weather was terrible, it rained most of the time and we were living in puddles. There was a stream running through the camp, and this was the only water available. You can imagine how anxious I was, but I got our engineers to establish water-purifying equipment.
I was able to get one small piece of soap per person per month for all purposes - those little cakes of soap you get in a small motel - and you can imagine it was very difficult. However in fairness to these people let me say they are very religious, mostly Roman Catholics, and on Sundays they all turned out in their best attire: the women had frocks and the men dark suits, a white shirt and tie. Where they kept these, pressed and clean, I don't know, it's a bloody miracle really. To show you the character of the people, with John Corsellis we started up some schools. We found they had nuns and teachers. The children didn't learn very much grammar but at least it kept them occupied. Then we had a number of ex- police people and they wanted to do something, so they asked could they be armed.
That the Slovenes should feel insecure was understandable, with armed partisan bands ranging around Klagenfurt. The Red Cross nurse Jane Balding, who was posted to the camp on 23 May, writes:
45 18 May Tito's boys running wild causing trouble 19 May Partisans very noisy in evening sounds of shooting up Incident in square this a.m. a bit sticky 20 May Tito's boys parading all over town in afternoon all very warlike cleared out later 23 May armed British guards all round as Tito's men threaten to massacre them all
But Major Barre considered the British guards sufficient and was not prepared to arm the camp police:
Even if they had no ammunition I didn't want anyone to carry arms in the civilian camp, but we broke a branch of a tree and said, here's your night stick if you care to have something. However the Slovenes among themselves were so well-disciplined we never had to have recourse to punishment or trial or that sort of thing. Throughout my stay we never had trouble.
We had twelve or fourteen women who gave birth, and only one baby died. We found they had very few qualified doctors with the exception of Dr Mersol, but I was able finally to acquire thermometers and rubber gloves and pills and bandages and whatever they required. There was a building we turned into a clinic, and the morning sick parade was probably attended by twenty-five people out of thousands, so their state of health was very, very good in spite of the arduous conditions under which they were living.
I had two very charming British Red Cross people, Florence Phillips and Jane Balding. They did a wonderful job. I never gave them direct orders, I welcomed them and said, "well, you know what to do, go ahead. If you need anything let me know". I never dictated, I was there to help them, "please run your own show". I did that to give them confidence, both to the civilians or the Red Cross people or anyone else that worked in the camp - each was responsible for their behaviour, their administration, their work.
I was there to help at a higher level if they met with difficulties or opposition: let me know and I'd straighten things out. They never came back, so I presumed everything went well, and the fact there was no strike, no disagreement, it was all one big family, I think proved my theory in operating this particular camp was justified: they were so busy 46 looking after themselves they didn't get into trouble or disagreements, and if they had something they went to see Mersol, and Mersol came to see me, and I dealt with Mersol and no one else. Not that I didn't want to deal with anyone else but if I showed favouritism on one, then I'd have to do it for others and the whole authority, the line of communication, would have crumbled away. I was using my army experience, which proved to be very good indeed.
I didn't administer the camp with a stick in my hand. I wanted - that may have been a weakness on my part -to give them the feeling they were running their own camp: I was there to help if they needed it, I wasn't there to direct them, and I felt that would be perhaps a means of giving encouragement and self- reliance in view of all the misery they'd gone through.
Shortly after I got there I realised they couldn't live with their horses and other animals tethered to their wagons, and we established horse lines; and these animals require constant food, small quantities but at very regular intervals, and they were just being starved. So by having horse lines it was easier to feed them, and also in time we had to butcher them to feed the people. So they were sent to Klagenfurt at the abattoir and slaughtered properly and butchered and the meat came back. I well remember the day I made the pronouncement even Dr Mersol looked at me and I could read on his face, "here's the last straw. We've been robbed of everything by the Germans, by our own people, and now this Canadian is robbing us of our horses". I wasn't robbing them, I was really putting them away to one side, and I simply said, "look, you can go and pat your horse every day if you want to".
It was for their own health and protection, but I can well imagine their reaction. Because you must always put yourself in their position, how difficult it must be to accept that anyone was trying to do something to help rather than steal things from them. For that had been their experience ever since they left their home towns and villages; everyone was always taking something away. I placed myself in their position, how would I feel? And obviously the one man I could see in a foreign uniform is the man that is responsible for this. Who else can I blame, see, talk to, except that one person in uniform? The 47 others are beyond them, Corps and the government at Westminster! They can't go there to complain, they come to me. I'm the nearest boy they can whip if they wish.
John Corsellis came, not necessarily every day, and did what he could to organise, in their own fashion, the various things they did. I didn't have much contact except seeing him now and again. I knew he was a Quaker, and I think they are pacifists; that's an uphill struggle, a pacifist in war-time. However I grant him all the dues he deserves because of this wonderful work he did, he and all the others like him.
Dr Mersol's role at Viktring was very important vis-a-vis his own people because they all looked up to him, to contact me or whoever was responsible, to present their demands for assistance. Mostly it was food, and when the climax came it was a question of not having to be sent back. So they went through him, and that gave him the authority and I hope helped him, because they in turn would follow his directions.
We had a very good relationship and there was a trust there, he was very helpful and I did all I could to help and support him. I never, in all the weeks I was with these people, had difficulties with him, and no individual caused any trouble in the camp. There was never any question of holding a trial or having a meeting to reprimand anyone. Everyone minded his own business and they went along as best they could. But it was my principle - let them run their camp, and I was there to help them. I was not trying to dictate their way of life, because I was smart enough to realise I didn't know how they lived, what kind of life they led, I never met these people before in my life. So what else could I do?
"You know what to do, go ahead", Barre had told Jane Balding. The breathless telegraphese of her diary depicts a relief worker's job better than any more measured summary:
Wednesday 23 May Went out to new camp at Viktring Amazing sight 6,000 odd men, women & children encamped in open on one side & 11,000 soldiers on other All fugitives from Tito tanks, and armed British guards all round as Tito's mob threaten to massacre them all Like some fantastic film 48 Inspected MI [Medical Inspection] room & office, all very well organised.
At nearby factory which houses most of children & mothers, took small baby to civilian hospital in Klagenfurt, full of SS & Gestapo staff (cannot be locked up till replacements are found) Had to get British officer to settle their hash & make them take baby Chased round all afternoon trying to lay on milk for camp Am to have own car & driver.
Thursday 24 May Awful night Tanks roaring past, armed guards chasing armed escapees round hotel Pelted with rain all night, was afraid I'd find camp washed out Not too bad Went with Major Barre, grand sort, Canadian CC [camp commandant] to Dellach on lake to see three measles children in hospital Found other baby there Very different to civil hospital, all very charming & kind to children Beautiful run from camp
Rained again after lunch Went with Major on scrounge, raided Nazi offices for school paper etc., went to neighbouring camp & begged linen for MI room Mary Tanner22 says head of armed forces coming to my camp tomorrow, maybe Alexander but think it's McCreery Toothache, bed
Friday 25 May Had General Sir Richard McCreery23 in morning Only time he got out of his car was to walk through mud to shake hands with me Great thrill Newspaper bloke chased me afterwards Saw school in action in open Stopped raining for hour or so Back to lunch Afternoon off to have tooth out Very nice army dentist lad Nasty abscess Have to have two stopped some time soon Came back to bed Got up for dinner Bed straight afterwards, read till 11
My own letter-diary complements Barre and Balding. I wrote with all the self-confidence of a 22-year old, suggesting Barre "might do better" and making sweeping criticisms of Balding. She was just as critical of me, no doubt with greater justification. There was a strong personality clash. I had had enough of masterful hospital sisters after a year as ward orderly in wartime hospitals in England, and she could not stand immature, bumptious and disrespectful conscientious
22. British Red Cross supervisor for Carinthia 23. Commander, British 8th Army 49 objectors! Recently I spoke with a refugee who after fifty years still remembered her devoted work and kindness with the greatest affection and gratitude. My diary entry on Viktring started:
When I arrived they all had their horses inside the camp, and as there were over 400 you can imagine what the ground was like. They of course always got the best accommodation: some had even roofs made of boards. When it was dry things weren't too bad, but this district is particularly liable to sudden storms with heavy rain, and then the place was liable to become a sea of mud. We've now got them out of the camp, in long lines in the shade of an avenue of trees just along a stream: they are very impressive - all organised and done entirely by the Slovenes after we had suggested it rather strongly: they cut and carried the wood from the local woods and for the first 200 horses used wire instead of nails24.
The British workers number four: two Red Cross women, a Canadian Major i/c and myself. One Red Cross woman is a parson's sister and a mixture of North Country and Irish, has a biggish heart but is pretty impossible in every other way - very full of herself and how she does things, with a nurses's outlook etc, etc, but the other is Scotch, has imagination and ability and should be easy to work with.
The Red Cross Assistant Commissioner described her in his memoirs as "an excellent girl, Scotch and exuberant". I continued:
The Major is a charming and self-effacing man who is very patient with the refugees, does his best for them and certainly does not try to "manage" his staff. The great snag is he started on the job alone here and still approaches it from the point of view of a liaison officer between the army and the Slovene committee which runs the camp; he has no previous experience of camp administration and isn't much interested, and does nothing to coordinate the work of his staff. It is extraordinarily difficult to work as part of a machine that has no steering wheel or driver. Also he imagines the Slovenes are a good bit more efficient than in fact they are. The job is very good for me: not only must I go tactfully because I am more often than not dealing with men
24. until I obtained nails for them from the Royal Engineers 50 much older than myself, but also all the workers are unpaid so that one has to be very careful how much pressure one puts on to avoid them simply downing tools!
It occurs to me that I have hardly mentioned the end of the European war. I think many people in Italy were more moved by the Italian armistice, which was a close and immediate thing to them, than by the general surrender. Probably the general international political position is more depressing out here than at home, so many of the frightful problems are posed to us so vividly here: the future of the Chetniks, the Germans from Yugoslavia, the Russians who fought for the Germans, of Austria and of Germany, of Poland, of Trieste, of the stateless persons.
The last four lines referred in a veiled way to the forcible repatriations. I avoided mentioning them in so many words, from a reluctance to distress my mother and fear of the censor.
As to my personal future, I haven't worked out my demobilisation group but I guess I am somewhere in the 50s, which will mean that unless Japan collapses unexpectedly I will have some time to wait and meanwhile there is certainly a job worth doing out here, which is giving me excellent experience and should end me up with a reasonable command of three languages, Italian, German and French. I would certainly like to be home but there are many thousands of service men who have been away far longer than me, and are now queuing up for the return boat.
Why should working with refugees in Austria "end me up with a reasonable command of Italian and French" as well as German? French was spoken by most of the older Yugoslav and Russian intelligentsia, and for Italian I had a special use because it was my most fluent foreign language after six months work with Italian refugees. When I arrived at Viktring and asked Major Barre how I could best help, he referred me to Dr Mersol and he suggested hygiene. He said I would need an interpreter and he had just the right man, a medical student two years older than me who had organisational experience and while interned in the Italian concentration camp at Gonars had learnt the language; and that was how I got to know Joze Jancar. He has already recounted his flight into Austria. A little taller than I was, just as thin and with striking red hair, he continued to interpret for me after we had finished hygiene and moved on to 51 education, and later played a key role in the opening of the camp for university students in Graz. Here he recounts his memories of Viktring:
Mersol said, "look, let's hope he'll be able to do something. He seems young and energetic". He was expecting someone with more authority, a major or something, for six thousand people, and was a bit sceptical, and then he realised when we started to march around - and, my God, you were walking fast! And really it was a great success because Mersol was often saying, "it's unbelievable how much you two did". I was exhausted after you all day! It was sunny and very hot, and you came early and left late. And you brought 10,000 tablets, or pinched somewhere, sulphonamide. I remember you brought this to Mersol and everybody was cured with whatever disease they had, because this was the only thing.
Chemotherapy, the treatment of diseases by chemical compounds such as sulphonamide with specific bactericidal effects, and DDT powder for the control of typhus-carrying lice were spectacularly effective in maintaining a high standard of health in camps where conditions were often primitive.
After the accounts of those who ran the camp - commandant, nurse, relief worker and interpreter - it is time for the refugees themselves. First Gloria Bratina, then aged 19, who arrived with her parents and eight brothers and sisters. Her comments on the forcible repatriations, diet, health and hygiene are of particular interest as she later qualified as a doctor:
We built ourselves a little tent - there were some blankets we picked up - very fast because of course we were sporty people, gimnazija [grammar school] students. We managed to organise ourselves quickly, cut some branches for a structure, my dad was very good at it. There was a place where you had to pick up your bread and so on, and meat when they were killing the mules or horses; and we cooked soup and sometimes went downtown to get onions and lettuce. We were very cold at nights, especially when the rainy time started. There were about two weeks of heavy rain and mud. It was quite difficult. Our two brothers with the domobranci arrived one or two weeks later. They were not sent back. No. We were strong; they wanted to go, and we just didn't allow them. We heard already that they were sending them back, and we said no. They were quite depressed and 52 didn't know what to do. They said, well, all right, probably there is nothing going to happen, and if it happens ... And we said no. We tried to get them some clothes. They were staying with their unit. You know how naive they were: they thought, well, O.K., they are going to Italy just like everybody else. They were young too. We just said no, we put the pressure on, this was the family. Then they left their units and came into the civilian camp and took off their uniforms. We were begging around for some clothes.
There was a lot of depression there for the whole community and we went to church a lot, we prayed like anything. Some of us fell ill. I believe it was salmonella; no wonder, it wasn't proper water, but we recovered pretty soon. It was surprising there wasn't an epidemic. It was very good they came with the DDT, the British Red Cross, it was wonderful. I encouraged the people around - some of them were trying to escape it. I said, this is the only solution - all those little insects coming around: the fear of typhus.
Franc Pernisek gives his account of camp life:
Monday 14th May. A fine morning, the sun shines strongly. With darkness it becomes cold and at night very cold. Thank God the weather has been very, very kind. People start to construct emergency dwellings: awnings are a good shelter to keep off heat, wind and rain, and some have cut branches as cover or a big blanket serves as a temporary tent. Some are making huts from fir tree bark. We've exchanged our lovely, comfortable homes for this gipsy life.
The camp is totally disorganised with civilians, soldiers, livestock all mixed up and a most unpleasant smell everywhere. There are crowds of people queuing for drinking water at every well: some have already run dry and others put out of action by the locals on purpose. The greatest difficulties are experienced from not being able to satisfy basic human needs. There are no latrines yet, but English soldiers are already digging long, deep pits with huge machines.
Lieutenant-Colonel Ivan Drcar, chief-of-staff of the domobranci in the military camp, was keeping his own diary:
14 to 20 May. There is total confusion and disorder in the camp, and Army units are mixed up with civilians 53 and their families, wagons and horses. We're taking the most pressing steps to maintain hygiene and carry out policing duties. It's hard to keep order without any sanctions. The heat is unbearable. ...
It was made known to the [Slovene] National Committee that the British considered us as prisoners-of-war if we remained in uniform, but whoever changed into civilian clothes would be considered a civilian. I kept this latter option in front of me because our situation was uncertain, and then impeded the influx of civilians into the army and didn't agree with the Legion25 mobilizing its members.
I'm trying to set up an intelligence section because it's imperative we find out what the British are planning to do with us ... and what happened to the group of chetniks who left before we did. Less and less news is arriving. Krenner is away during the afternoons because he drives by auto each day to visit his wife in Krumpendorf26.
Colonel Drcar recorded elsewhere that the British had dropped an obvious hint it would be better if the soldiers changed into civilian clothes and that Dr. Bajlec, a member of the Slovene National Committee, had told him on 21 May that the British had indicated they would consider all those in uniform as prisoners-of-war, and those in civilian clothes as refugees. General Krenner refused to accept the need for a intelligence section and would not allow Colonel Drcar to set one up, but continued to press ahead with recruitment so as to increase the number of troops he had serving under him. Nobody liked or trusted him. Dr. Mersol's youngest son, then a 11-year-old, recalls:
Next to us was the camp of the anti-communist fighters. I remember Dad being absolutely furious because they were trying to recruit more troops among the young. He and Krenner got into a major fight. Dad never yelled at anybody, but this time he let him have it and I was surprised the language he knew, because he was absolutely furious. Krenner was appalling, he would call everybody else a liar.
Marko Sfiligoi, then an ordinary soldier aged 19, also recalls:
25. Slovenska Legija, the underground resistance force established by the Slovene People's Party in May 1941. 26. village 15 km from Viktring on lake Woerthersee. 54 I was with the main domobranci HQ in Ljubljana and knew all the top officers (including Vuk Rupnik) and the top politicians because they were continuously coming there. I was also at Vetrinje, and knew all the events with Krenner - we didn't like him. He was a nasty guy.
Pernisek's diary continues:
Monday 14th May. Today we received the first official English visit. The Canadian Major Barre came, who'd been appointed commandant of the camp by the English military authorities. This gentleman is very caring and understanding and very calm.27 For supper we got warm gruel.
Tuesday 15th May. The new commandant is an early riser. It was nearly eight when he came with his assistants and started putting some order into the camp. He made a round accompanied by Dr Mersol and ordered that all the soldiers should leave the civilian camp and go to the military camp, and that all horses should be moved into the pastureland near the forest, explaining that the civilian and military horses would be used to feed the refugees. He said we should organise a work team and set up a camp committee with whom he would meet for consultations each morning.
He told us we would stay here some time longer and would have to feed ourselves for a few more days until the Military Government organised provisioning, which is the most pressing need in Austria at the moment. For many people, especially families with children, this is quite a problem; even the few provisions they were able to bring with them got lost in the confusion of flight or were stolen. Only limitless confidence in God's providence allays their fear for the future. By evening the English soldiers brought some dry food from their own stores.
Major Barre's first visit took place two days after the arrival of the main body of refugees. He asked them to set up a camp committee but they had already established one which they called the "National Committee for Slovenia" and which passed its first two decrees, both on education, on 16 and 18 May, as
27. Dr Mersol described him as "a very conscientious and for the Slovenian refugees very meritorious officer". 55 the "annual report for the school-years 1945/46"28 recorded:
The National Committee for Slovenia with decree 1 issued the charter of constitution for the new secondary school and with decree 2 appointed Director Bajuk chief of culture, charging him to organise all the schooling among the Slovene refugees in Carinthia - elementary, higher elementary, professional and secondary schools. And so we began working. There were enough teachers for both the elementary and the complete secondary school, and so we began immediately in the most simple way, in the open and in the corridors. But from these simple beginnings our work developed fast. The Lord had blessed it.
Director Bajuk has already appeared in this narrative, as the 60 year old grandfather who accompanied his son, daughter-in- law and four grandchildren through the terrors of the tunnel. Everyone mentions his phenomenal energy. He had been headmaster of the principal classical secondary school in Ljubljana and also a school inspector. I described him at the time as a cross between Lenin and Sir Thomas Beecham in appearance and dynamism. He was also a gifted composer and arranger of songs for, and conductor of, the camp choir. It was he who wrote the school annual report. He gave more details later in his memoirs:
I began to worry about what would happen to our pupils .. and made plans for a temporary school, having looked through the list of secondary school teachers and found that ones for almost all subjects were available. I raised the matter with Dr. Basaj, deputy chairman of the National Council, who was at once very keen, especially after seeing Dr. Mersol's enthusiasm. So right away I invited all teachers and pupils to meet at the central camp office and enough turned up for us to decide to start lessons immediately, which led to decree No 1. But we had enormous difficulties - no classrooms, books, writing paper, pencils. We cleaned out an abandoned building with an adjoining barn for classrooms and used what we could lay our hands on for chairs, a few planks of wood for desks, while the English camp commandant Major Barre, who was very kind to us, got us a blackboard. Professor Sever from Jezica and our Bozidar helped a lot with cleaning up and sorting things out, and the girls from Jezica did all the heavy and dirty work.
28. Duplicated copy in the possession of the author. 56
There were no books. I borrowed a few Latin and Greek texts from the Jesuit monastery, Bozidar copied them for our pupils on his knees and on wooden crates, and we found single books among the pupils, at second- hand dealers and from individuals in Klagenfurt. With great difficulty we got paper and a few pencils from the camp office and bought some in Klagenfurt. Teachers had to prepare scripts for all subjects, write down lessons and texts, compose mathematical problems, etc. All this required enormous work, specially difficult because the teachers were living in tents. Colonel Baty's report rightly described the whole achievement as heroic.
As I had also been given provisional responsibility for the whole of education I called together all the elementary school teachers and pupils. Six Salesians also came to the meeting, and I put Cigan in charge of out-of-school youth activities and Mihelic of singing, and the others helped in the schools.
The elementary school was running within a week - Jane Balding "saw school in action in open" on the 25th May - and lessons for the 148 secondary school pupils started in mid-June. Colonel Baty inspected the secondary school in August and his report is reproduced under that date. Pernisek continues:
Ember Saturday 19th May29. Our morning devotions, the smarnice30, are just beautiful. From seven in the morning the church is full to the last small corner. A different priest delivers a sermon each day, followed by sung mass with organ accompaniment. People are very composed and all receive holy communion, while the singing is most beautiful and from the heart. Holy communion is distributed by two priests at all masses, and these are being said from five till ten-thirty. The confessionals are also permanently besieged.
Wherever one looks round the church one sees tears in people's eyes. We are all suffering under the cross we put on our own shoulders. We took it up willingly; let us carry it following Christ, who
29. the Saturday before Whitsunday, a day of fasting and prayer. 30. a popular Slovene church service comprising an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, sermon, rosary, litanies of Loreto and benediction. 57 suffers with us. We only ask that we understand in the right way the suffering of these times and that God does not try us beyond our strength, so that we do not fall under the weight of the cross. Jesus, be you our Simon of Cyrene when our strength ebbs away!
Afternoon and evening services are also beautiful. Smarnice for all - a sung holy rosary and sung litanies of Our Lady - are offered at six in front of a large framed canvas painting of Marija Pomagaj31. The domobranci have their own smarnice at eight, the special attraction being the mighty male choir.
Sunday 20th May. Today is Pentecost. Three Montenegrin chetniks came to the camp. 15,000 left Montenegro but only these three reached here: all the others died on the journey, many of typhus fever, or were killed by the ustashe or the partisans. The partisans captured them near Kamnik, disarmed them and took them away together with their women and children somewhere north of Kamnik where they killed them with machine guns. Some 300 Montenegrins were killed that way, all who reached Slovenia.
Tuesday 22nd May. Today we received bread for the first time - stale army rations but the children eat it with relish. Today we realise what a great inestimable boon it is when we're so hungry. A few weeks ago I read a book "L'eroica felicita giaponese"32 and couldn't understand or imagine their simple and unostentatious life style. I understand now when I see how easily man can live simply. I can rest well, sleeping on a palliasse or on the bare hard ground.
A lot of makeshift cooking places are springing up in the camp: two bricks, some twigs and branches between them, empty tin cans or a washing bowl on them and the food is cooking. A royal dish, if a morsel of meat and fat has been added. We now find despised horsemeat very tasty, and of this there's enough. Our horses grow fewer every day, as the army has driven them all off except for the few needed for the transport of supplies.
The camp presents a unique sight in the evening. Mighty Mount Kosuta sparkles in the setting sun like a giant
31. Mary Help Us. 32. the heroic happiness of the Japanese 58 emerald, while smaller mountains and hills are wrapped in a mysterious bluish hue set off by the magnificent green of the pine trees. Fairy-like white wisps of mist float above the larger and smaller lakes. Daylight dims fast, the day ebbs away and the camp becomes a single huge bonfire. One blaze after another lights up the surroundings fabulously and smoke rises skywards like a thin transparent veil. From the fires come a cheerful chatter of voices and the joyful sound of the patriotic songs of the domobranci accompanied by accordions. Now and again horses' neighs pierce the air. Eventually the camp falls silent with God's sublime peace above it.
I walk around the camp between eleven and twelve. Silence and peace reign. One hears people's snoring in a light drone. The tents assume a silver colour in the moonlight and the stars twinkle happily. Here and there some older refugee sits in front of his tent and gazes at the sky, searching for his own star. Only the coughing of the elderly and the ominous hooting of the owls disturb this heavenly peace. Ill-omened owls! From early childhood I hate your sinister hooting. I'm trembling and my soul is filled with an inexplicable fear. I can't shake off the impression that these hoots presage horror and death. I'm suffocated by this feeling and try to escape it.
Thursday 24th May. The feast of our Maria Pomagaj of Brezje, our national day. Today the English started to carry away the Serbian volunteers and the Mihailovic chetniks: heavy rain made the removal very sad, the soldiers gloomy and subdued. The whole camp is one muddy lake.
Engineer Tavcar gives a second account of camp life in his diary:
16th May. Troops, battalions and regiments are being formed in the army section of the camp.
18th May. The food situation for us refugees is getting worse. Many are starving, especially those from Dolenjska.
22nd & 23rd May. Life continues much the same every day. We have weddings and births and church services. School has started, with around 400 school-age 59 children taught by refugee teachers. Today I was planning to go to Klagenfurt by bike, but the English wouldn't let anyone out of the camp. In the morning some 10,000 English soldiers arrived from somewhere, driving in their tanks along the roads headed East.
24th May. Life is getting dull, we've lost our sense of time. We sleep under carts and bark sheds, cook what we've left in barrels. They say the English will start giving us bread in two days. It's been raining all day long, which has a very bad effect on us since we're crouching under the carts. Sanitary conditions are getting worse, with one more calamity - lice.
Rumours start begin to circulate that the men are not being sent for their safety down to Italy as promised, but back to Yugoslavia. The Red Cross nurse, Jane Balding, writes:
Friday 26 May heck of a night sore throat result of injection earache jaw ache full of misery went to camp awful tales of returned refugees being murdered in tunnels main question seems to be do they return to be murdered or stay here & starve or die of pneumonia if they are not under cover soon incessant pelting spring rains camp one huge swamp spent afternoon packing up to leave hotel for billet moved after tea am in house alone nice little room with balcony others all in next house mine to be mess me to be messing officer! had dinner at hotel decided to stay night! all very pleasant sat in bar talking shop to Major Barre mostly childbirth!!
Sunday 27 May spent morning running round camp & chatting to British guard huge church service in open for refugees priest in all his finery most picturesque spent whole afternoon till 6.30 going round country with Major B. & Major Sturgis looking for home for our 17,000 decide we must build hutments. Pernisek writes:
Sunday 27th May. Today the first contingent of domobranci leave the camp. The order for departure arrived without warning last night. We celebrate the first mass of the young priest Fr Vinko Zakelj in the parish church of Our Lady of Victories, but there's no festive spirit, the mood sad rather than cheerful.
Marian Loboda, a schoolboy at the time, who earlier described 60 life under German occupation now gives his account of Vetrinje:
The days we stayed in Vetrinje were for a youth of fourteen full of adventure. By good fortune the climate was fairly kind and I don't remember suffering from bad weather. What I did feel after a couple of days was hunger. Once my mother got hold of a piece of mule meat and we started a fire, found an empty food can and began to cook it. I know I collected a mountain of firewood and the meat was still tough. In the end we ate it because hunger overcomes everything. We liked the English soldiers who mounted guard round our encampment and looked on them as our protectors. There were warning notices that partisans were prowling around and reports of kidnappings and assassinations of people who'd strayed from the encampment. Apart from that we children had a good time, and everyday made fresh discoveries. Teachers tried to get us together for games and lessons and to protect us from the many dangers we ourselves ignored.
One morning towards the end of May I watched the domobranci climb onto the trucks and leave to the accompaniment of songs and cheers. They said they were going to Italy and we'd soon be following them. I didn't take much notice, perhaps because the soldiers from our Kranj detachment were detailed to go last. A couple of days later I went into the little church belonging to the convent of Vetrinje, moved by curiosity at the uncontrollable weeping I heard. There were a lot of women and some men in the church, all praying aloud between tears and sobs. They were the mothers, sisters, wives and betrothed, fathers, brothers and friends of the domobranci, who'd left for Italy in the English trucks a day or two earlier.
The first to escape had arrived and told what had happened. The English had treacherously sent the domobranci to the Yugoslav frontier and handed them over, disarmed and deceived, to their mortal enemies, Tito's partisans. No one was under the slightest illusion as to what would happen to them. Everything collapsed completely, first of all our faith in the men we'd always believed to be "gentlemen". The blow was so great that people lost the most basic of instincts of struggle to save their lives. Young men, previously true heroes, seemed to be without the slightest will to do anything to save themselves. 61 All that remained for us was God's mercy and prayer.
Majda Vracko has already related her flight from Ljubljana with her father the judge, and here she describes their arrival at Viktring. Not yet 17 herself, she looked for her brother Marian who had just turned 16 and was with the domobranci:
The second day I looked for him: he was nowhere. The third day Dr Puc told me he thinks he's in the sick- bay, and I went there and sure enough he was. I met with him every day until he moved and was in the middle of the field somewhere: they had their own tents and I was visiting him there. All the people we knew were slowly finding each other, friends with whom we were going over Ljubelj, also school friends, family friends. I knew a lot of people I didn't even know were there! And Marko Bajuk, the director of my school, the classical gimnazija of Ljubljana, made me feel very good when he said, "don't worry, we won't waste an hour, we'll start the school right now." And he started it, we were meeting outside on the grass of that monastery in one corner. And when we were there in 1989 we went to visit that corner, and it's still there. We were meeting very regularly, and each day there was another new professor that came from somewhere, so that we had quite a good selection.
It was very pleasant because there were so many people to talk to, and food wasn't too bad; I think we were hungry but didn't realise it. I remember once I went to church and all of a sudden I'm on the ground and lots of people are standing round me, and I said, what happened? And they said, you fainted. I said, how could I faint? I'm not sick. And somebody said, you're hungry. And I said, is that what hunger means? Because I'm hungry for the first time ever. I think it was not knowing we were hungry and having friends around that helped. In the morning we started with going to church, which was a beautiful old monastery. Masses were going on from six o'clock until noon. There were many, many priests, and masses at all the altars, so you didn't even have to go at a certain time, you just went and were able to participate in one or other service. Every day.
And then came Monday when they started to send the soldiers, as we thought, to Italy. We were quite happy they were able to go because they said, "we're going to make way for you". At first they said 62 civilians shouldn't go because we don't know how rough it's going to be, and even so a few went33. So they went Monday, Tuesday ... Wednesday they started to say something's wrong.
But on the Tuesday Dr Puc comes to the factory and is looking around and says, "I'd like to speak with Miss Vracko. Where is Miss Vracko?" I didn't know him then and thought he was a priest because he had a dark blue suit and a white shirt, and I said, "I'm Majda Vracko" and he said, "I've very bad news for you. Your father had high fever, he was delirious and we had to send him to Klagenfurt hospital." My God, what is this? And then Dr Mersol comes. Since I knew him, he knew I'd feel better if he talked to me and he said, "I think it's typhoid, but he had very high fever and was completely delirious." Fortunately with English help they could transport him to the hospital.
So all of a sudden I was alone. I went to see my brother and he wasn't in his tent any more, and I didn't know whether he'd left. I didn't find him, but I met somebody else and he said, "no, no, no, his unit is still here." So I didn't worry yet. Wednesday somebody said, "they're returning them back to Tito." I said, "it can't be." And then I heard from somebody else, "I think they are returning them." So I went to ask Max Jan, one of the university students who knew my father. I said, "would you say this was true?" and he said, "Miss Vracko, are you also one of those who believe that communistic propaganda? They want to make us afraid, to make us doubt. Don't believe it". So I was very calm. And that was Wednesday.
Next day Majda did believe. It took me longer as I was dividing my days between Viktring and a camp in Klagenfurt. I had established cordial relations with my Italian-speaking interpreter, and the other refugees were warmly appreciative of what we were doing, but after a few days their attitude towards me changed mysteriously and they became cold, withdrawn, mistrustful and almost hostile. I found the atmosphere deeply uncomfortable and was mystified, as Joze Jancar recalls:
You won't remember, but I remember. I asked, "John, why didn't you tell me?" and you said, "I didn't know" and I said, "John, is that the truth?" and you said,
33. in fact, a total of 600 63 "it's the truth. I didn't know". I asked because, you see, nobody trusted you and they were suspicious of me, that I was knowing things because we were, they saw us, always together. I remember distinctly I asked you and you were very upset. But people did not believe - before they were very friendly to you - but it took a long time, and then they came back.
To return to Majda Vracko:
Thursday more and more people were saying they are returning them, so I was determined to go down to get my brother. I got there but all I found - my brother was very fond as a little boy of radios, any kind of mechanical things, and I still saw some parts of his radio he was showing me a few days before. So I knew this was his tent, and he wasn't there any more. And I spoke with another friend and he said, "yes, I saw him, he was going on to the camion, as they called those huge trucks, and I said 'Marian, don't you know where you're going?' and he said, 'I don't believe that. It's just a bunch of lies.' And he got on." And then somebody else remembered seeing him later on in Klagenfurt, and said the same to him. But at that time they were all very resigned and said, "if this happened to the rest of them, why not to us? I'm not going to run away. This is the way it is." So that was the last we heard of him.
My father was still in the hospital and I really didn't know what was going on, and I somehow don't even remember the next few days because I too fell sick. I don't know whether I'd fever or not, I just remember I wasn't even hungry, I was dreaming about cherries that grew at home, I'd some sort of flu. And one day I was sitting there on the floor in the factory and I see my father come through the door, ashen white, with beard not shaven, and all he said was, "where is Marian?" and I said, "he left, I couldn't find him." He collapsed. In the hospital he found that they were returning them, and he left without telling anybody, in his hospital gown, I don't know how he found shoes, and he walked from Klagenfurt all the way to Vetrinje, sick as he was, to find out. So of course they returned him there and I was afraid he'd have another collapse.
And another thing. My friend who was with me, really my best friend, whose fiance was the blind domobranec, found his brother. The fiance was returned with his 64 brother because the brother felt, I can get better care for him than he can get here with the civilians. And she got bloody diarrhoea, so that she was really almost dead .. and I was the one that was supposed to be helping! I didn't have diarrhoea, but I was otherwise sort of distant. As soon as my father came back and I knew that he knew - when this horrible thing was off my chest - it started to get better.
I knew about the order that the civilians were to be sent back next day: Mersol told us, drew us all together, and we were praying all afternoon that they would make the right decision. I remember that. To me the worst thing was when my brother was returned and I couldn't keep him there, and then my father expected that I would, and I couldn't. And if I'd known more I'd have taken him away before then, but I didn't, and I thought I was doing the best thing letting him be where he was.
There was great rejoicing when Mersol said the order had been changed. Because first when he came, I'd never seen him so down. As a physician he always knew how to show faith and either didn't tell you it's the worst or was giving hope: but at that time he was really like he had already put on the cross himself.
Marija Plevnik was just 17 at the time, a few months older than Majda Vracko, and had two brothers with the domobranci, one sent back and the other not. She recalls how they, and the refugees in the civilian camp, reacted:
I had an older brother who was sent back with the domobranci. I still remember when he came to see me and said, "well you're going to follow us. We're going to Italy, and then we'll be all together there". And then a few days later rumours started that it isn't true, and soldiers escaped: "they are sending the whole groups back to Yugoslavia". It was just unbelievable. It took a few days before we believed it. The first days they said, "oh, some people are causing panic in the camp. It's not true. They are definitely going to Italy". Then, when Dr Janez jumped out and was hiding in the field and came back, when he started to report what actually is going on, then they believed him.
And when people learned what happened - it's something that will stay with me for the rest of my life - there was a little church in Viktring, and people 65 would go there and they were just crying out loud from their anguish, despair, disappointment, sorrow. They put everything out from them and just cried, cried, cried. It was unforgettable, it was non-stop, people praying, kneeling, crying out loud, "God help us. Look what's happening to us. We need your help. You are the only one that can save us now".
It was in a sense very healthy, a relief, good psychologically that they were able to externalise their grief, to express it, that they got it out of their systems, and all the disappointment that everyone experienced or went through. There was a big group of us who shared that. And at the same time we feared what would happen with us, because there were rumours that we would follow, that they would send us.
The priest of "the little church at Viktring", Pfarrer Josef Mussger, recorded in his "Memorabilia book Viktring" the succession of outsiders who at that time stayed a few days in the parish and then moved on: Italian partisan prisoners-of- war, so starved they stretched their fingers through the wire to reach nettles and grass but were denied even that; their Ukrainian police guards, columns of Hungarian oxen, defeated German armies exhausted and without hope, Hungarian refugees, the British, endless processions of cars and trucks, German POWs, SS mountain artillery who stationed their guns in the churchyard, and finally: most wretched of all, the Yugoslav refugees, an endless procession on 6, 7, 8 May, with their pitiful belongings, camping out in the fields and woods. One after another knock on my door seeking somewhere to sleep: mostly priests, finally totalling 18, with 39 other civilians, squeezed into every possible corner.
The church was crammed full, with 600 - 1,000 people daily attending 40 celebrations of Mass. After a couple of weeks the domobranci were handed back by the English to Tito-Yugoslavia and thousands were shot. Before that a number were married here. How they sang in the church! Magnificent hymns, Slovene, fervent, then much weeping because so many were sent back.
The parish register lists 21 Slovene marriages, 6 baptisms and 3 deaths. Marija Plevnik continues:
What did we do at Viktring? There was a little creek by the camp, and we'd go along there to wash ourselves 66 and we'd go for walks around there. We were mostly walking, going to church and going along to that little creek. And then I recall someone that comes from the same place as I do, a professor, he was once in Russia and he said, "keep in mind that we are refugees now. Russian refugees have been out of their country for such a long time. The same thing could happen to us", and we were shocked. How can he say that? How can he tell us? We still had hopes that something will happen, a miracle, and we will go back. We didn't live with reality, we were in shock.
That was Professor Sever34. I think he's still alive in Cleveland. He taught Slovenian language in the gimnazija. So he warned us and I guess we didn't want to hear the truth. We were very hungry. I remember getting corned beef in the can from the English and something like grain wafers. Isn't it funny I remember that? They're like crackers, only they're sweet. Then we'd go to a certain place where they were giving out food, soup with horse-meat, maybe a few macaroni, a few potatoes.
I came to Viktring with my brother. My two brothers were in the domobranci. It was the older one that encouraged me to go: "you'd better go; you don't know what the communists are doing. It's only for a week, and then we'll come back". So I left home with him. We were four in the family, one sister and my mother and father stayed home. I was seventeen and my sister was six years younger, eleven years old. One brother was a year younger and the other two years older. And he was sent back on a Tuesday, just the older one.
The younger was supposed to go on the Thursday, when we really knew what's happening; and then he was able to get some civilian clothes. He changed and was hiding some place in one of the tents and so escaped and moved across to the civilian camp; and we were kind of terrified because we saw some English soldiers walking up and down the camp looking for anyone that had a uniform, that they would force them to go back.
Up to now individuals have described how, confused and bewildered, they gradually realised the domobranci were being
34. the Professor Sever who "helped a lot with the cleaning up and sorting things out" before the secondary school could start, see p 00. 67 sent to Yugoslavia. But not only the domobranci: 600 civilians asked to go with them, thinking they and their children would be better off in Palmanova camp in Italy, where there was more food. And the British allowed them to go, although they knew it was not to Palmanova as they thought, but to be handed over to the partisans, the very people they had just fled in terror.
Ivan Kukovica, a 26 year old engineering student at the time, has recorded what happened to his family of eleven - father and mother aged 47 and 45 and four brothers and four sisters aged 8 to 25. He explains why they left home in the first place:
Why did we feel we had to flee? My father was an ordinary worker in a paper factory. In Slovenia we had three workers' unions, communist, socialist and catholic. He was president of the catholic union and the communists hated him. He was a visible man there in the factory and we got threatening letters and were twice attacked by the partisans at night. Beside that Edvard Kardelj, later on vice-president with Tito, was a neighbour of ours maybe 500m away from our house. So our family was visibly anti-communist. But not only anti-communists were fleeing the country, all kinds of people were, peasants.
We left Ljubljana on the 8th May and it took us five days to get to Vetrinje. My parents and all nine of us walked. We had a little wagon on two wheels, loaded to the brim. When we came to Ljubelj there were partisans, so the people ran back down to the other side of the hill and we abandoned the wagon with all we had right there, because we couldn't run back with it up the hill. So we came with nothing.
We lost one child: on the way out of Ljubljana he separated from us and wasn't in the group when we came to Vetrinje. He went with a group of his friends through Austria and then down to Italy. He must have been fifteen. At Spittal I found out he was in Italy and went to get him and brought him back to Austria. He wasn't sixteen yet, so Miss Jaboor35 had an order to send him back, because somebody learnt that he was an "unaccompanied" child. She was looking for him but he was living with me in Graz. She couldn't find him or maybe didn't want to find him. I think she suspected he was with me, because who else? There were no other relatives. I hid him
35. director of the special camp for refugee students run by UNRRA in Graz 68 successfully in the camp but he didn't get rations, we had to share.
Ivan left "for Palmanova" a day before the rest of the family to find suitable accommodation in advance for his father who was still recovering from an operation. He continues his account: It's an extraordinary story, miraculous so-to-say, how I escaped from the train. When we were pushed into those cattle trucks I was lucky to get into a wagon that had a shrapnel hole by the door. With my knife I enlarged it so much that I was able to take my hand out and open it. There were about 90 people in the wagon. I found only two I knew, colleagues from high school, and we decided, yes, we go. So after we opened the door we simply jumped out - we'd been going to high school by train and daring each other who can jump before it stops, so we knew how to do it! We were out in no time and started to go back. It was difficult to get into Austria because the partisans were patrolling, and three times we almost met death because we bumped into them: they didn't see us, we saw them.
We went at night and during the next two days to Austria. We were afraid of English people simply because they were patrolling the streets, and I said, "if they get me I'll be sent back again". So I was avoiding them - and the partisans because they were still there in Austria. Once we asked at a farmhouse for some food and they gave us bread and milk, and at the same time I saw a small 14 year-old girl running up the hill: then I asked them, where are the partisans, and they said, "oh they're up there, up in the hill" and I asked, "do they come down to the house?", and they said, "oh yes, they come down twice, three times a day". So I said to my two colleagues, let's get out of here. At that point we separated, saying if they capture one, they're not going to get all three. So the others went different ways, and I straight to Vetrinje, but I was too late.
At Vetrinje we were only eight children, and of the eight, all were returned. Two sisters, two brothers and both parents were killed. I escaped, and the other three eventually came out.
Ivan's mother and two older sisters shared the fate of most of the women: repeated rape and then murder. The two brothers disappeared and were presumed killed at Teharje and the father 69 died after some days in prison from injuries received during torture. The younger daughters and son aged 14, 12 and 8 were sent to an orphanage where they were harshly treated but eventually allowed to join an older married half-brother living elsewhere in Slovenia. Ivan eventually got to Canada and married a fellow Slovene refugee, and significantly they went on to have nine children of their own, and in due course fourteen grandchildren. Ivan gives the end of their story in chapter 00.
The next account comes from another civilian who was sent back and survived. She wrote it only two years later, with the memory still vivid and detailed. I reproduce it in full, as she gives some description of what happened not only to the 600 civilians but also to the 11,000 soldiers who were repatriated. Pavci Macek was 16 years old in 1945. She had led a very sheltered childhood as the youngest of four sisters, attending a convent school with her 18 year old sister Polonca and living in a home run by nuns. She and her architect husband gave me lunch in Buenos Aires in 1995, when she confirmed what she had written earlier and added a detail or two so terrible she had suppressed them in her original account. She began:
I was very young, living in the sky, very romantic and so terribly, terribly childish! I was still playing with dolls, not like girls today.
Her father was a prosperous timber exporter and flour mill owner from Logatec, a town south-west of Ljubljana. A year earlier a drunken companion had told him, pointing to the big lime tree they were sitting under, "remember you and your family will one day hang here". So he escaped immediately the war ended with his wife and two elder daughters, but without the two younger girls who had no time to join them from their convent school in Ljubljana. The parents and two older girls reached Klagenfurt before the camp opened at Viktring, and got places on a British army convoy which really was taking refugees down to Italy. By the time Pavci and Polonca reached Viktring their parents had already left, and, when the Logatec domobranci were told at the end of May they were being sent to Italy, they naturally offered to reunite them with their parents. Pavci continued:
We got up and hurried to mass on Monday 28 May and when our domobranci told us they were off to Italy at midday and we with them, we were somehow astonished and upset. The troops folded their tents, packed their knapsacks and marched off after lunch singing to the rallying point. Twenty trucks were brought up at three o'clock and we climbed in, sitting on our 70 knapsacks and leaning against each other. Our route wound along beautiful roads past cornfields, dark green woods, streams, handsome churches, attractive houses with blood-red carnations and verdant rosemary cascading from their windows. Every time we passed a shrine in the fields I crossed myself without thinking. Police cyclists darted between the trucks.
The officer in charge of the Logatec contingent spread a map out and examined the countryside through which we were driving and suddenly cried: "we're not being driven to Italy. We've been betrayed!" We all fell silent, stunned. The bolder ones answered: "don't try to frighten us! Perhaps they've chosen a different route!" That was the end of peace; we hardly spoke, but were overcome by a nightmare of anxiety.
After some hours the column stopped. We jumped to the ground and brushed the dust from our faces and clothes. In a marshy meadow at the end of the road the English started searching our knapsacks and pockets and taking cameras, knives, fountain pens - anything valuable. I looked at them terrified, almost hating them. Then they told us to form fours and march across the marsh. My shoes were soaked but I'd no time to think about this. An English soldier with rifle and bayonet led and we continued along the road and then turned right and were already in front of Bleiburg station. I caught sight of caps with five-pointed red stars and heard shouts and muffled growls.
The English had betrayed us and handed us over to the partisans, the communists! I stared backward with astonishment. It seemed impossible our troops were still here. Was I dreaming? I can't describe the horror, grief and disgust they showed. I felt I was looking into the dark eyes of a mortally wounded deer my father once shot. Although they were not crying, it seemed as if tears were flowing down their cheeks.
They crammed us into filthy, suffocating cattle wagons and it flashed through my mind: "but we're not animals!" Then they closed the doors and we found ourselves in almost complete darkness. My eyes soon grew accustomed to it and distinguished individual faces. The train moved. After a long and painful silence a powerfully built older man groaned: "I've been in many fights and faced many dangers, but to fall now 71 into the hands of the enemy in such a shameful and deceitful way, unworthy of a decent fighter!"
We tore up our identity cards and photographs and all the keepsakes dear to us, reminding us of home and loved ones. Someone removed a bolt from the latticed window and a shaft of light flashed into the wagon. In one corner a young lieutenant held a photo, hesitated, was about to tear it up, then quickly wrote a message on it, turned and said, "my dear, would you do me a favour, possibly a last one? As you're a child they won't do anything to you. When you get back home, give this picture to my fiancee". Tears choked me but I nodded agreement, took the picture and guarded it as a holy relic.
No one tried to escape. We all sat dejected, depressed, absorbed in our thoughts, shocked, hypnotised, paralysed. The train stopped and partisans climbed in, shouting and cursing, and took any valuables we still had, including clothing and shoes. So far as my sister and myself were concerned, I think we had a special angel who guarded us because nobody touched us; there was also a woman with a baby she was breast-feeding, and I don't remember them touching her. At two-thirty that night we disembarked and went under a strong guard of Russians and Mongolians to some school or barracks outside Slovenj Gradec. I was terrified when I heard an unknown language and saw dark figures with tommy-guns and machine-guns at the end of the path.
Once in the building they put us in separate rooms - domobranci and male and women civilians - and set guards at the doors. We had to take it in turns to go to the lavatory and the washroom so as not to meet up with the others. Eventually my sister and I succeeded in escaping along the passage past the guards and after a long search found the Logatec domobranci. We were happy we were all still alive and offered them everything we had to eat, but they would only accept cigarettes. They were still brave, putting their trust in God. We went back.
We were held there three days. A couple of times we were given a strange-looking soup and something like coffee. Short and thick-set partisan women came, looked at us as if we were wild animals in cages and took any shoes or mountaineering boots that caught their fancy. Every day some domobranci were driven 72 off from the building. We watched through the windows, a woman catching sight of her husband, a child her father, a girl her boy. They heard cries and smothered weeping. Partisans threatened to shoot at once if they saw us again at the windows.
On the third day we left with the rest of the domobranci, after Slovene partisans had taken us over from the Serbs. We waited in line in a passage and listened to footsteps and screaming. Domobranci were running down the stairs with partisans chasing and mocking and striking them with belts and guns so that they stumbled, fell, picked themselves up and again rushed on. It was terrible and my sister burst into convulsive sobs, but the girls quietened her, "don't cry! We mustn't show it hurts or let them enjoy our suffering". We controlled ourselves and passed our mockers calmly and proudly when they jeered at us. We waited a long time at the station, wretched and miserable hunched on knapsacks and cases, and they again interrogated us, jeered and took photos. It was dark when we mounted the wagons.
We got down from the wagons at Mislinje, where the railway ended, and marched up the valley in thick darkness. I slipped and fell on the damp grass. A fire burnt at the edge and cast ghastly shadows on the meadow. I thought we were going to die there. In the darkness someone shrieked the command, "on the road!" and we ran uphill, but another partisan chased us back. We huddled together like lost sheep terrified by wolves. Along the road they drove near us some domobranci who were rushing past and we had to follow. The guards' command sounded harshly, "In ranks of eight!" We got ourselves in order somehow as the road narrowed.
I unexpectedly slid over the edge of the road and just saved myself from falling, but had to stop and caused confusion in the rank. A guard cursed and fumed. My legs trembled from tiredness and terror, as if filled with lead, so that I simply couldn't move. I cried to my sister, "I'm finished!" - "you must continue, you can't stop here or they'll kill you! Give me your bundle! Keep going, you can do it!" This spurred me on, I clenched my teeth and forced myself forward. The straps of my rucksack were cutting my shoulders but I wasn't sweating and didn't want to give in. The moon shone through the clouds and lit up a ruined bridge. I stumbled on the sharp stones, 73 almost fell and saw dark stains on the ground: "what is this? Blood?" Oh horror, it really was the blood of our wretched sufferers. We were so tired that while we were walking I slept, just slept a little. At three in the morning we reached a railway station and found we'd walked eighteen kilometres. That was the most terrible night for me. Soon I was relieved to climb into a wagon, put my head on my rucksack and instantly fell asleep.
We were woken by shrieks and frenzied beatings on the doors. They were opened and the sun poured in harshly, blinding us. Only cries and shooting - a day of judgment. My sister whispered in my ear, "do your act of contrition, our end has come!" We were made to stand on one side of the road, the domobranci on the other, while partisans on handsome, fiery horses, with bloodthirsty grins on their faces chased our lads back and forth. They beat them over the heads and ordered them to undo and throw away their belts and lie on the ground, and walked their horses over them. Then they had them get up again and run forward, all the time flogging them. When a sick soldier was too slow, they drew their revolvers, aimed and shot him.
We reached Teharje, an hour from Celje, that evening after been made to run forward, go back, stop and go forward again. We were worn down by our rucksacks and staggered. We started throwing away in the ditches food, boots, clothes and then whole rucksacks and suitcases. Some partisans noticed and took pity and sent some of the worst injured lads to help us. A fellow villager, his forehead streaked with strands of hair glued down by sweat and clotted blood, came to my aid. Parched, cracked lips begged for water.
We reached the brow of the hill - wire fences, guards and barracks with pine trees and spruces on all sides and a second hill beyond, with a view opening onto broad fields to the north, but only barracks to the south. We entered the camp and were received by harsh stones underfoot and hostile, rough-mannered, spiteful faces. For the last time we were plundered for gold, watches, purses, money and documents; they said we wouldn't be needing them any more and took everything. They locked us in the barracks; in the room where my sister and I were put there were wooden bunk beds, a table and a broken-down wardrobe. The lads were crammed into a space between two barracks 74 fenced off with a high wire mesh. Everything had been taken from them and some were down to their bathing drawers or underpants.
The first day we were given no food at all, the next afternoon a little bitter beetroot soup, which even pigs would have rejected. I craved for potato peelings. The sixth day they gave us a small, thin piece of ration bread. How delighted we were with this! Now and then we succeeded in throwing some morsel or cigarette to the lads, even when we ourselves were starving, and a couple of times were able to give our ration to someone who ate it up eagerly. In spite of the hunger I felt I couldn't eat and was continually weeping.
We were only allowed a few minutes at a fixed time in the lavatory and the wash-room, so there was often an intolerable stench in our room. We lay on the floor as the bugs weren't so bad there; there were lice also, and we itched and it hurt like hell. Every day the military came, questioning and promising some people they'd be going home soon and then sneering and mocking at us, the domobranci and the bishop36. We often had to go for interrogation, and again questions, gibes, scolding, threats. The weaker soon broke down. When we got up we were faint from weakness. A partisan from Stajerska, whose father we'd called by name, brought us bread from time to time; and the partisan in charge of the wash-room once or twice gave my sister bread. How grateful we were!
It was terrible when they took the children under fourteen away from their mothers, to send to the boarding school at Celje, saying they were innocent. The mothers wept and begged, and the children even more, especially the smaller ones. It would have melted a stone, but not those people. That was nothing to what the domobranci suffered. There was no pity for them. They sat for three weeks on the hard stone with the sun burning them mercilessly during the day. At night, poorly dressed and without other covering, they were stiff with cold. They got up and lay down only in response to commands. A terrible punishment followed if a guard noticed someone talking with us. I don't know how they survived. God alone supported
36. Gregorij Rozman, Bishop of Ljubljana and spiritual leader of the anti-communist Slovenes 75 them with his mercy.
They came at night suddenly, shouting and with a list of names, "the name we call, come here." They didn't call my sister and me, so we remained there. Another day they said, "those with a brother or fiance or father in the domobranci, come here" and I said to my sister, "I'll go because it's so terrible here", but she said, "we stay here, just be quiet." So we remained, while all those civilians were murdered too.
They already started taking them away after a few days. They twice drove off about eighty women. One said, "thank God they left you behind." Earlier ten of the lads escaped during the night. They killed three of them at once and others later, but two succeeded in reaching Monigo camp37. The partisans were furious and took it out on the rest of the domobranci, beating them up and continually inventing new forms of torture. We saw all this through the window and wept. Afterwards the windows had to be kept closed and we didn't dare stand near them. I heard late into the night the cries of lads who'd gone mad, probably because they'd been beaten up so badly.
On Saturday 7th July they discharged the surviving civilians from the camp after six weeks of suffering, saying we'd been punished and so they were sending us home, where a people's court would try us for all our offences and our treachery. I didn't believe we were going home and thought they were taking us to prison in Ljubljana, and so the journey was painful and hard.
Our train halted outside Ljubljana station. During the brief stop the Pozarj girls from Most and the two of us got down from the open wagon cautiously and, because there didn't seem to be any military guards around, step by step crossed the railway lines. We reached the first gardens and houses quickly and then started running as fast as we could. We were feeble and half-starved, but fear and the hope of escape gave us strength and energy. Out of breath, we reached the home of our fellow-sufferers and fell asleep at once. Next morning we bid the girls and their kind parents farewell and boarded a tram to Krek Domestic Science
37. in north-east Italy 76 School, where we'd lived with the School Sisters during the war. There were soldiers with rifles and red stars in their caps all round the building! Where now? Not Logatec, because our family was no longer there; then to our favourite aunt in the suburb Bezigrad. In spite of the danger and her fear she gave us a warm welcome and deloused us, and we stayed a few weeks while still weak from fever and our wanderings. I was terrified every time a car made a noise in front of the building.
Our aunt got in touch with our parents in Treviso camp in Italy through a friend of our father in Trieste. Then we obtained a doctor's certificate that I needed to visit the seaside for convalescence and that as a minor I needed my sister to escort me. With this we got legal travel documents and left by train. We altered our appearance as we had to travel through Logatec, and we saw father's saw-mill and flour-mill from the train. Our oldest sister was waiting for us in Trieste, and on the 11th August we joyfully hugged our dear ones and friends from Logatec in Monigo camp near Treviso.
It was four days after the repatriations started before Pernisek fully accepted that the British had been deceiving them:
Monday 28th May. We can't believe it, nobody can believe it. The English are handing over Serbian and Slovene domobranci to Tito's partisans at Podrozca station. Not to Italy: to Yugoslavia, into the hands of the communists they've sent them.
77
C H A P T E R 3
28 May - 4 June 1945
Captain Nigel Nicolson of the Brigade of Guards describes how the forcible repatriations were carried out, followed by the Balding and Pernisek diaries. The surgeon Dr Janez realises what is happening and escapes to warn the commander of the domobranci, General Krenner. The latter tragically refuses to listen to this and a series of earlier warnings. The Balding and Pernisek diaries recall the civilians' horror when they gradually realise their menfolk have been betrayed. They describe how the army commands that the civilians must also be sent back, and how Dr Mersol and Major Barre resist the command.
Documents from Quaker and British Red Cross archives record the protests made by the FAU and Red Cross relief workers. Their leaders David Pearson and John Selby-Bigge submit them to a succession of sympathetic staff officers at Army HQ in Udine, until the Army Commander himself sees Selby-Bigge and finally cancels the repatriation order.
78 So the Macek sisters and Majda Vracko's brother were sent back with ten thousand of their fellow Slovenes because they trusted the British, while Gloria Bratina's brothers escaped because their families preferred to trust their own suspicions.
What has the Army made of the episode? It speaks with two voices: one of officialdom, the other of decency and integrity. General Sir William Jackson speaks for officialdom in the 1988 official history of the Mediterranean campaigns. He writes, "the outcome was entirely satisfactory to the Allied side".
Nigel Nicolson, distinguished author, publisher, former Conservative MP and wartime Grenadier Guards officer, represents decency and integrity. He protested unsuccessfully in 1945. He also protested direct to General Jackson because he was so shocked by his "cynical observation", but "failed to elicit a word of pity or remorse." He then wrote in a newspaper article:
These were three weeks that should live in infamy. It was one of the most disgraceful operations British soldiers have ever been ordered to undertake. The editors [of the official history] should feel ashamed. They say it was a political decision and no business of theirs to pass judgement. Politicians have maintained it was primarily the concern of the military.
It was the responsibility of both. This brutal act was committed knowing its probable consequences. Compassion was overridden. For a momentary advantage (but what?) and a desire to placate Stalin and Tito, a major betrayal was deliberately organised. The passing of nearly half a century should not excuse us from investigating who was responsible, and why.38
Captain Nicolson, if anyone, was entitled to challenge the official response because it was he, as brigade intelligence officer of the 1st Guards Brigade of 5th Corps of 8th Army, who had to transmit the orders to the troops and coordinate their execution. The facts were concealed from the public for forty years and it was not until 1986 that they were exhaustively documented by Count Nikolai Tolstoy in his brilliant but controversial book "The Minister and the Massacres", after his earlier highly praised and uncontroversial "Victims of Yalta" which dealt only with the forcible repatriation of the Cossacks. In the autumn of 1989 the forcible repatriations were the
38. Independent Magazine, 22 April 1989 79 subject of a forty-day libel action in the High Court in London, Aldington v Watts and Tolstoy, which was fully reported in the serious press and on television so that the general public became aware for the first time of what had been done in their name. In court the fact that the repatriations and subsequent massacres took place was accepted and not disputed. Lord Aldington, chief-of-staff to 5th Corps in 1945, won the action because the jury was not satisfied he was personally responsible in the sense Tolstoy alleged. Nicolson commented that a libel trial was too crude a method of writing - or rewriting - history and the Government should institute its own enquiry.
Nicolson was not alone in condemning the repatriations. Captain Tony Crosland of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, later British Foreign Secretary and leading Labour Party theorist, wrote at the time in his diary entry for 18 May 1945:
The problem of the anti-Tito Croats and Slovenes is almost causing a civil war within the British Army. We have on our hands at the moment some 50,000 of them. When we accepted their surrender, they certainly assumed that they would not be returned by us to Yugoslavia. It was then decided as a matter of higher policy that they were to be handed back to Tito. ..
The unarmed lot were shepherded into trains and told they were going to Italy; they crowded on in the best of spirits, and were driven off under a British guard to the entrance of a tunnel at the frontier: there the guard left them and the train drove off into the tunnel. Among officers here, there is a great revolt and resentment against the deception and dishonesty involved.39
and in a private letter at the time he described it as
The most nauseating and cold-blooded act of war I have ever taken part in.40
His widow and biographer added:
Twelve or thirteen years later, he was induced by someone he loved, who knew nothing about the war, to tell her what he minded most. He spoke of [three episodes, the third of which was] the train of cheerful,
39. Crosland Susan (1982), Tony Crosland (Jonathan Cape, London), pp. 38-9 40. ibid, p.39 80 unsuspecting men going into the tunnel ... He didn't go into detail. He really didn't want to talk about it.41
Tolstoy quotes the War Diary for 19 May 1945 of Colonel Robin Rose Price of the Third Welsh Guards:
Lovely day. Evacuation of Croats begin. Order of most sinister duplicity received i.e. to send Croats to their foes i.e. Tits to Yugoslavia under the impression they were to go to Italy. Tit guards on trains hidden in guards van.42
He also quotes an eyewitness to the repatriation from Viktring of the thousand chetniks under the command of Lieutenant- Colonel Tatalovic:
As his men scrambled aboard, twenty-five to a lorry, Colonel Tatalovic approached the British officer in charge.
"Major, where are we going?" he asked. "To join your army in Italy," came the reply. "Word of honour?" persisted Tatalovic. "Word of honour!" replied the Englishman breezily.43
Nicolson himself wrote at the time in an official and semi- public document, a "Summary Report on Operations of First Guards Brigade in May 1945":
The only point on which they were unanimous was in their fear that we should return them to Tito, and this was unfortunately exactly what we intended to do. They were not told of our intentions till they saw for themselves the Tito guards boarding their train. We allowed them to remain at Viktring in blissful ignorance and under only nominal guard, for the huge size of the camp ruled out the question of any attempt to wire them in or keep them under the constant supervision of our patrols.44
and, more outspokenly, in his Sitrep (Situation Report) for the 18th May:
41. ibid. p.41 42. Tolstoy, op. cit., p.133 43. ibid., p.156. Information to Tolstoy from Mr M.S.Stankovic, then serving with Colonel Tatalovic's staff 44. Quoted by Tolstoy, op. cit, p. 147 81 The whole business is most unsavoury, and British troops have the utmost distaste in carrying out their orders.45
Forty-five years later, interviewed by a historian of the British Imperial War Museum, he explained that his primary responsibility was to disseminate information - to find out and inform rear headquarters what was occurring at the front and transmit orders received from Corps HQ. The Guards got their orders to return the Yugoslavs on the 16th May, and on the 19th delivered the first batches to the railway stations of Rosenbach and Maria Elend:
The whole operation lasted from 19 to 31 May: every day train-loads of these Yugoslavs would depart for Yugoslavia, and the Welsh Guards was the battalion stationed at or near these two railway stations, and they formed a staging camp; and I was constantly at the railway stations and at the main camps watching and reporting about the whole of this process. We received specific orders from our division that they weren't to be told where they were going; and, as naturally they were very anxious that they shouldn't be sent back to Yugoslavia and suspected us, we were told a little later, only a few days later, that we were to tell them definitely they were going back to Italy, in the case of the Serbs to join their friends, other chetniks, at Palmanova in north-east Italy.
This lie, which we told with the greatest reluctance, was ordered from above, and of course if they'd learnt the truth that they were going back to Yugoslavia where they didn't expect to survive, none of them would have consented to mount the railway trucks. But as they trusted us that we were telling the truth there wasn't much trouble about loading them on.
It's one of the most disgraceful operations that British troops have ever been asked to undertake, and we felt that at the time and many of us expressed it at the time. I expressed it in writing in a public document, and was reprimanded for doing so: but the evidence from people, officers who were engaged upon this dastardly act, is overwhelming. But our feelings about it, which were of course reported to higher headquarters, had no effect upon the operation which was continued until all these people had been
45. ibid., p. 133 82 sent back to Yugoslavia, as we knew almost for certain at the beginning meant to their death. And if there was any doubt in our mind about it, we were confirmed in that supposition by the escape of two or three men who'd been loaded onto the trucks and got over the frontier, seen what was happening on their arrival and escaped and came back to warn their fellow countrymen and the British officers what was happening.
We sent these people to the higher headquarters, right up to the general, General Keightley, commanding 5th Corps, but either he didn't believe them or else he thought that the necessity to carry out the orders he was given from further up was dominant. ... There was some justification for returning the Croats to Tito because they'd been fighting all through the war in alliance with Germany. In fact they could have been called traitors to their state. But the same thing didn't apply to the Serbs and the Slovenes, and particularly the chetniks who were engaged in a civil war against communism inside the major war of Germany against Yugoslavia. It was a very confused situation, and at the time of course we didn't completely understand it.
There were women and children and old men and sometimes babies who were in these convoys which we organised. But in the Viktring camp we'd managed to separate most of the women and children from their menfolk and put them in a separate part of the camp. There were 6,000 of them, and we were ordered to send them too. ... But at the very last moment owing to the intervention of a very bold man with the military authorities higher up those 6,000 were in fact saved, and the order was countermanded at the last moment.
They weren't carriages, they were cattle-trucks, and there were sixty men piled into each of them. It was rather like the evacuation to the concentration camps in Germany, and they were locked in. ... It was absolutely horrifying to watch. And that is why I say now, and felt at the time, that it was such a disgraceful operation, that British troops should never have been asked to undertake.
And we couldn't understand the reason why we were ordered to do this, since it could have been perfectly easy to ship all these people - there were only 70,000 of them, and that was a drop in the ocean of the 83 millions who were swarming through Europe - we could have shipped them back to Eisenhower's divisions in Western Austria or even into Germany where they could have accommodated them quite easily.
They were very well-behaved .. : they were happy to have escaped into Austria under British protection. Very soon they were organising even schools for the children, and they were running horse races. .. It was like a sort of a Gold Rush camp, and with concerts and festivals and a great deal of religious celebration because there were many priests among them. They just were resting after their arduous journey over the mountains, and although they didn't know what was their ultimate destination they felt secure. We grew to like them very much, and they were all so jolly and gay and grateful, and helpful to us; and we had no trouble with them. .. I was constantly in the camp.46
Nicolson added that his views on the repatriations were widely shared:
I was simply reflecting what was the current talk in the officers' mess, but it wasn't confined to the officers. The Welsh Guards who had the major task of forcing these people into the trains - they were at one point almost on the verge of mutiny. They were saying to their officers, "is this what we fought the war for?" And when one company of the Welsh Guards was relieved by another, a sergeant in the first company who'd been through this just for one day said, "well, I'm very glad we haven't got to do it again because I couldn't answer for what the men would do if we were ordered to do this a second time". So they rotated them the companies: it was as bad as - the feeling was running as high as that.47
There has been independent confirmation for all Nicolson's statements except the particularly shocking one, that the order to lie came "from above". But now even this has been confirmed - by from the most unexpected of sources. Lieutenant-Colonel Hocevar, the partisan army commander who negotiated the handovers with "a senior British officer" on the 15th May, the day before the Guards received their orders, has described the negotiations in some detail, adding that:
46. Imperial War Museum, 10968/2/1, pp.1-5 and 10968/2/2, pp.12-13 47. ibid, 10968/2/2, p.15 84
They told us they would entrain the quislings in Viktring, while informing them they were being transported to Italy.
Franc Pernisek continued in his diary:
Monday, 28th May. We cannot believe it. Nobody can believe it. The English are handing over Serbian and Slovene domobranci to Tito's partisans at Podrozca station. They are sending them, not to Italy, but to Yugoslavia into the hands of the communists. The first Serbian officer to escape from Jesenice across the Karawanken and back to Vetrinje reported this last night. His name is Vujicic, his rank lieutenant. He arrived back on the 26th May before the first transport of domobranci and went to General Krenner and reported that the English soldiers were sending the Serbian soldiers and others to Yugoslavia to torture and death. General Krenner didn't believe him. We were convinced the English didn't commit such crimes.
The Balding diary:
Monday 28 May camp thinning out chetniks (troops) being taken off to POW cage did round in morning saw to school equipment with help of ORs [other ranks] Austrian kids in monastery (bombed out) becoming menace to Yugo school must clamp down on them went to Nazi HQ in afternoon in search of writing paper all in open ready to be burnt building to be used as Red Cross store rescued quite a lot also odd jars for hospital Major B & Connolly FAU called after dinner searched house for Nazi propaganda found masses of books son of house says he was called up at 15 & Nazi shot men behind this house in woods!
Tuesday 29 May got baby clothes from Monica NBG [no bloody good] on the whole hung around at hotel for Major B re camp furniture went to hospital for cough mixture on to camp to MI Room some flowers another refugee man disappeared from camp most sinister looked at furniture before lunch picture of me & General M in 8th Army News went to Villach after lunch to trace wife of refugee no luck saw other BRCs glad I'm at Klagenfurt picked up ORs on return journey & MPs [military police] picked us up for speeding had lovely bath 'acking corf 85
The Pernisek diary:
Tuesday 29th May. A glorious sunny day. The lads of the 3rd Regiment are leaving; they are happy and their songs echo all around the camp. The English load the last truck. Slowly the convoy moves out, truck after truck leave the plain of Vetrinje. Accordions sound cheerfully. The roar of the motors doesn't drown the happy songs and cheering of the domobranci. A sea of white handkerchiefs wave goodbye to the lads. Girls and women are crying; their eyes follow the column until it disappears. Farther off one can still hear the singing and the accordions. Gradually the sounds die, sinking into the distance.
Wednesday 30th May. The lads from Kranj are mustering The girls are crying What are they going to do?
The song of Rupnik's commando battalion echoes around the camp. With them there are also going a lot of civilians - people from Cerknica. The English don't discourage or stop any civilians from going with the soldiers. But after each transport it is said with increasing certainty that the destination "Italy" is only an English trick, while in fact the anti- communist fighters are being handed over to the Yugoslav communists at the Austrian border posts at Podrozca and Pliberk.
But today it has become perfectly clear to all of us that the English have been deceiving us in an appalling manner. The domobranci doctor Dr Janez, one of the soldiers the English handed over to the communists and only narrowly escaped, returned to Klagenfurt.
Towards evening some Serbs also turned up in the camp and stated that they escaped from the transports which the English handed over to Tito's men at Podrozca and Pliberk. The domobranci were treated in the same way, as they heard from local people. The lads swear that everything they say is the truth. The news spread immediately among the people and they were overcome with panic. Everywhere one sees grief- stricken, despairing faces, and in the tents there is loud lamentation.
A dreadful night awaits those domobranci who are detailed 86 for next day's transport. Their commanding officer paraded them and told them the English were handing over the domobranci to the Yugoslav communists, and it was up to them to decide what they wanted to do. Some walked away, others declared:
If God demands this sacrifice of us, we will follow our brothers and comrades even if it means death. We also are ready to die for truth.
Marija Plevnik agrees with Pernisek that it was only when Dr. Janez escaped and returned to Viktring and "started to report what actually is going on, then they believed him". Pernisek described him as a domobranci doctor but he was in fact a civilian surgeon and had refused to join any military or political organisation. His chauffeur had driven him to Viktring in a Red Cross car loaded with medicines and instruments, and two weeks later the two of them went with a contingent of domobranci whom the British delivered to Bleiburg railway station and handed over to the partisans. The two of them saw what was happening in time and escaped by jumping behind a station building and hiding in an adjoining rye field; the driver was caught and put on the train but the doctor lay undetected in the rye. During the six long hours he hid there he remembered it was the anniversary of his qualification as a doctor and to contemplate that by rights he should now be on the way to his death with the others, and by any normal calculations should be dead. He vowed that if he survived he would dedicate his life to missionary service for the sick and needy worldwide. He fulfilled his vow and twenty-five years later he spent Christmas day - the one day in the year when his mission hospital in Taiwan was not doing any surgery - to put on paper an account of how he got back to Viktring:48
When night fell I made up my mind to cross the rye field and the road we'd been driven along and climb the hill beyond. I knelt and parted the rye cautiously and silently and after waiting two hours looked down the white road. I saw there was no one and ran across the road and up the hill 100 metres beyond. There I waited for dawn, and around six crossed the hill and approached the plain, avoiding people. On the way I met a woman with children who told me I was in Austria and the railway station was Bleiberg, and how to get to Klagenfurt.
Following her directions I reached Klagenfurt on foot at
48. Tone Ciglar, Dr. Janez Janez, Utrinek Bozje Dobrote, Ljubljana, 1993), pp. 15-16 87 midday the following day, the 30th May. There I told our people that the English were handing the domobranci over to the partisans.
My driver reached Vetrinj five days after me. Just after I jumped into the rye a partisan woman came up and asked him what he was doing and where the doctor was. He said I'd already got on the train and she led him to it, and it was only by a hair's breadth she missed seeing me. Around midnight he somehow managed to smash the cattle truck window near Dravograd and hurl himself off the train onto a bridge, injuring his leg. He was hidden by farmers for three days and then succeeded in crossing the frontier to Viktring.49
When Dr Janez returned on Wednesday, 30th May, General Krenner finally accepted that the British were handing his troops over to the partisans.
The way the General and the civilians of the Slovene National Council rejected instance after instance of reliable evidence that the men were being handed over has the quality of a Greek tragedy. So many young lives were lost that could have been saved that the sequence of events needs to be examined in detail, and this can be done best in the form of a diary:50
On Thursday 24 May 1,000 Serbian chetniks commanded by Colonel Tatalovic, the domobranci military supply unit and a few Serb, Croat and Slovene civilians were the first to be sent back from Rosenbach. A domobranec witnessed the handover after changing into civilian clothes, and told his colleagues. On Friday 25 May a Carinthian Slovene living in Rosenbach travelled to Viktring specially to warn Krenner of what was happening. Krenner had him locked up for the night for "spreading alarmist reports and stirring up animosities between Serbs and Slovenes and within the domobranci". On Saturday 26 May a Serb officer, Lieut. Vujicic, together with two fellow chetniks, who escaped from the partisans at Jesenice, twice reported their brutal treatment. Krenner threatened to lock them up for spreading panic.
49. Tone Ciglar, Dr Janez Janez - Utrinek Bozje Dobrote (Ljubljana, 1993) 50. The account that follows is based on: Matica Mrtvih: Specific Data on Slovenians who were murdered by the criminal Liberation Front 1941-1945 (Cleveland, Ohio, 1968), iv, pp.7-9; Vetrinjska tragedija, (Cleveland, Ohio, 1960), pp. 26-38; Vladimir Kozina, Slovenia, the land of my joy and my sorrow, (Cleveland, Ohio, 1980) pp. 228-232; Nikolaj Tolstoj, Ministar i pokolji, (Zagreb, 1991), pp. 140-169. 88 On Sunday 27 May Colonel Drcar, Krenner's own chief-of-staff, wrote in his diary:
Early in the morning at 7 o'clock the usually reserved [Major] Vuk Rupnik came to my room looking worried and asked if Krenner was awake. I passed him on to Krenner's ordnance officer to wake him up and half an hour later heard that Ljotic had gone to Rupnik the night before with the terrible and unbelievable news that the British had handed Tatalovic's Serbian volunteers over to the partisans at Rosenbach on the 24th May. Ljotic had escaped from the train before it had pulled through the tunnel and secretly returned to the camp. We were crushed by the news.
After the first shock Krenner, [Colonel] Bitenc, Bajlec and Veble51 decided this report was only a Serb trick and attempt to get the domobranci to disintegrate out of fear of being sent back to Yugoslavia and then later have them join the Serb chetniks. My position, that our intelligence should thoroughly investigate the report so as to refute it at once if it was false, was rejected by everybody on the grounds that it was certain they were driving us to Italy. Ljotic must be locked up because he is spreading panic in the camp.
A Slovene civilian called Franc Veber reported on the same evening that the domobranci were being driven to Rosenbach and through the tunnel to Yugoslavia. Krenner was woken at one in the morning, but dismissed his report on the grounds that three patrols had been sent out that afternoon and had found no evidence.
On Monday 28 May Colonel Drcar, undeterred by Krenner, sent a soldier named Janko Marinsek to follow the next transport to Rosenbach. Marinsek talked with a railway man who told him there was a permanent partisan garrison there and the British were handing the domobranci over to them. That evening Drcar and Marinsek returned to the camp and reported their findings, but the officers at HQ refused to believe them.
Three Serb officers also reported that the transports were going through the tunnel to Yugoslavia but fell silent when required to repeat their statement in front of the English. Krenner did however go to the British army HQ in Klagenfurt in
51. two members of the Slovene National Council or SNC, the body representing the interests of the Slovenes who had fled into Austria and Italy 89 the morning together with Colonel Bitenc and two members of the Slovene National Council (SNC) to find out definitely where the transports were going. At Brigade HQ a captain told them they were going to Palmanova in Italy, a base half way between Udine and the sea. The four then went on to Division HQ, where after a wait of three hours an officer again told Krenner the transports were going to Palmanova, but could not answer Krenner's objections that the bridges were down on the only route there was via Rosenbach. The delegation returned to Viktring and still did nothing to warn the domobranci.
On Tuesday 29 May Dr Basaj, President of the SNC, was able to speak with General Keightley himself to find out what was going on. Keightley indignantly denied that handovers had occurred and threatened with severe punishment anyone spreading such rumours.
Drcar, for his part, went on bicycle to check on his own, and found out from a railway worker and some local residents that the British really were handing the domobranci over to the partisans both at Rosenbach and at the nearby station of St Helena. He returned and reported that the trains were definitely going to Yugoslavia. The answer of Krenner and the other staff officers was that in that case the men must be being driven across Yugoslav territory via Lake Bohinj to Italy, or otherwise via Villach to Italy. Colonel Bitenc added that the SNC knew for a fact the British were driving them to Italy and anyone spreading panic rumours should be locked up or dealt with more harshly. The same day a domobranec lieutenant, Otmar Sprah, returned with a Serb woman and reported they had succeeded in escaping from the British handover, but his evidence was rejected on the grounds that he was an unreliable witness.
On Wednesday 30 May Drcar took a Captain Tomic with him to Rosenbach, where a partisan confirmed the British were handing the men over to Tito's troops. They hurried back to the camp, arriving around midday. Krenner had also sent his chauffeur Franc Sega to Bleiburg, and he confirmed that Bleiburg was swarming with partisans who were taking delivery of the men. Drcar and Tomic returned with Sega and then Dr Janez turned up and the four of them reported to a meeting of the SNC in Klagenfurt. All the members of the SNC were still highly sceptical and only the combined testimony of the witnesses, and in particular that of Dr Janez, finally convinced them. Eventually the SNC decided to send a delegation to the camp to warn the domobranci who were about to be returned and any accompanying civilian refugees that all the transports were going to Yugoslavia, and not to Italy.
90 Franc Sega had in the meantime returned to his employer Krenner and had a long session with him. Krenner emerged, having changed into civilian trousers but still wearing a military shirt, stepped into his car and left without saying a word. Captain Nigel Nicolson recorded his departure in his log book next morning, "General i/c Slovenes missing in his green Adler coupe". Nikolai Tolstoy describes him as "a man remarkable only for extreme ineptitude and cowardice."52
Fourteen separate reports, all more or less corroborating each other, were needed to convince Krenner and the SNC that the British were lying, and persuade them to pass on the information enabling the domobranci and civilians to decide for themselves whether to risk their lives by boarding the trucks provided by their British protectors. The witnesses who were not believed included nine Serbs - six officers, two soldiers and one civilian - a member of the Slovene minority living in Austria and ten Slovenes - six domobranci officers, including Krenner's own chief-of-staff, three soldiers and one civilian.
The poignancy of the tragedy increases when it is recalled that at least one British officer was also doing his best to save them and risking severe disciplinary action if found out. Drcar recorded that well before the repatriations started:
The British had dropped an obvious hint it would be better if the soldiers changed into civilian clothes, and Dr Bajlec [a member of the SNC] had even informed [me] on 21 May the British had said they would consider all those in uniform as prisoners of war and those in civilian clothes as refugees.
What caused this tragic blindness, resulting in the avoidable deaths of so many thousands of soldiers and civilians? Krenner and his staff and the SNC were all equally determined to shut their eyes to what was happening. They were so sure the western allies would enter their country after Germany's defeat - as in fact happened with their neighbour Greece - that their whole world collapsed when the hated communists seized power instead and they had to flee. They were as a result in severe shock, unable to face reality. They had to have someone in whom they could put their faith. They hated and feared the partisans and the Germans, Italians and Russians equally, and that left only the English and the Americans. So they must be trust-worthy, whatever the evidence to the contrary.
The powerful feelings of insecurity of the Slovenes led to
52. Tolstoy, The Minister and the Massacres (London, 1986), p. 168 91 paranoia, so that although they normally got on reasonably well with the Serbs, inter-ethnic prejudices and mistrust now prevailed and they deluded themselves with the fantasy that the reports of repatriations were Serb chetnik plots to undermine their morale and destabilise the domobranci.
Dr Mersol himself confirmed that Krenner and the SNC were blinded by the assurances of people they trusted implicitly. He wrote:53
I asked Major Barre what was really happening. Everyone would agree that he was at that time our best friend and a sincere man who looked as few others for the welfare and benefit of our refugees, the civilians and, where possible, the soldiers. He asked the army - I don't know who - and was told that all our domobranci were going to Italy.
It was no doubt his immediate superior, Major Johnson, whom Major Barre asked. Johnson may have answered him with the 5 Corps "official version" in good faith, unaware that it was a lie. A Mrs Grapar, one of the refugees, told Johnson on 29 May that rumours were spreading that the British were handing the domobranci over to Tito's men, and he protested, hurt, "Don't you trust us?" The school director Marko Bajuk got a similar reaction from Barre:
He, visibly hurt, replied: 'Do you think that the British could really do something like that?'
The Balding diary:
Wednesday 30 May heck of a morning chasing round for Red + message forms etc also furniture for MI [medical inspection] Room six chairs & two tables scrounged called at 7th advance stores re scabies had very wet FAU wished on me after lunch
The very wet FAU, also referred to as the WYM or Wet Young Man, was of course me. I must have finished my immediate work on hygiene and offered to help with welfare. The Florence P mentioned in the next entry for 31 May was the second Red Cross nurse Florence Phillips, whom I describe in my letters as "Scotch, has imagination and ability and should be easy to work with". The Balding diary continues:
53. 23-page duplicated document "Events in Vetrinje in May 1945 written by Dr. Valentin Mersol according to his own experiences", copy in possession of author. 92 went out to 5th corps near lake for permit for Benzil Ben54 nice chatty time collected BB on way to camp delivered same at MI Room took WYM round camp ashamed to pass my OR [other ranks] friends militia almost gone from camp, camp in state think they've gone back to Tito Red + resigning in body unless they get low-down
Thursday 31 May very unhappy atmosphere in camp much silent weeping persistent rumours of militia being disarmed & sent back to Tito must get position clear tea with ORs managed to lose WYM went later in morn to civil hosp: very inefficient, went to Unterbergen in afternoon to Mat[ernity] hosp: lovely spot shown every corner by doctors seem very genuine food very bad returned to camp civilians to be removed tomorrow left Major B. to find out where & why 13 to supper very successful workers seem almost over anxious to please Florence P. sharing my house hopes to work in camp good
The Pernisek diary:
Thursday 31st May. Today we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. Our hearts are crushed, our souls sorrowful unto death. We suffered a terrible night: at the moment when we are commemorating the greatest mystery of our holy faith, the English are loading the last lads onto their trucks. Poor lads, what terrible fate are they approaching! In the middle of the holy mass which was celebrated in the castle courtyard by Rev Canon Dr Tomaz Klinar it started to rain, and it continued to rain during the modest procession.
For us today the Feast is not a day of joy. For us the instant consists of the feelings of Our Lord and his disciples on the holy evening when they went to the Mount of Olives for His death. Oh Lord, this moment we can well understand Your cry: "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." You had nobody on this earth to help You, Your Father's Will was inexorable. What happened to the domobranci might happen any minute to us all. We have no more friends on this earth! They have all abandoned us in our most difficult hour. Stay with us at least You, Lord: stay with us in our hour of death!
54. benzil benzoate, an ointment for the treatment of scabies 93 In the afternoon Dr Mersol returned from Podljubelj with Major Barre. Lieut Hames's interpreter, Mr Kristof, was waiting for them outside the camp office and told the Major to go as quickly as possible to the commandant of the military camp, because it was a matter of the return to Yugoslavia of the civilian Slovene refugees. This was the first time Dr Mersol learnt that the civilian refugees should also be returned. When he heard this he said to Major Barre:
So it's really true the English are sending the refugees back home to be tortured and killed? Earlier they sent back the soldiers, now it's the time for us civilians. Up till now we didn't believe the English were capable of lying and deceit, but the facts confirm these dishonourable acts.
On hearing his words Major Barre turned pale and asked Dr Mersol to accompany him to Lieut Hames. The latter objected to his presence during the conversation, but at the Major's request gave way. He picked up a paper and said: "I've orders that tomorrow 1 June we should send from the camp 2,700 Slovene civilian refugees, that's to say 1,500 to Bleiburg station and 1,200 to Maria Elend station. They must be ready to leave at five in the morning. They will be transported by trucks from the camp to the stations mentioned, where a train will await them."
The lieutenant asked the major to carry out headquarters' order, but the major asked him to wait so that he could go to Klagenfurt with Dr Mersol and intervene with the Military Government. The lieutenant telephoned HQ about this, and they arrived there about six, to be received at once by Major Johnson, Chief of the Department for Displaced Persons. Dr Mersol asked him to help save the Slovene refugees, as this was their duty since they had taken them under their protection.
Dr Mersol then withdrew to another room at Major Johnson's wish and the two majors conferred together. There was a lot of telephoning in all directions. After about thirty minutes Dr Mersol was again called into the office. Major Johnson offered him a chair, looked at him in silence for some seconds and then said in Major Barre's presence: "We've decided the civilians won't be sent back to Yugoslavia against their will. Only those who want to, will go."
94 Dr Mersol recorded more of their conversation:55
I was very glad of this declaration, which came unexpectedly fast for me. I thanked him with kind words, stating that he had helped save the lives of thousands, and that the conditions in Yugoslavia are terrible and far from being anything like democratic. He interrupted me: 'You may not inform me about conditions in Yugoslavia. I know a lot about it, therefore we decided thus as I told you.'
Johnson indeed knew a lot, having spent six months as a British liaison officer at Marshal Tito's HQ. Pernisek continues:
After thanking Major Johnson cordially for his successful intervention the two men returned to the camp and informed Lieut Hames of their success. He asked Major Barre to arrange for him to receive the order in writing from Division and wished to know how many people wanted to go. Major Barre returned to Klagenfurt. When he got back at ten that evening the whole camp committee was waiting at the office to thank him cordially for his successful intervention. The major was greatly moved and had tears in his eyes.
The Balding diary:
Friday 1 June had day in bed might as well have been up & about everyone so anxious for my welfare continual stream of visitors got up for dinner went to bed immediately after decided I'm all agin everything & everybody high time I went home
Saturday 2 June still all agin all, started day with row hurt WYM feelings told him I was used to men doing men's work etc. Florence P., he & I now run camp me babies he hygiene F.P. general welfare have decided to keep quiet if poss: camp has option of returning to Yugoslavia 150 out of 6,012 were for it then backed out, persistent rumours of unarmed militia handed over to Tito mine went up in camp no damage domestic trouble cook not to be trusted!
The Pernisek diary:
55. from a cyclostyled document in my possession: "Events in Vetrinje in May 1945: written by Dr Valentin Mersol according to his own experiences", p. 13. 95
Sunday 3rd June. The people who wanted to leave, left today. There were about 100 Slovenes, the rest deciding not to go, and 100 Croats and Serbs. They travelled on 40 horse-drawn carts via Ljubelj. Today a Montenegrin chetnik arrived, who'd escaped from Radovljica where the communists shot on the bridge about 600 Montenegrins and Serbs who'd been sent back on the first transport from Carinthia.
The atmosphere in the camp is very depressed. Whenever I look at the empty space where the domobranci had their tents, an icy coldness grips my heart as I think how the communists, drunk with victory, are torturing and killing them. The English have disillusioned us in an appalling way. We never could have conceived that such a vile and hypocritical betrayal was possible. The good Mr Corsellis, who's working for us in our daily needs, admits the English who are with us are ashamed of what has been done.
There is nothing left for us but to lock our grief in our hearts and not complain. We are of course only refugees, delivered up to the mercy of the English. Major Barre told us that tomorrow someone senior and very important will visit us.
Tolstoy documented the Russian and Yugoslav forcible repatriations in meticulous detail in three substantial volumes56, but only wrote briefly about the civilians' reprieve. The subject deserves a more detailed analysis in view of its historical importance as an early (probably the first) post-war example of organised, logical and effective voiced opposition to forcible repatriation by the refugees themselves, a formulation for which I am indebted to Professor Sidney Waldron of the Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, an authority within the new academic discipline of Refugee Studies. We need to look more closely into the reasons for the reprieve. Why did the Army change its mind and cancel the repatriation of the civilians less than twelve hours before it was due to take place? Nigel Nicolson told an interviewing historian that "oral protests by our officers were to no avail" in the case of the soldiers' repatriation, and that: two or three men .. came back to warn their fellow
56. Victims of Yalta (Hodder & Stoughton 1977), Stalin's Secret War (Jonathan Cape 1981) and The Minister & The Massacres (Century Hutchinson 1986). 96 countrymen and the British officers what was happening .. we sent these people to the higher headquarters, right up to the General, General Keightley, commanding Fifth Corps, but either he didn't believe them or else he thought that the necessity to carry out the orders he was given from further up were dominant.57
The repatriation of the civilians, on the other hand, was halted after only half an hour of telephone conversations. Why? Something must have happened behind the scenes. What, is explained by two previously unpublished documents, one a report from John Rose and Peter Gibson, senior visiting representatives of the Friends Ambulance Unit to their London HQ in July 1945, and the other the memoirs of John Selby-Bigge, the British Red Cross Assistant Commissioner for Civilian Relief in Austria. Rose and Gibson reported: 58
Military Government (MG) has a DP Branch whose chief is Lt Col Dufour. Dufour is a very good personal friend of Selby-Bigge so that cooperation between BRCS and MG on displaced person matters is excellent. .. BRCS/FAU workers were on the territory several days ahead of MG. .. During this period the untried relief workers in the section won their spurs. ..
Intervention by BRC/FAU succeeded in remedying a serious official blunder and a grave injustice. .. Pearson59 and Miss Couper60 promptly collected evidence and saw Selby-Bigge. As a result, Selby-Bigge and Pearson went to HQ 8th Army where they saw the Head of MG and the Army Chief of Staff. The General was shocked by the evidence and forthwith issued instructions that no DPs were to be repatriated against their will.
For obvious reasons this story should be treated as highly confidential, but it is an excellent example of successful intervention by voluntary societies to effect a highly desirable change in official policy. The greatest credit is due to Pearson for the way in which he took the matter up.
BRC RELATIONS .. Pearson at HQ enjoys the closest and
57. PRO 10968/2/1, p.4 58. OCIT 110, Friends Ambulance Unit, C.M.F., 10th July 1945, "Austria", p. 9, from FAU archives, Friends House Library, London. 59. leader of the FAU contingent 60. BRC supervisor for Carinthia 97 happiest relations with the BRC HQ staff and the integration of field-workers and the close cooperation is in great measure a tribute to him. The rather careful approach, and the tendency to separate spheres of work in the initial arrangements, have now been replaced by a considerable integration of BRC/FAU personnel. At headquarters this has worked extremely smoothly and each operation is discussed as a joint affair. In the field, the FAU has not always found it ideal, but this is largely a matter of personalities which might equally apply within each society.
Selby-Bigge has the advantage of a very privileged position with MG, and in particular DP Branch. This is reflected in the influence BRCS/FAU can have on DP operations. .. It is, incidentally, an interesting fact that the total BRCS personnel at 27th June was 26 against the Unit's 25, and this included the HQ staff, so that in the field there were 18 BRC and 24 FAU.
An earlier FAU report, probably written by David Pearson, added:61
Relations with the military authorities have been good on the whole, and the presence in MG of several officers who knew the Unit and the voluntary societies at the Maadi training camps62 has been helpful in some of the camps. In others it has been necessary to break a certain distrust of civilian workers, but this has usually been removed after a period on the job, and in some cases requests have been received for FAU members to stay at a camp or to help in a new project from officers who were at first somewhat prejudiced against them.
HQ 8th Army HQ was outside Udine, an Italian town half way between the frontier and the sea, 85 km south-west of Klagenfurt and 30 km north of Palmanova. It was there that Selby-Bigge and Pearson saw not just the Head of MG and the Chief of Staff but the Army Commander himself. He was installed in a "nice camp in the garden of a large country
61. Report dated 13.6.45 Friends Ambulance Unit - Mediterranean Area: Relief Work in Austria: First Reports, p.5, from FAU archives. 62. voluntary society and UNRRA personnel were given orientation at this centre just outside Cairo before going into the field 98 house", according to Harold Macmillan's memoirs. Selby-Bigge prefaced his account of their visit with a description of his team, which included63 twenty-five workers of the Friends Ambulance Unit; I was much impressed by their modesty, intelligence and keenness. .. On May 15th our first party moved into Austria. Meanwhile Dufour was in despair. He had collected some staff officers and opened his HQ office in Udine; but as yet he had no staff, personnel or equipment for his camps. ..
Elsewhere in his memoirs Selby-Bigge described Colonel Dufour as a wiry little French-Canadian who combined the incisive brains of the French with the drive and realism of the Canadian. At first sight he seemed tough, gruff and uncommonly reserved; but in time I realised he had a fine sensibility and a heart of gold.
Selby-Bigge continued his account:
The next day I went on to Klagenfurt .. There were few standing camps to be found, and many refugees were camping in the fields or railway yards. In one field there were about 6,500 Slovenes with their families, living in shacks made of branches, with their horses picketed behind them. Whether they were chetnik irregulars or peasants fleeing from Tito, nobody quite knew. .. All that could be done at that stage was to feed and delouse them. A team of FAU lads toured the camps, powdering the population64 ; within the camps our workers were busy getting small hospitals and surgeries going. By some miracle, illness was slight and epidemics almost unknown.
These were difficult days for MG officers. Their Staff HQ was far away at Udine; and in Austria the 5th Corps Commander was in charge of the occupation forces. But 5th Corps was a fighting force, and its Staff knew little, and cared less, about Military Government. Dufour's Refugee Section suffered the most. As he was unable to cope with all the situation through lack of personnel, 5th Corps opened many refugee camps on their own initiative and without reference to him. When these camps became
63. typescript memoir of J.A.Selby-Bigge OBE, pp.217-9, kindly loaned to me by his daughter Mrs Mary Edwards. 64. with DDT powder, then widely used against lice, now forbidden as a poison 99 congested, 5th Corps loaded the refugees, irrespective of nation-ality or category, into trucks and dumped them over the Italian frontier. This was done without any notice to HQ, either in Italy or Austria, and caused considerable confusion and hardship.
A serious situation soon arose in the refugee camps controlled by 5th Corps, and to a lesser extent in the MG camps. Forcible repatriation was being exercised in a most discreditable manner. White Russian emigres, who had joined the Cossack regiments of the German Army to fight the Bolsheviks, were loaded up by force and driven off to the Soviet boundary - including wives and civilians. These emigres had mostly become citizens of Poland and Jugoslavia, after leaving Russia in 1918.
Similarly, Slovenes chetniks65 or civilians who had fled from Tito were driven over the frontier; many were taken out of the camps and put into trains for Jugoslavia, under the pretence that they were being transferred to another camp. Some escaped and came back to the camps with terrible tales of mass slaughter and rape; many of the Russians took to the woods or committed suicide; at Viktring the whole Slovene camp went into mourning; in other camps of mixed nationalities the sight of soldiers, armed with pick handles, sweeping through the camps to round up people for repatriation spread terror. My workers got increasingly restless; one of my supervisors threatened to resign; the head of the FAU66 said his team would not continue to work under these conditions; wherever I went I was met by the dejected faces of my workers. From our point of view, as Red Cross workers, the position was untenable; and I don't think the Army officers or their soldiers were much happier.
I collected some written reports and wrote a report to my Commissioner in Rome, describing the situation and suggesting 'the British Zone of Austria was not a
65. used here in a sense that was then common, of "members of guerrilla bands". There were in fact some Slovene as well as Serb chetniks, but most of the Slovenes in uniform were domobranci, members of the "home guard". 66. David Pearson, whom Selby-Bigge described as "having considerable experience and a sound imagination - his simple frankness made him an easy partner". 100 suitable field of operations for the BRC'. Before sending this off (and in fact hoping it would never be necessary) I intended to give a copy to Benson67 as was customary. I took Dave Pearson with me and set off to Udine in pouring rain. We arrived at teatime, wet and bedraggled.
The Chief [of MG] and his Deputy were camped near the Army Commander's HQ. They were extremely perturbed by my report but knew me well enough to trust my judgement. They asked me to withhold the letter, until they saw what could be done. The Deputy telephoned the DAAG68 and asked him to come down; at the same time he advised me to talk perfectly frankly to him. The DAAG took the matter seriously and said he would speak to the Chief of Staff69 about it that night, asking me to return in the morning.
The next morning we found the DAAG. He said the Chief of Staff would like to see me personally and took me along to his caravan on the hilltop. He considered the matter very grave and asked my permission to show the documents to the Army Commander, it being understood they were not to be treated as official.
So Dave and I started back to Klagenfurt. This was Dave's first experience of how BRC worked on the higher level and he was amazed at the speedy and informal way matters were handled. Late that same evening an Aide-de-Camp rang my doorbell in Klagenfurt and said the Army Commander wished to see me the next morning at 11 a.m. Dufour looked at me over his glass and said 'Holy Pete! What a fellow! You do stick your neck out!' so I asked if he wouldn't have done the same in my place.
Early next morning I was off to Udine once again. I reported to the ADC and sat down to wait for the Army Commander, feeling extremely nervous. Half an hour later I was taken to his caravan. It was a bare room, with a writing desk and two arm-chairs. He
67. Air Commodore Constantine Benson, Head of MG at 8th Army, an old friend of Harold Macmillan, described by Selby- Bigge as "lean and nervous, with much of the temperament of an artist". 68. Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General 69. Major-General Sir Henry Floyd, who had had recent experience of cavalier treatment in Yugoslavia as commander of the ill-fated Floydforce 101 shook me by the hand and motioned me to a chair, then got up and offered me a cigarette from a box on the desk. He was a tall, lean man, with a terse manner and a nervous smile. He was dressed simply in a cotton shirt, open at the neck, and drill trousers; only on his shoulder straps could one see any mark or rank. I sensed a ruthless energy and a keen decisive mind.
He plunged straight into the matter, and for forty minutes we argued the points. I could see he exacted absolute truthfulness and would be merciless on any humbug. On one point however I had to be silent and accept his reproof. He wanted to know why I had not reported the matter at once to the Corps Commander. I could only reply I had followed my official channels through MG. He then explained to me at length the difficulty of the military situation, which had necessitated the clearance of a certain area without delay. Under such circumstances, hasty decisions and injustices were bound to occur. But my main thesis he accepted and regretted. He gave me his assurance 'there would be no more forcible repatriation, and no repatriation at all without proper screening by qualified MG officers.'
At the same time, he invited the BRC to help in the camps under Army control. This I agreed to on my own responsibility, at any rate where women and children were involved. The BRC had always been vague as to its policy on helping enemy subjects, but I felt I could take a chance in the care of Hungarians and White Russians, as they had their womenfolk with them, who were certainly not soldiers whatever the men might be. I got up to take my leave, but he told me to come along with him to lunch. We strolled through the camp, and other officers joined us in a casual way. When we entered the big marquee, he introduced me to his staff and sat me down beside him. Everyone was in shirt sleeves and the meal was simple and informal. My impression of General McCreery was of a very great gentleman.
After lunch I returned to Klagenfurt, very impressed by my experience. My workers were delighted at the success of my demarche but I was nervous as to the reactions at 5th Corps HQ. However, two days later the Corps Commander invited me to lunch at his HQ and received me in a friendly manner. We had a few minutes conversation over a cocktail, and he asked me in 102 future to bring any problems direct to him or to his staff. As his staff were present, I knew the door was now open to the BRC; in fact they gave us every assistance afterwards.
As the emergency phase passed we were able to begin more constructive plans. Dufour and I agreed that, as repatriation slowed down, the static camps should develop as far as possible into self-contained communities. They were to have their own workshops, schools, clinics, sports and amusements. Employment was to be arranged for those now classified as 'Displaced Persons' (i.e. not repatriable).
Selby-Bigge wrote this account a year or more later in memoirs intended for publication. But much earlier, only a few weeks after the incident, he told a senior British Red Cross colleague, Lady Falmouth, of a talk he must have had with the Commander of 5 Corps, General Keightley, some days before his meeting with McCreery. The Dowager Lady Falmouth told the story to Tolstoy after a gap of forty years.70 Selby-Bigge described to her the forcible repatriations, and then went on:
A short time after they'd gone one came back to say that when they got there they'd all been put up against a wall and shot - or, anyhow, liquidated. This man had escaped and said to his friends: "now, whatever you do, don't go." So when the next lot of them were due to go, they refused. There was a good deal of difficulty in the camp. Nobody more was sent, but they [presumably the Camp Commandant] reported back to the Corps Commander, Keightley, that they didn't want to go.
He [Keightley] saw Selby-Bigge, who was the Red Cross representative, who got on very well with them [the people being repatriated], who evidently accepted his advice. [Keightley] said he wanted him to encourage them to go. To which he replied that he didn't think he could, because this report had come back, which appeared to be authentic, and the Red Cross couldn't do that. They couldn't encourage people to do a thing that they didn't want to do, when it was obviously difficult.
70. Nikolai Tolstoy, The Minister and the Massacres, (London, 1986), pp.297-8. 103 Keightley was very insistent, saying it was an order from higher up, and on Selby-Bigge's refusing he said, "well, this is an order!" To which Selby-Bigge said, "well, I'm very sorry, sir, but I'm not under your command: I'm an official of the Red Cross, and I'm afraid I can't do this." So Keightley said, "very well, you must go", and sent him back to England. To which Selby-Bigge said: "of course I quite understand. I'll go back and report to my people. I can't do it." That was the end of the interview. As he went out of the door, Keightley said: "it's all right, they won't go". And they didn't.
The two conflicting accounts can be reconciled if Keightley summoned Selby-Bigge to see him on 30 May and the army continued to send the Slovenes back next day, and also Cossack and White Russian troops and their families, in spite of the general's assurances. The only thing Selby-Bigge could then do was to try to stop the repatriations by 'following his official channels through MG', which meant taking David Pearson with him to Udine. When McCreery asked why he had not reported the matter at once to the Corps Commander, he accepted the rebuke in silence because he had in fact not done so but had been summoned by the Corps Commander and asked to do something he felt was wrong. He would not have wanted to damage his relations with Keightley by telling McCreery of Keightley's threat and subsequent climb-down which might be considered to Keightley's discredit. He could recount all this to Lady Falmouth, relying on her discretion, but did not include it in his memoirs which were intended for publication while Keightley was still alive.
Shortly afterwards the Army Chief-of-Staff sent Selby-Bigge a letter, copies of which were given to the BRC/FAU field workers for their reassurance71:
Major-General Sir H.K.Floyd, CBE Main Headquarters, EIGHTH ARMY 16th June 1945 Dear Bigge,
The Army Commander has asked me to write you a line to tell you that he has personally gone into the difficult problem of the repatriation of displaced persons in Austria. A letter has been sent from these Headquarters to 5 Corps with instructions that in future no repatriation of anyone will take place without full classification by the Displaced Persons
71. in FAU archive, Friends House Library, London. 104 Branch of AMG [Allied Military Government].
The Army Commander has given instructions that on no account is any force to be used in connection with any repatriation scheme. I think it is fair to remember that 5 Corps have been faced with a colossal problem, and that on the whole, the situation has been well handled. I think that you can rest assured that matters will improve, but if you have any further cause for anxiety I hope you will not hesitate to contact General Keightley, Commander 5 Corps, who is fully conversant with the full facts. Yours sincerely, Henry Floyd.
This instruction saved the lives of not only the six thousand civilians at Viktring but also of tens of thousands of other Yugoslavs in and out of uniform, because the order was to send back "all surrendered personnel of established Yugoslav nationality" and would have applied to Italy as well as Austria.
How was it possible for the powerless refugees, a Canadian MG major and 51 civilian relief workers, half of them conscientious objectors, to challenge successfully an all- powerful 8th Army still celebrating total victory? A number of circumstances made it possible, some directly relevant to the world of today. I have identified fourteen:
1. The democratic structures, solidarity, discipline and moderate behaviour of the refugees, and their decision to elect Mersol as their leader and back him fully. If they had not gained Barre's admiration and sympathy so quickly, he might not have intervened with the same speed, courage and conviction.
2. Mersol's transparent integrity which led Barre to trust him. Also his tact, fluent command of English and year spent in North America, which enabled him to relate more easily to Canadian and British officers.
3. Barre's rugged Canadian independence which resulted in his not being overawed by the British military hierarchy, and what might be described as a chip on the shoulder72 which led him
72. Major Barre has challenged the reference to a chip on the shoulder in a friendly letter. However after careful consideration I have not removed it, as it is not intended to be in any way to his discredit and does not diminish the outstanding merit of his courageous stand, while it is a reasonable hypothesis which may help to explain the factors that moved him to act with such decisiveness. 105 more readily to take offence at the cavalier manner, as he saw it, with which the British were treating him, and to fight back vigorously.
4. Selby-Bigge's orthodox background and unorthodox career which gave him self-confidence, style and a mind of his own and resulted in his not being overawed by the military hierarchy, but on the contrary handling it with great tact and skill. His father Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge was a member of the civil establishment who progressed from Oxford don to permanent head of a major government department. He himself received an "establishment" education at Winchester and Christ Church Oxford but then rebelled to become a painter, regularly exhibiting with his more famous friends Edward Wadsworth, Paul Nash and Ben Nicholson; while three years of active army service in World War I as an officer with marked linguistic skills, latterly as acting captain in Macedonia, enabled him to negotiate with the military during World War II on close to equal terms.
5. The personal qualities of four men, Slovene, Canadian, English and Welsh - the refugee Mersol, MG officer Barre and Red Cross and FAU leaders Selby-Bigge and Pearson - three civilians and one soldier, who all confronted the crisis with courage, coolness and decisiveness.
6. The humanity shown by all ranks within the British Army which led them to protest repeatedly. Their protests were insufficient to save the domobranci and other Yugoslav soldiers or the Cossacks, but were effective in reinforcing the relief workers' protests on behalf of the civilians. Tolstoy records that officers as senior as Major-General (later Viscount) Robert Arbuthnott and Major-General Sir Horatius Murray protested, as did rank and file who 'were nearer mutiny than anyone had known before' as reported by the Rev. John Vaughan, Chaplain to the Hampshire Brigade.73
7. The threat of withdrawal by the civilian relief workers. For this to be effective, they had to have the fullest mutual confidence with their leaders Selby-Bigge and Pearson. The leaders for their part had to have the sensitivity to recognise the urgency of the complaints, the courage to press them to the highest level and the tact to present them convincingly so that the officers did not reject them but passed them higher up without delay.
8. The vigorously asserted independence and autonomy of the British Red Cross and the FAU.
73. Tolstoy, Ministar i pokolji, pp.218, 233, 275. 106
9. The language skills of the relief workers. This enabled them to listen to the refugees and learn what was happening.
10. The training, experience and dedication of the relief workers. This led the army to respect their professionalism and listen to their protests.
11. The humanity of the officers at army HQ. This led them to recognise the strength of the case put by the two junior civilians, Selby-Bigge and Pearson, and recommend it to their immediate superiors.
12. The efficiency of the army administration. This allowed the protest to move up the line of command fast enough for the order to be cancelled in time to save the civilians.
13. The army's flexibility and informality. This led to its commander being prepared to listen to junior civilians.
14. The enlightened army policy of accepting civilian workers in a war zone during and immediately after hostilities. The workers introduced a restraining civilian conscience into a situation otherwise totally dominated by military expediency. The policy also made possible the relationship of mutual confidence and friendship between the civilian Selby-Bigge and the officers Benson and Dufour, resulting from their previous close and prolonged collaboration in opening and running refugee camps in Italy.
Selby-Bigge's comments on the army illustrate the last four points: 'from the desert days it had been a privileged army, with a frankness of speech and a lack of formality which in no way impaired its discipline. Moreover it was remarkable that long years of fighting had not brutalised them. They would flood to hear classical music or opera.'
The refugees, although told on the Thursday that the repatriations would not be taking place, remained fearful until the following Monday when Field Marshal Alexander visited Viktring. The Balding diary:
Monday 4 June The day went to camp early rumour that F.M. Alexander is in Klagenfurt & coming to camp later told he was not coming he arrived as we decided to go home to lunch stood with Major B. to see him go past he stopped & got out of car to shake hands talked for about 10 minutes shook hands again filmed an' all, I felt better immediately full of beans in fact, troops moved out 107 of school house in afternoon camp moved in sorted rooms out, camp in high spirits, 'cos F.M. said they wouldn't be sent back Yugo.
Writing 50 years later, the then 15 year old schoolboy Marian Loboda remembered it rather differently:
One day a report spread that a top American (sic) military commander was going to visit us. The teachers summoned us and lined us up at the entry to the courtyard of the Vetrinje convent. A huge red limousine appeared and we greeted Viscount Fieldmarshal Alexander (sic), commander of the allied forces. They said he had given the order that no one else should be forcibly repatriated to Yugoslavia. For us this meant we were saved. Confidence and the desire to live began to revive.
The Pernisek diary:
Monday 4th June. At 11 a large number of soldiers and military police surrounded the camp. People were very apprehensive. Major Barre told Dr Mersol that Field Marshal Alexander was coming. He was asked to be at hand as he could easily talk with him. Hearing this, we all quietened down. At 12.30 six cars with English officers drove into the camp. In the third was Field Marshal Viscount Alexander. He made it stop in front of the administrative personnel, including Dr Mersol, who were waiting for him outside the camp office.
A powerful figure alighted and stepped in front of the assembled group. Major Barre saluted him and introduced the group. The Field Marshal shook hands with everyone in a dignified manner and at once started to talk with the camp leader Dr Valentin Mersol. In the exchange which lasted about 20 minutes he was very kind. It was evident that he was very well informed about all aspects of our situation. There wasn't time for Dr Mersol to prepare a written statement, so he explained directly in a brief clear manner who were the people among whom he had come.
We are Slovenes, anti-communists, who came across the Karawanken mountains to Klagenfurt and were conducted to Viktring plain. They now ask you for your kind protection and assistance, for the Slovenes as also for the other Yugoslavs in the camp. They 108 particularly ask you kindly to order that the Slovene and Yugoslav civilian and military refugees should not be sent back to Yugoslavia, for there awaits them there prison, torture and death.
That it is so, our soldiers tell us who were returned to Yugoslavia last week but escaped from concentration camps where they were being beaten and tortured and in most cases killed without any hearing, judgement or sentence. Those who escaped, crossed the mountains and reported to us. Some of them had open wounds because they had been shot but not mortally wounded, and had climbed out of the mass execution pits under cover of darkness. These domobranci didn't fight against the Allies: on the contrary, they saved Allied pilots and helped the Allies whenever they could. They fought only against the communists, who in Slovenia and other parts of Yugoslavia behaved like robbers and murderers."
Dr Mersol thanked him for all the help he and the English authorities had given them up till then:
We are asking you for asylum, protection and help also in the future; and we beg that you leave us here in Viktring and don't send us back to Yugoslavia, because that would mean for very many of us torture and death.
The Field Marshal listened carefully, and here and there asked a question. His final answer was soldier-like, well considered and brief:
As far as I'm concerned, you can remain here in Viktring. Please rest assured that we will help you and your people.
Dr Mersol thanked him sincerely. The Field Marshal shook hands with him and all the others and sat in the auto and drove ahead through the camp to look it over. Major Barre also rode with him and showed him the camp. He was very satisfied with the cleanliness and order in spite of the otherwise unfavourable conditions and commanded that our living quarters conditions be improved. On the same day at 7 in the evening the commandant of the military camp Lieutenant Ames received the directive:
New army policy respective Jugoslavs effective forthwith:
109 1. No Jugoslavs will be returned to Jugoslavia or handed over to Jugoslav troops against their will 2. Jugoslavs who bore arms against Tito will be treated as surrendered personnel and sent to Viktring Camp at disposal: further instructions awaited. 3. All this personnel will be regarded as displaced personnel and ultimately routed via Italy. 4. No evacuation from Viktring TFO [till further orders].
Thus did God help us in those terrible days of distress and dread. We prayed much and our prayers were heard. We filled and still fill the church of Our Lady of Victories. It is certain that never since the White Friars left Viktring long ago were there such fervent prayers in that church and holy ground.
110
C H A P T E R 4
5 - 29 June 1945
Camp life returns to normality. From their differing viewpoints Pernisek, Director Bajuk, the 16-year old Majda Vracko and the 11-year old Tinc Mersol recall the classes that were organised for the children. The Slovenes' resilience is illustrated by the "very festive" solemn mass celebrated a week after the forcible repatriations, but Pernisek then returns to the subject of the tragedy. Later he deplores the departure of the Slovenes' beloved saviour Major Barre, but has to admit that his successor, the Englishman Major Bell, is equally concerned for their welfare. The refugees prepare for departure from Viktring and dispersal between four long-term camps.
So the Field Marshal left and life returned to normal. The Pernisek diary:
Tuesday 5th June. And what now? What awaits us? Mr Corsellis answered this question briefly:
Now we'll have to register you as displaced persons, DPs. When you get your registration card you'll be just a DP number, stateless and without rights. You mustn't demand anything but you can ask and it will be granted you so far as possible. Among us English who have to look after you there's a firm will to help you and make easier the truly hard life of the stateless person without rights.
These frank words have had a very calming effect on us although not pleasant to the ear. We are serfs without rights, small change in the hands of international brokers and speculators which they'll use to settle their accounts, and we are cheap labour for the locals. From now on our motto is: "Trust firmly in God! Help yourself and God will help you!"
DP INDEX CARD A.0153341 Franc Pernisek
Pernisek next day records a message sent by Dr Miha Krek, the spokesman for the Slovenes in exile and former leader of the Catholic Slovene People's Party74 and Vice-Premier of the Yugoslav Royal Government in Exile in London. It was addressed to Dean Matija Skrbec, the senior Catholic priest living in the camp and an acute observer of the political scene well-known for his financial acumen, whom I remember as an energetic and colourful character straight out of Trollope:
Wednesday 6th June. Dean Skrbec told us a delegate had come from Rome to tell us how Dr Krek sees our current situation. We are of no consequence at all politically and he himself has no political influence. All he can do is make use of his many personal
74. Slovenska Ljudska Stranka 111 contacts from the time when he was a minister in the Yugoslav Royal Government in Exile in London and later in the Mediterranean Council. He knows a lot of people and is highly regarded and respected by many influential Americans and Englishmen, as well as within the Vatican.
They've set up a "Yugoslav Welfare Society" in Rome which is recognised by the English and American authorities and is the only body now accepted as representing Yugoslav anti-communists there. Because its chairman is Dr Krek, it's held in high esteem and is the only body in a position to offer protection and support. As we can't achieve anything by political means in the present situation and it's in the interest of all refugees to stop political activities, we need to establish a branch of the Yugoslav Welfare Society here in Carinthia. So a working committee was appointed today to take over leadership.
Thursday 7th June. The young people are our first concern. We have a careful organiser, teacher and educator in the high school director Prof Marko Bajuk. He gets started at once, vigorously and decisively, without hesitating or wondering if it'll work or not. After all, we're on a bare field with less than any gipsy encampment.
Today he called a council for the systematic organization of all educational and cultural activities. It decided to: 1. start systematic teaching immediately in an elementary and a secondary school 2. form a choir for church and popular singing 3. arrange talks of general interest for the whole camp 4. issue a camp bulletin 5. organize gymnastics, sports, technical courses and foreign languages instruction 6. put youth work in the hands of the Salesian fathers.
Bajuk himself recorded in his annual report for the school-years 1944/4675 that in fact it only took the Slovene refugee committee four days after their arrival to issue, on 16 May, decree No 1 providing for the constitution of the new Secondary School and two more days to appoint himself, on 18 May, "Chief of Culture, charging him to organise all the schooling among the Slovene refugees in Carinthia". Kindergarten and primary school classes started at once, but it took longer to get the secondary school going:76
On 12 June the technical sitting was held for all the subjects and a discussion on the course of instruction in general. Regular teaching began on 14 June with Holy Mass. Teaching was extremely difficult. There was a great want of any kind of teaching material, paper, pencils and copy-books. There were no books at all. After carefully searching we found single books among the scholars, at second-hand dealers, at individuals at Klagenfurt. These were used by both professors and scholars.
.. It was necessary to draw it [the curriculum] up at common sittings.
75. Studia Slovenica Archive, St Vid, Ljubljana: Marko Bajuk, Annual Report for the School-Years 1944/45 and 1945/46 (Peggetz, Lienz, undated) 23 page duplicated text. 76. ibid, p.7 112 The teachers were obliged to prepare the scripta for all the subjects, write down Latin and Greek lessons and texts, compose mathematical problems, etc. All this required enormous work, and it was specially difficult because all the members of the teaching board lived under tents.
Majda Vracko, then a 16 year old pupil in the secondary school, recalls:
I had many friends at Viktring, the ones we were going over the Loiblpass with, and we were meeting with them; also school friends, friends from the family, and the director of my school, Dr Bajuk. That made me feel very good because he said, "Don't worry, we won't waste an hour: we'll start with school right now" and he started it. We were meeting outside on the grass of the monastery in a corner, and when we were there in 1989 we visited that corner and it's still the same. We were meeting very regularly and each day there was another new professor that came from somewhere, so that we had quite a good selection. At the school lessons of course there were no books, no note-books, but we had every major subject covered from the languages to even geography, history and stuff like that.
What I also thought was very nice, they said this would continue, when they were starting to talk about splitting people77 which caused a lot of trouble: my father was helping with that and people were saying, "Why did you send me here? Everybody goes there". It wasn't easy to do that, yet it had to be done.
One criterion was that families with older schoolchildren and the gimnazija should all go to Lienz. What made me feel very good was that at least people I knew who also were in school would all be together, so it didn't sound like the whole world would end. Because when we left we didn't know anybody, but after being together for two months through really difficult times you realised that this was all we had, friends. And if they took that away!
Nigel Nicolson and Major Barre both remarked on the overriding priority the Slovenes devoted to education. Joze Jancar, my Italian-speaking interpreter, has described a meeting he attended with three of his fellow refugees. The Dr Blatnik he referred to was one of the many Salesian priests at Viktring: while the others devoted themselves to their traditional activities of youth welfare and school teaching he had a finger in many pies. He was a man of mystery, proud of having been held by Mussolini in the notorious Regina Coeli jail in Rome and always hinting at secret connections and surrounded by an aura of intrigue - more Jesuit than Salesian. He combined half-time teaching in the secondary school with managing camp printing and publishing and editing the camp newssheet and numerous other publications. Joze Jancar recalls:
Mersol, Blatnik, Bajuk and I met one evening, because during the day we were busy, and started to talk about school and they said, "what would be best?" I said, "the best thing would be you talk with Corsellis; he's the man to help us" because Bajuk had said, "look, there are kids around the fields, we need a school". So
77. between the four long-term camps they were sent to. 113 you met Mersol, Bajuk and others, and that was the beginning of the secondary school. The infant and primary schools had started earlier. Psychologically this was terribly important for the children, for the families, for the youngsters, for the teachers and the leaders because they felt, "alright, we've lost everything, let's get back a little". And this was very successful.
They smuggled teaching materials already, because people were going illegally to Ljubljana. And already in Viktring numbers of people came back with rucksacks of books. They also got a lot from Gorizia78 and Klagenfurt - stories for the children, because they have a Slovene primary school in Carinthia.
Majda Vracko described the school as experienced by a 16 year old girl. Tinc Mersol now gives a picture of Director Bajuk and camp life seen through the eyes of an 11 year old boy. He was the youngest of Dr Mersol's four children, who all attended the secondary school. He is today a highly successful surgeon in Ohio with six children and numerous grandchildren:
Prof Bajuk was a short portly man with a goatee beard. He'd had a habit even in Ljubljana of walking into classes and popping surprise questions in Latin at the younger boys and in Greek at the older ones. It was standard practice to have a spy keeping a look-out on the hall and when Dr Bajuk was on the rampage he'd yell, "Hannibal ante portas".
The old abbey in Viktring was surrounded by a U-shaped moat which had a real treasure trove on one outer side. It was an ammunition and weapons depot with rather inadequate fencing, absolutely irresistible to any 11 year old. A whole group of us would sneak in there and steal ammunition, the bigger the better. There were flat doughnut-shaped rings of mortar-propellant as well as machine-gun and small cannon ammo. All the shells could be wedged open and the powder used for fun. To really bug the British we learned how to shoot the mortars. All you had to do was pop a shell into the hills and the British would play their sirens, roar away in their trucks and be generally annoyed and ineffective.
Food was very scarce even for the Austrian civilians and there was a brisk barter and black market trade going. We were quite hungry. I remember being near the British mess where they'd just had roast beef and were clearing the scraps into the garbage; I tried to take some, and the generous British cook yelled and chased me away with a meat cleaver.
The water in Viktring was not the greatest and there was a great deal of diarrhoea going around. Dad had brought some medicines with him and he'd give us drops of opium to control the cramps but it didn't help much. A lot of very dignified older folks were caught short and on any walk you could see the sudden Viktring
78. Gorizia and Klagenfurt were Italian and Austrian cities just over the border from Yugoslavia which had substantial Slovene ethnic minorities. 114 side-step into the vegetation. After we left I'm sure the fields didn't need fertiliser for years.
The Pernisek diary:
Friday 8th June. Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the atmosphere in church during the community morning mass is very festive. The young girls decorated with garlands the altar, a massive and beautiful piece of ancient art. This was the altar at which the famous Abbot John of Vetrinje said mass. In the 14th century he wrote here a history of great importance for Slovenes; he described the enthronement ceremonies of the Carinthian Dukes at Gosposvetsko Polje as he witnessed them himself, and the old custom whereby the free Slovene landowners gave their dukes a mandate of government in the Slovene language.
One can see everywhere this church is really old. The parish priest Musger says he is very worried about the woodworm which is slowly eating away the main altar and transforming it to powdery dust. The stained-glass window from 1390 gives the altar its special charm. On this feast our hearts are filled with unshakeable confidence, hope and consolation. Our trust is in the Sacred Heart. If everyone abandons us, Jesus will never close his heart and we will never be ashamed of trusting in Him.
Tuesday 12th June. People who fled into the woods for fear of forcible repatriation are returning to the camp, as are the first domobranci who escaped from the transports. Some even escaped from the mass graves into which they fell wounded but still alive; they have unhealed wounds and terrible stories to tell.
The partisans are carrying out mass killings of our men and lads, driving four to six hundred from the prison camps into the forest in a night and mowing them down with machine guns. The main execution grounds are Teharje near Celje, Skofja Loka, Podutik near Ljubljana, Hrastnik and Kocevski Rog. Out of the first transport which left Vetrinje on the 27th May probably not a single individual remains alive. Around Podutik so many bodies were thrown into the pits and ravines that the water is contaminated from the rotting corpses. Even here we've heard a report on Ljubljana Radio that "the reactionaries have been poisoning the wells around Podutik".
Thursday 14th June. Today in the field in Vetrinje our grammar school in exile came into existence. At nine all the students and professors gathered in the church for mass and the students were then divided up into classes. Its official name is "Slovene grammar school for refugees", founded on the 16th May 1945 by order of the National Committee for Slovenia. 140 students were enrolled today. It is a classical, humanistic grammar school with a modern stream.
Major Barre found us some classrooms. The young welfare officer John Corsellis has been appointed the camp administration official responsible for education, an unassuming youngster, a law 115 student by background, very hard-working, conscientious and always kind and patient. The beginning is very modest indeed, with three classrooms lodged in the empty house Knesebech in Thal on the edge of the plain of Vetrinje and with the teachers' room and office in the kitchen. The fourth classroom is in an outhouse next the cattle shed. There are no books, teaching aids, paper or pencils; all the same the subject matter will be taught and learnt quite efficiently.
Saturday 16th June. Dr Basaj presented Major Barre a memorandum on behalf of the National Committee:
Major Barre!
We the Slovene refugees are grateful to you for your great efforts to lighten the burdens of the lives of refugees.
Our bodily suffering is nothing compared to the agony of our minds and hearts because of the hard fate of our relatives who were handed over with the Slovene National Army to Tito's bands. Fully trustworthy testimonies of those who saved their lives by escaping tell us that the officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers handed over are suffering such hardship, torture and harassment that for one after another death is salvation. Those who don't die from hunger, thirst, beatings and other tortures are to be judged by the so-called "people's courts", which means simply that a stirred-up mob will judge them. Handing over to Tito means handing over to death.
We, the relatives, are suffering deep anguish and beg you to help them urgently. Intervene, Mr Barre, with the British military authorities to enquire about the fate of our sons, husbands, brothers and fathers. We are convinced the British military authorities could not only find out the present situation of these repatriated soldiers but also intervene effectively so that the men will be treated in a humane way. Over 10,000 Slovene men must not become victims of the wild revengefulness which is the guiding principle of Tito, as it was of Hitler and Mussolini.
If our husbands, sons and brothers defended the lives and property of their families and the freedom and faith of our nation in the face of communist revolution, in doing so they did not commit any crime. Rather they were exercising their natural right of self-defence and fulfilling their sacred duty to defend their faith and homeland. For that defence they were acting in accord with the international convention on the legal status of people living in occupied territories. These conventions were accepted by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and by Great Britain and the USA, but not by the Soviet Union. We ask you, Mr Barre, kindly to intervene urgently before it is too late.
Monday 18th June. We are very sad. Major Barre took leave of us today and departs. A Canadian by birth, he was a very kind, outstandingly calm and good man whose heart was on our side. He paved the way and established our good name and trustworthiness within the military authorities. We got used to the man who 116 understood us, was compassionate and shared with us our deepest sorrow and helped us whenever he could.
We gathered in the castle courtyard and Dr Basaj said farewell on behalf of all of us, while the choir sang two Slovenian national songs for him. People cried openly and he himself went away with tears in his eyes. Farewell, good man, we will never forget you!79
Tuesday 19th June. Major Barre's successor, Major Bell, introduced himself to us. A man in his prime, tall, a red-head with long red moustaches, he frowns and speaks a curiously hesitant and unclear English. His appearance is anything but sympathetic. If you would judge by appearances, you would say, "This one is not going to be good for us".
We were therefore all the more pleasantly surprised by his warm opening speech. He said he knew who and what we were and what Major Barre meant to us, and he wanted to be at least as good as him. When he heard we were still afraid of possible forced repatriation he asked the higher command about our future and secured renewed guarantees that no one would be sent to Tito against their will. He warned us we will shortly be moved to a permanent and well-equipped camp and should be ready for this at any time.
My letter-diary:
Wednesday 20th June. I now divide my day between three activities: hygiene and sanitation and two English classes at the 6,000 Slovene camp and work of a general nature in a 700 person "enemy national" refugee camp in the town itself.
The wide variety of responsibility and work is very useful to me personally, showing what kinds of situation I am competent to handle and where I am a failure. Also coming across such a wide selection of types is instructive - British army officers and ORs, BRC and FAU, Austrian officials and refugees, Jewish and Slovene refugees from town and country.
So far I found surprisingly and disappointingly little difference between Italians and Austrians. I thought Austrians would anyhow be intermediate between Italian and German standards of efficiency etc, but I haven't yet seen much to choose between Italians and Austrians, and on the whole the choice would be in favour of the Italians. I will give you more details about my Austrian camp in my next letter, but my main difficulty there is to get any sort of life into the director and staff.
79. A three column "Tribute to Major Barre" in the Ljubljana newspaper Slovenec of 9 May 1996 recorded: "In celebration of his 90th birthday Toronto Slovenes gave him a letter of thanks with 300 signatures and a banquet in his honour. .. When asked why he had acted as he did 50 years ago, he looked at me vigorously and answered: 'From humanity'. Then he added quietly: 'I am of course a Christian'". 117
This comparison failed to take into account the Austrians' disorientation after their world had just collapsed around them, while the Italians had already had time to adjust to their fate.
The Pernisek diary:
Friday 22nd June. Dr Vracko, Anica Dolenc and I work on the preparation of lists for the move. Major Bell told us where we are going and how many are going to each location. It's up to us to decide sensibly who goes where. According to the wish and suggestion of the Social Committee for Slovenian Refugees, which changed its name from Yugoslav Welfare Society, we are compiling lists following these criteria:
* people should be kept together so far as possible, the move being organized according to ethnic groupings (people from Gorenjska, Dolenska, Notrajnska and from Ljubljana and its surroundings) * each community should be as homogeneous as possible and should already now choose its own leadership * high school and grammar school pupils should stay together in the camp with the biggest population, which should be the central camp, and of course the parents should go to this camp * the same applies to the grammar school teachers and a proportion of the secondary teachers * primary school pupils don't have to go to the central camp, because each camp will have its own primary and nursery schools * in each camp there should be sufficient male and female teachers, and also some intelligentsia * in the allocations we should try wherever possible to respect the wishes of individuals, including teachers and priests, the first priority being to keep families together. Priests should go with the people to the new camps and Chancellor Monsignor Dr Jagodic should allocate those unable to choose for themselves. The camp commandant fully agreed with these criteria.
Dr Joze Jagodic ranked second in the hierarchy of the refugee clergy after Bishop Rozman. He reappears periodically in this narrative, but I give his tragic family history now, as it epitomises that of the Slovenes80. His father started as a tailor, but by the time Joze, his fifth child, was born he had built up a small-holding. This began with just one cow, to which he added a horse, a couple of piglets and some chickens, and then a second horse to deal with the milk round. His family grew, eventually to nine children - six boys and three girls.
The partisans shot the eldest daughter's husband already in 1942, in front of his wife and children. The eldest son, after a chequered youth, became a communist agitator and was imprisoned in the 1920s and then released; he joined the partisans in 1941 and the Germans took him as a hostage and killed him early in 1942. The second son (married and with ten children) and the fourth son joined the domobranci, were forcibly repatriated from Viktring and killed by the partisans. The fifth son spent nine years in prison during and after the war, held by the Italians, Germans and his own people successively; while the sixth and youngest joined the partisans, reached the rank of major
80. Mons. Dr. Joze Jagodic, Mojega Zivljenja Tek, (Klagenfurt, 1974), passim. 118 and survived the war, only to shoot himself and his wife three years later in a crime passionel. So of the six sons, two joined the partisans, three were killed by them and one fled from them to become a permanent exile, together with one of his sisters.
My letter-diary:
Friday 23rd June. Many thanks for further Listeners arrived and Harold Nicolson's81 novel, and letters with a lovely lot of news. About voting, I gather it is very doubtful if our postal forms will be through in time owing to some muddle in London. So could you very kindly vote for me - I nominated you on my proxy form. If it is a straight fight between conservatives and some other party, will you please vote for that other party. If a three- or more-cornered contest, for whichever party seems most likely to beat the conservatives. The Army paper here is reprinting all the broadcast speeches and they make interesting reading. What did you think of Churchill's first effort? Such people as I heard discussing it said this intemperance would do his cause more harm than good, and certainly his very wild remarks about the opposition "forcing" the election roused a lot of avoidable hostility to him.
The Pernisek diary:
Thursday 29th June. Between the 25th and the 29th June the camp was evacuated and the field cleared. 2,600 people from Gorenjska and Ljubljana went to the largest and so the central Slovene camp at Lienz in East Tyrol: 1,600 from Dolenska and Notranjska to Spittal on the Drau: 600 from the surroundings of Ljubljana to St. Veit on the Glina; and 400 people, some from Ljubljana and its suburbs, to Judenburg.
The Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. This morning we gathered for the last time in the venerable church of Our Lady of Victories, which was always open to us during the terrible months of May and June.
*At your feet, O Mother, we wept inconsolably, before you we poured out our grief and suffering and through you we besought the help and consolation of your dear Son Jesus. In this church we came to find peace for our souls and in our mortal fear besought the Lord have mercy on us and spare us. Goodbye, dear Mother, thank you for all your care. Wherever we are, we'll not forget you, Mary the Victorious. We don't know what is in front of us, but we trust in the power of your intercession. Be with us in our journey through the desert into the promised land! Goodbye, venerable church! Here for eight hundred years, you probably never saw more sorrow and suffering, or more fervent prayers uttered, than during the last two months. You saw us off handsomely, you were our parish church. Here we grew through suffering and prayer towards greater maturity.*
They put us on wagons. We still boarded them with some mistrust and
81. famous diarist and author, and father of Captain Nigel Nicolson, quoted on pages 00. 119 the men hid axes among their belongings so as to open the train carriage doors should there be any sign we were heading for "Palmanova"82. Today is the second anniversary of when I was rounded up in an Italian army raid and taken to the barracks in Ljubljana. Thank God I was not sent on to an Italian concentration camp. Today I'm again sitting in a lorry and we are driving to our new home in a real camp. The ride is interesting and not tiring, past Woerthersee on the way to Villach, which is terribly laid waste. We are getting anxious, waiting to see in which direction we will now turn. Not to the right, not to the left, but straight towards Spittal, passing a camp where some Slovenes are already settled. It's by the roadside and the barracks are quite pleasant to look at, but we don't like the high barbed-wire fencing.
At Oberdrauburg we stop and stretch our legs, the sky clears and we can see the majestic Dolomites around Lienz. The soldiers tell us we are approaching the town. We are driven through Tyroletoerl. At the beautiful village of Doelsach the valley suddenly opens up, and at Nussdorf we turn from the main road onto a side road. We then reach our destination, the "city of barracks" in Peggetz near Lienz.
82. The town in Italy where the British army said the Slovenes were going, when in fact they sent them back to Yugoslavia. 120 P A R T 2 : C A M P L I F E
C H A P T E R 5
30 June - 12 August 1945
The Slovenes now face a new challenge: adjustment to life in Lienz. The camp provides shelter against a Tyrolean winter but is run by Russian refugees not prepared to share control with the new Slovene majority. The British officers in overall charge are unsympathetic. Marian Loboda describes life in the camp, followed by the Pernisek and Corsellis diaries.
Pernisek describes the censorship imposed by the British on the Slovenes' collection and distribution of news - an important issue for refugees struggling to empower themselves - and the good relations that were quickly established with the local Austrian "host community", with the parish priest even inviting the Slovenes' Bishop Rozman to officiate as principal celebrant at the village's annual Patronal Mass.
Director Bajuk describes the reopening of the secondary school and its inspection by the deputy head of Education Branch of Allied Military Government. The text of the report is quoted - the first of a number of official documents which add an extra dimension, depicting the perceptions and policies of the British and of UNRRA.
While the school children have been cared for from the start, what can be done for the university students? Joze Jancar describes his illegal journey to Italy in search of university places for them, and his fellow student Mark Sfiligoi tells of plans by other refugee leaders to start a refugee university inside the camp itself - plans overtaken by events, when the Russian occupiers withdraw from Graz and a special refugee camp for students is opened there. The Pernisek and Corsellis diaries continue their accounts of camp life.
Marian Loboda describes life in the new camp as seen through the eyes of a 15 year old schoolboy:
We reached the camp that evening, and felt we were arriving at the best hotel. The wooden huts seemed veritable luxury after the rickety hovels, built from scraps of canvas and branches, we had occupied on the meadows of Vetrinje. My mother and I settled into a room with two other families, so that ten of us shared 4 x 5 meters. Fortunately there were double-decker bunks so that we could each sleep in our own bed.
Next day we boys reconnoitred. We soon discovered bullet holes in the wooden walls, and mounds of fresh earth close to the camp, some with Orthodox crosses. We met a Russian mother and daughter and learnt what had happened to the Cossack refugees83 who had
83. fully described in Bethell, Nicholas (1974, reprinted 121 occupied this spot before us. The English loaded them by force onto trucks and took them to the Russian zone near Vienna and, as the people resisted, used their weapons to carry out their sad commission. We had lived through our own tragedy unaware that in many places similar and greater injustices were being repeated against the helpless refugees who had escaped from the Russian armies and their communist allies.
We soon established order in the life of the camp. A hut was transformed into a chapel in which the priests daily said frequent Masses. The teachers organised school for the children and all kinds of cultural activities were started up. The biggest problem was the severe food shortage. I was never so hungry as in those first weeks in Lienz. We soon discovered the people in charge of the kitchen, Russians who remained in the camp when we arrived, were largely to blame, and when the camp commandant entrusted the kitchen to our own people things improved visibly.
I soon started to go to school. Who will forget the attractive mock leather jackets all the pupils of the primary and secondary schools were given for the winter, or the YMCA and YWCA camps, or the Boy Scout troop which gave so much for our human development? I remember the pride and seriousness with which I raised my arm and recited "on my honour I promise ..." and the camp on the banks of Lake Millstatt.
One day I was strolling on the big sports ground and learning a lesson for school when I saw a young man stretched out on the grass taking the sun. The face seemed familiar and I walked past him a number of times. I couldn't believe it, because I knew Frank Jerman had been handed over to Tito's partisans with thousands of fellow domobranci. He was from the village next mine and a great friend of my uncle who'd been abducted, but I thought he was dead. All the same here he was, though much thinner. When I greeted him he recognised me immediately, and told me how he'd escaped death almost miraculously. I ran to tell my mother the good news.
Frank started to study. One day he couldn't answer a question in an exam set by Director Bajuk. When asked why, he said he didn't have the book from which he could have learnt the answer. Bajuk said he didn't mind where he found the book, but he had to know the subject. Frank wasn't a man for half measures. He was absent from class for nearly a week, but when he reappeared he handed Bajuk the book he'd mentioned and a few others. He'd crossed the frontier to his home in Slovenia, loaded a haversack with schoolbooks and returned, running a real risk of death: if the partisans had caught him his end would have been terrible. Frank blamed himself for his rashness for the rest of his life - the communists heard of his secret visit home and put his sister in prison. She was held for some years for failing to denounce
with epilogue 1995) The Last Secret (London, Andre Deutsch & Penguin) and Tolstoy Nikolai (1977) Victims of Yalta (London, Hodder & Stoughton). 122 him, and by the time she was released was half paralysed. We were privileged to live with real heroes.
Camp life for us youngsters was quite tolerable. We studied, attended meetings of the boy scouts and religious organisations, played football and went on excursions on Sundays with our teacher Luskar. We always had something to do. These were without doubt the happiest years of my youth.
It wasn't the same for the older people. It was painful to see how those from the country, professional people, craftsmen and ordinary workers, suffered from not being able to exercise their skills and provide their families with a worthy hearth and secure future. A further burden was the frequent visits by Yugoslav government missions, looking for people they charged with war crimes or pressing us to return to Yugoslavia. They didn't have much success, as everyone knew there was a bloody communist dictatorship at home, guilty of massacring the domobranci among other atrocities.
Marian Loboda was not alone in describing how the school children were looked after and remembering his teacher Luskar. Franc Rode was only ten when his family reached Austria - father, mother and seven children, of whom two were sent back, the older being killed at Teharje and the younger eventually released. He attended the camp schools at Viktring and Judenburg to start with. Then in 1946 he passed the gimnazija entrance exam and joined his sister Francka and brother Vinko there, first in Lienz and then in Spittal. He remembers the order of priests who traditionally concerned themselves with education;
... Later I got to know the Salesians. These were priests, outstanding priests. Outstandingly devoted and self- sacrificing, they lived in truth only for us, for the young people. The time in the camps could so easily have been cheerless and miserable in an atmosphere of depression and apathy, but owing to the Salesians we lived an exceptionally vigorous and joyful existence. We were also very well taught.
There were some great, great Salesians. Above all Janko Mernik, a wonderful man from Stajerska, exceptionally gifted: then our teacher of religion at the gimnazija, Alojzij Luskar, a saintly man with a warm heart and great worldly wisdom: the talented musician Silvo Mihelic, our teacher of singing and music at the gimnazija, a true scholar: Dr. Franc Mihelic, who taught us natural science, a true scientist; and finally two more Salesians, who we realised were laymen and who specially involved themselves with our leisure-time activities, Janez Ambrozic and Rudi Knez. When we went to the woods to play soldiers, they were two halves. One camp was with Mr. Ambrozic, the other with Mr. Knez. We played tag in those woods and captured camps.
These people devoted themselves totally to their vocation and sacrificed themselves for us. When I think back on them I cannot but feel a boundless respect and admiration for the devotion with which they brought us up, acting as positive role models. They were always available to us, so that our lives, 123 which could easily have been sad, wretched and hopeless, were on the contrary very happy.
The author of these words was installed Archbishop and Metropolitan in Ljubljana on 6 April 1997.
Rode's predecessor in 1945, the exiled Bishop Gregorij Rozman, visited the Slovenes as soon as they arrived in Lienz. His former chancellor, Monsignor Dr Joze Jagodic, recorded84:
Sunday 1 July. Bishop Rozman came and celebrated mass for the Feast of Christ's Blessed Blood and delivered a deeply moving sermon to an immense throng of Slovenes in the open air between the barracks. There were around 3,000, including a number of Croats.
A week later I also reached the camp, and wrote home:
Sunday 8th July. I've transferred from one end of the British zone to the other. The Slovenes are being sent to four camps. As there were already FAU men in the three main centres they were going to, I thought I'd lost "my Slovenes" and was feeling disappointed. But I had a pleasant surprise. David Pearson, our chief in Austria, decided on a swap round of personnel and I've now found myself at Lienz (where half the Slovenes have been sent) together with another FAU man, who's had no previous experience in camps but wide interests and enough drive.
Before leaving Klagenfurt I handed over my job at the Austrian refugee camp to a man supposed till then to have been browned off for lack of work. I was talking solidly for four hours covering the small amount that had been done and the pile that could be done! My last afternoon was cheering as the director showed signs of bucking up, having seen the Burgermeister to hurry up urgent roofing repair without any prompting.
The journey to Lienz was lovely - along the valley of the river Drau, past the enormous Woerthersee lake which was a popular Austrian holiday resort and along the winding river flanked by impressive mountain ranges, ending up in the Lienz valley dominated by the Dolomites. On a hot afternoon the mountains have the hard brilliance of the hills in the Riviera, but on cooler days they produce superbly soft colours and we often have glorious skies. The work may be wearing but it certainly has its compensations, living in some of the finest tourist country of Austria.
The position in the camp is delicate and complex. It holds 3,500, and has over 4,400 and so is somewhat overcrowded! 1,600 are Russians and Yugoslavs who were here before the Slovenes arrived and thus occupy all the jobs in the office, kitchens, stores and workshops. Then arrived the 2,500 Slovenes, who had virtually run their own camp at Viktring. The camp director85 is not
84. Jagodic, Monsignor Joze (1974), Mojega Zivljenja Tek (Klagenfurt), p.258. 85. Captain Martyn. 124 nearly as imaginative or liberal as the two we had at Viktring, and reacted strongly to the overtures made by the Slovenes who are in an absolute majority. At Viktring the one thing the majors were keen on was that so far as possible the refugees should run their own camp, while here the captain is determined that if the refugees realise only one thing, it's that the British army are running the camp. Thus the over-enthusiastic Slovenes were severely snubbed and the Russians remain in virtual monopoly of camp jobs, which leads to ugly results. The food is undoubtedly poor in quantity and quality, and the Slovenes are convinced the Russians in the kitchen put water into the soup doled out to the Slovene barracks. The only solution is a mixed kitchen staff but the powers that be resist the idea.
Combined with this, the two FAU men who preceded us had spent all their time abroad as medical orderlies in an army hospital and were content here to carry out a no doubt useful and necessary job of little scope of the sergeant's or corporal's type, one looking after food stores and kitchen, the other running a camp information and Red Cross message service.
The real thing we're sent to do is to help and encourage the refugees start their own carpenters', blacksmiths', tinsmiths', bootmakers' and tailors' shops, train apprentices in them, get schools going, adult education and lectures, gymnastics, sports and recreations, concert parties and gardening and many such- like activities so that they don't fall into the all too common apathy and later "unemployableness" to be found in camps86. But the captain has more limited ideas and has shown mistrust of the two meddlesome Red Cross men who disturb the quiet of his camp and give him more work to do. So one has the delicate task of going slow to overcome his mistrust and wait till he gets to know one better and has more confidence in one before pressing too many new ideas, and on the other hand dealing with the not unnaturally dissatisfied Slovenes, trying to temper their enthusiasm which will only make things worse with the Officer Commanding (OC), who will be strengthened in his conviction that these so-and-sos are trying to run his camp.
Things seem to be improving in the last day or two; we've got some gym and football going in which all the camp takes part, and have taken the opportunity, provided by some school benches and other material scrounged from a bombed school in the town, of forcing the Russian and Slovene doctors to cooperate in deciding on the sharing out of the proceeds. One can see each coming to the conclusion that the others were not quite such awful people as they'd imagined.
I'm hoping to start a lending library of English books for the many refugees who are studying English, and my already impressive
86. The training the FAU gave its fieldworkers in this respect was heavily influenced by Quaker experience of work in Wales in areas of mass unemployment in the 1920s and 1930s depression. 125 store of Penguins will form an excellent nucleus (I've given away very few of the ones you sent me, having had the idea for some time). The Listeners should also come in handy, especially as they've plenty of simple direct narrative prose.
**Saturday 14th July. An FAU man I know who is responsible for the supervision of Hitler Youth camps turned up with the MG officer i/c education in the Gau and picked two of us up to go to half a dozen camps that evening and next morning up in the hills. The kids are mainly from Vienna and housed in winter sports hotels in the mountains. We spent the night at the camp where the Vienna Boys' Choir are: it is an ancient foundation to which all the kids with first class voices in Vienna are sent, and they sang to us in the evening. They were really beautiful, doing songs of Mozart and Schubert's "Lark", the Blue Danube and another Strauss waltz, some folksongs and the old Austrian national anthem. One or two had amazing voices, and their precision and technique and feeling were superb. The school had had several clashes with the Nazis, but kept its character pretty well.**
On Wednesday 25 July the camp newspaper ("Novice" or "The News")87 contained an announcement on a development which transformed the lives of hundreds of refugee students in Austria. The issue opened as usual with world news: Winston Churchill, Antony Eden and Clement Attlee had returned from the Potsdam Conference to London to hear the General Election results, the Americans had made massive air raids on Japan. It then turned to sport and blamed the Slovene football team for an ill-disciplined performance against the Croats, who won 4:1, but praised the referee, my FAU colleague John Strachan, for his firm handling of the match which prevented more unpleasant incidents. Then came the announcement:
FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS the English camp authorities have started to take a very active interest, to enable them to continue their studies for the new academic year. Yesterday on the initiative of Mr Corsellis a meeting of all male and female university students was also attended by representatives from Spittal and Anras. A committee was elected to assist Mr Corsellis with the preparations for university studies, consisting of Jancar Joze, Kompare Tone, Sah Max, Malovrh Roza, Dr Kalin Angel, Hudic Lado (Croat) and Zaruba Vlado (Russian).
Joze Jancar describes on page 00 how the students were eventually found university places, but other developments have to be recorded in the meantime. My letter-diary:
Sunday 29 July. It looks as if things are at last beginning to sort themselves out. * A fortnight ago a major plus camp team arrived suddenly. At first no one knew when he was taking over and so all intelligent planning was paralysed - the OC not being interested in pressing for supplies which would not arrive until after he left. We were then told calmly by Army HQ that the change-over wouldn't take place for a month or more which was
87. Novice for 25 July, 1945, duplicated camp daily neswpaper, in Studia Slovenica archive, Zavod Sv. Stanislava, Ljubljana-Sentvid. 126 infuriating, as this camp can only be adequately got ready for winter if firm and energetic action is taken, and the present OC even before he knew he was going was not exactly bursting with energy: he felt he'd worked quite hard enough during the war and deserved a rest and intended taking one. Then the BRC suddenly without warning withdrew two of its five workers and so the three left, already with enough to do, had to share between them their work.* Thank goodness yesterday we received news that the change-over to the major's camp team will take place at the weekend.
The major88 is a "regular ranker", i.e. had been in the Army as an NCO some ten years before the war. He's pretty friendly and I think we'll cooperate well - fortunately my FAU colleague is a keen footballer which provides common ground - and he seems to have plenty of push: he certainly isn't conspicuous for understanding of or interest in the viewpoint of the refugee or the Slovene as such, but is keen to help the people to be efficient and make the camp a success, and that is saying a lot. He's not the type that shows any signs of war weariness, although he's had his full share of it.
I had already sent three letters home before Pernisek resumed his diary:
Sunday 30th July. It's a month since we arrived and the Slovene part of the camp is gradually getting set up. We are having a great struggle dealing with the Russians, who took the best and most attractive barracks. They were here when we arrived and they manage in their own way. Most are old Russian emigrants who lived in Yugoslavia for more than twenty years and enjoyed King Alexander's89 goodwill, and speak Serbian very well. The majority appear perverted and corrupted, proficient in slander, lies, swindle and theft. Still there are some highly educated, refined, noble individuals who are ashamed to belong to the group. We get on with them well and understand each other. Many are deeply religious and very ecumenically minded, and we talk about the need for more unity among Christians, especially after the intense suffering we are all undergoing.
Among the Russians from the Soviet Union there are labour camp people and soldiers of the Vlasov army who escaped into the woods during the forced repatriations. They believe in the bolshevik doctrine, are morally less scrupulous, addicted to vodka and quite poor as well. There is intense hatred between the old Russian emigres and the Russians from the Soviet Union.
There is a difficult battle to be fought, on very unequal terms, simply because we have no "women for sale", while the Russians use this weapon to open all doors. They have dances and merry- making till the early hours and different competitions presided over by former Russian dancers from Belgrade night-clubs and
88. Major A.E.Richards. 89. King Alexander I, born 1888, succeeded to throne 1921, killed by a Croat assassin 1934. 127 cabarets, and even by less reputable women. One of these has a great influence over the camp commandant, a British Major. Her room in the camp is the centre of intrigues and activities and the Major spends long hours there. The so-called superintendent of the camp is a certain Engineer X who is a master liar, intriguer and thief. The post was invented by the Russians themselves. When they have a celebration or a marriage the inhabitants of the camp immediately suffer a shortage of bread - today we got only one loaf for sixteen people.
We have organized the teaching in the school, and all three sections have classes regularly. The camp administration has banned the issue of the newssheet Domovina v Taboriscu [The Homeland in the Camp]. We are allowed to publish one called Novice [The News] in Slovene, but the news is sent to us by Sergeant Jud Shany. He underlines in red articles from the Kaerntner Nachrichten [Carinthian News] and we can only publish them. Anything on religious, political, ideological or national subjects is forbidden. Sergeant Shany knows Russian well and can understand Slovene and that's why he is in charge of censorship. But we are publishing Domaci Glasovi [Voices from Home] in Klagenfurt to supplement what cannot be published in Novice. The number of copies of Novice is very low. Our hope is that the censorship will stop soon, as Sergeant Shany is due to be recalled to active duty.
Sergeant Shany left next day and I was asked, or volunteered, to replace him as censor. Pernisek's hope was fulfilled and I was able to stop censorship to all intents and purposes, limiting myself to persuading the Slovenes to exercise restraint and avoid outspoken anti-communist comments likely to provoke the Yugoslavs or Russians into protesting formally to the British army. Pernisek believed Father Blatnik's story that the outspoken "Voices from Home" was published in Klagenfurt, but Blatnik himself tells the truth on page xx. Pernisek continues:
We are trying little by little to get some workshops started in spite of the Russians having stolen most of the equipment. Our people are able to make some tools themselves; there are loads of old military transport vehicles on the banks of the river Drau which are invaluable for making tools and other useful things. Good Mr Corsellis procured some hammers and other tools for us, and people brought axes and smaller hand tools with them from home, so the workshops have started operating well.
Thursday 9th August. There was a terrific storm during the night, the river Drau rose rapidly to a dangerous level and in the early hours of the morning waves were crashing over the bridge. By nine the bridge was gone!
Friday 10th August. The people of Tristach are celebrating the feast of St Lawrence, their patron saint. The good gentle priest Ferdinand Fritzer invited our Metropolitan Bishop Dr Rozman as the main celebrant of Solemn Mass. This parish priest is our benefactor, advocate, protector and "generous father" to our children, who gives them everything he has himself and everything he collects from the parishioners.
128 After Mass Bishop Rozman headed a long procession which wound its way through the village and the fields, and the parishioners carried the statues of the saints from the church. The mayor, very tall and of imposing appearance, carried the large banner himself, no small feat in such a wind. The women walked behind the statue of St Anne, wearing Tyrolean national costumes, black dresses, silk aprons of vivid green or blue and black, low round hats with large black bows and ribbons reaching the ground. It's simple, but very elegant and beautiful, and the women wear it for church services on Sundays and Feastdays.
The girls line up behind the statue of Our Lady. Their costumes are beautiful, long black dresses and blue or green silk aprons, bareheaded, with braided plaits adorned with small white garlands wound round their heads. The younger children and teenagers follow the statue of the Guardian Angel. The town band also wear traditional Tyrolean costume, black suede leather short trousers held up by green embroidered braces, long woollen stockings and black boots, white shirts and large silk neck- scarves. Around their thighs they have wide leather belts decorated with multicoloured small leather ornaments and on top of it all coarse woollen cloth jackets with vivid coloured borders and on their heads tall cone-shaped black hats with curved feathers.
Four field altars were erected along the route, where the Bishop blessed the people four times with the Most Blessed Sacrament, as during the Corpus Christi procession, and Slovene priests from different camps assisted. Such a procession in the beautiful mountain setting is majestic and colourful, and the people were most devout, with no chatter to be heard but only deeply experienced prayers. There were few men as they haven't yet returned from the war fronts. I also missed bell-ringing as the military had confiscated all the church bells, and only the smallest bell is heard, little better than a death knell.
Dr Rozman was the most eminent of the Slovenes to escape to Austria, and was hated and pursued by the Belgrade government as a leading anti-communist and alleged collaborator. The British held him under house arrest in Klagenfurt from August 1945 while considering a demand for his extradition as a war criminal. They decided not to, and in November 1947 he moved secretly to Salzburg in the American zone of Austria, and then to Switzerland and the USA. He was a controversial figure and Father Kozina has described how hurt he was when in 1950 his request to see the Pope privately was declined. He spent his remaining eleven years as a "wandering missionary and bishop" based on Cleveland, Ohio, the centre with the strongest concentration of Slovene immigrants in the States.
Pernisek put schools high on the list of the Slovenes' priorities on arrival at Lienz, and Director Marko Bajuk, appointed already in Viktring by the Slovene National Committee as educational supremo, recalls the progress that was made:
No sooner did we organise ourselves at Viktring than there came a bomb-shell, we had to move! ... We were able to continue with 129 lessons under most difficult circumstances. In August I approached the HQ in Klagenfurt to let them know we were intending to hold the baccalaureate exams and ask them to send us someone to head the exam commission. Instead they sent Colonel Baty, overall head of education there, who arrived very late one evening. I was summoned to the office at 11 pm, and he was asking me so many detailed questions I was soon able to guess his profession - headmaster of a London grammar school. He wrote such an excellent report on our work that none of our people could have written it so well.
The report does indeed make moving reading90. Its interest is the greater, because of the closeness with which its author follows the format of contemporary official inspection reports of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Education on grammar schools in Britain:
1. An inspection was made of this school, and especially of the upper forms, on Thursday and Friday, 9 and 10 August, 1945.
2. HISTORY. The school began spontaneously, under the lead of Dr Marko Bajuk, at Viktring during June 1945, and consisted of Slovene boys and girls who had been in attendance at intermediate (British terminology, secondary) schools in Ljubljana. Most of these pupils were soon after removed to the Lienz camp, where the school has been continued. Practically all the pupils are Slovene, and without exception they are Roman Catholic.
3. ORGANISATION and STAFFING. The constitution of the school follows the plan normal in Jugoslavia, and since the head master was for some three years inspector of secondary schools for Slovenia, he is very well acquainted with the standards, syllabuses and regulations in force there. Dr Bajuk is a man of outstanding personality and energy. Both from the reports of the camp authorities and from direct observation it was clear that his leadership was the most vital factor in the school. His experience as a scholar, an administrator and a student of music is invaluable. He exercises a general advisory direction over the primary school also, though it has its own head: and he also concerns himself actively with adult education. The other members of the staff, seventeen in all (some of them with part-time duties only), are understood to be qualified according to the requirements for Jugoslav secondary schools. So far as an outsider not speaking Slovene can judge, their ability as teachers is undoubted, and their personal relations with one another, with the camp management and with their pupils appeared natural and happy. A weekly meeting of the whole teaching staff is held, at which both general matters and individual problems are discussed.
90. duplicated seven-page report headed Headquarters Military Government Land Kaernten Ref: MGK/3870/DP, signed Baty (Deputy Controller, Education Nr., Allied Comm. for Austria) and dated 12 August 1945, Studia Slovenica archive, Ljubljana- Sentvid. 130 The role of the camp commandant corresponds to that, in an English school, of a friendly and well-informed chairman of the governors, who makes it his business to give all possible facilities to the school, but wisely leaves the head master a free hand in running it. In his dealings with the school, he is greatly helped by Mr John Corsellis of the Friends Ambulance Unit, who makes the educational side of the camp his special business.
4. PREMISES. The secondary school has its premises in a long hut with rooms of different sizes, none of them large. It is unfortunate the lavatory accommodation occupies a part of this hut: for in consequence some of the classes, even of the secondary school, have to be held elsewhere. These same rooms are extensively used for adult courses in the evenings. It was observed that during recent heavy rain, school work had been curtailed because rooms were flooded: and that the windows were in some cases defective, and in all cases seen single. This would clearly be serious in winter. A good deal of school furniture had been secured: but even so, in some rooms equipment was very incomplete. The school day is, for reasons of accommodation, divided into two shifts. The four senior years have classes from 08.30 to 12.15 hours, the four lower years from 14.30 to 18.30 hours.
5. BOOKS. From the nature of the circumstances in which these Slovenes left their homes, they have almost no books. In most subjects the teachers have to prepare texts, or to copy the one existing text-book on a duplicating machine with which they have provided themselves. This imposes immense extra work on the staff, whose conditions are already difficult. Apart from the class-teaching difficulties, the absence of a library will very soon prove a basic defect to staff and pupils alike. They are living on capital from a pedagogical point of view. At present they are living on capital in an educational sense. If their background of culture is to be maintained, this cannot last.
6. TEACHING. In view of the immediate occasion of the inspection, the classes actually visited were all in the upper half of the school, and pupils ranging from about 14 1/2 to 19 were concerned. The total numbers in the secondary school were 124, of whom about 50 were girls. All classes seen, with one exception, contained both boys and girls. A systematic time-table, much on English lines, was shown and it was clear that it corresponded exactly with what was in fact carried out. All classes were orderly, punctual and well- disciplined. The manners of pupils were rather more formal than is usual in England, but it was abundantly clear that their good external behaviour proceeded from natural courtesy and a determination to make the best possible use of their opportunities.
The report then appraised five lessons. Two were by Dr Bozidar Bajuk, one of the headmaster's sons and "evidently a good scholar and a teacher above the average". A Greek grammar lesson for boys aged 14 - 15 reached "a standard, for the age concerned, I have no hesitation in saying higher than will at present be found in Greek classes in most English secondary schools in which 131 Greek is taught"; while in a Latin lesson on Livy for ten boys and two girls aged about 18, the "reading of the Latin (very wisely insisted upon) showed an excellent grade of the sense as well as an appreciation of quantity".
The third, geography, lesson for fifteen boys and seven girls was taken by Mr Max Sah and was "exemplary in its attention and its manners"; while Dr Zudenigo, the only Croat teacher, took the last two, Italian, lessons which were "very lively and responsive classes". The report continued:
Time did not permit an inspection of other classes: but it was ascertained that: a) religious instruction, by teachers duly qualified and ecclesiastically approved, has two periods a week throughout the school. b) physical training has due attention (a class of children of the elementary school was observed). c) hygiene, taught by a Slovene doctor of distinction [Dr Puc], is in the curriculum. d) music (in which Dr Bajuk himself is an expert) plays a live part in the camp in general and in the school in particular.
7. MISCELLANEOUS. a) The camp choir, assembled at short notice, gave a delightful recital of Slovene songs. b) The camp produces a daily news-sheet in Slovene. c) There are roughly the following university students in the camp whose courses have been broken off short, and for whom, in the absence of tutors and books, nothing can be done at present: 40 law 30 medicine 20 humanities, vet science and others 3 agriculture d) A number of intending teachers are among the pupils of the 8th (top) class. On completion of the normal school year they will continue to study, taking the theory and practice of teaching in an intensive course.
8. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. This school is maintaining, under very great difficulties, the best traditions of European education and culture. In the circumstances the venture can fairly be called heroic, and deserves all possible recognition and support. The kindness and helpfulness of the camp commandant and of his FAU workers made the inspector's visit a pleasure: and the courtesy and appreciation shown by the Slovenes is a high testimonial to their work and understanding. The recommendations involving action are given below.
9. RECOMMENDATIONS. 1. That military government should exercise the privilege which its responsibilities for DPs confer, and should recognise this as a secondary school. This would involve the issue, under the authority of MG, of certificates in accordance with Jugoslav practice at, at any rate, the following levels: a) Abiturienten, or Reifepruefung [maturity exam] which corresponds roughly to higher certificate, and is essential for those going on to universities, whether in Italy, in Austria or elsewhere. This would be awarded on the examinations now about to be held. b) Lehrerbildungspruefung [teacher training exam] to enable those senior pupils, mostly girls, who are combining "sixth-form" work 132 with a teachers training course to obtain posts as teachers in elementary schools. These steps are urgent, since pupils are in danger of dispersal and the question of university admission will arise during the summer vacation.
2. That the greatest possible care should be taken not to disperse this very homogeneous unit. For the cultural future of these Slovenes, the continuation of this school is vital. Further, if steps can be taken to regain those pupils who were lost to the school by the move to Lienz, that would be most desirable.
3. That Dr Blatnik, a priest and a teaching member of the staff, be enabled at the earliest possible moment to go to Rome in order that, by way of the Pontificia Assistenza [Papal Aid] at the Vatican, arrangement may be made for the absorption of a) this year school-leavers, and b) existing university students whose courses are incomplete, in universities in Italy or elsewhere. The potential loss of doctors, lawyers, teachers and educated men generally is very disturbing, if these persons cannot get into touch with such bodies, which are willing and able to help them. If this is entirely impossible, a representative of Pontificia Assistenza might be invited to Lienz.
4. That books should be secured by any possible means, for teaching and for library purposes. The first need is for Slovene books, but Italian and German books would have great usefulness and many of the pupils, as well as adults, are learning English.
5. That the contents of this report be communicated to all persons mentioned and that it be shown to Major Richards, camp commandant, Mr J.Corsellis, FAU, at the camp and Dr Marko Bajuk, head master.
All the recommendations were carried out. The one exception was Dr Blatnik's visit to Rome, which was overtaken by events. It had been included as a result of intensive lobbying on my part, after I had been approached already in Viktring by the powerful team of Bajuk himself, Dr Mersol, who was previously lecturer in the medical faculty of Ljubljana University, Dr Blatnik, a senior Catholic priest specialising in youth welfare and former gimnazija director, and Joze Jancar, medical student and spokesman for the university students. Jancar recalls:
Mersol was saying, "what about the university students?" and I said, "look, I think the first priority should be kids. The university students have plenty of time until October but the kids need school now." "But for the university students, what about books and whatnot?" We discussed that and I said, "look, ask Corsellis. He might be organising something". The chap Blatnik said, "we have to have a list of the students first". He was a very good organiser, he had the names. Next morning he said, would I talk to you? So we started: I was mentioning Italy and you were very enthusiastic. But I said Mersol and I are holding the students back for later.
It was not easy to do anything for them. Austria had been divided into four 133 separate zones occupied by the British, French, Americans and Russians, and it was easier to travel to Italy, illegally across the poorly guarded frontier, than to the other three zones. The only universities were in Innsbruck, Vienna and Graz, the first two of which were in the French and Russian zones, and the third in a part of the British zone the Russians had occupied and showed no signs of leaving. So that only left Italy. Joze Opara recalls:
This was a marvellous time. In July I went black [illegally], over the hills, to Italy to find out about university, to Padua. I spoke with the Pro-Rector, we were talking in Latin, and he said, "yes, come, we'll accept you." This was for me personally, I was going on my own. I'd no mandate from anybody else. But where to get finance?
Several students crossed illegally on their own to see if study at Padua or Bologna was possible. Joze Jancar was different. He travelled on behalf of all the students. He recalled the background in conversation with me:
When you arrived in Lienz the first priority was the university students, and we had a long discussion. You said you'd check: and there wasn't a hope in hell of Graz. You said it may be later, and I said later is a year gone, or a term gone, and I remember we were sitting in a meadow and discussing other alternatives. I said, "look, a lot know Italian, what about Padua? It's the nearest. Rome's too far. I'll go to Padua". You were very sceptical but agreed and gave me some provisions and your blessing so I felt all right.
I heard a Peter Maler, a Cistercian monk, was going to Merano91. We went across and he said, "you look on the left and I on the right. Whoever first spots the FSS92 or a car with an English registration dives straight to the woodland on one side or the other. Not the two together, because if they catch one .. it depends who's unlucky". It was heavy going, we saw a lot of people going across, Germans, Hungarians, smugglers and all kinds of queer people. We walked all the way.
We came down to Merano, saw the station and said goodbye to each other, he to the monastery and I on the train. I didn't know what time, I didn't ask, I just sat there. It was about midday we left and then the chap came along, Italian, and said "biglietti", tickets, and I mumbled something and offered a DP card .. and he clipped! I'd no money! Nothing.
We were going along happily, and the next thing, "all out!" because the line was bombed. It was Cortina d'Ampezzo and there was a big lorry coming along with some wood and a lot of people singing and happy. They stopped and somebody dropped down and I said, "can I?" "good, jump on!" and we were going through Cortina and they were singing, Avanti Populo, Bandiera Rosso [Forward the People and the Red Flag]. "My God Almighty, where
91. Italian town 170 km west of Lienz 92. Field Security Service, the British political and frontier police 134 am I?" They were Italian partisans! And, "da dove siete?" [where are you from] and "oh God! what shall I say now?" I mumbled something and said, "I'm searching for my colleagues. They must be somewhere in this area". "come to our headquarters: we've names", and we stopped suddenly and I said I had to go to the loo and, my gosh, I went where nobody could catch me! They waited a while, then somebody was shouting, "oh, leave him!"
I got to Padua and saw Father Preseren93, the Slovene chief of Jesuits there, and I said, "could you arrange me an interview with the University Director?" "I might with the Secretary, but not with the Director". I said, "look. Secretary's no good", and explained and he said, "you are daring, aren't you!" and I said, "look, this is vital. Either I have the answer or we're in trouble for a year. Because I don't know what's happening in Graz". And he said, "all right. I'll explain to him. I'll ring him personally".
So he rang and the chap said I could see him tomorrow. I was as I was, and I apologised: he said, "did you travel by .. ?" He knew. I said, "I went over the mountains", and he said, "where were you studying?" "Ljubljana". "Oh, Provincia Ljubljana. Have you any documents?" "Yes. I've four indexes", university records of completed studies. He looked at them. "This is exactly what I want. I'll accept all your qualifications, and anybody else who studied in Ljubljana University". God! I nearly jumped through the window with joy and went off to Preseren who said, "tt, tt, tt, I can't believe it, because he's God Almighty, you know!"
So anyway I came back, and it was a very arduous walk, actually harder because I was getting exhausted and afraid all the time. Next morning you were surprised when I was reporting to you, and you said, "now we move", and started to organise things.
While Jancar and I were exploring the Italian connection, an alternative solution was being put forward by some of the older Slovenes - Pernisek, the social insurance worker and diary writer, Mavric, a public auditor and businessman, and Dr Puc, who was running the school clinic and teaching hygiene in the school - as recalled by Mark Sfiligoi, at the time 19 years old and one of the 21 students who passed their school-leaving exams in Lienz in September and were poised for university:
Pernisek, Mavric and Puc were very active: they wanted to start a Slovenian university at Lienz! We and the university students had a lot of discussions with them arguing against, that it would be only a school in the barracks, not comparable to the high school we have with Dr Bajuk. But Pernisek was a big proponent of a Slovenian university. Of course it never materialised because we sort of laughed it off and went to Graz.
93. Monsignor Anton Preseren, who happened to be a Slovene, was in fact Assistant General, or second in charge, of the Jesuits worldwide. 135 I remember Franc Pernisek very, very well: he was impressive because he was the most important politician among them, although self- propelled. He was involved deeply with the formation of a temporary Slovenian government on the 3rd May in Ljubljana - Tabor, or People's Convention, they called it. He was telling that he was appointed as a Srezki Nacelnik which would be like the head of a county in Slovenia, a local government official, and as such he acted and was very close to the National Committee of the refugees in Viktring. He was with the Slovenian People's Party or Christian Democrats. He was a very good man, devoted. We young students were kind of laughing at him because - how important he took his position which did not exist! He took life very seriously and tried to exercise his authority and so on, but there was nothing but just an imaginary title! Director Bajuk wrote in his memoirs that he decided to back both projects:
Because the registration of our undergraduates in Graz that first autumn appeared to be sticking and we had a well-founded fear that nothing would come of it in the end, we had to start thinking about a "temporary university" or rather some sort of high-school courses. We had lined up lecturers in medicine, philosophy, natural history, chemistry and law. There was a deadline on a certain day. The favourable telegram arrived from Graz that they were taking all our candidates, so our university "fell in the water". But everything was prepared for it - space, books and students were all allocated.
Jancar explains how the "favourable telegram from Graz" was achieved:
A few days later you said, "I've news for you. The Russians are moving out of Graz". Then the circus started and we were really going fast because September, October - it's only two months. What was important was food and lodging, and then the university, would it accept us?
Anyway you organised it: to Graz, to investigate. You gave me a letter to UNRRA or the army. When I arrived it was getting dark. I came to the station. Everything was bombed and I couldn't get anywhere. So I looked around and there was a siding. It was warm so I went and slept there, under the train, nice and comfortable. The danger was somebody will pinch whatever I had, and I'd a big loaf of bread from you!
I went in Graz and a nice man there, very sympathetic, a Military Government officer, asked, "how many are you?" "About a hundred". "Oh God! Where'll we put them?" He started to ring around. He said, "right. There's the Kepplerschule. We're moving the people out". He took me to it and said, "would it be good enough for you?" and I said, "fantastic!" I'd been thinking of a ruddy barracks! "Great!" he said, "all right. I'm not 100% sure, but I'll organise that and I'll get in touch with Corsellis and tell him".
I returned to Lienz and reported to you and then went back to Graz to see the University Dean. The chap there said, "I think the Dean is very busy". I said, "look, I've a very urgent appointment 136 with him". "oh, you've an appointment?" "yes", and he took me in. I didn't have any appointment! And I said, "good morning". And he said, "ste vi Slovenc?" [are you Slovene?], my gosh! and I said, "da". "Razumem Slovensko" "I understand Slovene". He was very sympathetic, and again I had my documents. He said, "if you can find accommodation in Graz, I'll be very pleased to help you. How many are you?" "A hundred".
My diary now takes over. I am not sure if I visited Graz before or after Jancar, or between his two visits. The important thing is that between us we succeeded. I wrote: undated. At last John Strachan is back and work is not quite so desperate. To my surprise, my visit to Graz re the university students has had some result. Graz is 200 miles from here, and Klagenfurt, our "county" HQ and FAU HQ, 100 miles, so that agitating for the arrangements for 145 students from three separate camps to begin or continue their studies at Graz was no simple matter.
If you just write a memo and forward it to your official channel and await results, you can be confident nothing will happen. You have to type as many copies as possible, send them to everyone who might possibly be interested in the scheme and help it along, and then buttonhole every likely person you see and try to guide the conversation along the right channels. Luckily our FAU chief94 is a live wire and did a bit of pushing from the Klagenfurt end, and the BRC supervisor in Graz95 is an excellent and most energetic woman, and they both exerted pressure.
Eventually a Colonel Hall, i/c camps welfare, visited this camp during a general tour and I managed to impress the urgency on him - the project was first aired some three months ago, and nearly two months ago I circulated a comprehensive memo - I'm getting quite a hand at memos! - with detailed analytical lists. I got him to approve my visiting Graz to survey possible accommodation and then report back to him, only to get as far as Klagenfurt and be halted by fierce telephone messages from BRC Graz telling me not to poach.
Of course I was poaching, but it was their own fault as they had not let me know they were doing anything. So wasting two working days I returned here only to be summoned four days later to a conference at Graz, a whole day's journey away. The conference was composed of Colonel Hall, a major i/c DPs in Steiermark who is pretty hopeless, the UNRRA regional director96 who was very alive and supported the scheme strongly, the MG education representative, two other souls from MG and UNRRA, the BRC supervisor and myself.
I was in a strong position as I wasn't speaking only for one camp, but for three camps containing the majority of refugees in Kaernten,
94. David Pearson. 95. Miss Joan Couper. 96. Mr. Cornwall. 137 the only group that had produced comprehensive lists. All the principles were settled reasonably quickly but the inevitable stumbling block appeared over the accommodation question. Graz is badly bombed and the Army doesn't consider students a high priority. I left Graz depressed as another three days had been wasted.
But pressure from BRC and UNRRA was just strong enough and a camp has been found for 250 students from camps in the British zone and 100 in the American zone. You can imagine I'm pleased! Our children are not losing time as they all go to reasonably good schools, and now the same will apply to our undergrads.
While the fight for a special camp for the university students continued, so did ordinary life at Lienz. My letter-diary:
Saturday 13th August. Things still happen with alarming rapidity and every week one hopes that at last they will calm down and we will be able to relax into a tolerable routine. A truck has at last arrived for us, which will simplify work. We have just had three days solid downpour - the worst for sixty years: three bridges washed away locally including one just by the camp, which is a great nuisance.
Monday 15th August. At last the news has come that the war is over in the Far East - what an enormous relief. One can feel that the vast machinery of the world is now concentrated on reconstruction. The Daily Telegraphs are starting to arrive. For the last six weeks I've had to rely entirely on the Austrian paper, as for some reason the copies of the British army paper fail to arrive: excellent for my German, but it only contains the most important home news.
We certainly have our elated and depressed periods. For four or five days we've been pretty depressed, but now things are looking up again. I've been spending time recently trying to get going a fair and efficient clothing distribution system, seeing that what little we do get goes as quickly as possible to those who really need it. Our camp contains 2,100 Slovenes, 1,700 Russian emigrants to Yugoslavia, 250 Croats and 40 Serbs. I'm trying to get each group to form its own clothing committee and allot it its rightful proportion of such clothes as we receive or make. They then prepare lists of who should receive the clothes and my store issues by the lists. The Russians are my main headache. They have little idea of unity and "solidarity" and not much confidence in their leaders. Still I hope to issue some 2,700 pairs of trousers, with some shirts, in five days.
The whole of this job is finding the right people to do the work for you, handle them so they work well and keep an eye to see they remain honest, contrive the simplest system you can find and then step aside and be ready to deal with the inevitable difficulties that arise. It is complicated by the fact that the Major interferes in quite unexpected ways, and sabotages my distribution system by giving people permits to have clothes made if they come to him with a good yarn.
138 My bugbear as usual is the interpreters. They wield enormous power and have no scruples against using it as they think fit and are at the bottom of most intrigues. It is amazing how unaware people are, of how much they are in their interpreters' hands.
The Pernisek diary:
Friday 18th August. **The banks of the river Drau are one big garden. The dark green pine trees, bent and broken by the storm, lord it over the slender alders whose leaves are turned to silver by the glaring sun. A light breeze makes the leaves quiver and the barberry bushes, covered with a thousand rubies, shimmer in the summer sun, while swallows circle overhead in large circles. The Drau rushes through this garden after it has won freedom from the chilly walls of the Dolomites and overcome the narrow rocky gorges as, unchained and boisterous, it speeds eager to explore the wider world.**
I stand with my little daughter on the bank and we tell the river to carry heartfelt greetings to our beloved and lovely Slovenian homeland and to our dear family and friends. Walking along the shore we come across the untended graves of disaster victims. In those terrible days of May when the British Army was handing over soldiers and civilians, deportees and their wives and children from the refugee camp to Stalin's Red Army, those unfortunates who could do so fled the camp and threw themselves in desperation into the river, killing first their wives and children and finally themselves. The British buried the corpses wherever they found them. Many more were carried off by the waves and deposited who knows where.
We pick barberries. As we gather the red grape-like clusters I seem to be home in our Slovene woods and the bushes are sprinkled with the blood of our fathers, sons and brothers. Dear brother Joze, which bush in Rog97 is sprinkled with your blood? We pick the berries but my fingers feel sticky, smeared with blood. Dear girl, let's stop, stop picking the red barberries, let's stop and go away. They remind me too much of our slaughtered heroes.
Friday 25th August. The food is poor, scant and insufficient: some days it's only green boiled water. People who'd been in Gonars concentration camp tell us they were given more, and more sustaining, food. Today it was decided to campaign for a separate Slovene kitchen to put an end to the theft of food supplies. The Russians obstinately resist handing over control although they could easily keep the barrack 25 kitchen for themselves; but they're in an absolute minority in the camp and obviously if they hand over the kitchen they'll have no one to
97. Kocevski Rog, the wooded area of south-east Slovenia where the worst partisan massacres of the domobranci took place, and where a commemorative mass is celebrated each year, attended by thousands of Slovenes. My wife and I, together with Count Tolstoy, were invited to attend this in 1995. 139 steal from! There were angry exchanges at a joint meeting when the self-styled Superintendent K called the Slovenes "filthy swine" and said the Russians would never eat what the Slovenes cooked. All the same we won the argument and took over the kitchen for the whole camp.
The next entry in my diary is an account of an incident I described in my letter-diary at the time and then discovered forty years later that Father Blatnik had written his own version98. The differences are fascinating! I give his version first. He starts by describing the activities of his Salesian colleagues:
The number of Salesians was proportionately large in the stream of Slovenian refugees. When we found we were present in strength at Viktring we started to think how we could help our fellows and particularly the young people best, and six of us offered our services to director Dr Marko Bajuk in the establishment of a gimnazija. Most of us were sent from Viktring to Lienz: five worked on the staff of the gimnazija while Father Mernik taught religion in the primary school and opened a youth centre. Father Ivan Matko taught in the technical school and Father Dr Silvo Mihelic directed a magnificent choir which even the British enjoyed and praised tremendously.
I edited both of the duplicated daily papers in the camp, "The News", issued in the morning, and the afternoon "Voices from Home". The former was published with British approval on the understanding it shouldn't contain anything that would annoy Tito or the Soviets. I was even summoned before a Soviet military commission to explain why we only published news from British radio and not from Moscow. I said the reception from Moscow was poor and they retorted that on the contrary it was very powerful; to which I replied, "very possibly, but we don't receive it well in these valleys", and didn't hear from them again.
"Voices from Home" was an underground paper. Our people wanted news from home but this was always of a kind not welcome to Tito and therefore also not to the British, so we wrote and duplicated the paper in the camp but gave its place of publication as Klagenfurt. We let the distributors have it at about three pm to give the impression it had been sent up with the mail on the afternoon train from Klagenfurt. I was always afraid I'd have difficulties with the British because of the illegal publication, but never did. I could hardly believe the English and Tito's communists wouldn't see where the paper was being written and duplicated. To be sure we typed the stencils on a different typewriter than the one used for "The News" and so tried to cover our tracks. "Voices from Home" had a comparatively large circulation because we also sent it to other camps and individuals in the Tyrol and Carinthia.
One Saturday our "welfare officers" Corsellis and Strachan came to our office and invited me to go with them on Sunday on an excursion
98. article in the weekly journal Ameriska Domovina, Cleveland, Ohio, issue no. 201, 20 October 1971 140 into the frontier zone, up towards Anras and Sillian so that I could visit friends I had there. Refugees needed a special pass to enter the zone and we couldn't get there, so I was specially pleased by the invitation although I suspected it might have given with an ulterior motive. I was afraid it had something to do with "Voices from Home", because Corsellis was ultimately responsible for all camp publications. My first impulse was to decline but then I felt this might offend them, which wouldn't have been a good idea. Till then I hadn't heard of the camp administrators inviting any refugee on such an "excursion", least of all into the frontier zone. If they asked me they must have had some confidence in me, and so I accepted. No sooner had we left the camp than they began:
We've been together for a good summer and truly admire your people's high culture, deep religious faith, love of cleanliness and order, excellent way of bringing up their young people, honesty and high moral standards, but one thing we can't understand, your attitude to communism. You fly into a passion like turkey cocks at the sight of the colour red, but all the same the communists are human beings like us. One has to adjust to them and talk things over with them democratically, but you flare up at the very word communism. It's clear the right attitude to communism is the only issue we don't agree on. We find you kind, friendly and appreciative, but on this point you don't trust us.
I won't go into details how I explained the atrocities the communists perpetrated during the war against everybody who was on the side of the English and what happened to the domobranci who were sent back - those the English handed over to Tito under the lying pretence they were sending them down to Italy: and they had seen for themselves how they were loaded on to the trucks at Viktring and carted away from there. In the end they thanked me and said they now understood us better.
I was not very happy at calling on friends and acquaintances in the frontier zone because by doing so I'd be showing them the people I was in contact with. Of course I couldn't trust them completely - something they themselves justifiably reproached us with. So I only drove them to the vicarage at Anras where Dr Mirko Kozina, who is now in California, was curate. On his desk Corsellis noticed "Voices from Home", pointed to it and said to me: "your writings travel far! I congratulate you". "You're mistaken", I answered, " that's not mine, it comes from Klagenfurt, just look". Then he came right up to me and said quietly, "Herr Doktor, halten Sie mich bitte nicht fuer so dumm" [Doctor, please don't think I'm that stupid!]. I was startled because he'd shown the camp administration had seen through my deception; but I also realised he wasn't going to make difficulties for us and felt grateful for his consideration. I don't know if he fully understood my answer: I just said, but this time really meant it, "thank you!"
And now my diary entry at the time:
25th August. I am writing at the end of a very pleasant and 141 successful Sunday. John Strachan, my FAU colleague, and I went out at ten o'clock in the truck with Father Blatnik to visit some neighbouring Slovenes and have a day in the country.
Father Blatnik, one of the foremost personalities in the camp, is a Salesian priest but always wears lay clothes (the Salesians are a very active Catholic order who work mainly for orphans and youths generally: they have colleges in London and Oxford and all over the continent). During the war he was doing welfare and liaison work with Slovenes deported by the Germans to Serbia and interned in concentration camps in Italy, cooperating on this with the Vatican99. At the same time he managed to smuggle information for use of the British out of Yugoslavia via the British Minister to the Vatican and got shoved in jail in Rome three months by the Italians - in Regina Coeli, the jail from which the leading Fascist escaped four months ago. Earlier in Ljubljana he was headmaster of a Salesian secondary school, and in the camp here teaches the classics in our secondary school and edits the excellent camp newspaper and generally looks after the interests of students, among other things.
In the neighbouring hills there are also many Slovenes, mainly ex- university students, working on the land. So this morning we went some fifteen miles by truck and then walked up into the hills to a lovely typical Tyrolean village, Anras, where there are some students. It was a remarkably fine day with no low clouds or rain and hot sun. I had a long and interesting chat with a Slovene law student.
The only way the war had apparently affected the villagers had been in the casualty lists. Every village has its roll of honour, and on it nearly all the men have fallen on the "Eastern" or "S.E." front. The farmers certainly have to work very hard as do their womenfolk to wrest a living out of the soil: their land is so steep, and often very stony. All their crops they cut by hand, with scythe or sickle. When the war came the Germans sent the farmers a lot of Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians. These the farmers worked very hard and paid nothing - just fed them. Now they're gone and the farmers do the same with the Slovenes100. Even an Austrian farm worker only receives food and 6d a day pay!
We then picked up another Slovene priest101 and his brother with whom I had worked at Viktring and went on further and had a picnic lunch in a field with an excellent view of an old castle. Then up again in the hills towards the Italian frontier to a village
99. Bishop Gregorij Rozman selected him for this delicate mission: see Kolaric, Jakob (1977) Skof Rozman (Klagenfurt), passim. 100. While this may be true about some Austrian farmers it is unfair as a generalisation. Farmers often paid their Slovene workers generously in food for themselves and their families. 101. Father Vladimir (Mirko) Kozina and Joseph Kozina. See also pages 00 -00. 142 from which there were three or four superb views. There we visited the local Austrian priest with whom a Slovene was lodging; the latter was out, but we had a couple of glasses of wine and bread and a pleasant chat with the old character of a priest - he'd been in the same parish with eighty souls since the first world war! He couldn't make out if John and I were really harmless or not, and made very cautious replies to any doubtful questions. This was the first time I've had wine since Italy. We then visited a church with some fine Gothic wall paintings and called in on a charming Slovene family who entertained us with hot milk - again my first real milk since Italy. The father of the family was chief local government officer for a large area of Slovenia, and he and his wife and 22 years old son spoke very good German and Italian - a most successful day!
I probably did most of the talking, about "the right attitude to communism" and "talking things over with them democratically". I do not know if I was really as naive as that102 or was being loyal to the British official policy. John Strachan and I were probably unaware of the full scale and nature of the forcible repatriations and massacres until Father Blatnik enlightened us.
102. I may have been, as in England I depended for my news and views on the News Chronicle and the New Statesman and Nation. 143
C H A P T E R 6
13 August - 31 December 1945
Vida Rosenberg and Mirko Kozina explain how many Slovenes are not living in the camps at all, but are self-settled in private accommodation, often with Austrian families. The narrative then returns to Lienz and to a memorandum I write in August 1945 which summarises the progress the Slovenes have made during their first eight weeks.
Miroslav Odar follows with a very different picture of camp life, as seen through the eyes of a schoolboy without influence. Pernisek follows with a traditional end-of-year school excursion and my diary describes an inspection by the British Army Commander-in-Chief and his entourage, followed by preparations for the handover of the camp to the inter-governmental organisation concerned with refugee care, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Organisation, and my own transfer to UNRRA from the NGO or non-governmental organisation I have worked with up till now.
144 The last chapter referred to the many Slovenes living with Austrian families rather than in camps - who were self-settled, to use modern terminology. Vida Rosenberg explains how this happened. Vida was the 20 year-old law student with ambitions to become a juvenile court judge who panicked when left alone with the luggage during the flight (page 00). She went on to describe how her group arrived in Austria before the British started diverting the refugees to Viktring:
We were the very first people out and so went to Lienz. We had a problem on the train, because there were some Circassians, Russians, and one lost his mind and attacked an Austrian girl. It was an awful incident. We reached Lienz the next day and stayed in a Gasthaus and were sleeping on the floor. We got meat to eat and somebody said it's horse's meat, but we were hungry enough and ate it. And at night it was so stuffy we went out and slept on the benches.
The next afternoon the British came. We saw British soldiers and were so afraid - soldiers, because we thought they might take us for Germans, and God knows what. But my two friends103 spoke English and said, "don't be afraid, they won't do anything". We went to wash in the brook morning and evening and they came there walking and Anka started to speak to them! They gave us what they had on them .. government chocolate, I don't remember, but next day they came again with loaves of white bread, the first I'd seen in ages.
So every memory has good and bad parts. It proves there is goodness in human beings, but on the other hand there are vicious ones, and I won't forget, because we were hungry and so on, that beautiful loaf of white bread. We were just smiles and they gave us I don't know what else; and, you know, one feels, oh, there is goodness in people. Memories are in these little clumps, some that hit you terribly or gave you pleasure. Today a loaf of bread is nothing but then it was, like the old Slavic custom when a guest came, that you got bread and salt - almost sacramental. We stayed three or four days, and engineer Muri arranged - I believe he knew somebody in Anras because his relatives were there somewhere, he knew the countryside - for us to be accommodated, first in Abfaltersbach and later in Anras.
Vida's account is supplemented by Mirko Kozina, whom Father Blatnik took us to see on our Sunday excursion and who was ordained by Bishop Rozman in Anras at the end of May. Three years earlier he had lain hidden in the loft of the family home, powerless to intervene, when the communists brutally murdered his elderly father and mother and crippled brother in the rooms below. He described this in a remarkable book104, and how on the 8th May he arrived with three of his surviving sisters, probably on the same train as Vida:
103. Dora and Anka Zebot, who both eventually settled in Britain, one marrying an English officer and the other a fellow Slovene. 104. Kozina, Rev. Vladimir (Mirko) (1980) Slovenia land of my joy and my sorrow (Historical Commission of ZDSPB Cleveland & Toronto), pp. 84-85 and 180-182. 145 A group of seventy-five Slovenes now walked from the station to the centre of Lienz. Rubble, debris, houses without roofs, devastated buildings, all lay about the medieval castle. We were fortunate to discover an undamaged Gasthaus, the White Horse Inn. Its bare dining room floor, tables, chairs and benches made admirable but spartan lodgings for the night.
Next day the Allies entered Lienz. My first impression of the British soldiers was disappointing. I expected to meet tall, neatly- dressed men and officers, all armed to the hilt! Back home we Slovenes pictured the English as a nation of martial giants, blindly placing our faith and trust and even our destiny into the hands of these Tommies, whose arrival we'd desired so much during the years of national strife. Now they had come! They were squat, dusty and slovenly. My former admiration for the victorious Allies vanished. I was appalled by the loose conduct and shabby appearance of Lienz's "liberators". Had the English really come to free us? Or had they brought us more misery and suffering?
Mirko's bitterness may seem unreasonable until we recall what the British did to ten thousand of his compatriots three weeks later.
Meanwhile it was necessary for the Slovene DP families to find a safe place away from our new occupiers. Leaders of our group knocked on the door of the Lienz Parish House. Father Budamaier, pastor of St. Andrew's, had already opened his house to the Bishop of Ljubljana and his driver. In a spirit of true Christian charity, he now listened cheerfully to our pleas for help. His reassurances were not empty promises, for he immediately telephoned a young assistant, Father Georg Schuchter, asking him to come down from Anras for an urgent meeting. When he arrived, Father Budamaier explained our group's uncertain status. Returning home Father Georg talked to his superior, Pastor Engl, himself a refugee from the Italian South Tyrol, who gladly welcomed the Slovene refugees to Anras. My sisters and I left Lienz next day. Since buses and trains had ceased operating after Germany's surrender, we had to walk the 20 km.
Vida Rosenberg continues:
I stayed with a farmer's family that had sixteen children, in Anras, a Herr Meyerhof. They were so good, at least to me. All other students had to work, but they had three sons on different fronts and said, "no, don't do anything. God will help me if I help somebody, God will help my child." So they were thanking me for being there so they could help me.
They just fed me and every day I was a little bigger, you know! The old man, who was very imposing, would come and cut me bread and some of that Austrian smoked bacon which is absolutely delicious. Never in my life was I so fat, every day I was half a kilo more. I came up with 50 and ended with 66. They did it so that somebody would help their children, their sons -they didn't know are they dead or alive. While I was still there two returned sound. And in the spring when we were already in Graz I received a huge parcel, thanking me for being there, now that 146 their last son had returned home from the front.
Someone came to Anras. I asked him and he knew my brother very well and said Janes was sent back. I was astounded, but to start with we did not know what was happening to them. Later the news of the massacres came and I feared the worst. So many people were more or less in the same position, the shock was lessened, we almost shared each other's burdens, and I went to Mass every day, which was an enormous support. I was able to an extent to verbalise and share my fears.
It was blind trust that protected us and the prayers with the priests helped us, and that we would see each other again was comforting. And it wasn't me praying, it was me as a member of a group praying, I was conscious of people who had to face losses or fears greater than mine praying all around me. The Mass itself was very helpful and the Austrian priest, what was his name, Schuchter, he was a marvellous person.
I went to Lienz a lot, we were back and forth all the time. I slept there sometimes. I walked from Anras to Lienz, for me it was nothing. What was it? 30 km? Nothing. And up in Anras I came across Gustl Kuk, we went to the same gymnasium in Celje until 1941. I remained in Anras until November, then everybody left. It was time, you couldn't stay there in winter. First of all, what do you do there? Specially as they didn't let me do anything, they just fed me. Some went to Lienz to the camp and some started to look, like Cop and Klaus, how to finish their studies in Austria. A lot went across the border to Italy.
In November we went to Graz. There I knew what it is to be hungry, and all that food they served me up in Anras really protected my health! It was strange, I didn't lose it so quickly because it was good Tyrolean fat! I think about those people and the village with such warm feelings because they could have sold a lot of that, but they gave it to me. Some other people had experiences opposite to mine, and the girls, they really had to work and were not spoiled as I was.
Most of the Slovenes may have been made to work hard, but Stefanija Stukelj, 15 1/2 years old at the time, remembers being treated much the same as Vida:
This was not a particularly wealthy farmer but they were very, very good people with four children of their own. I helped around the house and in the fields cutting the hay, with the potatoes sometimes, but was treated almost like a daughter of the family and behaved like one. I had a bed in their living room on top of the Kachelofen, the stove in which they would have a fire in the winter, and was feeding much better than I had been in Ljubljana. They were very kind and very helpful. It was a typical Tyrolean house, fairly clean, they live at this end and there would be the stable on the other side. I stayed until the beginning of September and then my brother decided there might be a possibility of studying in Italy so we went over illegally, hired a guide who got us over, along small paths high up, staying overnight in a stable or haystack or whatever.
147 Gustl Kuk, a male law student, experienced much the same:
Local farmers received us as refugees and were very good to us. They kept saying, if we are good to you, maybe our boys will return, for most were still on the Russian front. We were helping them with chores, collecting hay and of course we were part of the family, so we ate, slept with them, everything. They were friendly and humane, very good people.
Up to now, to tell the story of the Slovene refugees, I have drawn mainly on the two diaries and quoted from the recorded memories of a wide variety individual Slovenes. I now also draw on an ample archive of official and unofficial correspondence, reports and memoranda written at the time and preserved either in my own collection or in the admirable UN/UNRRA archives in New York. The memorandum that follows is relevant here because it records how much the Slovenes had achieved during their first eight weeks at Lienz, and explains why the army and UNRRA had chosen Lienz as the model camp to which newly arrived UNRRA teams should be sent for induction.
My colleague John Strachan and I were trying to persuade the army to hand the camp over to the Slovenes to run on their own, with only one or two officers, left in a liaison capacity, in place of the Major and twelve other ranks then running it. Later attempts at lobbying were successful but this one was not.
Notes on Slovene Refugees in Austria August 1945
The following notes on the Slovene refugees in camps in Austria have been prepared by two BRC/FAU workers [John Strachan and myself] who have perhaps special opportunities to observe their problems and capabilities; both have worked eight weeks with them in Lienz, while one has also worked with Yugoslavs in the Middle East and was with the Slovenes at Viktring. It is assumed that the authorities will be making plans for the administration of refugee camps during the next few months. The Slovenes would presumably be disposed of in these general plans. We suggest the Slovene problem is substantially different from that of other groups such as Croats, Russians, Serbs or Latvians, and that therefore a different policy should be adopted in their case.
The first seven weeks 6,000 Slovenes arrived at Viktring, near Klagenfurt, on or about May 12th. About one in six are townspeople and the remainder from the country; the majority of the townspeople are from Ljubljana. The people from the country form a representative cross-section of a normal rural community and all come from a small geographical area; the farmers are in the majority but there is the normal quota of mayors, teachers, priests and craftsmen. On the other hand the townsfolk are mainly drawn from the intelligentsia and black-coated workers, with teachers, clerks and students strongly represented.
At Viktring under exceptionally difficult conditions the refugees ran the camp themselves with the minimum of equipment, and ran it well enough for its inmates to compare life there favourably with that at the camps to which they were later sent. Apart 148 from having responsibility for the general administration of the camp and the collection and distribution of food, they registered all the inhabitants, prepared complete nominal rolls for their transfer to four separate camps and ran a secondary school for 140 students with a comprehensive curriculum in a neighbouring farm house.
From Viktring the refugees were dispersed to four different camps, Judenburg, St. Veit, Spittal and Lienz. 2,000 were sent to Lienz, where there were already some Serbs, Croats and 1,700 Russian emigrants to Yugoslavia. The administration of the camp was entirely in the hands of the latter group, working under the direction of the control camp team. The administration has remained for the most part in the [Russian] emigrants' hands, and the following summary only deals with the Slovenes' activities.
The Slovenes at Lienz: administration The Slovenes maintain their own office with a registration system containing comprehensive details of every Slovene in the camp. They have a representative in each barrack in which their nationals live to look after their interests, and this work is coordinated by a committee of five men, each responsible for four or five barracks. This organisation prepared list of those people most in need of clothing, on the basis of which a clothing distribution was carried out satisfactorily; when completed they summoned a mass meeting of representatives from each room to discuss and criticise the fairness of the distribution.
Their general committee meets once a fortnight and consists of chairman (a former chairman of the Slovene Medical Association and vice-chairman of the Yugoslav Medical Association)105, secretary106 and the chairmen of the six sub-committees for registration and housing, food, education and recreation, labour and employment, welfare, and hygiene and health.
Education and Recreation The kindergarten and elementary schools, at which attendance is compulsory, are staffed by qualified teachers. The secondary school, which provides a full classical and modern syllabus, has received warm praise from Mr. Baty, Deputy Director of Education, Allied Commission. A domestic science school has recently been started to cater for the 150 girls who do not attend the secondary school [a number of girls did attend the secondary school], with a class on agricultural subjects for youths. Adult education includes language courses for English, French, Russian, Italian and German. Sport and gymnastics for school classes and adults are organised by an ex- Olympic games athlete. A choir of over 120 voices under the direction of a doctor of music maintains a high standard in spite of a complete lack of musical supplies. The newspaper office produces a daily newspaper in Slovene and Russian as well as duplicating an elementary Slovene reader which is issued serially and much other material for the schools. A weekly children's newspaper and a cultural and educational review will
105. Dr Valentin Mersol. 106. Franc Pernisek. 149 shortly be produced.
Health The camp hospital was already staffed by personnel supplied by MG and so the Slovene doctors have opened a child welfare clinic, at which detailed records are kept of every child in the camp. Every child receives a routine monthly inspection by the doctors. A comprehensive analysis and report was prepared after the completion of the first examination of all the children. A daily visit to every room in the camp is carried out from the clinic by a nurse or medical student, and the clinic also undertakes general hygiene propaganda.
Labour and General The establishment of workshops has only been hindered by the lack of tools. However a carpentry shop and a forge have started and have been producing their own tools as far as possible. The enthusiasm for work is very great and there are few trades for which trained men cannot be found. In all fields the Slovenes have qualified and capable leaders. For instance the headmaster of the secondary school is Dr. Bajuk, who was for many years inspector of secondary schools and before he left Slovenia was director of the senior secondary school in Ljubljana. Also the head of the workshops is G. Brodnik, an architectural engineer who managed a building firm in Ljubljana which employed more than 100 men.
The Slovenes have a high degree of social consciousness and form a closely-knit and cohesive community. They have shown a marked leaning towards and aptitude for democratic methods of administration. Their leaders work hard for those in need of their help and oppose any preferential treatment for themselves or their friends. The director of the secondary school, who could have secured a room for his family if he had asked for one, lives in the most crowded barrack of the camp with several other families. Their interest in and close contact with the other Slovene camps in Austria is also remarkable. Their newspapers and educational sheets are sent to Spittal, St. Veit and Judenburg, and they willingly make available facilities to other camps. Relations with local Austrian authorities are excellent.
Conclusion The administration of the Slovenes at Viktring and Lienz shows that they have enough competent leaders and skilled workers and are a unified enough community to be able to run their camp by themselves. If they are in the future concentrated in a camp or camps in which they would be in a majority, the most satisfactory course would seem to be to attach one or more liaison officers in an advisory rather than directory capacity. This would contribute greatly to the preservation of that individual and communal self-respect which is usually the first casualty in the refugee camp.
Our memorandum had no apparent effect on the army - it was not even acknowledged - but the UNRRA Director for the British Zone of Austria, Major C.D.Chapman, a competent and humane Australian, did address a zonal staff conference two months later, in November:
It should be impressed on the DPs that at last they have the privilege 150 of being under the care of the United Nations. National groups should be set up and this can only be achieved with the cooperation of the DPs. They should be told that UNRRA is here in a purely advisory capacity, and that they themselves will run the groups and elect their own leaders. Daily conferences between all members of the team will help considerably in this respect. (my emphasis)
And earlier, at another staff meeting in September, he said:
You can put military organizations in charge of displaced persons and just give them food and clothing but the job is more than that! The challenge is greater! These people have faced great disaster and must be given hope, courage and retraining to face normal life again. They must be "helped to help themselves" as rapidly as possible.
Sadly, he quickly forgot his brave words and allowed the more or less paternalistic, autocratic and arbitrary army style of camp administration to continue, though modified by a degree of democratic consultation which varied from camp to camp and director to director.
My letter-diary continues:
5th September. * The Telegraphs certainly are welcome arrivals, and more interesting now that it is an opposition paper. The Sunday before last we were feeling a bit cut off from the world here and anyhow had to collect some clothing stores, and so combined business with pleasure going down to Klagenfurt by truck on Sunday morning, seeing everyone there and hearing what they had been doing with themselves and what new work had developed.
Monday morning we collected the stores and then started on our return journey, having lunch with some colleagues en route and making a detour through some lovely country to visit Gurk, where there is the best-known monastery and abbey in Kaernten. The abbey is an impressive building and has a beautiful set of murals and a fine porch and another set of murals in the lobby. We arrived back weary but refreshed.*
Work continues to be something of a trial as supplies promised months ago still have not turned up. The camp is scheduled for 3,500 people and we now have 4,350 people, which means that overcrowding is acute and progress in most directions is blocked by lack of accommodation. On top of that a considerable proportion of the barrack roofs leak, and while the Army find no difficulty in roofing new camps they are building, material for mending our roofs has been promised for two months now. The same applies to elementary things like straw palliasses, glass, blankets, etc, all or most of which are available if only the right person would wake up! What a life!
The 5th September was notable as the last day of the school-leaving or matriculation examination at the camp secondary school, which had had its official inspection a month before. All the candidates passed - 16 boys and 5 girls between the ages of 18 and 22 - and so, thanks to the successful official inspection of a month ago, would be able to start study at 151 university if one could be found for them by the autumn. Three boys and two girls were adjudged excellent scholars on the strength of their written exams and previous school records, and so were exempted from taking the oral tests.
Five years ago I interviewed the youngest of these "excellent scholars", Miroslav Odar, in Cleveland Ohio. He had been sent, together with his mother and brother, from Viktring to Spittal camp rather than to Lienz with the other secondary school pupils. Three other boys in the same situation travelled to Lienz specially to take the school-leaving examination on the 5th September. Odar tells their story:
There were four of us, four boys. We asked at the main gate because we wanted to attend the school and were turned away by the camp police107. We didn't even get as far as the registration office or the school. It was at night, about 7.30 in the evening, it was dark and we were kind of tired. We'd ridden on a train which had no windows and was cold. It was terrible, not to have a place to lie down or to sit down. I was nearly nineteen and the other boys the same age. My mother didn't encourage me to go to Lienz, that was my decision. I was doing things on my own as long as I remember.
Things would have been different if I had gone to see the camp director in Spittal and asked him to arrange for me to visit Lienz, but that would be like me going to God! There were some people you couldn't talk to, they were the authorities. Besides, the whole situation was so confusing, the orders didn't come down to the right people for days, and that's part of it. I don't want to blame anybody, but I was terribly disappointed.
When they refused us admittance we went round the camp and found a gap; there was a wooden fence and the plank was loose, so we removed it and went in, and stopped at barrack 14. It was a big hall, and there were people sleeping along the wall, all the way round, so I just stayed there, laid down, and that was it and nobody chased me away. Nobody questioned what we were doing until Dr. Vracko found out and came to us and said, "you are here illegally and if you're not gone by tomorrow morning, I'll call the police." I don't remember why we were allowed to stay, but I stayed one or two weeks just to take the exam. They wouldn't feed us, they said we were in there illegally, till I found a trainee priest - he's a priest in Minnesota now - the whole family was there, the mother and two sons, and he was thinking at that time already about the priesthood and all that, because he gave me half of his rations, and I remember that to this day: he saved me, my stay at Lienz. I have no recollection how I got to the school, how I registered, I must have been fairly persistent. I wanted to finish, even if I wouldn't have a chance to go to university, that would give me a lot. I
107. The police were in fact only doing their job. The Camp Director, Major Richards, had just had a prominent notice printed in the camp newspaper: "Peggetz camp is closed from now on to anyone wishing to move to it. This regulation will be strictly enforced. Residents will please warn refugees living outside the camp who may be hoping to settle here". 152 finished the gimnazija and went back to Spittal. I think the other three boys stayed the two weeks and took their matura.
After we came over to Austria, they set up a whole school system. That was really unbelievable, I think unique. I don't remember any other schools like that. From the end of the school to the exams we had a week of teaching to get us into the spirit of the whole thing and we were studying like crazy. We had to know history, geography, mathematics, Latin or Greek. I remember Mr. Gantar108 for the Slovenian language and Bozidar Bajuk for Latin. I had the full Abitur exams, they took a whole week. I was taking Latin and Greek, Director Bajuk's boy! He took very good care of us and had persuaded the British authorities to allow us to take the matura. I'd been in Mr. Bajuk's school in Ljubljana and there was no question about my grades, because Bajuk brought all the paper works with him.
Miroslav Odar and the three other boys were not the only ones who met with difficulties when they tried to attend the Lienz gimnazija. Paula Hribovsek was also turned away, not from the camp but from the school. She had left home in Slovenia on her own. Her father was dead and her mother and older sister decided not to go, probably hoping to look after the small family property, and anyhow neither had made themselves conspicuous as anti- communists. Paula was an "open Christian" and so she said yes when her godfather, a prosperous farmer who lived in the same town, Radovljica, called in on the 6th May and asked if she wanted to go. Two of her cousins went with them:
*When we arrived in Klagenfurt by train, because the ordinary trains were still running, we were there for one day and then my cousin walked in the city on the 9th May and came back and said she saw partisans. We were so afraid we said we must go further, and we went to the station and there was the last train to Spittal which we took, and then we were told the train will not go on. And so this priest who was with us went to the church and spoke with the parish priest and he arranged with an Austrian family to give us, we were six or seven persons, a room.
We were there for a few days and then this family arranged with other families to give us work. My two cousins worked as cook in a family and the boy helped in the shop. And my godfather and myself and the daughter of my godfather and his wife were working at a farm. We all spoke some German already. Then when the other people from Vetrinje came to Spittal, we joined them. We worked for a month or two with these families. They fed us quite well and they were kind to us. I think we moved to the camp just to be together with all the others, no other reason.*
The dean of Radovljica was also at Spittal and he said to me, "Paula,
108. Professor Dr Caetan (Kajetan) Gantar taught Slovene and Italian at Viktring, Lienz and Spittal until 15 September 1947, when he returned to Slovenia. His son, also Kajetan, born 1930, is a leading philologist in Ljubljana, university professor of Latin and corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. 153 why aren't you going to Peggetz? There is a secondary school there. Go and study". And so I went on my own, leaving my godfather and cousins in Spittal. I showed Director Bajuk my certificate of the secondary school in Kranj for the third and fourth year but he said "No, this is worthless, you can't study here". So I went out and cried, and professor Jeglic saw me and asked, "why are you crying?" and I told him. "Come with me", he said, spoke with Director Bajuk and then told me I could study but had to begin with the third, not the fifth year. So I studied with the third year and did the fourth year privately so that I completed two years in one.
It was part of Bajuk's character. He always said, "girls are to be kept in the kitchen, and not to study"! This in fact was a great help in my case. If he'd been sympathetic and sensitive, I wouldn't have cried and Jeglic wouldn't have noticed me, and I'd have gone to the domestic science school, accepting the ruling of authority as a good Slovene girl and catholic! No one would have argued for me - no one would have appealed or questioned the judgment apart from a fellow teacher. Jeglic did so because he first asked me where I was from, and I said Radovljica: "Ah, my wife is from Radovljica!" I feel this was the hand of God!
In Peggetz I lived in the Convikt (boarding house) for the girls with Brother Peterlin and his sister. We had two rooms with eight or ten to a room, and the Peterlins had a room to themselves in the same barrack. The boys were in a different barrack, quite a way away! I stayed at the gimnazija the whole time in Peggetz and moved with it to Spittal. I missed the Matura by a month, because I had to leave for Argentina! Four students of our class stayed and finished, but the majority left before the exam.
The Pernisek diary:
Saturday 8th September. Our final year high school students were taken on an outing to Heiligenblut and the Pasterz Glacier at the foot of Grossglockner, and my wife and I went with them. The day was cold and cloudy. The English army lorries took the steep ascents and hairpin bends in their stride. The Moell Valley is beautiful, but in and around Heiligenblut it's a little paradise. *After a short stop at this lovely place of pilgrimage we continued on the fine Grossglockner motorway, a real feat of engineering with wild slopes, curves and hairpin bends. We got to Pasterz at about nine in the morning, a marvellous display of natural beauty and might.* Grossglockner's peak was shrouded in mist, but this lifted for a few moments so that we could admire it spellbound!
Some lads went down to the glacier, others climbed the sheer slopes in search of edelweiss.* They found some but they were small, puny. The glacier glistened below emerald-green and lured us on temptingly, but the crevasses are hazardous. The lads knew this and approached cautiously up to a safe distance, and didn't go onto the ice. The hotels, shops and restaurants on the esplanade are deserted with all kinds of things strewn around, 154 looking as if they had just been looted. On the way back we had a look at the Church of the Precious Blood, a magnificent and beautiful late Gothic masterpiece, its main altar in the form of a diptych one of the loveliest and richest in Carinthia. The church's situation and orientation in relation to Grossglockner is exceptionally felicitous.*
*So we came to a spot of historic importance for us Slovenes, because this is the highest point in Carinthia our forefathers reached - a long time ago but there are still some people of Slovene origin living here. Father France Zabret, who used to be the parish priest of Bled and now assists the local parish priest, told us there are still old people in the mountains who speak Slovene and say their confessions in Slovene, but they are the last remnants and when they die the last Slovene-speaking people in these parts will have disappeared.*
When we returned home happy from the excursion we found our little son in bed with a very high fever. *Our cousin was looking after the children during our absence and when we left the boy said nothing unusual and looked alright.* We sent for Dr Mersol and he said the boy had scarlet fever, a most unpleasant surprise. We had to take him to the hospital in Lienz, where the doctors diagnosed scarlet fever, diphtheria and an infection of the inner ear. He soon received as fellow patient the small Bajuk, son of Prof Bozidar Bajuk.
My letter-diary:
11th September. *A letter answering all your letters - they are so marvellously regular I feel ashamed of my patchy efforts.* If what has just been announced actually happens, my work should be a good bit lighter and I hope my letters thus more regular - HQ says all Russians are to be concentrated into special camps, as are all other nationalities in other national camps. We have 1,700 Russian emigrants to Yugoslavia here, and their departure would ease our accommodation problem enormously and simplify administration very much. They have no idea of organisation at all, and while you can tell the Slovenes what you want done and leave them to get on with it, you have to keep a continual eye on the Russians. Also they have no idea of pulling together or any feeling of solidarity - you may speak at length with a spokesman of the Russians, only next day for streams of them to come up to say that he was not speaking for them! Compared to them the Slovenes are ideal.
15th September. It may interest you to know some of the irons I have in the fire and how I spend my time.
(1) justice: this is a new sideline and is taking up a most aggravating amount of time. Seven of our refugees were taken into detention for interrogation; it being an Austrian gaol they only got Austrian rations, so refugee rations had to be laid on and their families to visit them.
The case, a flimsy one, was first in the hands of an unpleasant MP (military police) lieutenant; he leaves and hands it on to a 155 friendly sergeant. Today he leaves and hands it on to a corporal - the people are still under detention and haven't yet been charged. In England one could make the police's pants feel very warm for that, but not here!
All the time the relatives are naturally very worried. Today I went to see the local Austrian police and spoke with an efficient but human woman re arranging for the defence. Her reply, "yes, I've been feeling rather worried about that recently - there never seems to be a defence at the court here: they just go up and are sentenced". This refers to our courts, and is a stunning example of how the British are teaching the Austrians democratic administration. So I've got to see the corporal i/c the case and also possibly the military government major, so that our Slovene high court judge can visit the men and prepare their defence. Also I've arranged for the wife of a man given nine months for crossing the frontier to visit him once a fortnight - Austrian law is I think more lenient than English on this point. [see below, p.00]
(2) education: approaching every possible authority to arrange for our hundred odd undergrads to continue their studies at Graz or Innsbruck, Vienna or Padua - no one knows who is responsible. Trying all sources for text books for the secondary school which is at last officially recognised and can give exam certificates.
(3) newspapers: I'm beginning to sympathise with censors - I'm now one myself. On the one hand I want to encourage [the refugees] to extend their journalistic efforts - they now produce a daily paper in Russian and Slovene and a weekly children's newspaper and a weekly cultural, educational and political review - on the other hand I must make them tone down their anti-communist material: they have every reason to be anti-communist, but HQ at Klagenfurt or the Yugoslav attache may not think so. So there I sit solemnly with [Mr Kremzar], a man nearly three times my age who was chairman of a group of papers in Ljubljana and one of Slovenia's foremost journalists, and have to try to suggest tactfully that while it would be all right to print that letter describing conditions in Slovenia it might be wiser to be a bit guarded and cover oneself in the editorial!
(4) the English class: my colleague and I take turns to teach a group including the ex-headmaster of a secondary school, a judge, a doctor, the ex-head of the finance department of Slovenia and a woman who was a professional language teacher before she married. You can imagine me telling them off - they must not try to speak so fast or they will never improve their pronunciation!
(5) the hospital with two doctors, six nurses and fifty beds for which I'm "responsible". The head doctor is a very charming, conscientious and hardworking man but has little idea of organisation, will do everything himself and is very jealous of other doctors, such as the two that run the children's clinic. So to start with my main function was to persuade the two parties that the others were not ogres - they are now uneasy friends. 156
(6) the clothing store and the two sewing shops with eighteen workers in all. Clothing distribution is one worse than censoring. Everyone in the camp has a very particular reason why they should receive one of the garments in short supply: I run the distribution on a national committee basis, which works all right with the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes who abide by their committees' decisions, but when we come to the Russian emigres they all flock to the office and swear that the committee is a set of rogues that only looks after its friends. Well, I've a cold in my nose and must go to bed!
20th September. What a life! It is hardly possible to believe that an Army which undoubtedly was very efficient and successful at waging war could be quite such a failure at dealing with civilian problems (a combination of events coming too close together has stretched my patience almost to breaking point, so you mustn't take this letter too seriously!). I continually think it must be my extremist judgment at fault but my colleague here, who is very different from me, comes to the same conclusion, and the surprise of the UNRRA teams that have arrived here to learn camp admin. (they were told they were going to a model camp) is obvious. The most elementary organisational principles are ignored - they could hardly believe it when they found that there was no one person effectively responsible for supply, the most urgent problem in the camp.
Neither the major nor the captain have had any refugee camp experience or apparently any other administrative experience, except in the army where the organisation is ready-made and fool-proof, and neither shows any signs of wanting to learn.
Even on the most severely practical matters where I thought I was pretty dense, they leave me miles behind in stupidity. Yesterday two barrack huts had to be dismantled at a place near the camp and reassembled in the camp, so they were quite happy to send some lorries along and collect the pieces and dump them here. It never occurred to them it might be a good idea to send a camp carpenter who would be responsible for the reassembling to see what they looked like up and number the pieces. They even allowed the pieces of the two huts to be mixed together! And we have plenty of qualified people in the camp. That is but one example. Also they don't take any interest in their NCOs and men who are consequently very "browned off" and thus do only half the work they might, although they are a very pleasant crowd.
The strain of having to make the most obvious suggestions in spheres of work quite outside our own without giving the impression that we are trying to run the camp is pretty colossal. It needs the continual use of tact and a nice sense to see that one does not push a point too far. But if we did not do this our own work would be impossible as it depends on a reasonable efficiency in the running of the basic services. We're continually having to take on jobs that are in no way welfare ones as we know if we did not, they simply would not get done. 157
It is clear that it would be a mockery to offer a "welfare programme" to people who have not enough to eat even to allow them to do light work properly, to start schools when they won't have fuel enough in the winter to warm the school rooms, or to get school benches made when not one person in two has a bed.
The major and captain are very friendly and tolerant of us - we must be a trial - but simply haven't a clue on camps. They are taken in by all the rogues and are of course in the hands of their interpreters, and the effort needed to counteract all this is colossal. Of course all staffs are not the same; at Viktring the second major and captain would have run a camp excellently, and also probably the first major. But here there is little to choose between the first and the second staff.
To make things worse, this is the first camp my colleague has been in, and the job is a little more than he can tackle. He is very conscientious and works very hard, and has a much fairer judgment than mine which acts for me as an excellent corrective, but he has not had enough experience of handling people (that one comes well from me with my two and twenty years!) and lacks organisational experience and enough self-assertiveness and tact.
As I said to start with, don't take this letter too seriously, because on this particular evening "my patience is exhausted"!
29th September. My last three sheets have been overflowing with righteous indignation but life has its compensations - butter, superb country, occasional good reception of music on the wireless! In the last week it has turned quite cold with snow on the hills. It is painful to think of the refugees here, many families without beds or palliasses and less than one blanket per head. Thank goodness some roofing material has at last arrived, so soon the rooms won't be leaking like sieves when it rains.
The main compensation for work here is the people themselves - the Slovenes are a charming crowd. Their only fault is that they spoil one! I will be a most impossible person when I return home when my opinion will no longer be treated with ten times more respect than it deserves - people will no longer leave what they are doing when I enter the room to see what the oracle has to say! The attraction of the Slovenes mainly lies in their strong self-respect, the complete lack of any attempt to draw advantage out of any position of responsibility they may hold, the genuine devotion of their intelligentsia to the well-being of the whole community and their unquenchable readiness to help themselves however unpromising their equipment may be. We have at last managed to get quite a large supply of books for the secondary school and schoolmasters, which should make their work a little easier. It must be terrible trying to teach without books.
How I would like you to meet so many of the Slovenes here. The headmaster of the secondary school, who looks like a cross 158 between Lenin and Sir Thomas Beecham, has incredible energy and enthusiasm for a wide range of subjects especially music - the choir has already sung some of his songs and arrangements of folk songs, which are really fine. Or his son, more retiring, but also a strong character and also a teacher. Or his other son, chief of the Slovene workshops, an engineer, a bit too kind but with a delightful sense of humour. Or our Slovene judge, rather earnest but very human. Or our terrifically active nursery school teacher with fair hair brushed back and red face.
30th September. The enclosed copies of our camp newspaper and the photo may amuse you [see p. 00]. The former are in Slovene and Russian, and the top article over the caricatures headed "Thank you" has as its immediate cause the release of three Slovenes and a Russian who had been arrested by the local police for an assault on two Tito Yugoslavs near the camp, solely on evidence of identification given by the latter; I was 90% convinced the police had caught the wrong men. The authorities were very dilatory and inefficient in handling the case and it was nearly a month before it was eventually dismissed because the two assaulted men simply failed to turn up to give evidence. The prisoners were very grateful for the trouble we took over them. The paragraph continues generally in appreciation of the activities of the welfare officers in the camp.
The photo is of the students of the High School who passed their "Higher Cert": sitting from left to right are Dr Bajuk, headmaster and prolific choral composer, my colleague John Strachan (one year law undergrad at Cambridge) the camp commandant Major Richards, myself and another master. Standing front row left is the camp gym instructor, a charming man who was one of the Yugoslav representatives at the Olympic Games and is still an impressive gymnast, while right but one the small man with the glasses is Dr Mersol, an unassuming physician who studied in America, was in charge of the infectious diseases wing of the main Ljubljana hospital and is very industrious but a little too gentle for his present job.
The man wearing a hat to the right at the back is Dr Bajuk's son, an able classical scholar and teacher, with an attractive singing voice. The man in the centre wearing a dark jacket and glasses is one of the leading Croats, teaches Italian and English and engages in endless other activities. Third left from him also in dark jacket and glasses, is Dr Zagar, the science master who is also a Salesian priest: a very charming man.
1st October. My last letter was two pages in a mightily browned-off vein. Since then we have had more opportunity of judging the quality of the two UNRRA teams sent to the camp for experience. It's been amusing "teaching" two highly qualified welfare workers from America (women with years of experience) how to run camp welfare! The two teams seem to us pretty good - able, wide general experience, broad-minded and with keenness and a real concern for the job. One director is Dutch, one South American Pole (first excellent, second fair), two Dutch nurses, one English secretary, a first-class Australian supply officer and some pretty poor and uninspiring American drivers. 159
The total impression is that they are far better qualified than the normal run of Army staffs (the UNRRA people we've seen so far are of a distinctly higher level than those I've seen in the Greek, Yugoslav and even Italian UNRRA missions). But the Army has been giving them a raw deal, putting difficulties in their way instead of trying to help them and doing their best to delay the handover of the refugee problem as long as possible.
To be fair, the Army should hand over at once or see the camps through till the spring - and not leave things until winter has set in and give UNRRA the job of holding the baby for the Army's lack of preparation for the winter. It is very galling seeing personnel keen to take over who could clear up the incredible muddle existing now, but not allowed to because a handful of officers refuse to give up some cushy jobs - the vested interest is composed entirely of officers because NCOs and men get very little out of the deal. I have always received friendly and kind treatment from the officers, but I am not here for the welfare of 20 officers but of 4,000 refugees.
4th October. Things look as if they are going to improve here. The bulk of our Russians are going, which means that the major will I expect be forced to hand over the administration from them to the Slovenes. A large part of our difficulties are caused directly or indirectly by the Russian administration's incapacity of organising, dishonesty or lack of willingness to cooperate with the other groups in the camp. The other groups are no angels but the Russians are certainly the worst.
We've been having a rash of inspections here. First two from the local brigadier and then one from McCreery, the British C-in-C for our zone of Austria. General McCreery came yesterday in a superb black car. Forty of the local Scotch regiment were sent beforehand and posted all over the camp to guard the great man! He arrived half an hour late and the party that toured the camp consisted of one lieutenant general, one major general, one brigadier, one colonel, two majors ... and two FAU!
Our first port of call was the hospital - part of my sphere of influence - and so I reached the front of the procession just in time as the general, who apparently spoke no German, was asking a question of the doctor who certainly spoke no English. After I'd been interpreting a couple of minutes some member of the cortege got a bit worried about the presence of the unlabelled object at the front of the procession (I was wearing a pullover and so had no epaulettes showing) and started mumbling something about "worker from the FAU" and our major introduced me.
We then entered the children's ward and ascertained that the three babies lying together weren't triplets - only twins and one odd one - and proceeded along the passage and left the hospital. As luck had it the general was asking me where I had picked up my German and where I had worked in camps before, so we entered the main thoroughfare of the camp engaged in deep conversation as a result of which my stock has risen in the camp considerably! So even visits of inspection have their advantages! 160
They next visited the school, with McCreery and our major first and FAU a short head in front of the major-general and brigadier - the school is also our "zone". Here I tried, with scant success, to get it across that we badly needed some milk for the children aged 6-14. The general was in a tearing hurry, but I think it sunk home with the brigadier. After the schools we fell back a bit nearer our rightful place and after visiting the kitchen, concert hall, wood-pile and workshops the general left with a flourish of salutes. The major has been in an excellent humour as the general expressed himself highly satisfied with the camp. One's position in such inspections is a bit embarrassing as a civilian wearing military uniform. Work in the camp was put back three or four days but we may get blankets and stores a little more quickly as a result, so it may have been worthwhile.
Three announcements in the camp newspaper for the 7th November illustrate its value as a source of information on camp life and also help fill a long gap between diary entries:
FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS We have to thank the tireless endeavours of Mr Corsellis for the fact that the majority of our academics are assured of places at the University of Graz. Military Government in Klagenfurt has sent an official notice to all camps to compile definitive lists of all those interested. Other camps were prepared for this, but some not as well as ours. The student camp will be run by UNRRA.
Anyone who seriously intends to study at Graz should report personally today at the office of the British Red Cross in barrack II. As pressure on places at the university is great and only a limited number of refugees can be accepted, only those who really wish to study should apply. Military Government has announced officially that all those who do not settle down to serious studies will be sent back to their camps of origin. Last date for application is tomorrow at 11 am. Anyone who does not apply personally will not be able to study at the university. Transport to Graz will be arranged a week from now.
FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN AND STUDENTS ATTENDING COURSES who are studying English, the camp office of the British Red Cross has obtained free admission to English film shows in Lienz. Conditions are that they turn up punctually, do not occupy the better seats, behave in an orderly manner and if the cinema should be full give up their seats to the English. Everyone will be issued with a permanent entrance ticket.
WITH REGARD TO YESTERDAY'S MOURNING COMMEMORATION of our Slovene army victims we must pay tribute to the organiser and all his supporters and thank them for the beautiful and sensitive manner in which they expressed our sorrow at the greatest sacrifice of the Slovene nation. We request them to repeat the commemoration soon, so that every Slovene resident in the camp can participate.
161 Dr Colin Parkes in his classic Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life (London, 1972) stresses the importance of memorial services at the expiry of a set period of time, which can "have the significance of a rite de passage, setting the bereaved person free from the dead and allowing him to undertake fresh commitments" and can also be a positive contribution to "community mental health".
The newspaper announcement about studies at the University of Graz was followed by the departure of the rejoicing students the following week. Shortly afterwards the redoubtable Director Bajuk also visited the university, as he recalled in his memoirs:
In November 1944 the government in Vienna ordered that all refugee students who did not possess authentic baccalaureate certificates would have to re-sit the exam before an Austrian commission, which would have been impossible for our boys - language, geography, history, literature! I went to see the Chief in Klagenfurt and he responded to my four suggestions with a short, sharp: "nein, nein, nein, nein".
I took my courage in both hands and went to the University of Graz. I was already in the office by 8 am and found the Vice-Chancellor had just got back that night from a three-week conference in Vienna. At 9 am, after a lecture, he received me very kindly, quickly understood the issue and promised to put it on the agenda of the 11 am Deans' Meeting, so that I would know the result at 12 am. Impatiently I returned at 11.30 to enquire. He spotted me through the half-open door of his office as the Deans were putting on their gowns for the graduation ceremony. He beckoned me in, introduced me and said:
We have decided unanimously (a) that you are a trustworthy man and we accept your report (b) that you know which students have passed the baccalaureate exam in your capacity of headmaster and schools inspector responsible for baccalaureate exams for several years (c) that your reliability is also confirmed by your pupils who are now our students, who are all hard-working, conscientious and well-behaved, so much so that we point them out as examples to others, and therefore (d) baccalaureate certificates for any of your students, issued by you and signed by you and stamped with your official stamp, are acceptable substitutes for authentic baccalaureate certificates.
My head swam. How was it possible to secure such a miraculous decision from the university, which went against the directives of their government - a university which used to be known for its nationalistic chauvinism? I wanted to thank them, but was so taken aback I only managed to stutter, I know not what. All I do know is that all the deans shook my hand and the Vice- Chancellor conducted me to the graduation ceremony where I sat to the right of the seat of honour - which remained vacant.
After the ceremony I sped back to the camp to let the lads know of the miraculous success. They flew straight through the window to the university to enrol for various exams, as time was running out. Later I received a report that following my attestations they passed 72 exams successfully. All credit to the lads and 162 to the university. This was generous broad-mindedness of the first degree.
My letter-diary:
19th November. For the last week work with the major has been a good bit easier. I'm not sure if I mentioned to you the business of the second i/cs - I think not: it's rather a long story. The major's kind of Army camp team should have a captain on its strength plus four sergeants and about twelve ORs, but when the major arrived at the camp he was the only officer, with myself and another FAU to help him. This was by far the largest DP camp in the British Zone and it was obvious it needed two officers.
At last the second officer came, but the major is so hopeless at dealing with people and without imagination that he did not take the captain at all into his confidence or divide the work with him, but gave him one or two stooge jobs and left it at that. The captain's reaction was, "if the major won't play, I won't play", did as little work as possible and applied for a transfer which he got. We then remained five weeks without a captain until one arrived who had been i/c quite successfully of a smaller camp which had been taken over by UNRRA. The major adopted the same treatment with the same result, so that within six days he was gone! The likelihood of our getting another 2 i/c is now nil. This has meant that for the bulk of the time I have been virtually acting as 2 i/c but without the status, rank or prestige or authority of one, and with a minimum of support from the major.
The snag has been that he is entirely new to camp work but never consults or confers with his staff: he is mentally incapable of considering one problem for more than six minutes at a time. The result is that only rarely can we corner him in his office and run through a list of problems - or he thinks these damn conchies109 are trying to run his camp for him. All suggestions have to be slipped in indirectly over the lunch table and one has to spend an inordinate amount of energy in trying to handle him. Combined with this is the fact that he spends a lot of his off-duty time with a Russian female in the camp, whose room is the centre of intrigue and who influences him considerably.
All this sounds rather black, but there is the other side. He is a regular soldier - was a sergeant for some twelve years before the war - and it is not his fault that his superiors should have made such a bad choice for the o/c of a civilian refugee camp, with all its manifold civil problems and needs of which a "regular" cannot be expected to have any conception.
Also he has lived all his life in Army messes and it must be a considerable strain to have to live with two youthful, highbrow,
109. slang for conscientious objectors or pacifists, who for religious or humanitarian reasons refused to serve in the armed forces during war-time 163 non-smoking, non-drinking, non-card playing, non-swearing conchies who seldom even dress in the correct way and haven't even got any uniforms smarter than battledress. He is remarkably tolerant to us and has always been very kind and friendly. Also he is genuinely concerned in the welfare of the people in his charge. He works very hard and does do his best in his own way - unfortunately not seldom he does more harm than good.
23rd November. Still no definite news. My hopes are still high that I may be back on leave before too long. Things drag on here and every week we are told that "it will be decided definitely at a conference at Klagenfurt, or Vienna, when the camp will be handed over to UNRRA" and it never happens.
The latest event is that our major at a Serb festival announced to the assembled refugees that UNRRA was taking over on December 16th, that he was joining UNRRA and would be staying on as camp director. This information was staggering but next day it emerged that the major was well primed with Serb "cognac" and the facts he gave were by no means certain, especially the last. So we're no further on! The only definite thing is that my colleague leaves in under a week.
4th December. * Last weekend the FAU man who lives with us here but works in Lienz town on district welfare had to go to Salzburg on business so we arranged things slightly, I acted as chauffeur and we journeyed there on Saturday, had all Sunday in Salzburg and on Monday did our business and returned -a restrained and respectable jangle! My colleague had left the camp for good which meant that I could look forward to three weeks of concentrated work, and so I particularly jumped at the opportunity of escaping for three days while it was possible.*
I was very sorry to lose John Strachan but the decision to transfer him was quite right. From the FAU's point of view we are justified in letting two workers stay at a camp only if there is a particularly urgent situation there or if they can plan two or three months ahead with reasonable security that their planning is not a complete waste of time, and neither of these conditions here apply now. The latest news is that UNRRA will be taking over shortly.
An article I wrote for the FAU Chronicle complements John Strachan's and my memo of the end of August and conveniently summarises the progress the camp had made after four months:
*3,700 refugees are housed in barracks that are well designed and constructed as barracks in Carinthia go: the layout of the camp is pleasantly irregular, with more distance between the blocks than is usual. Two-thirds of the refugees are Slovenes, one- quarter are Russians - a large proportion of these having lived in Serbia since 1920 - and there are smaller groups of Croats and Serbs. Two FAU members have worked in the camp ... and have been undertaking many jobs not of a direct welfare nature. Methods and standards of work of the two groups [Slovene and Russian] differ greatly, and it is almost impossible to get them 164 to collaborate closely in peace. The workshops have to be divided - there is a Slovenes' carpenters' shop and a Russian one, and the same applies to the smiths' shops, tailors' shops and kitchens.
The daily camp newspapers in Slovene and Russian have a combined circulation of 1,100 and find their way to nearly all camps in Carinthia - over 250 copies are sold outside the camp. The newspaper office also produces a children's weekly and two weekly political, cultural and educational reviews, including excerpts from the British and American presses and original compositions. Copies are distributed to other Slovene camps by special courier.
News is largely collected over the radio from London, Belgrade and Klagenfurt. The refugees run their own buying organisation for the considerable quantities of paper required. Material prepared by the duplicator for the schools includes an elementary reader, De Bello Gallico and Greek texts appearing serially. Among other functions the FAU fulfils that of censor and can be seen regularly in earnest consultation with the white-haired ex-manager of papers in Ljubljana110.
More spectacular was the camp football league, but also more short- lived: the bursting beyond repair of the only football put an end to what seemed likely to develop into an ugly international situation. It is inconsistent with the honour of a Balkan people to lose a football match and, if heroic violence on the field or bullying of the referee does not produce victory, every effort must be made after the match to annul the result on some obscure ground: in these diplomatic tussles the third team is quite entitled to take part, because their chances of victory in the league may be influenced by the award of the match to one or other of the teams. The bewildered John Strachan had to act as peacemaker at these sessions and, when all refugees available as referees had been tried and denounced by one side or other as biased, he undertook the thankless job. His last match was interrupted by spectators running onto the field to contest an unwelcome award and a free fight was narrowly avoided, but the match was followed by the providential bursting of the ball.
Refugees are continually getting on the wrong side of the civil or military police for one reason or other, and the cases are too many to allow of one investigating them all personally: so, most appropriately, the FAU man responsible (an articled clerk to a solicitor, of one year's standing) avails himself of the help of a Slovene High Court judge to "devil" the cases for him. Much time was spent on one case where five refugees from the camp were arrested for a serious assault on some alleged partisan of which it was reasonably clear they were not guilty, but our efforts were eventually crowned with success when they were released after two sessions in the local Military Government court.
Another effort of which we are proud is the reconstruction of the
110. Dr Kremzar, close friend of Franc Pernisek 165 local bridge over the Drau, half of which was swept away by floods. We had an engineer and plenty of experienced carpenters for the job, and pressure has at last resulted in tools and material being released by the army. The second day a temporary bridge was thrown across and already the permanent one is well on its way to completion.
The Slovenes' tailors' shop specialises in making women's and children's clothing out of the most unlikely material. Six sacks of flannel stomach comforters which had been thoroughly chewed over by Austrian rats have provided all our children with one pair of winter pants: for this work the girls of the domestic science school were used. As straw has so far been unobtainable through official channels for palliasses, parties of school children have been sent up into the neighbouring hills to gather moss: this has been used to fill palliasses for invalids and old people without families to look after them.
Much time has been spent in devising plans for the most effective and fool-proof distribution of supplies, of which we have had painfully little, the whole problem being always complicated by the communal divisions in the camp. Thus it had to be seen to that the milk, special foods, blankets, palliasses, beds and clothing reached those in the greatest need, and one did not lay oneself open to the charge of favouritism to particular groups.*
Perhaps the school is the most remarkable activity for which the FAU is responsible: there is compulsory education from 4 to 14, and 120 children attend the kindergarten and 350 the elementary school, Slovene, Serb and Croat. The secondary school is to date the only one for any nationality operating in Carinthia, and it caters for the children from all the camps in which there are Slovenes (five in all) as well as for children from some families not living in camps. Over 200 children attend, and a comprehensive curriculum is taught including Latin, Greek, German, Italian and music. The former headmaster of the senior secondary school in Ljubljana is director and he has a fully qualified team of teachers.
In addition, a domestic science school is attended by 130 girls, and an agricultural school by 40 boys. The main difficulty is, of course, text-books, but the FAU has managed to help in finding some, and the rest have had to be covered by duplicating texts. Some books have been smuggled on foot over the mountains. There is also a school clinic staffed by a doctor and nurses which undertakes regular examinations of the children. One of the "major operations" of the FAU has been an attempt to arrange for 90 undergraduates to start or continue their studies at Graz University. Detailed lists had to be collected from three camps and the authorities pressed to realise that the matter was urgent: the British Red Cross supervisor has done valuable work pushing the project from the Graz end. We are also trying to get two thousand copies of an excellent Slovene- English reader and grammar printed. Valuable supplies of books have been obtained from the store at Silberegg, from which it is planned to start a school library and a general lending library.
166 The source of books was described in 1947 in the official history of the FAU111:
... a vast underground store of confiscated Jewish property discovered in the mountain village of Silberegg; it seemed to contain the entire household belongings of several hundred Jewish families, who could never be traced. The store was handed over to the BRCS for use among the DPs.
I remember driving Director Bajuk to the store. He referred to it in his memoirs, and went on to describe other aspects of cultural life in the camp which I did not have enough room to mention in my article:
We often went there and collected many German books for our grammar school, including the entire 16 volumes of the Brockhaus lexicon. We also took numerous books for our university medical, technical and law students. I obtained three pianos and a pianino, so we organised a music school. Piano was taught by Mr Mihelic, violin by Dr Kalin, solo singing by a Russian ballet dancer. When I was picking up books from Silberegg I came across the idea for a public library. We got a few Slovene books from the countryside, among pupils, from families, and we bought about 700 volumes from the estate of Vienna university professor Dr Krek. Soon our library grew to 1,000 Slovene items, several German, Italian, French and others. The librarian was [my daughter] Marija, and she spent in it all her hours from morning to evening, she only came home to sleep, and in her free time she hand-wrote all the music scores for the choir for all voices.
The communal life of the camp developed so that there wasn't a single evening without a lecture for one of the courses. We had courses for all sorts of subjects, politics, social, philosophy, theology, etc. We barely managed to find space for all the lectures and meetings.
People found it difficult to get hold of the more popular books, so I thought about "reading evenings". Because I expected a good attendance I had the partition between two large classrooms re- designed so that it could be easily removed, and we got one very large room out of two. This proved very successful, people loved to come, usually about 200 or more attended. [My son] Bozidar did the reading, by sections and chapters - one per week - of selected novels. He explained literary points of interest, parallel literary comparisons, language peculiarities, other points of interest and the biography, or rather life-work, of the author. After these readings Prof Dr Mihelcic talked about a interesting topic from the past week, specially regarding politics as far round the world as we could reach. The evenings were very successful and indeed interesting. I would recommend them anywhere where people don't have access to books.
My letter-diary:
111. A Tegla Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit (London, 1947) p.449 167 8th December. I have left the Friends' Ambulance Unit and joined UNRRA. * The FAU has announced officially that it will probably wind up in Austria during the spring and I am not likely to be demobbed112 at least until the autumn. Elsewhere in Europe the FAU may be winding up during the summer, and anyhow I look on myself as a bit of a specialist by now in Austrian camp conditions and don't particularly want to start all over again elsewhere. On top of this I feel that I am really useful in this camp and have a most valuable understanding of the Yugoslavs ... and I've got the job of assistant welfare officer at this camp! While the war in Europe and the Far East was on I don't think I would have taken a paid job even if I had had the opportunity, but I feel that the circumstances are now different, especially as any Army man could now transfer to UNRRA. Certainly the financial consideration has not been the least powerful one in balancing the pros and cons. I will at last be performing a different function in the family economy - if only for a limited time. I doubt somehow if I will ever achieve a "rise" of similar scale again - something over 3,000% or from ,20 to ,645 a year!
I was accepted for UNRRA last Thursday, start work with them next Monday, UNRRA takes over the camp on Tuesday and the Army leaves on Thursday - quick work! I owe my very easy acceptance largely to my FAU boss here David Pearson (I worked directly under him at Rome for three months, and it was he who was responsible for my being chosen to follow the Slovenes from Viktring to here) as he recommended me to the UNRRA head in charge of all operations in the British Zone of Austria.
When I went on Thursday for interview with the personnel officer it was obvious she had orders from Major Chapman, the UNRRA head, and was not in the slightest interested whether I was suitable, but only for what price she could get me! A couple of weeks ago a circular was sent round from BRC/FAU HQ inviting applications for posts in UNRRA but did not mention any posts on the welfare side, so I had to apply for an admin job.
However some welfare jobs were available. The admin job scale started at ,450 and the welfare at ,550, so I was lucky getting ,600 by stressing that UNRRA salaries were graded according to qualifications and experience and I was pretty hot on both! As to leave, I could have got home between leaving the FAU and joining UNRRA, but that would have meant losing the chance of staying on here and abandoning work which probably would fizzle out if I left at the moment. March will see the camp through the worst of the winter and the UNRRA team well established, and I would be able to leave it much happier then - also UNRRA would be quite likely to send me back here after my leave.* I have already given you my impressions of the UNRRA welfare woman, with whom I will be working: it is partly because I feel sure I will be able to work satisfactorily under her that I am keen to stay here - going elsewhere would be a shot in the dark.
So the Army handed over to UNRRA in the middle of December and I moved from
112. demobilised 168 my independent humanitarian agency to UNRRA, which two years later was to be succeeded by the International Refugee Organisation and after that by UNHCR, the present Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
My letter-diary: undated. I am gradually handing over some of my work to other members of the staff and have hopes of working at a reasonable pressure by about a week from now; it would have been impossible to have got through the last month of chaotic rush if I hadn't got half a dozen helpers in key jobs on whose work I could rely without close supervision. My co-welfare officer is turning out to be pretty ineffectual, getting almost nothing at all done. He contributes very little good to the camp but thank goodness he can't do much harm in the job he's on - education and recreation.
My snag is that all the refugees flock to my office when they want something done, while at the same time the other team members are taking a frantically long time to settle in. The director, his secretary, the distribution officer and the warehouse officer all speak no language but English and we have a great shortage of competent interpreters, which complicates matters. Also the director still shows little signs of really assuming the leadership of the team - we have no one to do the job of coordination. But things are slowly improving.
169
C H A P T E R 7
1 January - 9 May 1946
Previously critical of the Army's standard of camp management, I now criticise UNRRA.
Spring arrives and Pernisek recalls the yearning of the Slovene farmers to till their own fields, and the bitterness between those who decide to return home and the majority who oppose this. He goes on to describe the consolation the Slovenes find in their religion, and their celebration of Easter. A week later the Army raids the camp and Pernisek finds himself in the local prison, held by the British Field Security Service (FSS). After a night terrified that he is about to be forcibly repatriated, he discovers he is not a prisoner at all. The FSS only wants to question him about the inner workings of the refugee leadership and has nowhere else to put him.
The Pernisek diary:
New Year 1946. This is our first new year abroad. A cold and dreary morning, no sun and the mountains wrapped in thick fog. Our rooms are well heated and we meet in the long barrack corridors and wish each other a happy new year. May God give us health, peace and daily bread, but our deepest desire is to be able to return home. We've no idea what 1946 will bring us, what joys, disappointments and suffering. The Christian must hold himself straight, trusting in God's providence and goodness. We must recognise that God's ways are not our ways, rest our faith in Him and pray Him to lead us into the promised land, wherever that may be. In every sense we're only here in transit. May God's will be done, but whatever happens we're every day a day nearer eternity!
My letter-diary:
1st January 1946. We had a quiet but pleasant Christmas here. To my great disappointment the American director and welfare officer who took over have left - posted to a Polish Jewish camp where they'll certainly have a tough enough job to satisfy even 170 them. I got to know them both well and developed a great respect for them, especially the welfare officer: I was really looking forward to working under her. In her forties, she had had a wide welfare experience in America and held a big and responsible job. Though thus highly qualified she remained completely open to new ideas, willing and anxious to learn and very easy to work with.
The director was of Lithuanian Jewish origin, younger, had done some refugee camp work in the American army and took advice and criticism very well. They had very advanced ideas on camp organisation and oh! it was refreshing to work with people with good brains, who approached the job intelligently and made some attempt at defining their objective and deciding upon the best means of reaching it. Unfortunately they'd applied for a really "tough" Jewish camp, and after taking over only a week they've been sent to the other end of Austria. So have been wasted many hours of explanations and deliberations - once we conferred to one in the morning!
Our team now consists of a Tasmanian major as director: a very quiet, pleasant and able Dutchman as supply officer, an Australian army veteran as warehouse officer, an incompetent Pole also on stores, a competent Dutch girl as nurse, a conscientious Welsh girl as secretary who runs the whole admin office, an American woman as catering officer, a Dutch ex-sailor as transport officer, an ex-Paris taxi-driver as driver, a Polish welfare officer113 and yours truly, who is classified as assistant welfare officer but to date has done virtually all the work of a deputy director.
The Pole is classified as principal welfare officer and when he arrived I naturally imagined he was sent to take the post i/c welfare. Things didn't begin very fortunately, because when I tried to get an idea of which branches of welfare he was more interested and experienced in, he just glanced through the list of responsibilities and without more ado pointed to one column and said, "I'll do these jobs", and pointed to the second column, "You'll do these" - the jobs listed in the columns not at all necessarily hanging together! He then placed his hand in a fatherly way on my shoulder and told me if I found any
113. Paul Mzyk 171 difficulties in coming to a decision I should consult him.
The same afternoon it occurred to the director to read us the letter that the Welfare HQ had sent with the Pole, saying for the time being there'd be no senior welfare officer in the camp, but we'd each carry equal authority and responsibility until the Area Welfare Officer visited the camp - all rather embarrassing! The Pole is 40, friendly and well- meaning, was a welfare officer pre-war in a part of Poland with heavy unemployment, but is not keen, strongly-concerned or imaginative, has a civil service mind and not much initiative. In every job I've handed over he's continually referred back to me unnecessarily or done nothing, but he may improve when he settles in ...
Meanwhile the new director is taking an unconscionable time taking over properly and, till he does, everything necessarily remains in disorder, as the division of responsibility between the various team workers remains far too vague. When the UNRRA team took over on the 12th I was doing two people's jobs, and every day something else is referred to me "because I know what was being done before", until the person whose job it really is "has had time to settle down". This morning (Sunday) I had a two hour conference on housing with a Slovene who only spoke Serbo-Croat and Italian, a Latvian who only spoke Russian and German [plus their mother tongues] and a Russian who only spoke Russian and Serbo-Croat, and while I understand most of what's said in Serbo-Croat I can only speak satisfactorily in Italian and German. The aim of the conference was to attain a compromise whereby both the Slovenes and the Russians would accept a proportion of Latvians in their camp zones!
I've a good-sized and pleasant room now and a stove that burns away cheerfully of an evening. My Polish co- welfare officer is turning out innocuous and very friendly but without any strong capability for the work, lacking imagination, grip or drive. The director of the team fell ill just before Christmas, was sent to hospital and has not yet returned, which means that the camp organisation remains unsatisfactory; but from what little I saw of him at work I doubt if things will be much better when he returns. He seems to lack any strong organisational 172 ability.
Meanwhile after wearing diplomacy I think I've managed to get through two vital bits of reorganisation - of the camp workshops and transport. Both have been in chaos, but I've got a really competent refugee placed in the key admin job in each field and we should start to see improvements in control and organisation. For this the absence of the major has been a help, as I've only had to "sell" the project to the Dutch supply officer, with whom I get on very well, and the Dutch temporary director who was happy as long as it was only provisional, subject to the major's confirmation when he returns.
The difficulty is that if the new UNRRA people are left to their own devices, while to start with they were loudly critical of the old lack of organisation, when they get down to the job they've little idea of how to remould the system and are almost certain to choose the plausible, pushing, unreliable refugees as departmental leaders, just not finding the quiet, competent ones that have too much self-respect to besiege the offices for jobs.
The frustrating thing is that there are plenty of honest and able men in the camp, often considerably more capable than the UNRRA personnel. The latter are in fact in some cases doing damage by interfering tactlessly in well-established departments. Surprisingly pervasive in UNRRA is the idea that refugees are inferior beings that can be patronised or ordered about, while in many cases they are superior to UNRRA personnel in capability, intelligence, manners, civilisation and honesty and morality. Well, after the above weighty discourse I must to bed!
2nd January. Recently I've handed over all the recreational, sports, gym, theatre, concerts etc side to my colleague, of which I'm glad as I hadn't time for it. Also I've handed over the whole school side, which I'm sorry to give up although again I'd no time to deal with it properly. The regular schools are already well established, and the same problem and opening now lies in developing apprentice schools, in e.g. carpentry, shoemaking, hairdressing etc, in which I'm still free to interest myself if I've the time.
173 On the other hand I've been landed with some new jobs. First the distribution of blankets, which is quite a job in a camp of 3,500 people. We've already seen to it that everyone has two blankets, either camp ones or their own, but we haven't enough to raise it to three all round so we're now devising the best system for seeing that priority groups get the third blanket, e.g. expectant mothers, people sleeping singly, old people etc. My second new responsibility is registration, which shouldn't involve too much work once one has got the office satisfactorily staffed and organised. The third is accommodation, a ticklish job as I'll have to try to even out the scandalously unfair distribution of housing space, while causing the smallest disturbance and ill- feeling possible. So I've the two most delicate spheres in the camp: clothing and housing! As long as I can retain a sense of humour it'll be all right!
20th January. After three days of snow it has been lovely and sunny today, and I went out for a walk this morning with Joze Jancar, the medical student with whom I worked on hygiene in Viktring and later here had much to do with on the Graz project. I got very good background on the refugee outlook on some events in the camp: also interesting details on the Italian occupation of Slovenia - Joze himself escaped by the skin of his teeth from being executed with six other students as hostages after an Italian had been killed in Ljubljana. This he told me in the most matter-of- fact way for the first time today.
In the afternoon I went for a walk with the group of university students on holiday here until February as there is not enough wood in Graz; actually they are studying here pretty hard. A pleasant crowd. We had some vigorous snow-balling en route. The mountains around did look lovely when occasionally the sun picked out the peaks and snowy folds.
30th January. The team is settling down a bit better but only two or three show signs of appreciating the technique of camp work, which demands an imaginative outlook and the approach to all problems with a definite aim in view: that of solving it in a manner suited to the state of development and the standards of the refugees.
One basic flaw is that our director is a very weak man. His ideas are mostly sound but he hasn't the strength 174 or imagination to lead his team of twelve members, let alone a camp of 3,500. Owing to lack of leadership and clarity in division of responsibilities, frictions are continually arising between different members of the team or difficulties in their relations with the refugees: and nearly everyone has decided I am a convenient person to bring their woes to! I've had embarrassing occasions when on the same day both parties have come with their versions, and I had to try to make sympathetic but uncompromising remarks and point out that the other fellow wasn't too bad after all! All of which reduces one's time and patience for the refugees, for whose troubles one is supposed to cater!
We've just had two excellent additions to the team -a pair of very human nurses: unfortunately it's probable we won't keep more than one, if one. One is Belgian, black-haired, very cheerful and bright, speaking English but also French which is just what I was needing. The other is an aristocratic Russian emigree, trained I think at Thomas's114 with a superb Slav face and a characteristic slight cast in the eyes. Both are refreshingly quick and intelligent, so that at last we've some UNRRA staff who will stand comparison with the best of the refugees! I especially hope the Russian stays, as I've hopes my German will be strongly enough established to allow my having a go at Russian. The nurses brighten up our mess life a lot - we were a pretty dumb crowd.
The work itself is very rewarding and satisfying. It was fun to take over the chaotic registration office, reduce the bloated staff to a small team of good, conscientious workers with a capable chief, and get a satisfactory routine going and clear up the inherited tangle of papers. In a couple of weeks I should be able to hand over an office that will run in spite of having an UNRRA officer responsible for it! Our accommodation here is good solid houses, double glazing and all. We're very lucky they are so near, less than ten minutes walk from the camp.
8th February. The Russian nurse is turning out excellently, as is the new deputy director, a Scotch colonel, young and open-minded, completely lacking in self-importance, quick, intelligent and interested in youth welfare: a very pleasant man to work with.
114. St. Thomas's Hospital in London 175 Recently the Zone UNRRA chiefs visited the camp and expressed themselves satisfied. I get on well with my chief, the Chief Welfare Officer, a well- concerned, pleasant and youngish American woman with limited camps experience. Fortunately I met her first when she was inspecting the camp and I was still in the FAU. I took her in fatherly fashion under my wing and, showing her round, gave her long lectures on camp welfare background, not dreaming she'd later be my boss! So I have a moral advantage over her as she knows I have a much wider experience than she. We get on very well together. I was impressed by Major Chapman, the Australian Mission Chief: he seemed competent, human and firm.
16th February. The deputy director - the Scotch colonel - is turning out very well, with a strong interest in youth welfare, but the director gets worse and worse; he's afraid the whole time. He knows he's no leader and not big enough for the job, and doesn't trust or support properly any member of his team because he's afraid, if he gives them too much authority, they'll make a success of their job and overshadow him. He's very shifty and it's impossible to know where one stands with him.
He's alienated every member of the team, even the deputy director who's only been at work a few days. The latter is now in bed with flu and I've had long chats with him. He's been in the army fourteen years. His main interest lies in youth welfare, boys' club, hostel or scout work, and he thinks he might try to get onto longer-term refugee work later, if he could get a job covering youth welfare. Pressure of work is at last easing somewhat and I'm getting a little more opportunity to get to know more of the people in the camp. I look forward to telling you of the many and varied "characters".
24th February. Every week UNRRA sends a new member to the team, which is becoming quite unnecessarily large. If we were worth our salt we should by now be reducing numbers as we trained refugees to take over our jobs. Yesterday evening the senior Slovene priest here (quite a figure back in Slovenia) who lives in a village a quarter of an hour from the camp, had his birthday and the male choir went to serenade him, as their custom at home is. I went along; they sang five songs outside his house, he appeared and said a few words, and then the choir 176 went into the village square and sang more folk songs. It was very pleasant.
The senior priest was Dean Matija Skrbec, for me a "figure out of Trollope". Director Bajuk, writing a few years later, described him as
the representative of the [Slovene] Social Committee in Rome and a sort of leader of the entire community in Austria. We have to be very grateful to him. He lived outside the camp but regularly visited us, led all the spiritual life, took interest in every aspect of work and was actively or passively part of it. He was very experienced in the ways of the world, unselfish and hard-working. He gave my work solid support.
It is appropriate to consider here the contribution the priests made to the life of the camp. In ultimate charge was Dr Jagodic. He had been appointed Papal Delegate a month earlier, "with responsibility for the spiritual and moral support of all Slovene, Croat and other Yugoslav catholic refugees in Germany and Austria". He described his job in his memoirs:115
I started work at once. First I presented myself to the camp commandant at Peggetz, a morose Englishman116. He showed very little interest in my appointment. But he did allocate me my own office in the first barrack as you entered the camp, where there were a number of offices, and also authorised me some petrol. I looked around to see where I could find a car and driver as I didn't have one of my own. My always inventive cousin Leon Kristanc came to my aid; he knew there was a young man in the camp with a car, and brought him to me. Franc Skvarca, who was a business man, at once agreed to work for me, and looked after me loyally for four years, after which he emigrated to South America with his whole family.
Then I had to get a travel permit for Austria. At the end of the war the country was divided into four zones: American, English, French and Russian. I applied to the English major in Lienz and he gave me the necessary permit for myself and my driver, but of course only for Austria. I couldn't get a permit or visa for Germany even through the Vatican. So I
115. Jagodic, op. cit., pp. 260 - 276. 116. He was in fact an Australian from Tasmania, Major Noel Simmonds. See pages 00-00. 177 wasn't able to get to Germany, or of course to the Russian zone of Austria. I never got to Vienna to see my immediate superior, the Apostolic Nuncio, and had to write to him. Once I had great difficulty arranging for the Nuncio to send me a large sum of money the Holy See had allocated for the refugees in my care. Thank the Lord it turned out well!
I also needed help with my office work and appointed prof. Martin Starce as my secretary in the camp. When I was away visiting other camps for some days I'd return to find a mountain of letters on my desk. It was my practice when chancellor to deal with letters the day they arrived. So I sometimes found myself writing and typing almost the whole night. The vicar of Anras was amazed at what I got through. But I was quite young then. I couldn't manage it today.
We got on really well with the local priests and they made us welcome: quite different to what happened in Carinthia. The dean of Lienz was in truth our good father, and supplied us sacramental wine free, although there were certainly 40 priests in the camp and some 20 in houses in the village.
There were exactly 200 refugee-priests under my jurisdiction: 132 Slovenes - 98 parish priests and 14 Salesian, 9 Cistercian, 5 Franciscan, 2 Jesuit, 2 Lazarist, 1 Capuchin and 1 Dominican brothers: 30 Croats and Bosnians; and 38 from the German ethnic minority communities. To start with most of them were living in the camps, with a few outside in various local parishes and other duties. In Germany my representative was Franc Seskar, who was living in Munich, where he returned after the Americans rescued him from Dachau concentration camp. Ferdinand Babnik117 was another of my representatives, first in the Netherlands and then in Switzerland. The refugees in all the zones of Austria with whom I was concerned came to about:
Slovenes 8,000: 6,750 in camp 1,250 outside Croats 8,000: 6,450 1,550 Ethnic Germans 85,000: 50,000 35,000 Hungarians 2,000
To this total of about 100,000 were later added a further 80,000 ethnic Germans, making a final total of about
117. Nande Babnik. See pp. 00 and 00. 178 180,000 catholic refugees from Yugoslavia for whom I had to care.
The camp at Lienz had its own branch of Caritas [Catholic social welfare organisation] but the British closed it down, so I opened a social welfare office under church auspices. Dean Matija Skrbec ran it to start with, and later Dr Edward Vracko. It was called the Social Committee, but it came under me. I should add that we didn't have happy relations with the institutions NCWC [National Catholic Welfare Conference] and UNRRA. Although both these bodies were set up in the first instance for refugees118 we didn't derive distinct benefits from them. Sometimes it seemed as if those who ran them were the people who benefitted from them. No refugee ever succeeded in being appointed to help run them although there were enough capable people among their ranks.119 On the other hand the London Cardinal Bernhard Griffin readily supported us: he felt for us and we turned to him several times. I have preserved a number of his letters in my archives, in which he responded benevolently to our different requests.
Our refugees at Lienz had everything they needed, even more than they had at home. So they found it easier to bear the pain of exile, and particularly of homesickness. The children became so much at home that they refused to return home when their parents decided to go. The English marvelled at the good order in which the camp was run, and gathered from far and wide to wonder at the marvel. Sadly it didn't last long. By orders from on high after two years the camp was - disbanded. So this fine creation of our people abroad was destroyed in a trice. Those who had demanded its disbandment and
118. A popular misconception. UNRRA was established, in November 1943, with a much wider remit, its name indicates: relief and rehabilitation. A.J.P.Taylor (1965) English History 1914-1945 (London OUP) p. 594, makes this clear: UNRRA saved Europeans from starvation. Refugees were only one, albeit very important, category of its beneficiaries. 119. Not entirely true. As Jagodic would have known, my colleague Paul Mzyk, UNRRA Welfare Officer at Lienz camp who was later promoted to a more senior UNRRA post in Salzburg, was himself a Polish refugee and a catholic, as he repeatedly told the Slovenes. Dara Lieven, UNRRA nurse at Lienz who later worked on emigration with IRO, was also a refugee. See pp. 00 and 00. 179 removal rubbed their hands, experiencing this satisfaction when our people were not prepared to be taken in by their propaganda of persuasion to return home, whither they incessantly tried to lure or force them. Their presence outside was a thorn in their flesh.
The last paragraph anticipates the closing of Lienz camp, which did not happen until November. While Yugoslav government claims that the allegedly clerico-fascist leadership of the Slovenes in Lienz was hindering repatriation may have had some influence on the closure, UNRRA would anyhow have had to reduce the number of its camps, and Lienz was an obvious candidate. One result was that UNRRA shortened its lines of communication and its transportation costs.
The Pernisek diary:
9th April 1946. It's long since I've written my diary. Life in our barrack has been proceeding in a routine way without significant disturbances. We've organised and settled our lives; we're all busy, our workshops are developing nicely and increasing in number, our schools are full; our young people are so fully occupied I can say truthfully life wasn't so good or pleasant for the young even at home! The last couple of months we've had enough bread and an adequate amount of pleasant food and warm accommodation. We've partitioned the barracks and every family has its own comfortable room.
A beautiful Tyrolean spring summons us out of our barracks, with a clear blue cloudless sky and powerful sun. On the green hills that surround us hundreds of bushes sparkle with white blossom and the fruit trees are covered with buds. The peaceful and mighty mountains tower above all this beauty. The Drau has risen and its emerald green water changed to a greyish white, as the sun melts the snow which has clothed the peaks all winter and closed off our Puster Valley. The earth breathes again, warms up and calls the people to plough and sow. As the bridegroom answers the call of his bride, so the farmer responds to the earth's summons. The fields come alive, the stubble is ploughed in, people are happy to be at work.
But our good, hardworking farmers from Gorenjska and Dolenjska suffer greatly. They go to the local farms as day-labourers to find some outlet for their 180 yearning to till the land, and in the evening sit resting in front of the barracks. But they're sad. They hear the call of their own fields, pastureland and meadows, needing to be cleared of weeds, their own orchards and vineyards crying for attention. It's hard to resist the call, to suppress the feeling of deep-rooted love for one's native soil and the green vine-shoots on the sunny hill-side.
Many succumb, unable to hold out, and prepare to leave for home. But they're worried what'll happen. Will they be left in peace or will the journey lead to prison and suffering? If spared that, how will their neighbours treat them? Will they be received as neighbours or with hatred and abuse, spat upon and taunted as happened to some who returned earlier? A number have members of their family at home; maybe daughters stayed or a son has returned from the army or prisoner-of-war camp. They tell them to come home as they can't manage the work on their own. Thus are they torn between a passionate longing for their homes and families, and bitter feelings of utter uncertainty and forebodings of evil and fear.
From our barrack a few are returning. Many can't understand their decision, treat them with contempt, accuse them of betrayal, say they're victims of the communists' propaganda of promises and enticements. Poor people! They don't deserve the scornful glances and sarcastic comments of their fellows. The barrack leader is going back and is the first target of spite and bitter reproaches, but he was very wise and scrupulously fair. Some elderly women are going as well: honest, devout, thoroughly good women, who walk around with tear-stained faces because of the spiteful remarks. It's not the other farmers that are hostile, but insensitive, selfish townspeople, civil servants, private employees and labourers.
It's incredible the loathing and hatred some of our people still feel towards any they suspect of being in contact with the communists back home. It's impossible to get them to understand that in the spring country people feel a powerful call to return to their fields. We should understand this deep and mysterious inner process. Dear Lord, you will chastise us more because we haven't rooted out hatred from our hearts and don't fully grasp the all- forgiving love, not even towards those who today think as we do and risk much by deciding to return 181 home. There is a deep call of the earth the city dweller cannot understand. Many prayed for a long time before they made the decision.
19th April 1946. Last year I'd no idea I'd live to see Good Friday under such terrible circumstances. All of us are worried, asking where we'll be next year on Good Friday, under what conditions? Our "Way of the Cross" is hard as we don't know yet if we've reached our Good Friday and passed through Calvary.
It's a most gloomy and bleak day: dirty-looking greyish mist covers the mountains and a cold and violent wind blows down in the valleys. In camp it's a public holiday, and we're visiting nearby churches to see their holy sepulchres. Our refugee chapel is simple and unpretentious, yet inviting and a true expression of our love for the dead Saviour and Redeemer. The panels were not produced by a well-known painter; a modest youngster has used his natural gift for painting. The candle-sticks shine, made with elegance and true taste from the outer layers of gun- shells and tinned food cans.
The sepulchre is like a garden in full flower, encircled by a throng of people gathered in devout prayer, and barrack succeeds barrack from early morning to late at night. *Interspersed among the prayers are hymns conveying sadness at the memory of Christ's death and our love for Christ who out of His love for us gave Himself as a sacrifice so that we could live in happiness eternally. Therefore let us bear the heavy cross of the refugee and exile with patience and resignation: we wish to be crucified with Him so that with Him we will rise up to new life.*
20th April 1946 - Holy Saturday. The whole camp is preparing for the feast of the Resurrection. The men sweep and cleanse the paths and areas round the barracks, the young lads set up maypoles in front. The women clean and tidy the family rooms so that all will be spick and span as for a feast at home, and run from the barracks to the kitchens to bake simple potice120, without which there can be no feast.
The chapel is decorated with flowers and votive lamps, as for a great festival. The Easter fare is blessed, and children with their mothers carry the Easter food
120. Slovene festive cakes 182 in simple baskets made in the camp. Strong winds swept down the valley during the afternoon so that the sky was washed clean, clean as the eye of a fish. The rattles fall silent, rattles with which the children had been "frightening God" the last three days, and the lads are ringing the bells for the Resurrection. At seven there were solemn vespers: the priest in white vestments, the altar boys in white surplices, the people in their Sunday clothes - their best dresses or suits, so far unworn in the camp, taken from suitcases or trunks. The saying at home was that you must wear something new for Easter; these outfits are not all new but are all fine, festive. The words echo joyfully from before the altar, Surrexit Dominus Vere, Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia! sung with passionate zeal in a beautiful, clear, strong voice by the parish priest Gregor Mali. The priests' choir sings psalms while the people pray and await the moment of the Resurrection.
The threefold Alleluias resound from before the Holy Sepulchre, the choir responds mightily. "Our Redeemer rose from the tomb" chants Dean Matija Skerbec: "Oh Christian, sing joyfully" the people answer, and the Risen Saviour starts on his first triumphant procession through the camp. Paths which for many years heard only the harsh tramp of soldiers, the clatter of their weapons, curses and profanity, today resound with mighty hymns of Christian resurrection and triumph. Even in this place the Spirit has conquered the force of earthly matter. The magnificent Easter procession encircles the camp with devout prayer, harmonious chimes and victorious Slovene Easter hymns. Surely for the first time today the Lord Jesus walks through this camp in triumph and majesty. Was it for this that we were sent here on our journey of exile to our own Promised Land?
The procession was a majestic expression of our living faith: if only there had been an Easter Banner it would have been just like home. I saw men crying from emotion. Afterwards we all wished each other "Happy Easter" with the same words, "and God grant that we celebrate it next year at home!"
Director Bajuk's memoirs added:
We had everything superbly organised at Peggetz for the 183 life of the spirit. We had a lovely chapel and a tall bell tower next it, from which hung lengths of railway track which gave a most harmonious ringing sound. The lads rang the "bells" so well, really in tune (Gaber even had a bell-ringing course under his belt) that it was a great pleasure to listen to them on Slivnica - you could hear their beautiful strong booming sound even up there.
The Pernisek diary:
21st April - Easter Sunday. Today we also can proclaim, "this is the day the Lord has made". The weather is superb, the mountain peaks as if washed in the blue of the sky. At ten Monsignor Jagodic, Apostolic Delegate to the Slovene refugees in Austria, celebrated solemn mass. In the evening bonfires glowed all over the surrounding hills, twinkling down on us in the valley like friendly stars. God knows where we'll celebrate next year's Easter, a thought that turns over and over in my head: surely not here. 27th April. A most unpleasant surprise! The British army has surrounded the camp from all sides to check the inmates. They started at 4.30 in the morning when we heard strange steps in the barrack corridor and foreign voices under our window. What's happening? I get up, look out and see English soldiers holding guns. We're surrounded. I go into the corridor and to the exit door. A soldier motions me to return and points his gun to say, "if you don't, you know what this means!" I understand this language, we got used to it in Ljubljana during Italian blockades. So it's a raid. Soon there's an announcement over the loudspeaker in poor Serbo-Croat that the English military police have surrounded the camp and everyone should stay in their rooms because the military police are searching for "war criminals, political criminals, collaborationists, quislings and absconding members of the SS". So now we know where we are!
28th April. I'm sitting in the FSS121 prison in Millstatt where they brought me during yesterday's raid. I was searched by an English sergeant, short, black-haired, stocky build. Jewish in appearance, he spoke a little Serbo-Croat and was accompanied by an Austrian gendarme. When he searched my cupboard he took two
121. Field Security Service: British military and political police 184 maps, some papers and two copies of the Black Book122. He stopped his search when he found the decree of the Slovene National Committee on the establishment of the Slovene High School at Vetrinje, gathered up the two books, the decree and some other papers and told me, "bring a blanket, shaving kit and towel because we have to interrogate you. You'll be back in two days."
So that's how I'm here in a middle-sized room with an old- fashioned vaulted ceiling and walls covered with scrawlings. I read them again and again: a litany of swear words in English and every conceivable language, German, Polish, Serb, Croat, Italian. I don't find anything in Slovene. From the grossest obscenities to the most refined sarcasms and mockery of the English. For a number I don't understand or know the language they're written in. Interesting reading!
My companions are not unpleasant. Two young Austrians, both Hitler Youth members and one the son a nearby textile factory owner, a butcher from Seeboden, a young doctor from Klagenfurt and a headmaster from Spittal, a pleasant, unpretentious man. In spite of knowing that Hitlerism and Nazism are done for ever they're still enthusiastic Nazis. They consider the English incompetent fools and predict the breakthrough and advance of communism.
A Slovene called Rupnik also keeps me company, an unassuming young farm worker who's only here because his surname is Rupnik123. He's very worried about what they'll do to him. There's also a former member of the Croatian Domobrani or National Guard who's very calm. The doctor paces up and down anxiously, sits at the table, looks at family photographs and his eyes fill with tears. He then he stares at the ceiling and cries horror-stricken, "panische Angst!"124. Yes, in truth, fear is close to panic.
They were searching for war criminals and pick on me alone out of the whole camp. Never, ever did I even in my thoughts toy with anything like committing a war crime, yet I'm sitting now in prison. A thousand
122. a record of communist war-time atrocities in Slovenia 123. A general of the same name was commander-in-chief of the domobranci or Slovenian National Guard 124. panic fear 185 possibilities of what they might do to me cross my mind like in a film, and not for a moment does the terrible thought leave me that they might send me back. "But that's not possible!" I tell myself to calm down, "wait till they interrogate you, so you'll know what you're accused of. Trust in God, you're in his hands!" Whatever I was thinking about during the day, I was dreaming at night.
29th April. At ten I was summoned for interrogation by a gendarme called Benedikta and questioned by a young air force sergeant who told me he was an English law student. Before he started I asked if I'd be sent back to Tito and he at once said categorically no. He assured me I wasn't a prisoner at all, wasn't even suspected of a war crime. They had very favourable reports on me and my character and work, and I was well respected by my fellow countrymen and the military command at Lienz camp.
I was in a cell because they'd nowhere else to put me, but I'd nothing to be afraid of: there was absolutely no question of being handed back. He wanted to find out some things that interested them and asked me to speak as someone responsible who knows what he's talking about: and that if I didn't know something, then I simply didn't know about it. With this he gave me a clear indication of how to speak. He added I should speak without fear because he was English. But I should be very cautious, even mistrustful, if I were interrogated by a Jew, and there were many serving with the English military police.
At once I felt reassured. We spoke the whole time in German and I felt I wasn't being interrogated at all but discussing things he found new and interesting - not a police interrogation but a calm and courteous conversation. He started off asking why we fled. Then we got on to conditions during the war and the communist revolution, and our self-defence against communist bands which later developed into organised and systematic military defence, because the communists were organised in the same way.
He was most surprised at our disappointment at the British government's actions at and after the end of the war, and the hand-over at Viktring of our disarmed troops to Tito's bands. We talked about our political restraint during the war and the establishment and composition of the National Committee for Slovenia, 186 which interested him a lot. He didn't write down what I said, only made notes on what interested him. It took two and a half hours and will continue tomorrow. 30th April. I was summoned again and we discussed conditions in the camp, our internal organisation, relationships among ourselves and what connections we had with the homeland. He wanted to know where the soldiers, who didn't want to go back, were and what they were doing: where the senior officers were and what they were doing; who were the coaches training our young people in sports and how many there were. I began to understand better why I'd been brought there and what they wanted from me.
The sergeant said all I was telling him was very interesting and I'd be taken to the FSS headquarters in the Jesuitenkaserne125 in Klagenfurt. I'd be completely free but would be interrogated again on the same things as here. They'll then let me go back at once to my family in the camp. During the two days our fairly large cell got so full we were overcrowded. The newcomers were all "important people".
1st May. The old detainees are having an exercise break in the courtyard and a huge white poster with red lettering is displayed on the opposite fire-wall, with the slogan: Erste Mai, wieder frei126 , as if to mock me personally! The Croat Brindl reads it, spits on the ground and says "devil take it!" obviously feeling as I do.
3rd May. Today they've taken some of our fraternity to the Wolfsberg camp for Nazi war criminals - guilty or innocent - and collaborators, where it's hoped they'll cool their enthusiasm, but I doubt if even one of them will sober up: when people of the same ideology are put together, their solidarity of belief is only strengthened. They're all glad to be going: they couldn't stand our prison cell and look forward to meeting up with old friends and comrades. But they'll soon be out.
**The newcomers are at first sight unattractive: haughty German officers and renegade German women. Among the new arrivals are two German doctors, majors in the
125. Jesuits' barracks 126. First of May, again free 187 SS. Dr Schacht, Austrian-born from Vienna, self- confident, arrogant and insolently impertinent: and Dr Oberer, also Austrian, from Linz; sentimental and a womaniser, he's for ever washing himself like a cat. In spite of being in prison he has a healthy appetite and never stops eating and chewing the cud. It takes him a quarter of an hour to get ready for a meal: he washes his hands twice as if preparing for a surgical operation, spreads a small cloth over his quarter of the table and then places a spoon to the right and a knife and fork to the left. Yes, a knife in prison, he has one. Dr Schacht hasn't. Then he starts eating his hors d'oeuvres, ham and hard boiled eggs, wherever he gets them from, and bread; and when the camp food ration appears, he gobbles it down promptly.
The third is a teacher, a regular Cankar127 in appearance, tall as Jacob's ladder, awkward as a bear, without a will of his own or a thought in his head. Without asking anyone he took the best palliasse and settled into the quietest corner of the cell. Dr Schacht eyes him askance. Then there's the Sudeten-German Pucek, an industrial lawyer, a good soul, always polite and smiling, and Captain Arnold, a Yugoslav fifth columnist from Zemun and the priggish Prussian von Bieberstein.**
5th May. **Pandur128 Benedikta is in a good mood today, and managed to get permission for us to attend the service in the local parish church. Drs Schacht and Oberer are atheists but went. Dr Oberer had an assignation in the church with his girl friend who's prodigiously persistent; she comes to see him every day, appears at the cell window, once even got as far as the cell door. Today at church they had a chat non-stop right through Mass. Now I know where he gets his snacks from. No doubt Pandur gets his share from the same source.**
**Dr Oberer is married but doesn't talk about his wife or family. After each visit he reads a new letter again and again with devout reverence and savours the perfume emanating from the scented missive. Thrice he passes it solemnly under his nose and then under Dr Schacht's nose. He doesn't worry like Dr Schacht
127. famous Slovene writer 128. 18th century Croat infantryman in Austrian service, robber, constable 188 does. Dr Schacht is afraid he'll get a long term of imprisonment, because he was an "illegal"129 before Austria was annexed. He is a violinist as well as a surgeon, and if he doesn't play regularly his fingers will grow stiff and numb: after some months without work a surgeon shouldn't take up a scalpel in his hand. Dr Schacht is overwhelmed by fear he'll lose his profession. They play bridge every evening while telling each other ghost stories which make my hair stand on end.**
6th May. **I'm sawing logs with Captain Arnold: since I arrived here I've cut enough firewood to earn the ham and egg I get for breakfast each morning. Today is the last log. The Captain has no idea how to saw. We aren't paid or hired for it so we work very slowly - it's better than just sitting in the cell. Pandur Benedikta is looking at us and then he suddenly puts his long nose into the shed and says: "if I look at the two of you any longer it'll make me ill". But I was thinking: "if I have to look at the faces around me much longer I'll go insane".
At around 5 the crafty Croat Brindl returns from his job at a hotel nearby and tells us von Bieberstein has escaped. The English don't make a fuss but calmly ask what he was wearing. Next morning they had him in a single cell.**
9th May. Today our cell is cleared. Rupnik and Brindl were returned to the camp they came from, the rest loaded onto a large armoured truck and carried off to Klagenfurt; I was put into the Jesuitenkaserne and the others taken to Wolfsberg. The man in charge of the transport delivered me to the RIP. What these initials mean I don't know, other than "requiescat in pace"130. I'll survive - I always have up till now. When I got to the office I was surrounded by Jews who eagerly grabbed the papers sent with me. What a group! Thank goodness I was warned about them in advance!
There were a large number of British Jews serving with the FSS, because so many were excellent linguists and already familiar with conditions on the continent. Pernisek was not alone in fearing them. The Slovenes knew how many Jews were in leading positions in the communist parties of the Soviet Union and
129. member of the Austrian Nazi Party 130. rest in peace, in latin. 189 elsewhere in central and eastern Europe. Also many members of the FSS had extreme left-wing sympathies and had friendly contacts with the local Austrian communists, who were naturally strongly hostile towards all anti-communist refugees in Austria.
Pernisek's diary continues:
I'm a little uneasy, although completely free to move around as I like. I've been asked for three o'clock for "a chat". They've given me a room in a building where there are some refugee families and they've arranged some food for me. At the Millstatt prison the food was very good and enough, but here it's poor. I turned up, but they told me they hadn't had time to look at the papers and asked me to return tomorrow.
11th May. The interrogation finished midday. One soldier on his own, I've no idea what rank, questioned me calmly and politely for a total of eleven hours today and yesterday. He kept on apologising and asking me to be patient because he'd so many questions that needed answering. During our conversation, for that's what I'd call it, he gave me cigarettes and liqueur. I gathered, from the many questions on our internal organisation and camp institutions and the relationship between our priests and the people, that the Yugoslav government has been accusing us emigrants of having our own rebel federal government and organising our own army.
Early on I was asked if I'd already visited Bishop Rozman. That's what they were looking for, not for war criminals at all. And that's why they'd crawled through the roof spaces above the barracks and torn up the floors, to see if we had hidden weapons. They found out from the papers they took from my cupboard that there were no such things, rather the contrary, and so they made the whole process easy for me. They found nothing to corroborate the charges of Tito's men. There's a great difference between the English and the Jews, the latter at the very least sympathising with communism and regimes favourably disposed towards it.
I noticed that the English have completely changed their attitude towards communism during the past twelve months, though they still don't know what it's like. For them it's just a political party which has at the 190 moment a favourable opportunity. In some respects they're really naive, in others they're badly informed or don't want to know. I didn't see my two black books either at Millstatt or in Klagenfurt - the Jew probably kept them - and I'm sorry I've lost them. Prison and interrogations have exhausted me completely and badly affected my nerves.
Meanwhile I had returned from leave and started writing again:
5th May. All the parcels have arrived except the one with a small amount of old clothes, books and shoe leather. The clothes have been a great success - I gave them all to a few middle class families who had lost everything, but as they hold responsible positions in the camp don't like to ask for clothes from UNRRA, because if they receive as much as they need people are inclined to say unfairly, "oh, her husband is an interpreter, or doctor, and she can get what she likes out of UNRRA".
191
C H A P T E R 8
10 May - 3 September 1946
A new camp director arrives. UNRRA HQ sends two repatriation officers to persuade the refugees to return home. They tell them that the organisation will soon be closing down and there is no present prospect of any country being prepared to accept large numbers of immigrants, and no known source of money to pay for the camps and food. Repatriation pressure steadily increases, and the refugees become more depressed and send UNRRA HQ a passionate letter of appeal.
The new British Commander-in-Chief inspects the camp. I attach myself to the one man in civilian clothes and lobby discreetly for the Slovenes. I choose well because he is in charge of the Austrian desk at the Foreign Office and has been sent specially by the Foreign Secretary to report on the refugee situation. My efforts meet with some success, as I discover forty years later when Sir Michael Cullis thoughtfully sends me a copy of his report. I tell him that the Slovenes are far advanced in arranging their mass emigration to Argentina, their preferred host country. An article the Slovenes themselves publish in Buenos two years later, with the details still fresh in their memory, describes the process.
192 My letter-diary:
10th May. Things have been happening pretty fast. Our director has at last been moved, thank God! I think he's got the sack, he certainly deserved it. He got the nice Dutch supply officer he disliked removed by very underhand means, so I've no sympathy at all. He tried to get him sacked but instead he's got a better job in HQ in Vienna! Our new director is an ex-Group Captain RAF and seems pretty good. I've got on with him very well so far.
Director Bajuk included in his memoirs characteristically blunt profiles of three of the UNRRA staff, three refugee leaders and several teachers131. Here he is on the new camp director:
I don't remember the first commandant but I'll never forget the second - a tall Australian132 called Young. He was a bachelor, and all heart. It seems to me he had a better heart towards us than Mersol by about as much as he was taller than Mersol. He really was a tall man. You saw him immediately, walking with long strides between the barracks, always kind and with a smile, while little Dr Mersol was dancing around him like a little dwarf, because Young was always turning round and Mersol wanted to be on his left side. Raising his head, he was always on the lookout for the camp inmates, returning greetings, greeting them and disappearing between the barracks over to the other side. He liked us Slovenes specially because we were so clean, he said, because we were conscientious at our work and generally polite.
The grammar school was specially close to his heart. How often he just stuck his head round my door, greeted me, closed the door and walked off: but always smiling like a naughty boy. When we had the school- leaving exams I naturally invited him to the opening ceremony, so that he could see how seriously and conscientiously we approached them. We were all
131. In manuscript memoirs he wrote in Argentina after 1949, a photocopy of which is in the possession of the author. 132. He was in fact English, and not Australian. Bajuk disapproved of all Englishmen so vehemently because of the forcible repatriations that his memory played him false, and he persuaded himself a camp commandant as good as Group Captain Ryder Young could not possibly be English. He did however concede that Colonel Baty, who inspected his school the previous August, was English. 193 waiting for him, everyone was nervous. On his desk he had - we all saw it - a big piece of paper with blue writing in large letters "exams 8 am". He didn't come. We sent for him, he wasn't at home.
His secretary Sustersic suggested we should wait. I disagreed, "we let him know, he is aware of it, we shan't wait. Order is order, also for the commanders", and we started. No sooner did Jeglic dictate the first mathematical questions than he appeared with his long strides, knocked on the door and, bending down as every door was too low for him, rushed in. He apologised to Dr Mersol explaining he'd forgotten, and when Mersol told him we'd already started, he thought that was good. Because I knew he had a sense of humour I told the boys, "you know, the commandant was afraid he might have to do the exams with you, and that's why he came late". When Dr Mersol translated my remark, he burst out laughing, came up to me, shook my hand until it hurt and left with his people.
He was a warm-hearted man. He absolutely adored our scouts and arranged a summer camp for them by Lake Millstatt and would visit them every Saturday together with Dr Mersol. Director Young is for the Slovenes certainly the dearest person who was sent to us and was our leader in those difficult days. I shall never forget him.
Bajuk here refers slightingly to Dr Mersol. His profile is very different:
Dr Mersol was like St Barbara to us - our last resort in all our greatest needs. Only God knew the hundreds pof hours he spent waiting outside the office of the camp commandant, to mediate not only in all public matters but also in private affairs.
When after the first transport at Vetrinj I heard the sad news that they were being sent back, I ran at once and told him all I'd heard. As I talked his eyes were like lightning in every direction. Without comment he hurried immediately to look for the people in charge and went to Klagenfurt to talk to the authorities and commanders. He was the one who saved those of us who remained, and if he hadn't intervened we'd have all shared the fate of the domobranci. We all know that, although we like to forget it.
194 Our whole group must be grateful to him till death for all he did. Particularly the children. It's true he had four of his own and they benefitted as well, but in whatever he did he was not motivated by self- interest. This was shown by the enormous amount of work he did which was of no benefit to himself or his family. He must surely be our greatest man and benefactor in our exile. I'm convinced of this and say it out aloud because I know well what he meant for the school. Our grammar school, our schools in general and our cultural work would never have been the same without his support and successful mediation.
Bajuk's second refugee profile was of Monsignor Skrbec and his third one was devoted to Dr Vracko, the judge. He had repeated clashes with him and recorded them with relish. His second UNRRA official was Paul Mzyk, the welfare officer: "he was himself a refugee and understood our position. He was also very devout." I was his third UNRRA official:
John Corsellis was a young, apparently not yet qualified academic, who had a lot to do with us on school matters. He spoke some Croatian, but his German was good enough for all purposes. He was young and inexperienced and openly recognised the fact in our relationship. If he wanted to interfere in any way in my school work I took the position firmly that he didn't understand our rules and I continued to do things my way. He would smile and give up.
When an order came from Klagenfurt to investigate "clerical fascism", of which our camp was charged by our dear brothers in Spittal, Monsignor Skrbec and Dr Jagodic were summoned and it then came to my turn, for they even involved the grammar school in this affair. When the commandant mentioned my name Corsellis jumped up to say, "in no way, in no way. Bajuk doesn't let anyone interfere in his sphere, not even me." And that was the last I heard of it.
He was honest and kindhearted, but he was English. Whenever I was there to get anything from his school supplies, he was so mean with every pencil that I hardly managed to get anything from him. So when it was time to move premises he had quite a sizeable stock, which then went into other channels, when we left for Spittal. Otherwise he was good to us and understood our circumstances. He was on familiar terms with our family - with Bozidar and myself - and 195 after the war wrote us a long letter about conditions in London. I am grateful to him for many things, but I cannot get rid of the feeling that he is English, one of that "puffed-up rabble"133 that betrayed us.
I return to my letter-diary:
They're carrying out big reductions in camp teams but I have it on pretty good authority I'll be staying. Already our deputy-director (the nice Scotch colonel), the blunt Australian warehouse officer and our supply officer have been told they're being transferred. I'm sorry to lose the Scot, but anyhow he was leaving UNRRA almost at once to take a job as development officer in Nigeria - he'll do it very well. The Australian also was a good sort, although at times difficult to work with. My opinion of UNRRA HQ at Klagenfurt goes down and down - they continually bungle things badly. It will for instance be extremely inconvenient losing our supply and warehouse officers at the same time and they will have to replace one of them. There seems no reason at all why they should be changed.
I've taken back responsibility for admittance and registration, housing and clothing and also am doing quite a bit of work on workshops now, so I have plenty to do. I'll probably take on a second full- time personal assistant: one to specialise on clothing and workshops, the other on housing and admittance and registration. I've found an excellent man who speaks good German, is quick and intelligent and was a bank worker - head of a department - in Slovenia. I'm reducing to a fine art the transfer of all work possible to other people's shoulders, but still find plenty to do! However I'm carefully confining myself to a 5 1/2 day week, 9-12.30 and 2- 5.30 or even less.
Could you very kindly send me as much cotton thread as you can lay your hands on? The simplest way would be to buy a few large-size registered envelopes and stuff in as many rolls as will fit; it will save the trouble of packing parcels and will obviate the risk of loss. The slightly higher cost won't matter. The Oxford Woolworths had a plentiful supply of 1000m rolls of black, green, blue and grey machine thread
133. "sodrge napihnjene" in Slovene, and difficult to translate. 196 at 10 pence a roll, which is ideal. It will be a real service to the refugees if you can send as many as you can buy. If you keep accounts at your end and let me know the cost of individual consignments I'll get paid here immediately - I charge cost price + transport costs!
If you're not likely to be in Oxford for some time perhaps you could ring or send a note to the St Michaels Street needlework supply shop and they could send me thread direct. I can use as much as they can send me of all colours, and perhaps you could arrange for them to send me so many envelopes-full weekly. In the unlikely event of my receiving more than I can use, other camps are in equally urgent need. The only coloured thread we have in our tailors' shops here is the small quantity I brought back! If you could also buy some sewing machine needles it would be a great help; at least two machines would be idle if I hadn't brought some back with me! We use 20 a month, so 40 or more needles sizes 17, 18 and 19 would be a godsend. Our other main urgent need is six cut-throat razors and three hairdressers' scissors as we're about to open a camp barbers' shop; there's a shop at the end of the Broad that sells them.
All the parcels have now safely arrived and are a great success. We've been able to help some really deserving people with the clothing, the school was very pleased with the books and the three people overjoyed at being able to buy good dictionaries at what was to them a ridiculous price. So far as the cotton etc. is concerned, I'm quite willing to spend ,20 to ,30 if necessary, as I need draw no pay here (I haven't been able to yet!) and so will be able to live here on the repayments.
28th May. * All the team members due to depart have gone and the team is settling down excellently; I continue to have too much to do, but this should be only temporary until the new members settle in and I'm able to reorganise my part of the job.* The main drawback of the new director is that he's a bit too fussy over details, wanting to know exactly the reason for this or that - and always expecting me to find it for him! This means consuming a lot of time on inessentials.
Last Saturday we had a gymnastic display together with an 197 arts and crafts exhibition (very impressive) and a concert: it all went off well, but the two main visitors failed to turn up, blast them! Several of the camp sewing machines would be useless now if it weren't for the needles I brought back with me. Also the only coloured cotton thread we've left in the camp is the rolls you bought for me. Do let me know if you have managed to get some more cotton and sent it off, as I can then let the workshops use what we've got slightly more generously.
16th June. Last Saturday I had to work in the camp so I've been able to take off all Saturday and Sunday this weekend. I had to go down to Klagenfurt on Friday as I had various jobs to do there, so I left Lienz at 5 am, had a pretty busy day in Klagenfurt and on the return journey got dropped off about half way at a place called Feffernitz, where there's a Hungarian DP camp at which John Strachan, my old FAU Lienz colleague, works. I'm staying here over Saturday and Sunday and will return to Lienz by train on Sunday evening. It's very pleasant getting away from the camp for three whole days, as it's the only way of getting a real break. The new director is perhaps a bit too keen, never stopping talking shop.
John Strachan is doing a very good job and is now responsible singlehanded for the welfare of this big camp with over 2,000 DPs. It's very valuable seeing round someone else's camp - it puts everything better into proportion and gives one some useful ideas. Last night I went to a Hungarian concert in the camp, which was very well produced and acted. In the afternoon I greatly enjoyed an hour's fencing with a Hungarian captain. Later I had a long chat with two Slovene doctors134 from a neighbouring camp I knew at Viktring and at Lienz. They are both single and hope to take up mission medical work somewhere.
Many thanks for the marvellous supplies of cotton, needles and books. The needles arrived in the nick of time as we were down to our last one. The camp tailors' shops, with about fifty people working, would have had to close down almost completely if we hadn't received your cotton. The biggest parcel of clothing arrived and I only finished giving it out a week ago. I gave it all to families with a large number of children (two had four and one had six) and to people
134. One was Dr Janez Janez, for whom see page 00. 198 who had very little indeed but whose past life and present responsible jobs in the camp made it very hard for them to ask for clothes at official distributions. I feel confident it will all be well used.
1st July. During the last fortnight we've had an intolerable number of visitors from Klagenfurt needing entertaining, a fantastic number of new monthly or weekly reports and returns to prepare and then they decide to "borrow" our welfare officer at the same time as our doctor is away on compassionate leave. I sometimes lack the strength of mind to sit down to a letter in the evening, especially when someone says "come for a walk - you need some fresh air".
The Pernisek diary:
2nd July. Two officers from UNRRA HQ Vienna came today to discuss the repatriation of Slovene refugees. One was called Graf and spoke good German. Both were of pleasing appearance and spoke most politely and calmly. They talked with Dr Mersol first, and then with Dr Blatnik and director Bajuk - naturally with each separately. They told them openly the reason why they were visiting the camp and that they wanted to know our feelings and views about the possibility of repatriating Slovene refugees. They asked why we didn't go home and what were the obstacles to return -political, economic or religious?
Mr Graf said they understood the intelligentsia couldn't go back but not why the small people, farmers and workers couldn't. They certainly weren't politically active and didn't present a danger to the present regime. And why didn't the old people go? Would there be any sense in a commission composed of UNRRA representatives and refugees visiting Yugoslavia and calling on refugees who'd returned to find out how they lived, whether they'd been left in peace, how they'd been received and the present situation in Yugoslavia? Were we carrying out propaganda against repatriation, and were we aware of the difficulties we would face as emigrants? UNRRA has no money to pay for transport. Where would we get money for travel and working capital? They then told us UNRRA didn't have long to live and the establishment of a new body to look after refugees was a long way off. 199
We hadn't agreed among ourselves how we'd respond, being unable to because the visit took us by surprise and the camp commandant had dealt with this kind of visit in the past. As it turned out we all answered in much the same way, giving the same main reason for the failure to return and the condition for any return: let the Yugoslav government tell us where our lads and menfolk are, who were returned in May 1945. That was the core issue. After I'd answered all their questions, they stated - Mr Graf speaking for them both - that it was difficult to get a precise idea on that issue and that both of them were only carrying out their official duties. They wished me the best of luck, thanked me most politely and departed.
12th July. The UNRRA Repatriation Commission is in the camp today, led by Dr Bedo, Hungarian by birth, who's the principal director of the Commission's European section. He speaks German well and is very polite, concise and clear. UNRRA, the organisation of the UN for help to refugees, divides them into three groups. First those who left their homelands before the 1st January 1945, under which category come prisoners-of- war and forced workers. UNRRA maintains there are no war criminals or collaborators amongst them because Hitler needed them at home. The second group are those who left home between the 1st January and the 8th May 1945, predominantly political refugees; it's possible there are some war criminals concealed amongst them. The Commission stated it hadn't found any among our people. In the third group fall all those who left home either of their own free will or were ordered to by the government.
Everyone above the age of eighteen has to report personally to the commission. Dr Bedo asked me and my wife whether we believed in God and Jesus crucified. When we answered yes, he asked if we'd been members of any German organisation and if we'd fought against the British and the Americans. When we answered no, he gave us a certificate to that effect and the matter was ended.
My letter-diary:
9th July. I'm sorry I've been so long giving you any answer in detail about the cotton - the stuff you've sent has been absolutely marvellous and I'll do my 200 best to let you know within a week how much would be welcome regularly. I still can't believe it's possible to receive stuff regularly, it's beyond my wildest dreams! I'm having an analysis made of the amount our various work places use and will be able to see from that how much we need in total weekly.
The question is complex because cotton goes to five different recipients (all through the camp central stores) (1) two shifts of tailors in the main workshops (run in two shifts because we are very short of machines and have to get all the work out of them we can) (2) a special shop salvaging clothes and making slippers out of rags - we made our 1,200th pair recently: they are most useful as they make it possible for the people to save their precious shoes (3) an "arts and crafts" shop, where they make children's toys, knit, embroider, make lace, etc., etc. (4) the cobblers' shop and (5) the hospital, where a sewing machine is used full-time mending hospital linen and making baby clothes.
Before I went on leave we received our last official supply of cotton and shortly after I returned we had completely run out, except for white thread. We've been "living on" the thread you've sent ever since. We managed to get a small supply of razors and scissors from Italy, enough to open our barbers' shop. I hadn't realised the importance of barbers: they have a very real function in the maintenance of self-respect, and even office efficiency. No one obeys an unshaven clerk, and the latter only works half as well as his tidier colleague.
The Pernisek diary:
14th July. *It's a glorious summer Sunday, the mountain peaks glitter in their white covering bathed in the hot July sun and the sky appears washed clean. Skylarks sing their praises to God above the golden wheat fields, as the Slovene camp community moves slowly in a penitential procession, praying aloud against a background music of chirping swallows and quails. A simple wooden cross made by a peasant is carried at the head of the procession followed by the elementary and middle school children, their faces glowing like red poppies in contentment and delight. After them march the young lads and men praying devoutly with bowed heads and rosaries in their hands. 201 Everyone sends his own prayer to heaven but all are united in one petition: good God, shorten our days of exile, send Your holy angels to take us home! The girls and women sing Marian hymns following a banner of Our Lady of Fatima. The people halt on the hill by the chapel of Our Lady and gather round an outdoor altar under the blue sky to hear Mass.
While the hungry camp community was asking for God's mercy, there was a huge demonstration in Lienz demanding that the refugees be expelled because of the shortage of food.
My letter-diary:
17th July. Last weekend I did a good vigorous climb with a visiting female welfare officer: I hit things off with her pretty well (she was English, progressive- schooly, Nursery School Association, socialist and a bit overpowering, but I survived) which was a good thing as it transpired later that she was a personal friend of the head welfare officer for all Austria. I'm sorry to sound so worldly, but in UNRRA one has to in self-defence. If I hadn't established excellent personal relationships with my Zone Chief Welfare Officer135 (a hard-faced American woman who has a disconcerting way of winking as she converses, is reported to have the Zone Director in her pocket, but who can be quite human) I'd have been moved from this camp by now and probably dropped two grades owing to reductions in staff.
Since the reductions, when we lost deputy director, admin. officer and full-time secretary, I've been responsible for all admin. as well as part of welfare. I've been steadily building up the interpreter who used to be a hospital administrator136 as chief of camp admin with great success - I'm most lucky having such a first-class reliable man.
My realm now covers (1) finance office, which deals with pay, health insurance, taxes etc. (2) labour exchange and employment office - we've three or four hundred workers in local farms and Austrian firms. We find them their jobs, see they're properly fed and treated, and also find all workers for inside the camp (3) judicial office which tries internal camp
135. Miss Madsen 136. Mr. 00 Sustersic. 202 "police court" cases and sees that refugees before the civil and military courts are properly defended (4) camp police force and jail (5) fire brigade, full-time and volunteer sections (6) registration office (7) filing office (8) central admin and registration office which also controls admissions to and departures from the camp (9) translation office.
On top of this, the director quite rightly tries to keep as free as possible of office work so that he can really direct the camp, and so usually leaves to me the drafting of special letters. I manage to get through only because I've a very conscientious and faithful staff, and have known them long enough to know what they can and what they can't do.
I give below a sample of the special letters the camp director, Group Captain Ryder Young, left to me to draft, this time as staff member responsible for the employment office. It didn't matter how hard-hitting I was: so long as I got my facts right and didn't "drop him in it" he'd sign anything and engage in as many fights with headquarters as were necessary. Sadly he was only with us a few months, but during them we enjoyed vigorous and dynamic management:
Subject: Employment of D.Ps in Camps To: Zone Director, UNRRA HQ
I am in receipt of your letter requesting the views of Camp Directors on a further reduction of payroll staff.
My view is that any such reduction would be in effect a penalisation of those teams that have energetically developed their camps, and as such is deplorable. A camp that is in an elementary stage of development can without difficulty be administered with a DP staff well below the minimum laid down, but the number of staff required increases sharply with every new project that is undertaken.
In circulars from Klagenfurt and personal visits the Zone supervisory staff have repeatedly made it clear that they are in agreement with the official UNRRA policy of regarding UNRRA's responsibility as not being limited to the provision of food, clothing and shelter: measures to maintain the morale of the D.Ps, to further their education and in general to assist with their rehabilitation and repatriation have repeatedly been suggested and warmly praised by Zone 203 H.Q.; some camps, owing to fortunate circumstances and the hard work of their teams have advanced particularly far in this direction.
For example one's educational responsibilities can be interpreted as meaning school for children between six and fourteen: on the other hand it may mean the vigorous attempt to provide all those youths capable of benefiting from it a training in some trade, such as carpentry, tailoring, cobbling etc. etc. and thus providing them with the opportunity of later supporting themselves and their families.
Equally one may rest satisfied when one has distributed such clothing & footwear as the UNRRA supply section sends one: alternatively one may energetically collect all kinds of salvage material from every source and make it into clothing for the D.Ps, as well as repairing and adapting as much as possible of the clothing already in their possession.
There are many other similar projects. None of them are possible without an increase of staff. If such work is undertaken but inadequately controlled it is worse than useless, as it only encourages abuses and black market.
More advanced camps are already finding difficulties in administration with the present minimum. This will increase as the quantity of cigarettes [used to pay staff] we receive decreases. Any further reduction would either involve cutting staff to an extent at which control would be inadequate, or the closing down of valuable activities.
This whole question is of great importance to Lienz camp, and if it is proposed to proceed with the reduction, I would be obliged if I could be given the opportunity of stating my point of view at greater length.
I return to my letter-diary:
20th July. I'm off today to Klagenfurt and Graz with the director on business. I'll get my first chance of visiting the students' camp in Graz, which I'm looking forward to.
27th July. We had poor weather on the way to Graz, but very fine on the way back. I was able to visit the 204 students' camp twice. It was very pleasant meeting so many old friends again. Many were still busy studying in the evening and there was an atmosphere of industry. The Austrian university professors have spoken highly of the standard of their work. Next day we paid an "official visit" to the camp. All the students from Lienz were there.
The Pernisek diary:
31st July. A time of intense and cruel pressure to return home begins. Our protectors know very well how we long to return, and our feelings towards communism which holds our enslaved homeland in its grip on the other hand. What they can't achieve by fair means, they may perhaps by foul!
Food rations have deteriorated drastically. The food is very poor: in the morning unsweetened black slush, presumably coffee, even for children. At midday watery soup with a few morsels of macaroni, beans or potato or meat fibres in it, the midday meal having 380 calories according to the official statement. For supper unsweetened blackish coffee again. The bread is very poor and is made from a mixture of grains. There's no fixed daily quantity, but one day a loaf between five people, the next between ten or even more. People are really hungry, especially those who don't earn any money because they can't work. If one can pay enough one gets bread, so now we know why there's such a shortage.
Things were never as bad when we were looked after by the military, when we got at least 850 calories a day. If UNRRA really wanted to help us, they could easily do so in spite of the equal treatment with the Austrians, which is a bluff as they're anyhow already helping them. Even during the worst times of the war we always had good and sufficient food; even when the railways were smashed to pieces and bridges down, food supplies functioned. This starving of the refugee serfs has a transparent design - to get as many people as possible to go home. They don't dare use forced repatriation, hence the ferocity towards helpless rightless people. We're very worried about this UNRRA policy aimed at getting as many as possible to go back and letting only 10% remain. People are desperate and so are returning, saying that if they have to die they prefer to die and be buried at home. The ordeal of our journey across the 205 post-war desert is hard!
Day after day we're disillusioned anew by the "allies". In place of compassion and respect for human rights we see the repulsive selfishness of petty tradesmen. They'd sell their own souls to the devil for profit, so why not their friends and allies? All the talk of humanitarian ideals is a cover-up for the most loathsome selfishness. And we risked our lives for these allies, lost everything we had and are now about to be robbed of our basic human rights. The young Englishman was right when he told me on the field at Viktring that when we were given the status of displaced persons, thenceforth we were DPs - people without any rights, people who can't demand anything but can only beg.
We're often overwhelmed by despair and doubts. Dear Lord, in the midst of all disappointments and disillusion help me to continue to trust in Your limitless love, faithfulness and justice. With Your grace prevent me from sinking into despair. I ask this not only for myself but for all my fellow Slovenes. I ask also that You don't count it as sin when I feel full of doubts and despair. I'm only a human being, judging and thinking in a human way. Have regard to my daily promise to strive to put my trust and reliance in You steadfastly and love You, in spite of the suffering and trials that almost overwhelm me. May the suffering of spirit and body not lead me into despair, but to consecration and reconciliation with You and Your Sacred Heart.
The Slovenes wrote to the camp director in July 1946:
The Social Committee of Slovene Migrants in Austria To: Group Captain Ryder Young
The Slovene refugees in Camp Peggez send you this petition asking you kindly to support and forward it to the UNRRA headquarters in Klagenfurt.
By the news we are getting from home we come to the conclusion that every day there is less possibility for most of us to return home soon. In spite of that, whoever can, should return home if only he has the moral guarantee that no misfortune would happen to him, that no danger to his life awaits him, that he will stay in freedom and that he will be able to work of his own free will and dispose of his 206 possessions. We are also of opinion that old people and such with ill health have nothing to fear in returning home. Even if the conditions at home will not be the best and much disagreeable things will happen, it will be the lesser evil, as the life of emigres also requires much patience, sacrifices and inner discipline.
At our meetings and councils we uttered these opinions often and advised everyone to decide for himself about returning home. No one is bound to our community, we will not dissuade or hinder any one. Who has decided by himself to go home, gets our best wishes for his welfare and our blessings. But as the number of those returning is very low in comparison with the number of refugees, it is possible that suspicion arises that the leaders of the Slovene nationality group make propaganda against returning. We can assure you there is no such propaganda from our side. But also there is no propaganda to return. The decision must be free, independent from any one. Everyone must after his own dispassionate and cool- headed reflection decide, weighing all circumstances.
Our refugees are disheartened by many letters they get from their own country. The tenor of all of them is the same: "do not go home - stay where you are and be patient. The circumstances are not such that you could return, on the contrary thousands would like to emigrate if they could. Here is no equality, but every non-communist is without rights, he has no possibility to exist, as his property is confiscated, he can not get decent work and he is arrested. To let go a good property is no great sacrifice today, as property values have no stability. Thousands at home are in daily peril that the authorities confiscate their property and so make them beggars overnight. That would not yet be the worst, if it would not be preceded by prison, degrading trials and judgement by the 'peoples' court' - and the sentence is forced labour for many years."
People who returned home from here write the same and repent this step as having been too early and not thoroughly reflected upon. This are letters written by simple people, who certainly are not guided by speculative political thoughts, but only by facts. These letters receive, on the main, also only simple people, small farmers and workers, which are the majority of our refugees. All such letters are 207 always at your disposal for inspection, so that you can convince yourself about the truth of our statement.
We think that emigration of the Slovene refugees is becoming every day more urgent. But we Slovenes have in this matter our own wishes, which we ask you kindly to support. All Slovene refugees living now in Austria and Italy wish to emigrate as a unit. Therefore we should not be torn asunder to many groups. On the contrary, we beg to be concentrated in purely Slovene camps and allowed to gather and to take counsel, so that we will be able to organise a joint emigration. The Anglo-American authorities ought to consider us as an ethnical group of emigres for which Dr. Miha Krek, former minister of the Jugoslav Royal Government in Belgrade and London, now Roma, Via Paganini 24/int.3, is the representative for all Slovenians in emigration. For those living in Austria we have the Social Committee of Slovene emigrants in Austria with the seat in Peggez-Lienz.
You, dear Sir, as well as your predecessors at your post, have had the best opportunity to become thoroughly acquainted with our good and bad sides. We hope that your opinion of the Slovene emigres is not such, that you could not support and explain this our petition at the superior department. Kindly allow us, dear Sir, to express also now and in this place our heartfelt gratitude and regard for you. Yours very faithfully
Pernisek Franc Secretary Skerbec Matija Chairman
Ryder Young forwarded their letter to the UNRRA Zone director in Klagenfurt with a covering letter I drafted for him:
Repatriation and Immigration.
The enclosed letter was handed to me by the secretary of Slovene Social Committee. As it gives a clear picture of the Slovenes' attitude to repatriation, I am sending you two copies, and would be glad if you would perhaps send one to Vienna.
So far as my own observations go, I would say that their remarks on repatriation propaganda are accurate: while propaganda hostile to repatriation undoubtedly occurs in this, as in every camp, I have no reason to believe that it is widespread or virulent, and I am 208 satisfied that responsible D.P. camp officials are conscientiously following the principle, that each individual should decide for himself, whether to return or not. *I enclose my more recent repatriation statistics. Ryder Young Director, Team 331 25th July 1946 REPATRIATION STATISTICS FOR UNRRA DP Center, LIENZ Slovenes to Yugoslavia children adults total Month 0-6 6-14 male female March - 6 5 25 36 April 3 6 22 46 77 May 3 6 24 23 56 June - 8 16 12 36 July - 3 12 18 33*
I now return to my letter-diary:
2nd August. Yesterday the director and I mixed business with pleasure very pleasantly. We had five or six packages to collect from a village just over the Italian border of clothes, books, ping-pong balls, lantern slides and projectors, etc, etc, for welfare for the camp children, which had been got near the frontier by Slovene priests and left with the local parish priest. It was up to us to do the rest.
Monday, 5th August. The C-in-C has come and been and a good time was had by all. Everything went off gratifyingly smoothly, and Lieut. General Sir James Steele expressed himself pleased with the camp and his reception. As soon as we had been introduced and moved off to tour the camp I gravitated towards the only member of the party in civilian clothes, who turned out to be an observer from the Foreign Office sent, as he said, "by Bevin to report on the refugee position in Austria". He was youngish, pleasant and obviously alert and intelligent. We soon got left behind with me trying to tell him in five minutes what would have needed two hours - the people's attitude to repatriation, migration etc, etc. He had to leave after about twenty minutes but said he'd be interested to see a sketch of the position in writing. I intend to take him at his word and send him a report - it might do some good and at the worst he can light his pipe with it!
Colonel Hall, the 2nd i/c for the DP Section of Military Government Austria, was also in the party. I think I've already mentioned he takes a fatherly interest 209 in me. He was the MG officer concerned with the opening of the students' camp in Graz and I've seen him several times since then. After seeing the most interesting parts of the camp and a small display by the boy scouts, we came back for tea and then went down by jeep to the station to see them off.
The civilian whose ear I so eagerly bent was M.F. (later Sir Michael) Cullis, then head of the Foreign Office's Austrian Section. Years later he gave me a copy of the 19-page "Report on Visit to Displaced Persons Camps in British Zone of Austria" he prepared for Mr Bevin137, in which he described the week-end of 3-6 August he spent on a tour of four camps with the Commander-in-Chief, General Steele, and the Deputy Director of the PW and DP Division, Colonel Hall, referring to the latter as being exceptionally helpful. He started with the subject of Jewish refugees, who were "by far the most difficult and troublesome group of DPs inside camps in Styria (Steiermark)". When I worked with them a few months later I found them amenable and cooperative with a camp staff that listened to them with understanding rather than adopting a rigidly authoritarian approach. He went on to discuss the problem of "some Poles and Ukrainians" who were terrorising the countryside, and then commented on the refugees in the second camp they visited:
They were fairly dejected at their lot, and most had no idea of what their future would be. Some nursed rosy ideas about eventually emigrating to America - ideas which I did my best to pour cold water on whenever possible. Their main preoccupation was that they should not be sent back to the countries or conditions from which they had fled. They were also, if less emphatically, opposed to remaining permanently in Austria, where they believed the local population would always be hostile and they would have little chance of becoming assimilated and starting a new life.
We drove in the afternoon to Lienz to inspect the UNRRA camp there. The camp .. has the advantage of better and more substantial buildings than any of the three MG camps we had seen during the morning. Altogether things were on a somewhat grander scale and one seemed to meet many more administrative personnel than the very limited members running our own camps. It has a population of just over 3,000, consisting mainly of Yugoslav nationals, and the divisions of
137. F.O. reference Number 010370 of 30 August 1946. 210 the camp between Slovenes, Croats and Serbs seemed fairly rigid. I do not think any such efforts had been made to observe national distinctions in the other camps we had seen .. . The fact that it had been adjudged necessary at Lienz was striking evidence of the lack of sympathy existing between the constituent nationalities of Yugoslavia whom even their recent misfortunes do not seem to have brought together into anything like harmony.
General Steele had a more organised reception in this camp than in the others, and everything was clearly looking at its best. Nevertheless it was evident that it was an extremely well-run camp, and one could not fail to be impressed by such features as the hospital wards and the school rooms. I was also encouraged by what one of the officers told me regarding the prospects of settlement for at least part of the population. He said that negotiations were quite far advanced with one or two South American countries - where there are apparently already appreciable Slovene immigrant communities - for the settlement of several thousands of the Slovene DPs. These negotiations were being carried on through Dr Krek of the Slovene Committee in Rome. I was promised further and more specific information on the subject if I wanted it.
This brought my visit, somewhat abruptly, to an end. I had seen enough however of camps which I presume to be representative at least of those in the British Zone for certain conclusions to emerge, although I cannot claim to be nearer to seeing a solution of the problem: indeed, just as the problem itself had been created by external circumstances, so a real solution can likewise only come from outside. This is not to deny that the problem is, intrinsically, a real and difficult one. But - so far at any rate as the British Zone is concerned - it would not be of major importance but for the external pressure that has rendered it so.
First-hand experience resulted in any case in two clear impressions. One, that there is no single, straight- forward solution to the problem that can really be regarded as satisfactory. Secondly, that, whatever its political and economic aspects, the problem is essentially a human one, and demands a human solution. This latter fact has nevertheless political bearings. Thanks to the good treatment 211 they have received at our hands, these DPs form a potentially pro-British and pro-Western element.
Quite apart from humanitarian considerations, which in this case seem to me strong, I venture to suggest that we should not readily abandon these people to their fate in return for hypothetical political advantages. For this reason, and because the Austrian Government, if they were left in sole charge, could hardly be trusted not to yield to outside pressure and hand the dissidents over to the claimant countries, we should continue - as we are authorised to do under the new Control Agreement, and as I believe we intend doing -to retain responsibility for all DPs in our Zone, so long as we are in Austria. ..
It cannot be said that the prospects of settling any appreciable number of DPs in Austria itself - except perhaps for some of the Germans - are even as encouraging as one had hoped, if, that is to say, any weight is to be given to the wishes of either the DPs themselves or the Austrian population. For the majority of them, an ultimate home will have to be found elsewhere. But there is no magic wand that can be waved, and I understand that facilities are unlikely to be offered on a suitable scale by any of the American countries, or the British Dominions. In any case if, as seems agreed, we are to take seriously the fact that the Soviet have made the presence of these DPs in Austria a pretext for refusing to consider an Austrian Treaty, some steps have presumably got to be taken soon, without waiting for the normal machinery for emigration to function in regard to all these countries.
Thus, while we should continue to encourage genuine voluntary repatriation wherever this is possible, and should also not neglect any openings there may be in Western European countries, it does look as though the proposal to send the bulk of them to the Western Zones of Germany constitutes the only practicable step at the present time. I would add only one qualification. I believe that we ought to do what we can to keep these communities together, and should abandon the idea of dispersing them amongst an alien and probably unsympathetic population. This would apply whether they are moved abroad in large groups or small. It is one of the chief and most natural preoccupations of the DPs themselves, so far as one 212 can gather, and I cannot see that their satisfactory re-settlement in countries far removed from those of their origin would be feasible on any other basis.
The Cullis report could not have been more helpful to the Slovenes, *urging as it did that "we should not readily abandon these people to their fate", emphasising that only genuine voluntary repatriation should be encouraged, recording the possibility of Slovene emigration to "one or two South American countries" and recommending that they should be kept together as communities - "one of the chief and most natural preoccupations of the DPs themselves".* The Slovenes, by sharing their fears and aspirations with me over the months, had "empowered themselves" through me when I grasped the opportunity and bent the ear of the civilian in the Commander- in-Chief's party. I followed this up with a report138 putting the case for the Slovenes in more detail, though not until the following March. Its arrival was timely: just before Cullis departed for inter-governmental negotiations in Moscow, at which refugees were on the agenda.
Two years later the Slovenes gave their own account of the negotiation of their own emigration, an outstandingly successful exercise in self-help and a classic example of refugee "self-empowerment". I reproduce a shortened version of the article which appeared in the first Almanac they published after their arrival in Argentina:
The Slovene Social Committee paved the way for our emigration139
The agonizing days that followed the Viktring tragedy left our people ready to go anywhere, to any peaceful spot under God's sun. Our eyes were all turned towards Rome and Dr Krek, who was already devoting his time to planning, conferring, searching for contacts, lobbying and sending out letters in every direction. He was convinced we had to find a new homeland for our people where they could earn an existence through the work of their own hands and live in peace, if possible staying together so as to preserve their way of life towards the day they returned home.
He endlessly scanned the atlas, collected intelligence and explored the situation in: Australia - Australian bishops in Rome promised to do everything to enable
138. See page 00. 139. article signed D.R.F. in Koledar Svobodne Slovenije 1949 (Buenos Aires, 1949) pp.162-165 213 us to emigrate to Australia, but the problem of transport arose, and having got nowhere after three whole years the situation was now urgent: South Africa - a rich and cultured country, but only willing to accept skilled personnel: France - not willing to consider receiving a single refugee in spite of empty and unpopulated areas in its south: Ecuador - an obviously rich country, but culturally and economically underdeveloped and unable to offer people anything other than uncultivated land. How would people live for the first months, before the fields were tilled for the first time? Peru - no one showing any interest in emigration, the same applying to Brazil. Venezuela - prepared to accept refugees but would send them to climatically difficult regions and pay them poorly. There remained only Argentina, which of all countries was most ready to receive refugees, under-stood their situation and offered the best conditions.
We had already for some decades had a number of our people in Argentina (specially from Primorska and Prekmurje140), including a tireless idealist, Mr. Janez Hladnik. Minister Krek appealed to him and he took up our case with such wholehearted enthusiasm that by November 1946 General Peron had received him and agreed to take 10,000 Slovene refugees with families and children. This was our salvation!
Mr. Joze Kosicek at once visited all the camps in Italy where we had people, on behalf of the Slovene Social Committee (SSC) in Rome of which he was the secretary, and explained the situation and suggested they should apply for Argentina. The response was unexpected with over 95% applying, and a special emigration committee within the SSC was set up in Rome to be responsible for detailed organisation: to collect emigration applications, compile a card index of all refugees (we were the only nation in exile to have a complete card index of all its people!), provide everyone with movement permits and passports, negotiate visa issue procedures with the Argentinean consulates, cut down the consulates' document requirements to a minimum (they always demanded the least documentation from us!) and finally supply everyone with the wherewithal to travel overseas.
140. Two regions of Slovenia, the first on the south coast, adjacent to Italy, the second in the extreme north-east, squeezed between Austria and Hungary. 214
These tasks were not easy for refugees without rights, legal representation, friends in the world or enough money, although we did have Dr Krek, former ambassador with the Allied Commission for Italy, intervening on our behalf whenever necessary.
Mr. Hladnik persuaded the Direccion de Migraciones141 to recognise the Slovene Emigration Committee in Rome as the sole authority through which our refugees could obtain travel permits, and a special subcommittee under his chairmanship was set up in Buenos Aires to settle all procedures there and make the necessary representations. Finally the first list of 500 Slovene refugees was certified on 6 February 1947, soon to be followed by others.
The consuls could not reconcile themselves to almost all our refugees being without any personal documents, and we for our part would never have been able to produce the documentation they required, so it was essential to reduce the requirements. We were in fact the first to be granted group movement permits and thus everywhere we had to break fresh ground. Eventually Mr. Krek's diplomacy succeeded in persuading the consular department to reduce the number of documents required from eight to three and to recognise the International Red Cross passport. Other national groups did not have the same difficulties because Krek, in his fight for our refugees, opened up the route for them.
When the issue of visas was sorted out - the consular department did not want to issue more than five a day - the ice had to be broken with the IGCR142, as it had a representative of Tito among its members and did not want to listen when asked to finance the transport of the refugees across the ocean. Its first priority was forcing people home, as it was later for UNRRA and the PCIRO143, their slogan being repatriation at all costs. Our refugees in the camps had suffered heavily under that slogan and the inhumanity of the staff of those organisations.
141. Directorate of Migration 142. Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees (1938-47) which was succeeded by UNRRA (1943-47) 143. Preparatory Commission for the International Refugee Organization, (1947) succeeded by the IRO itself (1947-51) 215 IGCR, UNRRA and later PCIRO sent commissions to the camps, which interrogated everyone individually, trying to persuade them to return home and searching for "criminals". The methods they used made our people feel they were appearing before a criminal court and being condemned only because they had recognised the evil of the communist beasts too soon.
I return to my letter-diary:
11th August. This morning I bathed at Tristachersee, the lake half an hour's walk from the camp in the hills, pleasantly warm and very nice. Our students from Graz University are on holiday now and the scouts among them are camping by the lake in the woods. I bathed with the leader of the students from this camp144 and heard all their news.
26th August. The director and I went down to Klagenfurt about a Soviet Mission that is visiting the camp. They wanted to have access to DP records we didn't consider they had any right to see. The DPs are terrified that (a) they will be sent home (b) reprisals will be taken against their relatives still in Russia. We had a long session with Colonel Hall and came to a satisfactory compromise.
144. Joze Jancar 216
C H A P T E R 9
4 September - 31 December 1946
Things are going well for the Slovenes when tragedy strikes with the sudden death of their beloved protector, the camp director, Group Captain Ryder Young. He is succeeded by a pale shadow in the form of the deskbound Wing Commander Chalmers. My diary explores an unattractive feature of refugee camps, the mutual jealousies, suspicions and mistrust that fester between individuals.
Pernisek celebrates the loving care the refugees lavish on their church and the consolation they draw from its services, and bemoans the debilitating starvation from which they are suffering more and more severely. I complain of UNRRA bureaucracy and inefficiency, and we both express our anger at UNRRA's choice of a bitterly cold November to close Lienz camp and transfer the Slovenes to the worse housed and equipped and more overcrowded camp at Spittal, which does however have the advantage of being closer to UNRRA's regional HQ in Klagenfurt and so reduces lines of communication. Pernisek describes the first days in the new camp while I report my transfer to the other end of Austria, away from the Slovenes.
217 My letter-diary:
4th September. We've had a tragedy here and a terrible loss to the team. Last Saturday the director had a serious crash driving his jeep and died in hospital next day. The DPs in the camp were very deeply and sincerely distressed by his death, as he had worked wholeheartedly for and was much loved by them. In the months he was here I got to know the him very closely. The relationship between us was peculiarly close, with him a senior RAF officer of 32 years in the service and me a very youthful and junior camp worker. From the start he recognised my adequate experience in camp administration and specialised knowledge of the subject, and time and again would change a decision he'd made if he saw I was unhappy about it. I was continually amazed at the readiness with which he'd take advice from his juniors; at the same time he held very decided views and had strong principles.
Being in charge of admin I inevitably came much more regularly in contact with him than anyone else in the team and he took me almost unreservedly in his confidence on every subject, including personal team problems. One failing of his was a somewhat hasty temper and very forthright manner, and the humorous situation often arose of the youthful John counselling a less fiery letter to HQ (and he did send some snorters!) or pressing for a less extreme form of action in the camp.
Director Bajuk added a paragraph to the end of his profile of Ryder Young:
Young died but Dr Mersol survived with bad concussion and shock and minor injuries. They were kindred spirits who came together for our benefit: people called them two parsleys - because parsley goes well in any dish. He is buried in Klagenfurt. I couldn't go to his funeral. I was too upset. So I sent a deputy instead, and we gave him a wreath with a message. After his death I wrote to his sister, who lived in Klagenfurt, to express my condolences. She thanked me warmly and added, "my brother wrote to me almost daily, and every letter he reported the good things he was able to do for the Slovenes that day. If he didn't have any such news to report, he always added, 'Today the Slovenes didn't get anything from me or from elsewhere by my intercession'". 218
My letter-diary:
10th September. Sunday was nice and fine and I went for a walk in the hills in the morning, meeting two Russians from our camp with whom I walked and chatted for an hour and a half in English, which one of them spoke - she used to attend my English class. I do admire the courage of these people. The women had left the camp at six in the morning and didn't get back till ten in the evening. The English-speaking one had been living since May 1945 on a very low diet. Her companion was going for a day's mountain hike wearing our camp slippers145 made of scrap salvage material and canvas soles!
We're using a lot of salvage material in small pieces now, which uses a lot of cotton. I'm sorry to trouble you further, but cotton does mean so much to the refugees - warmth, dryness and comfort, as without it they can neither alter nor mend their own clothes or make new clothes.
28th September. I don't know if I told you the new director has arrived: a Wing Commander with thirty years service in the RAF on the administration side, a pleasant and friendly man but much more limited and less imaginative than the Group Captain. He's worked so long at HQs, in the RAF and UNRRA, that he's completely developed the HQ point of view and looks on himself more as a man sent to carry out HQ policy than as a director responsible for the wellbeing of the camp inmates. He has a distressingly red tape and legalistic mind and thinks he knows considerably more than he does. But he's settling down reasonably well and may mellow. It's wearying having to tame him!
His reverence for the instructions and "policy" of HQ wouldn't be quite such a drawback if it weren't for the fact that HQ is so phenomenally ill-informed about conditions in camps, so ignorant about the elements of camp administration and so complacent in their ignorance! There are two, perhaps three, conscientious, intelligent and efficient officers at HQ (they happen to be English!) but they unfortunately don't have a say in the more important decisions, but as for the rest ... !
145. produced in the camp workshops 219
One of the depressing effects of continued camp life on refugees is that personal relationships become very strained and they become ultra-sensitive and suspicious of their neighbours and colleagues. They are continually overcome by jealousies, scandal- mongering and mistrusts. Administratively these animosities have their advantages, as if there are two DPs in the same department hostile to each other you don't have to check them so carefully and continuously, because if one was guilty of some act of favouritism, oppression or dishonesty his suspicious colleague would lose no time in letting one know! But it also has its more trying side. One has to be very guarded and careful in one's remarks, and sometimes you'll find me acting as a glorified father confessor to a man twice my age, trying to persuade him that so-and-so is not such a bad fellow after all, and probably is not in fact intriguing against him.
8th October. Those stockings you sent me as packing for the chocolate and said you thought might do as rags if they were too bad to repair, delighted my female office staff, amongst whom I distributed them. There were thirteen pairs, and I distributed them among nine interpreters, clerks and typists. When I asked if they could repair them, they laughed and said they were in much better condition than the ones they were using up till now: they will be their best stockings! That black material you sent was much appreciated too.
The new director is very friendly and pleasant, but rather an old woman and a quibbler. He takes ten minutes to take a decision that only needs thirty seconds, insists on unnecessary letters and generally wastes my precious time in a most exasperating way! I call it precious because I'm doing two full-time jobs and am responsible for a good third of the camp activities. He has plenty he should be doing, but hasn't the imagination to see what is necessary and so sits too long in his office worrying about footling points and asking my views on trifling questions. It's impossible to make him grasp that while he may be able to spend a quarter of an hour on an unimportant point I've got to deal with six or seven people in that time. It needs self-control at times to avoid being too frank!
220 Thank goodness I've got a first-class team in the most important jobs in the offices that come under me, having robbed every other department in the camp without conscience! It's nice being able to help them occasionally, as with the stockings and the razor blades, for which they were most grateful. I drive them hard at times and demand a high standard, but when they see I'm interested in their welfare they work any hours. Most of them have a real pride in their work, which makes all the difference. The ex-bank clerk146 who runs the filing office and does all the correspondence for the director and me is particularly nice and reliable and saves me a lot of routine work through a judicious use of the rubber stamp facsimile signature I got made in Oxford.
The Pernisek diary:
13th October. * Today is Harvest Festival Sunday. At home this was a joyful festival of thanks to the Good Lord for all the graces we received on each visit to his temple. Today God's hut is especially dear to me; only here do I find peace and solace for my bewildered soul in speaking with an all-bountiful God. When attacked by doubts and anxiety and feeling all but wholly crushed, this simple wooden church is my place of consolation.
How poor-looking is this church of ours! A barrack built of rough planks with rickety walls and ill-fitting windows, it has no magnificent artistic altar, only candlesticks and votive lamps beaten out of tin cans by refugee hands. Somebody picked up from a pile of rubbish some glass chandeliers, cleaned and mended them and now they serve their old purpose well; a refugee, self-taught but artistically gifted, painted a copy of Our Lady Help of Christians of Brezje. Each item is witness to the utter poverty of the refugees and their love for God's house. The sacred vessels were bought with their last pennies.
And our bell tower! Till not so long ago people who found concentration camp life intolerable and tried to escape were shot at from it, often fatally. Now three times daily, its bells are tolled. They have a lovely sound, but are just lengths of railway lines! Certainly the local people have never heard such harmonious and solemn peals before. We are bound to
146. Mr. Sfiligoi. 221 this humble church by all the fibres of our hearts and today especially we are grateful to God for it. Only in this wooden place lives a heart which truly loves, understands and helps us. Within this beggarly poor wooden place lives Jesus, our only true friend and ally. All the rest is hypocrisy and deceitful selfishness.*
16th October. * Today we start four weeks of harsh starvation when we'll only get 50 grams of bread a day. So far we've received very scant food, but from now on it'll be even worse; in the morning unsweetened black coffee, at midday a soup mainly of dried vegetables - recently cabbage and spinach, both from left-over German army stores. For supper again black unsweetened coffee. It's impossible to live or work on such rations and I can't understand this planned starvation of the Austrians and us. According to news from relatives in Yugoslavia the country has recovered a lot already and life is reasonable from the economic point of view, yet UNRRA keeps on sending food there: while it gives no food to Austria, which doesn't have a lot of agricultural land and is starving.
I can't believe there's a great shortage of food in the world: I read in the newspapers that last year and this year there were good harvests globally. They're forecasting severe famine all the same. The newspapers aren't consistent. One day they say famine in Europe is conquered, the next day that the severest famine is still to come. My aunt in Canada wrote they cannot get wheat flour, and sugar is rationed. What does it all mean? Is it really true there isn't enough food, or is it only economic blackmail to achieve some political and other concessions? I think a situation like this can't last too long. People can bear a lot of things, but not systematic starvation.*
Last night I heard that Ludvik Pus is in prison. One after another our first class and influential people are making the pilgrimage to gaol; so far they are picking up only those living outside camps. Father Basaj147 has been in prison in Klagenfurt since the 6th September and is in great danger of being handed back: engineer Remec148 has been there since the 7th
147. See page 00. 148. Father of Peter Remec, who later married Marija Vracko. 222 September, and Bishop Rozman149 is in great danger of being shut up. We are indeed people without rights, as good Mr. Corsellis told me frankly. They don't recognise even our human rights; if they say they do in words, they deny it in their actions. We feel like hunted wild animals, with death incessantly lying in wait for us. The communist regime grows more firmly entrenched every day, and the door for our return is closed ever more tightly and everything indicates it'll never again be opened. Of course the prison doors are open to us at home day and night!
My letter-diary:
17th October. Many thanks for your letters and cards. Your last letter was over half full of "business" you had done for me. You can't imagine what a help it is. Some three thousand people are substantially better clothed here than they would have been without us, and if we had not done it I am satisfied that, so far as this camp is concerned, no one would have.
When our present director arrived I stressed to him the urgent need for cotton, and he said he would write to a friend who had contacts on the wholesale cotton trade. The friend has now written back that export permits made it too difficult to arrange. The director has thereupon apparently lost interest. Meanwhile people in the camp are being clothed by our less ambitious but laborious and steady system! A few days ago I sold the razor blades to seventeen members of the office staff who come more directly under me, and at the same time let the nine women staff have a small slice of soap that I'd saved from the generous NAAFI soap ration. Were they pleased!
The "case history" I enclose was prepared because UNRRA has opened a special small children's camp for "unaccompanied children". The real idea is that those children whose parents or closest relatives are in Yugoslavia should be sent to the camp, where they should wait until the parents can be contacted and their agreement obtained for them to be sent home. The idea is very good but the man at HQ responsible for the scheme is a careerist American without the slightest interest in the children's welfare, who is only out to get impressive "results". So he has said
See pages 00 and 00. 149. See pages 00 and 00. 223 that all "unaccompanied children" must be transferred to this camp, defined by him as any child that has neither father nor mother in the camp.
The ridiculous result has been that orphans living for years with sisters or aunts are now being separated from them and sent to a special camp. You can imagine the effect on already nervous people. If anyone had told me the story I wouldn't have believed it could be true. In one case a 16 year old foundling, who had been looked after eight years by one family, has been parted from them! This gives you some idea what kind of an HQ one has to deal with. Any results we get in the camp are in spite of HQ! Ryder Young would never have allowed this case to happen, but would have fought it in Klagenfurt and Vienna. But the present director hasn't got much stuffing and has an overpowering respect for "official channels", however much he may grumble at times!
So much for UNRRA! I'm naturally doing all I can to put the matter right, but when one can't expect any help from one's director one's hands are naturally somewhat tied. Mr. Mzyk, our welfare officer whose job I'm doing while he's absent on special duty, visited the camp last weekend and I told him the whole story and armed him with detailed lists and notes. He's going to Vienna next week and I hope he'll be able to see the welfare chief there who is quite human, and she may clean up the whole matter. Meanwhile the DPs can suffer, and does UNRRA care? I can fully understand the army being incompetent in DP matters as they make no pretence at being experts, but I cannot stand the smug and self-satisfied blunderings of these highly-paid UNRRA specialists. There are many excellent people in UNRRA but unfortunately it's the lazy, the fools and the careerists who occupy most of the key posts. So that's a bit off my chest!
The Pernisek diary: 24th October. In Tristach the girls are dressing the flax. I watch them from a distance and don't dare go close, as flax-dressers are always up to tricks. I feel as if I'm at home; here in the Tyrol they're just as cheeky, insatiable gossips always taunting men, but they don't sing. When Dr. Jagodic, the Papal Delegate, and Monsignor Skrbec went too close they caught them and wrapped them in flax; but they 224 didn't fill their trouser pockets with wood splinters or paint them with soot. All the same they were caught and had to pay ransom. And lo and behold! they didn't have even a penny in their pockets, and you're for it if you can't pay the flax-dressers! We don't know how they escaped: they wouldn't tell us.
25th October. The news has hit us like a bolt from the blue: by the end of November the camp has to be cleared and we'll be moved. The Russians will be sent to St. Martin, the expellees to Treffling and the rest to Spittal and Bistrico. Today they took Dr. Blatnik and Janko Mernik150 off to prison.
Sunday 27th October. The feast of Christ the King. Today it snowed, the first snow of autumn. In the morning we had a beautiful Solemn Mass. The choral recital composed by the parish priest Gregor Mali was particularly successful, and France Kremzar delivered a fine and uplifting sermon to a packed congregation. In the evening the people really enjoyed Mr. Vomberger's comedy. It was good to break the circle of these worrying days and make people laugh and forget their troubles at least for a while.
1st November 1946. The Feast of All Saints. God has once again handled us roughly, moving us into worse conditions from all points of view. First Friday of the month - a new trial, a new cross: this is a recurring pattern in our lives as refugees, and we dread these days of trials. How long, Lord, will you keep choosing your feastdays for fresh tribulations?
The weather is grey, mist covers the valley and it drizzles all day. My thoughts are at home. Father is alone in the cemetery of St. Peter in Radece and there's no one to light a candle on his grave. Mother wrote she won't visit it until I return home, so I don't know if she'll ever see it again. Joze, unhappy brother, where do you sleep your eternal sleep? Is your grave in Sava's cold waters or do you await the day of resurrection in our beautiful but blood-soaked Slovene soil? Today my heart feels a profound grief but you have already passed through your own suffering. God knows what's awaiting us, what dreadful trials and suffering He is preparing for us. Fear of the unknown future is worse than death itself.
150. Salesian priest and youth worker 225
I look for consolation in prayer for you, dear martyred brother, and prayer for myself; I can't light a candle for you, I have none and nowhere to get one from. I lit many "lights" before the Sacred Heart of Jesus asking him to have mercy on you if you still need it. I'll pray a lot for you and for our father during these days. He was taken by the first world war, you by the second, the last worse than the first. This year the "field of exiles" here in Lienz has also received forty of our people into its bosom, half children. May God have mercy on them all!
11th November. They are clearing the camp stores and giving out all the clothing to the people, and a real war has started for these old pieces of cloth. They're not bad: on the contrary, most - especially those for women - are very nice and well preserved. There's no logic in the distribution, only greed and envy. Everyone wants as much as possible and grudges his neighbour the merest rag. The women are made ill by these pieces of cloth. Those who already have enough want even more, saying, "I don't really need more, but if others are getting more, why shouldn't I?" and "the gentry and the chosen few will get the best, and only the worst pieces will be left for us".
Most people would like to grab as much as possible, but those who really have nothing are quiet and calm. There's no difference in greed and envy between the country people and the intelligentsia; if anything the latter are worse. Greed and envy assumes other forms such as: everyone would like to claim a position of as much authority as possible so that he can accuse of selfishness those who really do exercise responsibility, blame them for unfairness, proclaim their complete unfitness. Those who take most pains are attacked most. Surely the best respected people in the camp are those models of altruism and self-sacrifice Dr. Valentin Mersol and his wife. They both dress very simply, as do their children, yet even they are slandered by the people.
No wonder many capable men willing to serve in the camp don't take up positions of responsibility, but would rather preserve their peace and good names. Naturally if they're not willing to offer themselves as victims then the black marketeers, profiteers and self-styled "men of honour" take over and come to the surface. Moses, you really were a great man to lead 226 and subdue such a rabble for forty years! But what can we do? It's all a matter of "camp psychology"!
I can't say everyone is as greedy as that: it's only a minority, but they're so aggressive and irrepressible they upset the whole camp. Eventually the ill-humour they spread seeps into the crowd and there's no peace. Reasonable people are unable to stop the unrest. In July a highly educated man filed a complaint against the camp committee about the distribution of clothes and shoes, and there was unrest for three months. He went on spreading slander even after the matter was settled, so that it went to higher authority in Klagenfurt, and as a result we Slovenes were all smeared, and the priests in particular. They actually were the only people who had nothing to do with it. The same greed which was the driving force behind the communist revolution is the force behind various shadowy characters here.
My letter-diary:
10th November. Today is Monday. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday we're sending our 2,000 Yugoslavs by train to a camp three hours' journey away. The organisational side of the transfer is exacting and the director is excelling himself in stupidity. He is an ex-Wing Commander of the RAF with over 30 years service, knows virtually nothing of refugee work, treats the refugees as if they were raw recruits and is surprised when they don't respond well to such treatment.
Up till now he hasn't done too much damage as the team (a charming Belgian messing officer, a Canadian supply officer who is very intelligent and humane and with whom I get on very well although we have little in common except our views on the director and our interest in the DPs, and a Dutch nurse who doesn't count!) got to know his ways in the first fortnight and realised the way to deal with him was to refer to him as many trivial and unimportant things as possible so as to keep him busy and out of mischief on matters on which it didn't much matter if he made a silly decision, but avoid so far as possible mentioning to him any points of real importance. If one had to mention an important matter, the technique was to do so that the real point at issue would appear to be already decided, while he was left to decide a minor side issue. This worked excellently, 227 particularly as half his energies were directed to keeping contact, visiting and arranging visits from his Danish girlfriend, who was working in UNRRA HQ Vienna.
The DPs are being transported with all luggage, furniture, stoves, beds etc., 700 at a time, in twenty covered and twenty open goods wagons on three consecutive days and will arrive at the other camp in the dark. There is a 50% chance at least that it will rain or snow and we will have little over six hours each day to load the train, which will be no small feat, demanding careful organisation and all our transport resources.
We were just getting everything nicely arranged when our bright director has to go down to another camp that is taking 200 of our DPs and arrange to send down a proportion of them by truck on the middle day, when the big move takes place. Not only could this matter be left over easily till next week, but it will mean two of our ten big trucks on the day when all our trucks will be most urgently needed. He has also made a second quite unnecessary alteration in the plans too complex to describe here, the result of which will be to put an intolerable strain on our transport and turn what could be a comparatively smooth and efficient operation into probable chaos.
One feels like expressing one's own opinion gently but clearly, declaring that one considers his plan mistaken, but he is the director and of course if he wishes to take the matter out of one's hands he is free to do so, but in that case one cannot oneself be expected to take any responsibility for the operation, and then simply ask for detailed instructions, carry them out implicitly and watch the resultant chaos that should serve to shake his staggering complacency.
I'd like to do that, but unfortunately he'd be the last person to suffer, and the people who would suffer would be the unfortunate DPs. If UNRRA or the army makes a blunder, as they frequently do, the only people to suffer seriously are the DPs. So tomorrow will be another day of tact and diplomacy, trying to salvage what is possible from our old plan and so to word compromise suggestions that it will seem that it was the director's idea the whole time. Thank goodness I work well together with the supply and 228 messing officers and have a first class refugee staff. It certainly is wearing having to keep one's temper and be tactful with a difficult and incompetent man in charge: the play acting and insincerity and deceit are so distasteful, but unfortunately so necessary.
I expect you think I take the whole matter too seriously! A mood of exasperation like this does not last long and I can always escape in a good novel. But the good planning of a move like this will mean a lot to these 2,000 wretches - it is anyhow criminal to move them in November, and the least we can do is try to avoid as much suffering as possible. If properly packed, there will be room in the wagons for all the little furniture they have, but if loading is done in a hurry the family may have to leave behind the one small cupboard they have had up till now.
I've received a grand supply of cotton during the last two weeks, and at last managed to achieve a reserve large enough to justify issuing 100 yards per child to every family with two or more children - you can imagine how far 100 yards of cotton goes for a growing child always tearing his clothes or growing out of them, but this is the first issue they've had all the eighteen months they've been away from home. Cotton on the black market is rare, and prohibitive in price for 90% of DP families.
The Pernisek diary:
14th November. We're moving today. We had to empty and leave the barracks by 11 and then wait on the lawn outside the barrack till 4, the women and children suffering greatly from the cold. At around 4.30 we were loaded into railway goods wagons after which we were taken to Lienz and then left around 6. I'll miss Lienz: it's a friendly place with good people and the camp was well organised with comfortable rooms. We'll not have such rooms anywhere ever again! We reached Spittal at about 8 in the evening, and luckily found all our luggage quickly and lost nothing except the planks for one bed.
15th November. We're fixing up our living quarters. For the time being we're crammed ten to a room and it's difficult to put things in order in such a crush. I'm walking by the railway line; luggage and furniture are scattered around in all directions. To 229 find one's belongings one has to rummage and search everywhere. We won't be looking for our own bones at the day of judgement as eagerly as we're searching today. It'll be difficult to adapt ourselves to the new circumstances, but we'll have to get used to it.
My letter-diary:
19th November. I'm in Lienz and expect to be here until early in December: there is still a lot of work to do closing down the camp. All the Yugoslavs have gone except office staff and essential workers, and we are now starting on the Russian "old emigres". The Yugoslavs were sent by cattle truck on three successive days, and thank goodness the weather was reasonably good and the movement went off quite smoothly.
Office and loading staff worked incredibly hard: I was particularly pleased with "my" office staff who worked on exacting tasks till midnight and after for days at a time, and then volunteered to accompany the train to the other camp to make the organisation smoother, and returned the same night here to work further. I doubt if I'll ever again find such people to work with, so willing and uncomplaining, although they have plenty to complain about. Unfortunately conditions in the camp they are being transferred to are much worse than here, where they have the "luxury" of closets and washrooms in the hut in which they live, while at the other camp there is quite a walk to the nearest lavatory or water point.
The Pernisek diary:
22nd November. Mr. France Kremzar, Professor Janez Sever and I called on the camp director151 today and thanked him for the friendly way the Lienz people were received and all the help and understanding shown us by him and his immediate staff. He was taken by surprise by our visit, thanked us for it and promised his continued support. At the same time he took advantage of the opportunity to express some of his own particular wishes.
First, he said he wasn't referring to people of any specific nationality, but to the unsatisfactory
151. The former Australian politician and UNRRA director Major M.L.F.Jarvie. 230 conditions that prevail in today's world; in these circumstances it was necessary for all DPs to abstain from any kind of political activity or criticism of the situation in whatever country. If people are found engaging in such activities he won't be able to help them further. He was a politician himself and knew how dirty politics were, so it was appropriate for DPs to abstain from them.
His second explicit request concerned repatriation. He asked that no one should harass or show resentment towards those who had decided to return home. Let everyone be free to come to their own decision. Mr. Kremzar answered that we were well aware we were refugees, dependent on the goodwill of others and it was totally inappropriate for us to meddle in political activities. He therefore promised we'd abstain from anything which might disturb our relationship with the camp authorities and UNRRA in general; and we'd do our best to integrate with the existing community. The director shook us warmly by the hand and wished us a pleasant stay here.
The food is poor here as well: this morning unsweetened black coffee with a little bread of very poor quality. Just at this moment a scandal has been uncovered, it being alleged the bakers have been mixing even glass in the flour. The police are investigating. At midday we get a thick soup which is appetizing but thin and the portions are small. We get the same in the evening. There are no special supplements and they don't issue any tinned food here.
So the Slovenes from Lienz had to adjust from their life in the model camp they had built up over 18 months to the unexpected role of poor relations to their fellow Slovenes in Spittal. There had been friction between the two camps for some time. This was partly because the Slovenes themselves had decided in June 1945 that people who already knew each other should when possible stick together, so that those from Dolenjska and Notranjska, the regions south of Ljubljana, all went together to Spittal camp, while those from Gorenjska, the region north west of Ljubljana, and from the capital itself went to Lienz. In addition Lienz, as the largest camp, was considered from the start as the central or principal Slovene camp. So the Slovenes' pride and joy, the grammar school, went there together with a high proportion of the intelligentsia, the kind of people to continue and develop the community's newspapers and other publishing; and also the Slovene Social Committee, 231 their government-in-exile and generally recognised spokesmen for the whole of the Slovene political emigration in Austria.
Not surprisingly, this led to a growing feeling of resentment and jealousy towards the, in their view, underprivileged residents of Spittal to their lordships in Lienz. Director Bajuk is as usual forthright in his highly charged and subjective account, writing in his memoirs:
When we got the official announcement about the move I was anxious about how the grammar school would manage in the new circumstances. I went at once to Spittal to get my bearings and introduce myself to the new commandant. I first went to see "head and professor" Fr. Novak [the Slovene in charge of schools in Spittal] who received me in a very unfriendly way. He told me to my face brusquely and bitterly, "but there'll be no grammar school here. If there is, it won't be like it used to be. I am what I am and I'm not giving up my place to anyone". It was clear to me immediately and I answered, "Mr. Colleague, don't worry. Our spheres of work cannot touch each other in any way, let alone cross over each other. You couldn't have my place, and I don't want yours".
The camp director Jarvie told me, "grammar school studies take too long. We'll teach the youth to read and write and then send them out to work". I had found out enough.
Our camp director let us take away the camp chapel, two scout huts and one large barrack, which would be large enough for both the grammar school and for living accommodation for the teachers. All the material was stacked in Spittal camp by the police station, so that it should be safe until we got there. But they moved it all to the bottom of the camp in a dark spot behind some barracks, where it was ideally placed for them to steal it for wood. And they took it all: partly for fuel and partly to improve and make their own barracks more beautiful.
I complained to the camp director at Lienz, and he gave us ten more cubic metres of wood. We brought it over and they took that too, using it for different purposes. This behaviour of our compatriots was so despicable as to go beyond all boundaries and to be seen as a crime.
When after seven weeks they gave us the go-ahead for our 232 lessons, we started to put up the barrack. The workers were shamelessly sabotaging this work, stealing material and sawing up wood for logs. Most of the work was done by the pupils (Jerman and others), myself and our Marko [Director Bajuk's son, engineer Marko Bajuk]. But there was not enough material, and at the other end of the camp there was an empty abandoned Russian stable, and we agreed with the pupils to go there. By the end of January the work progressed well enough for us to start planning to move in.
In mid-January Miss Michell [the UNRRA camp welfare officer] summoned me and ordered me to produce overnight a plan for a secondary technical school, as the grammar school was to be converted into a school of that type. I told her it was impossible and I would need at least three days. The "gracious patroness" conceded this. At the teachers' meeting we decided to play a trick on her. We sketched out an elaborate plan which covered everything but in fact said nothing. I took it to her two days later. She read it through, her face shone with triumphant glory and she nodded, "excellent, excellent!" I heroically restrained myself from bursting out laughing.
I think it was the 29th January that the institute was going to change its name and the new school was opened. All our work in remained unchanged, we didn't even alter the time-table; only a little, to make room for a new subject that was requested, descriptive geometry, which we adopted on our own initiative for two hours a week in classes 5, 6 and 7. It was taught by my son Marko. A few months later Jarvie and Michell left, but before then I obtained a ruling that lessons were again to follow the grammar school plan.
My letter-diary:
6th December. I expect to remain here [Lienz] till about the end of December and then be transferred to a camp called Judenburg152, about 200 miles from here.
152. Camp with 2,300 Jewish, Slovene and Croat refugees, taken over by UNRRA from the British army in November 1945. Stieber, Gabriela (1997) Nachkriegsfluechtlinge in Kaernten und der Steiermark (Graz, Leykam), p.258.
233
The Pernisek diary:
18th December. Today it's appallingly cold, -19 C. in the morning and all day, with no sun as it's hidden behind Goldeck. There's a shortage of fire-wood, so we're cold all day. We don't dare use much wood in case we run out by the end of the month.
19th December. Last night at 11 they brought Russian emigres into the camp153. They'd loaded them onto cattle trucks at about midday: old people, sick people, children, mothers with new-born babies, absolutely everyone. Their train stopped at every station, sometimes for as long as an hour and a half. This is ruthless torture: cattle would have been better treated! The UNRRA welfare officer Katinka rightly remarked that they wouldn't have treated their enemies worse in the Soviet Union. And UNRRA treats the neediest people in this fashion: the humanitarian aid agency of the 20th century! This isn't UNRRA any more, it's a machine for goading people into repatriation.
O dear family home, the one real happiness in our life! A man recognises your priceless worth when he loses you! I desire nothing more than to possess the smallest and humblest home of my own, and every day I pray God to grant me this. I'll forgo my profession and take on hard labour to become a free man again and to be delivered from this appalling welfare! I've had enough reproachful charity reminding me I'm a DP, a being without rights, a number: DP A 01533419.
25th December. Our second Christmas in exile. Worse than last year, when we celebrated it as a family in our own room. This year we don't experience that joyful feeling of togetherness, and on Christmas Eve we were even out of humour. We're crammed together in a smoke-filled room. Yesterday the barrack elder spent all day handing out and handing out soap, combs, used ties, cigarettes, rum for the workers and so on. In the afternoon we made a crib, but without moss, because the snow fell too early and was too high. Around eight we went round the barrack blessing the rooms;
153. Their transport is also mentioned in my diary entry for 29 December below, page 00, although I must in fact have got the date wrong 234 grandfather Cepin sprinkled holy water, Mr. Urbanija swung the censer, my little daughter carried a statuette of Mary, I led the rosary prayers and the people followed from room to room, singing, blessing, censing. They were happy to experience at least something of the traditional Christmas celebrations and feel it's Holy Night. We wished each other heart-felt good wishes for a blessed and happy Christmas.
Then good Mr. Corsellis came to wish us a happy Christmas. This lad doesn't forget us. He told us that Lienz had been the best run and kept camp not only in the British zone, but in the whole of Austria, and they closed it down for the one and only reason that refugees shouldn't have too comfortable a life. The most cheerful and happy part of Christmas we experienced in the chapel, especially Midnight Mass and the solemn mid-morning Christmas Day Mass. There we felt in our hearts the real joy, happiness and blessed peace of the Holy Night.
My letter-diary:
29th December. *Many, many thanks for the lovely Christmas card. I was most amused to read that you had also had the "Biro" idea. If you should manage to lay your hands on one, I shouldn't imagine that refilling should present any problem, as I don't expect I'll write the 300,000 words in a hurry!* We spent a very quiet Christmas here; in the evening three of the DPs came and had supper with us.
I think it was the 16th December that our last trainload of people left the camp. Over 400 people, 70 of them over sixty years old, Russian emigres, weak and miserable, they had to spend some eleven hours exposed, either in the open or in cattle trucks: we had a stove in each truck, but it only heated some eight out of the thirty people in the truck. And the people knew that they were going to very bad accommodation - they were supposed to be sent to a camp where there was enough room, but then Klagenfurt changed its mind and they were sent to the same camp as the Slovenes went, which was already full. So they got the very leavings of the accommodation.
It certainly made one bitter - this was UNRRA's idea of "relief and rehabilitation". I still think it was criminal transferring the people gratuitously in mid- 235 winter. The official reason was that UNRRA had no money left and had to cut down camps to economise and reduce staff. But HQ should have tumbled to that in the autumn, or if they could not see beyond the ends of their noses, should have waited till the spring. The move was made largely from the cynical point of view that the DPs were so comfortable they didn't want to go home and a little discomfort would do them a world of good and encourage repatriation. How I'd like to make someone from HQ live in a DP camp for even a fortnight under average DP rations and conditions. Then perhaps they'd revise their ideas of DPs living in comfort.
The courage and patience of the refugees continually astonishes me. Everyone in the camp must have spent hours upon hours of work getting their rooms livable- in for the winter, saving a reserve of food and fuel. And then just at the start of the most difficult three months of the year they were uprooted and dumped in a camp, of which the best rooms available were worse than the worst in Lienz; and they were dumped there when it was already too late to do much in the way of preparation against the cold. And still they remain not too uncheerful.
There were about two feet of snow on the ground on the 16th. We left Lienz at 1.30 in the afternoon and were told we'd get into Spittal soon after 6 - we arrived eventually at 10, 8 1/2 hours for a trip that should take 1 1/2 hours. It wasn't the fault of the Austrians, but of the person at HQ who decided we were to be taken not by a special train, but hitched to the daily goods train. At every station we stopped, the engine was uncoupled and proceeded to do half an hour's shunting. Old people and women and children meanwhile were shivering in the trucks, taking turns to stand round the stoves until the coal ran out.
I was well dressed, swathed myself in a blanket and sat in my famous canvas chair (my Christmas present from you of last year!) and was reasonably comfortable, except that one of my feet froze, and stamp as I did for a half hour solidly, I could not restore circulation. Later on we stopped for a long time at a station, so I got out and waded through the snow to see what was the matter: it was pitch dark and I was somewhat perturbed that the train might suddenly start and I'd have no choice but jump on to the nearest open goods 236 truck and stay on it to the next station! Eventually I got to the station master's office to find that we had a further 3/4 of an hour to wait, but the room was warm and at last that foot thawed! Everything was unloaded from the train and in the camp by two o'clock next morning.
Next day I woke up with the hell of a headache and nausea, which wasn't too bad as long as I lay down. It was almost OK by midday, but the doctor examined me and told me I had a stomach chill. I stayed two days in bed feeling quite alright and enjoying the rest, and then went carefully for a week - I'm still wearing a scarf round my tummy! The thought of our DPs didn't make for a particularly cheerful Christmas, but on Christmas evening we had three come over who were still in the camp as part of our rearguard party, and had pork and tinned turkey and a bottle of Spumante I'd saved, and afterwards played games that made our sides ache with laughing.
I expect to be going within the next week to St. Marein154, a camp in Steiermark near Graz, the other end of the British zone, but am told that the job should not last long - presumably they'll be closing down the camp. The DPs are Jews, the nationality that has the almost universal reputation among UNRRA relief circles as the most difficult to handle, undisciplined etc., so I'm quite looking forward to some first-hand experience.
The Pernisek diary:
31st December. There are a few hours of 1946 left, and it'll soon slip into eternity, and with it our unfulfilled hopes and expectations! It brought us many sufferings and disappointments. We watched UNRRA change from a humanitarian aid agency into a premeditated institution for pushing repatriation. They bargained with us, using the poorest of the poor as small change to pay for their political deals, frustrating our initiatives and industriousness as much as and whenever they could. For this they starved us and dislodged us from a well-organised
154. camp 6, one of 7 sub-camps for slave labour employed in the important Boehlerwerk munition factory at Kapfenberg. Situated close to St Marein, outside Kapfenberg, it held Jewish refugees on their way to Palestine. Stieber op. cit., pp. 262/3. 237 camp where some people could have achieved self- sufficiency in caring for themselves and their families. But the order from above was to persuade as many as possible to return home and reduce the number of refugees to a minimum.
This fury for repatriation claimed a victim on the 24th December: Cerarja, the father of four young children, caught a severe chill in his unheated and otherwise totally inadequate room and died from an infection of the inner ear brought on by hypothermia. When our people asked the supply officer why there wasn't enough fuel for heating he answered briskly: "And what are you Yugoslavs doing, staying on here, anyway?"
In spite of all these difficulties we didn't despair. May God be thanked even for sending us suffering! It gave us the opportunity to purify our souls, to do reparation to God for our offences and to learn from it for our hopefully better future. Every day we thanked God for our sufferings and offered them up to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Let us accept UNRRA as it is, thank God for it, for what would have happened to us without it! Its staff who looked after us, understood us and helped us whenever they could; but they couldn't, and didn't dare to, go against the orders and rules of their superiors. Now the words and warnings of the camp director Major Jarvie made more sense to us: that politics are a dirty business and we should keep ourselves well clear of them.
*None of the disasters foretold by the prophets and fortune tellers took place either. There were no three days of total darkness in the whole world starting on the 13th December, a further world war didn't break out and poisonous fumes didn't appear and kill millions of people.*
So our ways are not God's ways. We learnt this to the utmost during the year which will tonight slip into eternity, and with it the suffering we underwent. We'll remember only the happy days and the fruits of our overcoming difficulties by trying to live good lives, which most of our people did. We take our present situation as a spiritual preparation for our unknown future. We've grown through suffering, and may God grant us that we continue to do so.
238
C H A P T E R 10
1 January - 24 March 1947
Pernisek starts the New Year with "a tiny, shining ray of hope" - news from Buenos Aires that mass emigration to Argentina may put an end to the Slovenes' current misery, and a second letter with more details. Meanwhile, after five weeks at a temporary camp for Jews, I am sent back to the Slovenes in Spittal to set up a 120-bed TB sanatorium for patients of all nationalities.
My diary reflects exhilaration at the opportunity to put into practice a doctrine taught by the Quakers in 1944 and recently rediscovered, that the overriding priority of aid agencies should be to empower the refugees. I had already commented that the Slovenes were more capable and competent than most of the camp administrators looking after them. Now I can start up a new organisation, choosing the best individual for each job based on informed Slovene advice and giving the resulting team the maximum of support. The outcome is evident from my two "narrative reports" to UNRRA, which I use as vehicles to press the arguments in favour of empowering or enabling the refugees.
Pernisek reports UNRRA's dismissal of the camp director and welfare officer for alleged softness on repatriation, and the increased harassment of the Slovenes by the "British police". Talk of Argentina continues, but when? A Yugoslav Government Repatriation Commission adds to the repatriation pressure. I complete and send to the British Foreign Office the "Notes on Slovene Refugees" I had promised, with copies to everyone who might influence refugee policy, including the then Leader of the Opposition at Westminster, Mr Winston Churchill.
239 The Pernisek diary:
1st January 1947. We said good-bye to the old year in a Christian manner, with prayer and a happy celebration. As the first stars appeared and the bells tolled, calling us to lift our hearts up to God, we carried out the ritual blessing of our rooms as on Christmas Eve and said the rosary. By 8 pm we were already seated in the "White Horse" hall where our devoted company of actors presented us with a really lovely and happy evening. There were mainly comic sketches showing wit and imagination, interspersed with cheerful songs and recitals.
During the interval the camp choir sang happy folk songs with a musical accompaniment. Many were restless in their seats, itching to get up and dance. A couple of hours passed, the lights were dimmed and out of the darkness came the voice of the camp director Major Jarvie wishing us a happy New Year and good health. Then the choir sang the "Triglav March" and everyone joined in, thus passing from the old to the New Year 1947, and everyone wished each other health, happiness, God's protection and above all peace and again peace.
We don't know what the new year is hiding. We expect to be faced with new trials. God is among us. We can, and must, trust Him alone and abandon ourselves to His will, and only this will bring peace to our souls. But I do have a secret wish. God, you are very good to me. Grant that I be delivered from this camp life, give me ever so small a place I can call my home, where there will be Christian warmth and a Christian spirit. This will be my daily prayer.
2nd January. There's no let up in the cold weather, rather it continues relentlessly and a truly Siberian wind blows day after day. Freezing storms attack without respite, each one more bitter than the last. The temperature keeps at about -20 C., yesterday reaching the lowest temperature so far of -25 C. The locals say this winter is like that of 1922. We've very little heating so the room is never warm enough.
Early in the New Year I moved to what was in effect a temporary transit camp for Jewish refugees at St. Marein, 36 miles north of Graz at the other end of Austria. My letter-diary:
Beginning of January. I am now at my new team, team 332. 240 We were very busy the last few days at Lienz, packing and disposing of camp records that had accumulated for 1/2 years. I took hours on the single task of writing references for the more responsible DP camp staff. There were so many I had to do and one had to be so careful in the wording, particularly to make sure that one had not made one too warm as compared to another who deserved a stronger recommendation! I am glad to say that several of my staff already have actual jobs or offers of jobs in other camps. They certainly deserved it. I've done what I can to get them well settled.
25th January. Yesterday an urgent letter arrived instructing me to travel today, Sunday, to Vienna to see the Director of Medical Services for the UNRRA Austrian Mission there - absolutely no mention of why! So this afternoon I depart for Vienna.
It will be impossible to do anything much to put any order into the chaos of [St. Marein] camp so long as the officer from the Allied Commission (British Military Government) remains there. It is supposed to be run by UNRRA and his being in it is completely anomalous: he is not under the control of UNRRA but has the position of deputy director on the staff. It is an impossible position as it is essential that only one person be in charge of a camp and that he have complete control of his staff. The man is quite friendly, but has an entirely disciplinarian outlook and no understanding of the psychology of the DPs.
The disciplinarian approach relies largely on bluff because, if the DPs do not want to do what you order them to, there is precious little you can do about it! And while some nationalities will allow themselves to be bluffed, it's not much use trying that on the Jews! The only sound technique is to gain the DPs' confidence and cooperation and guide them so that they run their own camp. But this is only possible if the staff have a real understanding of the DPs and a common technique of dealing with them. This can't happen here until the Allied Commission officer goes.
The Pernisek diary:
28th January. A tiny, tiny shining and warm ray of hope lit up the cold darkness today. Dr. Blatnik has received a letter from the emigre Slovene priest in 241 Argentina Rev. Janez Hladnik155 which is of interest to us. It's dated the 14th January 1947, and it's clear they're well informed about us and our difficult situation. And more still, there are people in the world who want to help us, not with words, but doing something practical to rescue us. Father Hladnik writes he's had an audience with the President of Argentina, General Peron, about the settlement of Slovene refugees in the country, and the President has promised to receive all the Slovene refugees. Dr. Krek in Rome will be our officially recognised representative and will compile a list of those wishing to emigrate to Argentina. Soon after that the government there will issue permits and the appropriate authority will take an interest in the Slovene refugees and help them. They have agricultural settlements in mind.
In Argentina our people would find their second homeland. Only trained workers would get jobs in industry and the rest should work on the land. Peron has clipped the capitalists' wings and found a good solution to the needs of the workers and thus disarmed the communists. It's true the communist party is now permitted, but a brake has been put on its future.
Father Hladnik wrote, "tell the people not to be discouraged. The diplomatic side will soon be sorted out and I hope transport across the ocean will then be solved and so we'll, God willing, be able to shake hands this year". A ray of sunshine doesn't make a fine day, but it does herald daylight. Important and encouraging is the fact there's a concrete plan to move us out and, as is clear from the letter, this is Dr. Krek's work. May God hear his pleas and help him!
A second letter arrived in February, this time from Father Kosicek156. In view of its importance I quote it in full:
155. Dean Janez Hladnik, born 1902, consecrated priest 1927, served in local parish and then the Slovene catholic community in Zagreb. Moved to Argentina as assistant to the Slovene priest there, and succeeded him on his untimely death. As immigrants' priest travelled the length of Argentina several times. Edited and largely wrote Duhovno Zivljenje [The Spiritual Life], the journal which was later to serialise the Pernisek diaries. Svobodna Slovenija (1952), (Buenos Aires) p. 215. 156. see pp. 00 and 00. 242
Rev. Janez Hladnik received your letter today. As his assistant I am answering you in his name. I shall mix his answer with my own observations and advice, as far as I can give them now as a "gringo" (greenhorn).
1. The Argentinean Government issued permission in principle for the settlement of 10,000 Slovenes in Argentina. This is the merit of Mr. Hladnik who has excellent connections with the men of the Government and with the Church authorities. Some days ago special permission was issued to 500 refugees in Italy that they can emigrate at once. As soon as further lists arrive, others will receive permission.
2. The Slovene Social Committee in Rome is authorized by the Government of this country, exclusively to propose Slovene emigrants to the Consulate. Immigration other than through this Committee is impossible.
3. The International Welfare Organization, where the American Catholics and Vatican are especially collaborating, has enough means at its disposal for the transport of the refugees over the ocean, for the present only to South America. Msgr. O'Gradi, the representative of this organization, is now in Buenos Aires. We have already had some conferences with him. He assures us - and especially us - of all help.
4. Argentina is a very rich country. The climate is hot, but not insupportable. The fertility of the soil is three times better than in the Banat157. Everything can be sold. Anyone who is prepared to work cannot starve. The Government is looking for settlers. Do not worry about the payment of the assigned land. Should anyone want to return home and be able to do so, he will receive the money for the investments and work. People who ten years ago paid 10,000 pesos in instalments for the land assigned by the State can sell it today for 40,000 pesos. No manure is needed. After lunch the farmers sleep here for some hours. One cannot imagine how easy the work is. Certainly the first months will be bad. It will be necessary to plough fresh land. I am only afraid that the refugees will not want to return home, if
157. the richest agricultural area of Yugoslavia 243 the possibility will come. I regret very much to state that today there are no indications for return.
5. The great difficulties you have with the post and connections with Rome are known to me. Therefore it is right that you yourself are preparing everything necessary for the emigration. Prepare the lists of people who are unconditionally determined to go over the ocean. Hundred and hundred together! Do not forget to put among the first persons those who are in direct danger there. It seems that the Allied authorities want to solve the question of refugees in Italy first, and then will be your turn in Kaernten. Nevertheless it is all right that for this case you have everything prepared. To the people who cannot decide on emigration you may give the advice to return home as soon as possible. Whoever thinks he will go only through purgatory if he returns home, should return. A special problem is the small number of bad people among the refugees. You have to think well if you ought to take them with you when emigrating.
6. I am concerned about the intelligentsia: there is no possibility here that they would all be occupied in their professions. All kinds of intelligentsia are in abundance in Argentina. There are for instance 5,000 students in the medical faculty at Buenos Aires. Rich farmers - and that is all of them - are pushing their children to different schools, and the country remains empty. The intelligentsia must be prepared for manual work, as must the students. If somebody has some exams, he has to repeat them here, in good Spanish language. They look with mistrust at foreigners: they see in them either scamps (there are many) or people who are more diligent and capable than the general population. 7. Argentine is a Christian country, at least according to their feelings, although, because of the superficial instruction, in many places morals and the practical Christian life are not very high. All evil - together with Communism - was brought into the country by foreigners.
8. Prices are high, wages also. The peso has the value of the Swiss franc. For one American dollar one has to pay 4.10 pesos. There is no black market. Clothing is twice as expensive as in Italy, as are typewriters, photo apparatus etc. Anyone who brings something like that to Argentina can get good money. 244 There is a great demand for workers, especially masons. Today there are for instance in the newspaper "La Prensa" about 2,500 advertisements asking for workers and less than 100 offers. There is an especially great demand for cooks, housemaids, seamstresses etc., and foreigners are welcome.
9. We are now setting up a small office here because the Mr. Hladnik, a saint and extremely unselfish soul, cannot do everything himself. Please ask your people to pray for him, because it will probably be due only to him if we in our misery get in a place of the world a modest home and a piece of bread. I am sending my greetings to all informed about my letter. In future I shall write regularly to inform you about the most important events.
My letter-diary:
In Vienna I saw Colonel Cottrell, the UNRRA Director of Medical Services. He told me the Zone Director had submitted my name as the most suitable for the post of welfare officer-admin officer of the DP TB hospital that is being developed. Up to now it has been attached to the DP camp close by, but it is thought that the camp director and staff are too busy with the camp to take much interest in it. So they are now detaching it from the camp and putting it under a nurse and a welfare-admin officer. I explained I had to return home in April, but Colonel Cottrell said he wished me anyhow to get the job organised.
The camp where the hospital is, is Spittal, which is the camp to which all the refugees from Lienz were sent. The job is one at which I can be usefully employed for two months or so, as against work at the camp here which has become more and more unsatisfactory. The director, while very pleasant personally, is too weak and vacillating, and the presence of the Allied Commission officer makes the position intolerable. The refugees are difficult but could be handled by a team that worked together following a clear policy consciously carried out, but the conditions are lacking. This is a shame as two of the workers on welfare are most capable and some of the best camp workers I have met. I shall be glad to leave the camp, where the chaos is hopeless but unnecessary, but sorry to leave the mess which is a very happy one - two British, two Dutch, one Belgian, one charming 245 Stateless ex-Austrian Jew (male!).
I have met more than once the nurse who will probably work with me in Spittal and she is pleasant, capable and easy to get on with, and I don't think she will try to be too bossy if handled firmly! The UNRRA doctor in charge of the district is English, quiet and very nice. I have been told confidentially that the director and welfare officer who are running the camp in Spittal will shortly be replaced. If I arrive before the new director and so know the ropes, I have a certain moral advantage over him!
Before starting in at Spittal (which by the way is much pleasanter and healthier country than here) I am going to visit Salzburg where there is a similar hospital for the American Zone of Austria. I will there be able to study their methods of administration and treatment before starting up at Spittal. So tomorrow I transfer by truck my kit to Spittal, and on Tuesday proceed by train to Salzburg.
The Pernisek diary:
8th February. Today a British parliamentary delegation composed of three MPs and led by Frank Beswick, Labour MP and Secretary of State for Air158, visited the camp. The other members were the Conservative MP T.V.Beamish159 and the Labour MP C.R.Hobson, and they were accompanied by Colonel Hall, Deputy Director of the Refugees' Section in Vienna. They reached the camp at around ten and started work at once in director Jarvie's office. After a brief introductory session with the director they started hearing the views of individual refugees from different national groups who could tell them what they wanted. Our representative prof. Sever gave them a special memorandum in which we spelt out our reasons for becoming refugees and why we couldn't return home. The memorandum stated briefly that there were currently 3,732 Slovenes in Spittal camp and about 3,000 outside scattered throughout Carinthia, where they were living and working separately. We left home
158. he was in fact Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Assistant Secretary of State for Air: later Lord Beswick, PC and Labour Chief Whip in the House of Lords. 159. Later Sir Tufton Beamish, long-serving MP, strong supporter of European Union and author of books on Marxism in East Europe, etc. 246 because the front was coming close, as were the communist troops who were killing innocent people who didn't collaborate with them; and because of the threatening letters many people had received. We Slovenes were by an overwhelming majority pro the Western democracies and had expected to be liberated by the Anglo-Americans. When we realised that we were on the contrary going to be abandoned to the mercy of Tito's partisan army, we withdrew in the direction of the British army to secure asylum and support from them. Some Slovenes had come to Carinthia already during the war, either taken as forced labourers by the Germans or escaping from the communists, and they don't want to return home now.
Every single refugee amongst us can decide for himself whether he wants to return home or emigrate. We can't return because at home there is a totalitarian communist regime which liquidates its ideological and political opponents. Many, or most, of the Slovene DPs have members of their families who were killed by the communists during the war. Good Slovenes who remained at home were persecuted, some even expelled on the ground that they were ethnic Germans. Even those who returned from Dachau were put in prison at home, sentenced to forced labour or shot. Letters from people who had returned were full of bad news and regret at having gone back. The memorandum set out some specific requests:
The Slovene DPs hope the Allies will intervene in Yugoslavia so that the provisions of the Atlantic Charter are implemented there. We ask for help and support in the future so that no Yugoslav will be returned against his will and the Allies will insist that Western-type democracy is introduced and that rights under the Atlantic Charter are implemented.
We request help and protection so that no one is returned by force, and the Allies insist that a true democracy in the western sense with the Four Freedoms be introduced in Yugoslavia. The Slovene DPs ask that they be enabled to find work outside Austria and that emigration for those who want it be arranged as early as possible. We want all the Slovene DPs in Austria and Italy to emigrate together.
The delegation then toured the camp. They first saw the kitchen and wanted to know what the refugees would get for lunch. They were cooking turnips as usual - 247 I'm sure the director wanted them to prepare a better meal, but the messing officer Mr. Adler insisted on turnips, so that they should see the kind of food on which the poor people had to live. They then looked at the workshops and saw the printing shop where the Taboriscnik160 was printed. They examined closely how it operated and asked what kind of literature the press was producing. Then they visited the camp church and went on to the theatre, Victory Hall, where all the refugees were waiting. Everyone stood up and greeted them, the orchestra played the Triglav March and the people cheered enthusiastically. Then the Slovene choir conducted by prof. Silvin Mihelic sang one English and three Slovene songs, which the guests greatly enjoyed.
The camp chief Mr. Vertacnik then went up to the delegation and saying, "please accept this souvenir of your visit", presented them on behalf of the Slovene community with beautifully decorated albums containing photographs of camp life and activities, the covers being finely embroidered by our girls with Slovene national motifs and bound by Mr. Herman Zupan, whose workshop the delegation also visited.
The leader of the delegation said, "thank you for your kind reception, beautiful singing and souvenir gifts. We must say we admire greatly that you've maintained such high standards of conduct, order and discipline in view of the circumstances in which you're living, and we wish you every happiness". After that everyone stood up and sang the hymn of the Slovene homeland "Father, mother, brothers and sisters". The guests then went to see the children's kitchen and some rooms in the barracks where they talked with the people.
9th February. Today our theatre company gave a beautiful performance of Mesko's play "Mother", which the people followed enthralled. In the evening director Jarvie invited ten leading members of the camp to his room and thanked them for the order, discipline and punctuality our people had shown during the British parliamentarians' visit. He was so moved he had tears in his eyes. Miss Michell thanked us as well and told us she wouldn't leave the unhappy Slovenes until she could see us happy again, even if that meant working without pay for months.
160. the Camp Dweller 248
11th February. Dr. V came from Klagenfurt this evening. He'd visited Monsignor Podgorec and told him of our plan to approach the Austrian government for permission to remain in Austria. He warmly welcomed this idea and said he was on very good terms with the Provincial Governor Mr. Pirsch, who was well disposed towards the Slovenes. He would therefore go and see the Governor about it. Dr. V visited Dr. Bluemel as well, and he said the Volkspartei was also well disposed towards Slovene DPs. It seems as if our intentions might become reality. Mr. Bluemel thought it'd be a good idea to involve the Bishop of Klagenfurt Dr. Koestner and the Austrian Cardinal Initzer also in these negotiations. In Carinthia there'd be enough bread and work for all the Slovenes. The Governor has intervened successfully for Dr. Pus. It seems to me the best of the proposals for resettlement, as under present circumstances we mustn't be distracted by other concerns but must concentrate on saving our own lives.
14th February. Last night we had a lovely concert in the assembly hall. The choir, now combining those of Peggetz and Spittal, has 70 male and female singers who sing really beautifully. Last night they presented us with a new type of programme, folk songs arranged by modern composers. It was an evening of aesthetic and artistic delight. What's most important about these performances is that they are the best way of encouraging mutual respect, good relations, cooperation and unity, and we must achieve this. So we must have as many stage plays and celebrations of cultural events as possible. Let religion and culture act as unifying forces for us!
The mutual respect that was needed was between the Slovenes who moved to Spittal already in July 1945 and those who were moved there from Peggetz Lienz in November 1946. Eighteen months of living apart were enough for powerful and bitter tensions, suspicions and jealousies to grow between the two communities and for them to develop separate distinctive identities, and it took a year for the rift to heal - a typical refugee phenomenon.
My letter-diary:
15th February. I am now back in Spittal after my trip to Salzburg. At the Jewish camp in St Marein it was 249 clear one could not do work of any particular usefulness - it was anyhow probably closing down in a couple of months. But here the picture is different. In the couple of months until April I feel I can make a real contribution and flatter myself, or rate UNRRA personnel in general so low, that there is no one else with similar suitable qualifications available. It is a matter of setting up an organisation, establishing a routine, selecting a staff and getting them to work harmoniously together, and finally so strengthening the authority of the DP senior doctor and chief of administration that they can take over. The place is on a worth-while scale, having 120 beds when complete. At present the camp hospital is also here, but it's being transferred into the camp.
The place will be entirely for TB cases, the great majority non-infectious, the few infectious cases being housed in a special isolation barrack. The establishment should continue to function after UNRRA has finished, as long in fact as the DPs remain in Austria. If it only were to operate for six months it would be enormously worth-while, as it will give a chance of recovery to many tubercular DPs and be an opportunity to teach them how to look after themselves and avoid being a danger to other people.
*My visit to Salzburg was from a work point of view most worth-while and also at the same time very enjoyable. I found the town much more attractive than I did on my last visit.*
16th February. The director and welfare officer here at Spittal are Australian - very Australian; they are not too difficult to handle (they are so blatantly obvious) but demand considerable patience. However they should have very little to do with the day-to- day running of the sanatorium. The nurse is Dutch: I worked with her many months at Lienz and get on with her very well; unlike many UNRRA nurses, she knows her job and gets on with it. The chief zone doctor, Dr Barton, an Englishman, is very sensible and nice and will leave me a very free hand, at the same time supporting me up to the hilt: so it looks as if it should be possible to do a really satisfactory job.
24th February. So far as staying on is concerned, things do change so often it is difficult to say. Anyhow UNRRA closes down in June completely - that is quite certain ... so far, but if this job develops 250 satisfactorily and there continues really useful work to do, I might stay a month or two after April.
There were two big reasons why I was very glad to be chosen for this job. First there is a real need for the institution. So long as the TB cases remain in the camps it is probable their physical condition will deteriorate, so that a case easily and quickly curable will become chronic. When we get them in the hospital they can be under continuous medical supervision, receive treatment and much better food, live under better and less crowded conditions and be taught how to look after themselves so that they will remain healthy when they leave, will not relapse and will not be a danger to those they live with. We expect to develop to 120 beds and could increase to 140, so the project is of a scale to be of some real use.
The second point was that I'd remain in touch with the Slovenes. I think they are the largest single group of refugees in the British Zone of Austria, and a group whose position is particularly difficult. Being strong Catholics, they arouse the hostility of the surprisingly large numbers of English and Americans who have a strong prejudice against the Catholic church. The political position in Yugoslavia that led them to leave their homes was highly complex and intricate, and most people dislike complexity and prefer a simplified answer to every question; and the simplified answer to this question is not to the advantage of the Slovenes.
It looks as if the next months will decide the fate of these people and in fact official commissions are visiting the camps to gather information as to what the refugees deserve in the way of help. Hardly any of the UNRRA field workers have the necessary languages or the intellectual curiosity to investigate the true history of the people. It is pathetic how appreciative the people are when someone does try to get to understand them.
I have got a capable and reliable DP161 as deputy for hospital administration, a very hard worker with imagination and initiative; in Slovenia he was in charge of the municipal undertakings of the second
161. Mr Joze Lekan. He emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio, where his son, daughter, son-in-law and grand-children still live. 251 largest town, Maribor or Marburg, having a general responsibility for the gasworks, slaughterhouse, orphans' home etc. I intend to put all the responsibility possible onto him for the internal working of the place. If one can secure a really good staff the battle's won, and I'm taking great care in finding the best available.
26th February. I'm feeling very pleased with myself. After some days of patient enquiries and search I've virtually secured what should prove a most successful team for the TB hospital, that is for the six or so key posts. The medical and nursing side are not my concern, but come under the UNRRA Zone doctor and the team nurse, although even here I've managed to find them a good man for the dispensary. The present dispenser is hopelessly and dangerously inefficient, but the new man is an unemployed doctor who was glad of the job; he should do it well and also be able to help with the clinical work possibly. An additional advantage is that he speaks some eight languages, including English.
I mentioned the man I'd chosen as "lay superintendent". I've also secured the best clerk and the best typist we had in Lienz, so that once I've got the office in order it should run very smoothly. The pair are used to my somewhat exacting and strict standards. But the department that caused me the most trouble was that of welfare, and with a hospital of 120 beds this will be most important. The psychological side of TB is as important, if not more so, than the physical side, and it makes all the difference in the world if the patients have the will to recover and the confidence they're able to recover. If they're pessimistic and depressed or always worrying, or simply bored and not interested, their recovery will be slower.
The welfare officer will be responsible for preparing a case sheet for each patient giving a full picture of his social and general background, education and former occupations and interests. Then when the doctor says he can have two or one hour's occupation daily, the welfare officer will arrange him the work in which he's most interested, sketching, painting, music, languages, carpentry, gardening, sewing, embroidery etc, etc. It will also be his responsibility to keep in touch continually with the patients, acting as their "guide, philosopher and 252 friend".
A pretty tall order! After lengthy searches and discussions, I came to the conclusion it'd be impossible to find one person to cover the whole job. The difficulty was that a considerable proportion of the patients would come from the more educated classes, and for these it was essential to have a man with a university education. People will rarely listen to advice given by a person with an education appreciably worse than their own - the snobs! But none of the people available with a university education was practical enough to organise occupations for the working class majority!
The present plan is to take on a Latvian called Rasa as principal welfare officer to look after the "intellectuals". You may remember he is the man I spoke so highly of at Lienz - the representative for the camp Baltic group who was a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Health in Latvia and is also a capable painter. He has one of the best brains in the camp - probably the best - is old enough and married, energetic and capable, with plenty of ideas and initiative. His main disadvantage is that while he speaks Russian, German, English and some Serbo- Croat he doesn't speak any Slovene, and many of the simpler patients will be able to speak only that language.
Combined with him I'll have a very energetic Slovene called Dolenc. At Lienz he ran our housing office, a most difficult job, with great success and also started a nail factory and a brush factory off his own bat! He gets on excellently with workers, is practical and very resourceful. But he would be little use with the intellectuals, as he is a textile factory worker and I doubt if he received more than elementary school education. He will be engaged officially as foreman of our small party of 5, 6 or 7 workers who will cut and distribute wood fuel, do minor repairs, porter etc, but will in fact spend most of his time on the welfare side.
I'm still looking for a capable woman willing to work part-time for the female patients, but I'm confident I'll find someone in the end. If my plans develop as I hope they will, the show should be able to run by itself pretty soon. My experience at Lienz of working by picking other people's brains is standing 253 me in good stead. Find the right person, handle him properly and he'll be able to do the job twice as well as you could have done yourself, and will work as hard as he can into the bargain.
The Pernisek diary:
1st March. The news has hit us like a thunderbolt that director Jarvie is being transferred and Miss Michell made redundant. Already on the 10th January director Jarvie received a warning from Klagenfurt that the Yugoslav government had complained to the British Foreign Office that he was the main obstacle to repatriation, so we can now expect stronger pressure than ever to return home. Who will we now get as director? There is talk of a Jew and a Jewess; these wouldn't be well disposed towards us. Whatever happens we can't expect anything good, because the repatriation screw is now sure to be turned tighter and tighter. But a Jew can easily be good, considerate and wise, just as a Christian can be depraved, as we've already experienced. It'll be interesting to see what Miss Michell does. Will she continue with us without pay until she sees us happy? I doubt it. It certainly doesn't depend upon her alone any more, unless she becomes a DP herself. We shouldn't expect such heroism from anyone.
3rd March. The hunt has begun. As we were seated for our lunch of corn mash and tea the English police came for Mr. Kremzar, but luckily he wasn't at home. They also asked where Pavle Masic was. What do they want with these two elderly respectable family men? They're doing nothing more than diligently looking after their families, scrupulously conscientious in their professions, selflessly working for the community with a passionate love for justice and truth, both resolutely rejecting the falsity, criminality and treachery of communism and resisting it openly!
Here we go again! We trusted the British unquestioningly, believed their words and pinned our faith on the Atlantic Charter, and so defied the communists who boasted they'd throw into the Mediterranean any British and American troops who tried to land on our shores. And now we get this treatment! They betrayed our King and his legitimate government, and they betrayed us as well, after first assuring us of political asylum. Through their premeditated 254 treachery and perfidy our Slovene National Guard was handed over to the communists to be brutally slaughtered. Thirteen thousand men and lads!
We, the surviving civilians, were taken under their protection and promised that no one would be repatriated to Tito against their wishes. But now they're hunting our leaders and shutting them up in jail, and softening us up with continual charges of being collaborators, traitors and quislings; they're forcing us home into the jaws of the Red Beast. Because fair means have failed, they're now trying in an underhand and sneaky manner to starve us systematically and deliberately into submission. We don't feel in the slightest guilty for having openly opposed and taken up arms against criminal communism: we're only sorry we trusted the "Allies" so blindly and naively.
9th March. Since Thursday I've been ill in bed. It's Sunday, and I got up but I'm not feeling well. I listen to people and join in the discussion. People don't reckon any more on a change in the political situation at home and many have decided to return home as the spring is calling them. They won't go across the ocean to foreign parts so long as land and home are awaiting them. We have to understand them! They've grown up with their farmlands and homesteads, inherited from their forefathers, and the land calls them powerfully. We of the urban proletariat don't feel this call, it isn't buried deep within us. Good people, thank you for your wholly admirable example; may God give you good fortune, may peace and God's protection be with you!
But most talk about Argentina and are preparing themselves for a long, long journey "to where the boat will sail", but the boat isn't ready yet and God only knows when it will be! Meanwhile we'll rot in the camp as the English won't let us leave Europe, but will rather deport us home or carry us off somewhere in their Empire where again we'll be doomed to live in refugee camps. In what way have we sinned so grievously to deserve this fate? It's understandable the Germans should suffer. Be done by as they did! Yet the victors are interested in them, strive to get them on their side and might even fight for them! And they handle the Jews with kid gloves, even though the Jews hate and detest them. And they want to provide the Balts with new, well-ordered lives as 255 quickly as possible.
It's only against us, who gave up everything for them, trusting them blindly and believing their promises, they discriminate, scold and obstruct. It's true it's only a few kilometres from here to our homes! That's why they keep us here and urge us to return. Miss Lieven162 only recently said no Yugoslavs will be allowed to emigrate across the ocean while there's a possibility a single one will go home. She is from the HQ for DPs in Vienna, and she certainly meant it.
11th March. The Yugoslav Repatriation Commission has appeared again. It consists of a young major whose name I don't know and a prof. Kunc, who is very kind and is doing everything he can to be friendly and is asking our people what the Yugoslav government should do in order for more people to return home. He's looked at everything in the camp, including the school and the printing press: there he asked the ever-imaginative Mr. Bucek, who answered, "you know what, Mr. Professor? Open up the frontier! We'll go to Ljubelj, and our relatives will meet us there. We'll talk together and decide which way to turn. We'll see which direction the majority will choose: more for Austria or more for Yugoslavia". Prof. Kunc could only smile.
12th March. A lovely sunny day, I'm sitting at home reading, it's quiet, the children at school. The wife coaxes me to go for a stroll in the sun. All right, but where? I don't like the snow and slush - too many cars on the road and my poor clothes will suffer, so I go into town. It's Wednesday, there's a film on, only one cinema, so choice is no problem. "Sports Parade in Moscow", in technicolour. Harasho! [good]. No need to queue as the young lady urges me in, and even pulls a fast one, charging 1.50 Schillings for the ninth row. I enter, the news is on and for the first time in six years I see a newsreel with war scenes, air and land battles, the roar of guns.
There was an interruption during the show, a police raid, the labour office carrying out a control, and we're back in 1944 or 1945 as this was just what the Nazis
162. Miss Dara Lieven, who had worked as a nurse at the camp in Lienz (see page 00), had now transferred to UNRRA HQ working on repatriation. 256 and Fascists did during the occupation. Soon the check reaches me, "where's your work permit?" it's an official from the city labour office. I show him my Beschaeftigungsnachweis163. The stout fellow takes it and tells me to report tomorrow to the labour office -I didn't have the authorization for the current period. The amiable young chief of the labour exchange asked about my work. When I said I looked after the theatre he laughed, "the fine is one English cigarette". I had one to give him and we parted friendlily. He returned me my work book without any endorsement.
22nd March. This afternoon at five the former camp director Jarvie and Miss Michell wanted to say goodbye to everyone as they were leaving us for good. We stood in front of our barrack and as they slowly passed by in their jeep we waved to them and they waved to us. Goodbye! God be with you, good people, we'll not forget you; your sudden departure only confirms your goodness. You were too good to us, you were not to the taste of your superiors, our sworn enemies, so you had to go.
Dr. V. heard the news from someone that we're all going to be transferred to somewhere in Germany, which seems to me the more credible as it comes from a government source. Today we buried in the cemetery a young and charming sixth form pupil, Erculj. TB. A number of people will follow Erculj, as the food here is good for nothing except for people to die of TB.
My letter-diary:
23rd March. On Wednesday the UNRRA chief medical officer and chief nurse for Austria visited us, staying two nights, to see what progress we'd made with the TB Centre. During our conference I started by explaining the difficulties of being dependant on the neighbouring camp for certain services and the generally very difficult supply situation, and Colonel Cottrell, interrupting me in the middle of a sentence, expressed the impression I was resigning myself to the difficulties, and if I was doing that he'd have no use for me.
His remark was pretty strongly worded and got my goat. I denied his assumption energetically and a little
163. work permit 257 later, when he again cut in on me and again complained he wasn't informed on what we were doing, I was able to counter-attack on sure ground, producing from the file my monthly report which dealt clearly with the second point raised and gave full information on the matter on which he complained he was not informed. Things cheered up then, and I found he appreciated people who stood up to him. The zone senior medical officer, my immediate chief, was clearly pleased at the colonel's discomforture!
I preserved my copy of the monthly report referred to above and, as it describes the workings of the TB sanatorium in some detail, I reproduce it here:
Personnel *During the month all sections of the camp hospital were transferred from the centre to the camp, and the personnel employed was finally divided between the two establishments. Further staff was engaged to cover minimum requirements. All staff have been put on the pay roll and received payment for the month of March.* A card index has been introduced to keep a check on the health of the staff, in it being entered dates of inoculations, results of quarterly medical examinations and monthly screenings, and monthly weights.
*Supply On the 19th March the centre was visited by Colonel Cottrell and Miss Grant Glass, and many supply problems were clarified during discussions. The next day the Zone Supply Officer was visited and proved most helpful: on the strength of a release note for plates it has been possible to obtain a variety of urgently needed kitchen, feeding and ward equipment: we have a further quantity of goods to our credit and will take further articles as soon as they are produced by the factory.*
Food By the middle of the month enough IRC164 parcels had been received to justify the issue of the full 3,500 calories to the patients: the increase has had a most noticeable effect on their morale. Many patients are unable to eat the full diet now provided, but it is not anticipated that this situation will last for long, as it is thought that their stomachs will soon get used to the greater quantity of food. Meanwhile variations in quantities given at the different meals are being tried, to find the best way of service.
164. Indian Red Cross 258 Owing to the generous help of the Camp Warehouse Officer it has been possible to provide particularly attractive meals over Easter.
Gardens An experienced kitchen gardener has been engaged and will not only be responsible for the care of the centre gardens, but will also provide employment and instruction for as many patients as possible as soon as the weather is warm enough for them to work out- of-doors. It has been possible to secure a number of plants free from the former camp gardens at Lienz.
Admin. Case sheets, a patients' register and an alphabetical cross-reference register have been introduced, and a meeting held with the camp chief registration clerk to effect the closest cooperation between the two offices.
*Maintenance and construction The centre's small maintenance team has been very busy during the month and received assistance from the camp construction staff. The dispensary and Y-Ray department have been transferred to the clinic and laboratory barrack, and a light trap, waiting room and dark room installed. Two further barracks have been partitioned, a removable wall being erected in the dining-reading room barrack, so as to allow of its use as concert hall etc. A boiler has been installed, making possible the washing of all laundry in the centre. Separate dining rooms for the medical and nursing staff and the centre workers have been prepared and are in use.
A scullery adjoining the kitchen will shortly be ready, and it will not then be necessary for the nurses to wash dirty plates in the side wards, and there will be no reason for anyone other than kitchen personnel to enter the kitchen. After extensive repairs water is now running in all barracks and all closets necessary are in working order. The camp maintenance staff will start on the colour-washing of the barracks directly after Easter.*
Welfare and occupations Particularly satisfactory progress has been achieved. The welfare officer has gained the confidence of both medical staff and patients and shown great aptitude for his work. Generous help with a variety of supplies has been received from YMCA/YWCA Klagenfurt, and a reading room and library have been opened. Contact has been 259 made with the Ukrainian community at Villach camp and the Russian cultural centres at Parsch, Salzburg and at the Red Cross Clinic at Lienz: they have promised to supply us regularly with periodicals and literature produced both locally and in Canada and America. A number of books in Slovene have been bought from the camp printing office. A radio kindly supplied by the camp has been repaired and now is in regular use, being transferred from ward to ward. A chess competition has aroused such interest that the welfare officer has started a course on chess theory. A set of bowls presented by YMCA is very popular, being used every evening by patients.
The patients have shown great interest in the language courses recently started, 12 attending the course in English, 10 Italian, 10 German and 4 French. The German course is being given by a patient, the others by a Slovene from the camp, who also is giving a course in musical theory to 12 patients. He will be engaged full-time, as it has been found that occupations and welfare is too big a job to be covered by one man, and further development will only be possible if he has a part-time assistant. It is anticipated that the number attending the courses will fall as the first enthusiasm dies down, but it is probable that sufficient will remain interested.
It has been possible to provide space and tools so that two patients can work on their former jobs of wood inlay and basket-making: it is hoped that the basket- maker will be able to teach two other interested patients as soon as the doctor gives permission for them to undertake such work.
Repatriation It has been suggested to Zone HQ that information be requested from the Yugoslav authorities as to the treatment for TB patients now available in Yugoslavia, so that it would be possible to discuss the matter of repatriation with the patients more concretely. A list of points to be raised is being prepared for the use of Miss Boester165 in her coming visit to Yugoslavia. 9th April 1947.
I now return to my letter-diary on Colonel Cottrell's inspection visit to the sanatorium:
165. See pp. 00, 00. 260 They expressed themselves satisfied at the progress and were really pleased, and provided us with solutions to two or three of our most troublesome problems. Our personnel will now definitely be paid and we have enough supplies received and assured to give all patients and staff who come directly in contact with them 3,500 calories, which is far better than was before possible.
I only hope they both fulfil their promise and return in six weeks time, as we'll be able to show them something really worth seeing - that'll teach them a thing or two about what can be achieved if you pick a first-class DP staff, treat them well, support them through and through and give them a free hand. This is a thing UNRRA has never really done before.
At last the camp hospital has been moved into the camp and we've a free hand. Things are daily improving. The weekly staff conference is a great success: it's attended by the two doctors, chief nurse, lay administrator, maintenance foreman, welfare officer and kitchen chief - five Slovenes, one Croat, one Latvian, plus two British UNRRA and one Dutch UNRRA officer!
We leave it to the DPs as much as possible and it's held in German with occasional lapses into Serbo-Croat. Already a team spirit is developing and a real pride and keenness in the organisation. The two meetings we've had so far both lasted four hours, which is too long but certainly showed their interest. By April 10th I'll be able to leave the place for a fortnight in perfect confidence that things will carry on all right.
Our Australian [camp] director and welfare officer have both left - I knew they were going already in January - and an American has taken over. Not brilliant, but has quite an intelligent approach to the job and might be much worse. I get on with him well and hope to be able to influence him on the right paths! Our new welfare officer is the American Miss Boester of whom I wrote so warmly at Lienz in December 1945: she is first-class and I get on with her excellently, so the future looks pretty rosy.
The memo I enclosed last week was prepared at the request of Zone HQ, although not quite in the form they intended: I've had fifteen copies typed and sent them 261 to various influential people I've come across in the refugee world.
"The memo I enclosed last week" was in fact also the one I had promised the diplomat Michael Cullis when he visited the camp at Lienz the previous August on his tour of inspection for British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin. It gave my conclusions after two years of work with the Slovenes. It may seem patronising to the Slovenes of today, but it was not written for their eyes, but to influence British policy-makers in London and Vienna. It is perhaps significant as an early example of parliamentary lobbying, before the advent of today's highly paid specialists. I sent copies not only to the Foreign Office, UNRRA and IRO headquarters and the DP Branch of the British High Commission in Austria, but also to Members of Parliament in London who had shown an interest in the postwar refugees, including the then Leader of the Opposition, Winston Churchill, who acknowledged receipt.
I wrote the memo knowing I was returning home for good, and anxious that there would then be no one on the spot to argue the Slovenes' cause - they themselves of course didn't count as they were "only DPs"! Its context was the following: (1) UNRRA was closing in ten weeks, (2) the treaty setting up its successor IRO, the International Refugee Organisation, hadn't yet been ratified, and (3) control of domestic affairs was being handed over to the Austrians, whose young government was wide open to pressure from the Russians who still occupied a quarter of their country, and from the Russians' friend and ally Yugoslavia - the Moscow-Belgrade split only happening a year later. If one added to this (4) the vigorous left-wing campaign then taking place in the Austrian press against the thousands of right-wing refugees who were alleged to be consuming the country's scarce food and other resources, and the Slovenes had every reason to be fearful for their future.
Notes on Slovene refugees in Austria and Italy
Introduction
Discussions are now taking place, and plans are being made, concerning the future of the several groups of refugees that have failed as yet to return home. Their present position is difficult, as they have no means of submitting their own case for consideration nor are they able to defend themselves against the many attacks made against them by persons who are often partial, prejudiced and ill-informed.
Even so impartial a body as the 'Manchester Guardian' news 262 service, for instance, recently published a statement that
the majority of Yugoslavs in Carinthia do not wish to go overseas. They have rather the intention to return to Yugoslavia and fight against the regime of Marshal Tito.
This may be true of the 1,800 Yugoslavs, mainly Serbs, in camps in the American Zone of Austria, but it certainly is false so far as all except a small minority of the 7,500 in camps in the British Zone are concerned. Three-quarters of the latter are Slovenes, very few of whom had any such aspirations even before the execution of General Mihailovic.
Such misleading statements, repeated and exaggerated by less responsible papers, give the completely false impression that the Yugoslav DPs are war-criminals and fascists. It would seem that there is a great lack of reliable information on this subject, and the following notes are aimed at meeting this need so far as Slovenes are concerned. The latter are of particular interest to England as they form the largest group of DPs in the zone of Austria for which Britain is responsible.
Qualifications of writer.
The writer is British and is at present working as an Admin. Officer with UNRRA. His law studies were interrupted by the war, and three years of service in different countries with the Friends' Ambulance Unit further developed an interest in the objective and cautious study of controversial subjects. He has followed Yugoslav affairs closely since September 1944, when he worked in El Shatt DP camp for 25,000 "partisan" Croats from Dalmatia: he had there good opportunity to appreciate the quality, energy and idealism of the original partisan movement.
He started work with Slovene refugees in May 1945 shortly after their flight into Austria, and has lived in the closest contact with them for 21 months. He can thus claim to have a more detailed knowledge of their nature and background than perhaps any other allied officer in Austria except Major Sharp of the British Information Service, Klagenfurt. He has a limited knowledge of Serbo-Croat, but has conducted most of his conversations with Slovenes in German or Italian. 263
General background
It is common practice to discuss the problem of the "Yugoslav" DPs. This leads readily to confusion as there are in reality three separate problems - those of the Serb, Croat and Slovene DPs. The historical background to the three groups is different, their social composition is different and the outlook on their future is different. The differences in temperament, habits and character between a Slovene and a Serb are as great as those between an Englishman and a Frenchman. The writer claims to speak with authority only on Slovene problems.
One of the smallest peoples of Europe, composed of one and a half million inhabitants, pre-war Slovenia was intensely proud and conscious of its nationality, language and culture, although it realised that it could only hope to survive by remaining united with the larger unit of Yugoslavia. The continual pressure brought to bear on Slovenia by the Germans and Italians would, if successful, have resulted in their national extinction and therefore hostility to these two countries was traditional. This hatred, aroused by the fear of extinction, was greatly increased by the sufferings they underwent at the hands of the German, Austrian and Italian occupation troops during the war.
Under the Italians these took the form of pillage, looting, burning of villages and the wholesale indiscriminate deportation of Slovene youth to internment and concentration camps in Italy: conditions in some of these camps were very bad, and of 50,000 persons deported, 5,000 died in internment. The Germans deported from their zone almost all the intelligentsia and leading farmers to Serbia, Croatia and Germany, and killed over 20,000 Slovenes in mass reprisal hostage executions. The hatred remains still so strong that a mother will be ostracised by the peasant families for teaching her children the German language.
Political background
Superimposed upon these hatreds came the enmity between catholic and communist. Slovene politics since 1941 have been extremely complicated, and no simplified statement can give a true picture. It can however be 264 said with confidence that the Slovene DPs are no more collaborators than were the Royalists or ELAS in Greece, or any civilian population under occupation. There is certainly a very small number of war criminals among them, and possibly 1% could be described as collaborators: but the great majority are in no way guilty and many were faithful and energetic workers for the allies during the war.
They left their country as a result of the unfortunate Balkan political system, which shows neither tolerance nor mercy to the defeated political opponent. All parties are alike in this respect and between the wars communists were thrown into prison and maltreated by the Royal Yugoslav government. To refer again to the example of Greece, if the civil war in that country had ended differently and the forces of EAM had gained power, it is probable that most of the leading officials in that country would have fled: they would have been DPs and would have been told that the fact that they were not willing to return home was proof that they were war criminals and collaborators. As it happened they were not defeated in the political struggle and instead of being DPs without rights they are the recognised and respected government officials, mayors, teachers and farmers of their country.
It is stressed that in the above paragraphs no judgment is intended on the merits or claims of either party in Greece or Yugoslavia. The point to be established is this: that while it is a justifiable assumption that a Dutch or Norwegian DP who refuses to return home was a collaborator, this assumption is not justified in the case of a Slovene any more than it is justified in the case of a Balt. Political conditions and methods are radically different in the two pairs of countries mentioned.
Origin of DPs
In the next paragraphs are given some notes on the origin and present distribution of Slovene DPs. The figures given are approximate and probably to some extent inaccurate, because the writer has not access to all official records and because such statistics as are available deal with "Yugoslavs", not subdividing the totals between Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. However as ignorance on the subject is so general even a rough survey should be of use. 265
Slovene refugees can be divided into three main groups:
1. a few hundred of the refugees, who were sent on forced labour to Austria and Germany during the war, have failed to return home. Some 300 of them, who were formerly housed in a camp at Wolfsberg, Styria, are now at Judenburg camp, Styria.
2. several thousand Slovenes left their country and entered Austria or Italy between May 5th and 10th 1945, when the Yugoslav government troops were advancing towards the Austrian frontier. Some fled because they had relatives in General Mihailovic's army166 and feared reprisals, some because they had previously been outspoken in their condemnation and opposition to the communist system, some because they were not willing to remain in Yugoslavia under the authoritarian regime and many because they were panicked into flight by wild and exaggerated reports of the treatment of the civilian population at the hands of the advancing army. Over 1,000 of the latter group have returned home and it is expected that many more will do so during the coming spring and summer. It is estimated that 7,000-10,000 of group (2) are at present in Austria and 2,000-3,000 in Italy: of those in Austria 4,300 are in UNRRA camps Spittal and Judenburg.
3. a large further number of Slovenes have fled or been expelled from Yugoslavia since the end of the war. The expulsions occurred mainly in December 1945 and the majority of those expelled were Slovene Volksdeutsch who were deservedly hated for their conduct during the occupation. A minority however were of pure Slovene descent with clean war records, who were ejected either because they happened to bear German names or because they were known to be unsympathetic to the government. These refugees are not eligible for UNRRA care, but are none the less refugees and in need of assistance.
Composition and character of DPs
About one in six of the refugees are townspeople, the remainder being from the country: the majority of the townspeople are from Ljubljana (Laibach). The people from the country form a representative cross-section
166. my inaccurate description of the Slovene Domobranci. 266 of a normal rural community and all come from a small geographical area: farmers are in the majority but there is the usual quota of mayors, teachers, priests and craftsmen. On the other hand the townspeople are mainly drawn from the intelligentsia and black-coated workers, with teachers, clerks and students strongly represented. There is a high proportion of children.
The majority of the refugees owned their own farms at home or worked on the family farm, there being very few hired agricultural workers. Their land was mountainous and not fertile, and they are therefore steady, industrious and accustomed to hard work. At the same time being small-holders they are independent by nature and do not tolerate domineering leaders but will obey reasonable leaders who have their respect and confidence. They are used to managing their affairs on democratic lines, and once they have elected representatives will follow their decisions with discipline. They have a high social conscience and form a closely-knit and cohesive community. In particular they are enthusiastic for education, their standard being one of the highest in Eastern Europe. Their crime rate is low, crimes of violence being very rare.
The Slovenes are devoutly catholic and the church holds a position in their country that is strange to American or British people. Many welfare, youth leadership, journalistic, cultural and educational posts that elsewhere would be occupied by laymen are among them discharged by priests. This predominant position of the church has its origins far back in their national history. It is probable that the Germans would have succeeded in their aim of Germanising the people, if it had not been for the tenacious opposition to their pressure that was led by the catholic bishops. The priests were thus in large part responsible for the survival of the nation and have ever since been accepted as the nation's leaders.
Two further characteristics of the people can be mentioned. The first is their strong insularity. The peasant is convinced that the world revolves around Slovenia, and cannot conceive that less than one Englishman in a thousand is aware of the existence of his nation. Even the intelligentsia is remarkably limited in outlook and narrow in its range of ideas. The second characteristic is their passionate devotion to their land. No one that works 267 with them can fail to notice their sorrow at being parted from their land or their yearning to return, to retill their fields and to resume their work together with their friends.
Repatriation
Some months ago a large number of the refugees intended to remain in Austria if possible: they were unwilling to return home but did not wish to emigrate as they were reluctant to move to a place further distant from their relatives in Slovenia. Recently however because of more unsettled Austro-Yugoslav relations and the increasingly hostile attitude of the Austrian press to all DPs, most of the refugees have changed their minds. At present it appears unlikely that many Slovenes in camps will try to stay in Austria. It is impossible to assess the number that will emigrate when the alternative is presented - emigration or repatriation. If political conditions became only slightly milder at home, the great majority would go back. But if conditions remain as uncompromising as at present, it is unlikely that more than 1,000-2,000 will return.
There is little anti-repatriation propaganda in the camps, and what there is has small influence on repatriation. If the church and the intelligentsia had the overwhelming influence over the people that is sometimes attributed to them, and were using it to oppose repatriation, the thousand Slovenes that have already returned home would still be in the camps. In reality the deciding factor on repatriation is certainly the frequent letters that the people receive from their relatives and friends at home. In the summer and autumn of 1946 the tone of these letters was optimistic, and following the advice contained in them many refugees returned home. More recently they have been less encouraging, usually telling the people not to go back, but to wait until May or June.
The actions and policy of the Yugoslav government have also great influence on repatriation. The Stepinac trial, for instance, and the reported plans for the introduction of the collective farm system in Slovenia, have not encouraged repatriation. A further influence is the news that they receive of the experiences of those that return home. Many are able to go back to their own houses and resume work, 268 but inevitably the fate of others has also made a strong impression. The case of Maria Kocian, for instance, was reported in the Yugoslav papers. She returned home, and for a year lived in an institution similar to a convent. She was then brought to trial and sentenced to three years imprisonment. The writer does not know further details of this case, and has no intention of discussing its merits, but wishes solely to point out the influence of this, and similar cases, on repatriation.
Emigration
Commissions from the British government are visiting camps to recruit workers for various industries. The opportunity will be an excellent one for certain refugees and perhaps a number of Slovenes will go: but the scheme as at present described cannot absorb any considerable proportion, as England is prepared only to take single workers or perhaps small family groups.
The only other country [sic] offering immediate prospects for large numbers is South America. Firms in Chile are reported ready to accept and pay the fares of considerable numbers of immigrants, but as only labour for plantations is required the project is unlikely to evoke any response. Ecuador has ample fertile soil for thousands of immigrants, but a complete lack of finance, so that although the country is attractive settlement would appear impractical. The Brazilian and Argentine large-scale schemes, which are for industrial and agricultural labourers, do not attract the Slovenes, who wish to receive individual small-holdings.
There remains the special Argentine scheme, details of which are given in letters received by a Slovene in Austria, copies of which are attached [see page 000]. The writer has been informed that the letter has been shown only to a handful of DPs specially interested, in view of the adverse influence it might possibly have on repatriation. The letters are of considerable interest, although the information contained is incomplete. No mention is made of any advance of money to cover living costs for the first months until the farms become productive, nor is there any reference to the provision of temporary or permanent housing. Also the statement that the International Welfare Organisation has funds for the 269 transport of 10,000 refugees to South America sounds too good to be true.
The letters however are written by two men with good reputations for responsibility and reliability. Mr. Kosicek was a leading Slovene journalist before the war and was sent to survey the situation in Argentine by Dr. Krek, the virtual representative for emigration matters of the Slovene refugees. The Rev. Hladnik is a much respected Slovene priest who has worked for fifteen years in the Argentine and has excellent connections with the government and church there.
Conclusion
The number of refugees that will return to Yugoslavia in the near future is dependant on political developments in that country: the number that will require resettlement cannot therefore be assessed immediately with any confidence. Their conduct in and out of DP camps during the last 21 months has however shown clearly that if given the minimum of outside help they are more than capable and ready to help themselves, and that they would form excellent immigrants to any country offering them reasonable conditions of entry. 23.3.1947
The people I sent the memo to included:
* Major Blake, military attache to the Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in Austria, the army being due to take over the camps when UNRRA closed down at the end of June. He responded: .. It was very interesting and you have certainly taken a lot of trouble. I will see it gets to the right quarter. As there are likely to be DP 'developments' in the near future it may be of great value. ..
* Major Gerald R Sharp, British Information Service, Klagenfurt, the British military intelligence officer specialising in the Slovenes mentioned at the beginning of my memo. He responded: I want to thank you for taking the trouble to send me a copy of your memorandum on repatriation of Yugoslavs, which I found most interesting. Please send me copies of any other such memoranda on this and similar subjects that you may have occasion to write.
* Colonel Hall, Deputy Director, Displaced Persons Branch, 270 British Forces in Austria, who responded verbally.
* Peter Gibson, Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, Vienna, an old colleague from FAU days (see page 00). He responded: Thank you very much for sending me a copy of your notes on the Slovene refugees. We had already received a copy from our Klagenfurt office, and I am proposing to send one of them to our Public Relations Section at Headquarters, as they frequently ask us for information of this sort. I hope you have no objection. No doubt you have heard of the continual rumours of movement of Slovenes to the Argentine. On our side we have heard nothing definite yet, and it seems that if anything is done it will be as a result of Church pressure, since our own missions have not been very successful.
* T R Hobson, the labour MP recently in Austria on a parliamentary delegation studying refugee camps. He responded: Thank you very much indeed for sending me your views on the above people, I appreciate your action. I shall pass them on to other members of the delegation.
* Major [now Sir] Tufton Beamish, MC, the conservative MP on the delegation. He responded: Thank you very much for your letter enclosing your most interesting article on Slovene DPs. I am very grateful to you for sending this to me.
* Winston Churchill, MP, then leader of the Conservative Party and of the parliamentary opposition, who acknowledged receipt.
* M.F. [now Sir Michael] Cullis, United Kingdom Delegation, Moscow, c/o The Foreign Office, London. He responded: I am writing to thank you for being so kind as to send me a copy of your very interesting report on Slovene Refugees in Austria and Italy. Not only have I read this with considerable interest for its own sake, but it has also been valuable in connexion with some of the discussions on Displaced Persons which we have been having here in Moscow in connexion with the Austrian Treaty. (my bold) If I am in Austria before you conclude your operations, I shall hope to have the pleasure of seeing you again.
271
C H A P T E R 1 1
25 March - 30 June 1947
The regional head of UNRRA spends a day at the camp, meets all the Slovene group leaders and urges them to return home, and then after hearing their objections tells them not to be afraid because UNRRA will help arrange their emigration. Two weeks later the new UNRRA camp director "advises" eighteen camp leaders to resign their posts and dismisses eight high school teachers after the Yugoslav government accuses them of obstructing repatriation.
Pernisek has to find alternative employment and is taken on as a farm labourer, but the job does not last long. The TB Centre receives a series of favourable inspections from senior UNRRA administrators. The main camp is again raided by the British military police. Pernisek's young son has his first communion. I send home a copy of my final report on the TB Centre and an account of the distribution of the clothing and cotton thread mailed by my mother.
Pernisek finds a job on another farm and is called on to troubleshoot an internal dispute within the Slovene community. I hand over the TB Centre to an eccentric veteran relief worker with experience of fieldwork in Belgium in World War I. She sends me news of the Centre's fate after I return home and fifty years later I solve the mystery of her hostility to a respected refugee doctor.
272
The Pernisek diary:
25th March. Today is the feast of "Mary of the Arrival of Spring". **The swallows should be arriving but there's still too much snow and it's a bleak and damp day. We're celebrating Mothers' Day, and at nine the High Mass for children and mothers, the Missa de Angelis167 sung by the boys, was beautiful. Our young son was very happy when he pinned a paper heart on his mother's breast and our daughter a posy; she also gave her a "spiritual bouquet".168 In the afternoon the children performed a special concert in the hall.**
Mr. Chapman169, the chief of the UNRRA Mission in Carinthia, spent the day in the camp. He called together all the group leaders at nine in the evening and told them his impressions of his fortnight's stay in Yugoslavia. He wanted to visit 14 people from our camp who'd returned home to Slovenia but didn't find even one at home. Interesting! I didn't attend the meeting but spoke with some who were there and they said he talked with objectivity about what he was able to see. He tried to persuade them to return home. When our people explained their views on the regime and the amnesty and told him about the poor experience our people had had, he apologised and withdrew his statements. As he, at the beginning of his talk, was painting a grim picture of the prospects for our immediate future so, after the explanations we gave, he told us we shouldn't be afraid, we'd be looked after and they'd help us arrange our emigration. In the afternoon he spoke to the whole camp over the public address system, but was very brief.
30th March. ** Palm Sunday. The youngsters are very happy, proud of and boasting about the gaily-coloured Palm Sunday bouquets they've made. They show them off in each of the barracks and they're critically examined to judge whose is the finest and largest! Some are even decorated with oranges. A happy and
167. Mass of the Angels 168. A Slovene custom for children to put in an envelope and give to their parents a handsome piece of paper on which they have written how many Masses or specific prayers they are offering up for them 169. Mr C.D.Chapman, an Australian. 273 animated crowd gathers in front of the chapel waiting for the blessing of the bouquets. It's only a pity that it's raining heavily and that disturbs the joy and festive spirits. My small son is happy because he has a big, beautiful Slovene bouquet.**
4th April. ** Good Friday and the first Friday of the month, a gloomy, cold rainy day. We've come to expect some new disappointment each first Friday, but feel confident God is visiting and trying us with troubles and tribulations because he loves us and is preparing us for our future. Our cross grows daily heavier, our suffering greater. You, Lord, experienced the same. Your way led through Calvary to the triumph of Easter morning. After a lengthy Good Friday full of suffering, may Easter morning, resurrection and a new life shine on us also!**
8th April. We've a new camp director from Columbia called Novarino, dark-skinned, dark hair, otherwise nothing special. I was summoned to see him this afternoon, there were some eighteen of us. Without any introductory greeting, more like a sergeant addressing his men, he told us they'd received complaints from the Yugoslav government against us all, many against some, fewer against others. He therefore advised us to resign from the camp posts we held to avoid the suspicion we were obstructing the repatriation of our fellow countrymen. Our withdrawal would benefit us and also the rest of the refugees. We shouldn't regard this as an expression of mistrust (when was a kick an expression of trust!) or dismissal. The posts were being held for us and the withdrawals were only temporary.
So director Novarino forbade eight high school teachers from teaching: the director prof. Marko Bajuk senior, prof. Bozidar Bajuk, eng. Marko Bajuk junior, the botany teacher prof. Dr. France Mihelcic, Dr. Franc Blatnik, the teacher of Slavonic Studies prof. Janez Sever, Dr. eng. Ludvik Zagar and the teacher of physics and physical education Pavle Kveder. The climax of the director's speech came when he said there would be nothing against us resuming our positions when this pressure finished - UNRRA had embarked on a fresh three month repatriation campaign.
This was a unique introductory speech for a new camp director at Spittal - a greeting combined with a 274 diktat; we don't expect much good from this man. Though as a person he's probably not bad, he'll be an obedient servant and faithful executant of the orders of his superiors. We'll find some way out of this predicament. It'll be an enormous blow to the high school but director Bajuk loves his pupils too much to abandon them, and he's resourceful and persistent!
13th April. I've become a forester. I spend all day in the woods, gathering firewood and pine cones and sometimes dandelion leaves. Mostly I'm on my own, reading a lot and learning languages. Sometimes old Mr. Kremzar keeps me company. We're old acquaintances but always kept a respectful distance, now I find what he has to say most interesting and really enjoy his company. I feel well physically but under great stress, and I notice the same with Mr. Kremzar. It's most fortunate the weather is lovely and there's spring in the land.
15th April. Today the Archbishop of York Dr. Garbett came to the camp. He only had time for a fleeting visit, entered the kitchen and one barrack and then left. He was visiting the British garrison at Spittal and took the opportunity to drop in at least at our refugee camp. Accompanied by senior church and army officials, he had a talk with the camp director to find out about conditions and then made a very quick perfunctory tour. He didn't go through the camp.
22nd April. I'm fed up with wandering in the woods and the atmosphere in the camp is getting me down. It upsets me seeing how sad and disheartened people are. The food is getting worse every day and the rations smaller and smaller. Why should I kill time wandering the woods like a hungry wild animal when I could get work on a farm? Although I've no farm experience I got a job today as a day labourer at Tangerner farm, downstream by the river Drau. My wife goes and sews there fairly often and gets paid in kind, in food.
The owner has just returned from a prisoner-of-war camp. The fields are naturally rather neglected so he was pleased to hire me. We'll see how it goes. I spent the whole of my first day planting potatoes but I'm not alone, there's also a man called Tone from Dobrava, a farm worker and so good at the job, and also a very kind and good person. An Ukrainian called Ivan was ploughing the field and treated the 275 horses with kindness and ploughed well. We chatted and he told me he'd be leaving soon.
26th April. I think I've passed the trial period as a hired hand well. The work is hard and exhausting, but much more interesting and pleasant than in a factory or building roads. The food is good, well prepared and nourishing, and I may eat as much as I want, and that's why I'm able to work. I'm slowly getting used to dealing with cattle and horses. The owner is a wise man and isn't driving us hard; he doesn't need to, as we love to work, and work well and hard. I go home tired and am able to sleep soundly.
I like farm work and can honestly say I feel better among cows and horses than among some of our people in the camp. During the day I forget completely all the troubles and difficulties of camp life and feel really free, but when I return home in the evening, leave the Tangerner's fields and catch sight of the camp I experience a pressure on my heart, and once again a nightmare lies heavy on my spirit. Sleep relieves me of my worries. But the job finishes soon and I'll have to return to the camp, as the owner will be able to manage all right with only one hired hand.
1st May. Erste Mai, wieder frei!170 Last year I almost swore, seeing this poster, and this year I nearly did so again. Today we've elections for the camp committee. They are free, but naturally the camp director has decreed that all those recently discharged from their posts in the service of the camp can't stand. This was repeated over the camp public address system again and again. There were leaflets, posters, word of mouth propaganda, falsehoods, slanders against individual candidates, witty jokes but also brazen lies about people of integrity. People at last showed their true faces. The conflict is unambiguously partisan: Spittal against Lienz. There's still a small group among the Spittal people who even now maintain with all their might an agitation against those who came from Lienz and make a stand against the majority who want to elect experienced, hard-working and reliable people to positions of authority. The result of the election showed that the people retained their good
170. First of May, again free! 276 sense.
5th May. *The second anniversary of our becoming refugees. In spite of all the suffering, deprivation, poverty and a hundred other difficulties the two years have passed quickly. God has guided and protected us marvellously, often without our even being aware of the dangers from which we were preserved and the intrigues taking place behind our backs. We must thank God every day for listening to our prayers, because we don't even know the evils he has averted from us.*
There's not the slightest prospect of an early return home, although during the two years the situation has changed profoundly. Who, apart from us, in those days thought of the possibility of a third world war? The Americans were infatuated with the Russians, the English drunk with victory, in their eyes we were fanatical clerico-fascists and collaborators. They didn't or couldn't or didn't want to understand our opposition to communism. They were sure western democracy was advancing triumphantly and in five years there would be world order.
And today? The Americans are furious at the Russians who push ever deeper into Europe, the hero Tito is now seen as a bandit, a criminal who shoots at American pilots. The whole world is gripped in a war of nerves which could any day change into a third world war. Time flies by, political developments follow one another at a dizzy speed. So we live for ever in fear that events will swallow us up. What'll happen then?
10th May. Repatriation propaganda grows stronger every day. The new director Novarino is a campaigner for repatriation pure and simple, and not very intelligent at that. **Today he banned the printing of Taboriscnik171, quoting in support a decree of UNRRA and the Military Government. Dr. Blatnik had published a "Refugee Letter" and sent it to refugees outside the camp and abroad, and also to Major Sharp172, but it fell into the wrong hands and a great issue was made out of it at UNRRA and Military Government because it apparently contained some
171. The Camp Dweller 172. the British Intelligence expert on Slovenia, see pages 00 and 00 277 untrue allegations about UNRRA. An UNRRA investigation came to the conclusion it could only have been written by someone actually living in the camp, as it used the same paper as the Taboriscnik and the print was the same. So once again dr. Blatnik has dropped us in it, and this time rather badly.**
My letter-diary:
17th May. You must have put a great amount of work into getting those parcels of clothes ready, thank you very, very much. I'm quite certain every small piece of material will be of some use: we have 500 small children in the camp among other things. It's now a year since the supply of substantial clothes, such as it was, brought in by UNRRA has run out, and you can imagine how well one set and a half of clothes will last a year of heavy work, when the clothes have to be washed without soap usually!
The same day as I arrived back from Italy Colonel Cottrell, the chief medical officer from HQ in Vienna, together with his chief from Paris, visited the camp and did a pretty thorough inspection of the TB Centre. They were impressed by the progress made and the standard of work of the DPs. A couple of days later Brigadier Parminter, the head of UNRRA in Austria, also inspected us and was very pleased with the place. The Brigadier is very pleasant and human, resplendent in red tabs and monocle, but is reputed to be well-intentioned but weak. Things have gone pretty well during the three weeks I was away, and I'm glad to say my staff gave good support to the UNRRA nurse who was temporarily in charge. There is still a lot to be done to make the place really efficient, but it does now run reasonably smoothly.
The Pernisek diary:
29th May. At 11.45 pm we had a visit from the British military police. They surrounded the barrack and checked my documents and asked me what I'd been doing during the war and whether I was with the Ustashe or was an officer with the Domobranci. The sergeant asked if I knew Josef Novak and had earlier been a clerical, so the source of the denunciation couldn't have been clearer. Then they left me and went to the Kremzars, but he happened not to be sleeping at home that night. At five this afternoon they wanted to be 278 given lists of the inhabitants of barracks 1, 3 and 15 at once, so we saw what they were after. That night they looked for Pavle Masic and France Grum as well.
1st June. *Once again "Today is the day the Lord has made".* It's the first communion for our children. Our Francek is also among the fortunate ones, and very joyful and happy. Last night he went for his first confession and came home crying. We asked why: at confession he didn't repent, he prayed to repent, but didn't feel sorry. It took a long time to quieten and console him. Today he's his old self, happy and in a good humour. He lives his experiences deeply.
My letter-diary:
2nd June. Things are happening here quickly and always changing. The latest news is that the British army will take over all the camps from UNRRA in the British Zone of Austria (and Germany) and not IRO as was earlier thought. So far as Austria is concerned this is a very sensible decision as the number of refugees involved is not enough to justify two separate organisations. In the US and French Zones of Germany and Austria IRO, the International Refugee Organisation and successor to UNRRA, will take over not only the UNRRA camps but also those administered up till now by the US and French armies.
So far as Kaernten and Steiermark are concerned, this new decision will be in the interest of the DPs as it is unlikely IRO will have more supplies than the army, and the army can look after the DPs' interests vis-a- vis the Austrians better than IRO. My main worry is whether the army will carry on with the TB Centre. It should be obvious it is of value but one cannot count on that. I have a good friend in Colonel Hall in Klagenfurt and hope everything will be arranged OK.
*Thank you again for the great trouble you must have taken with the clothes parcels: I do look forward to their arrival. It's months since the camps received any clothes, and what with growing children and hard work the people are always in need. As with the clothes I brought back with me when I came back from leave, this time I'll give most to the professional families who are in the greatest need. They have no 279 opportunity to earn high wages like the craftsmen, and because of their position and self-respect cannot be continually applying for help at the welfare office as some of the peasants do. Many are well enough off and don't need help, but some are working very hard for their people and almost destitute.*
9th June. *Ten parcels have now arrived! All in excellent condition, most strongly tied up. I started, together with my old clothing distribution clerk from Lienz, unpacking, sorting and dividing them at eight in the evening and was finished at one a.m.! The result was thirteen really useful bundles for twelve professional, or semi-professional families, who mostly worked hard for the community for two years for little or no pay, don't patronise the black market and have several children to support. The thirteenth bundle was for students without families.
We made a list of the families most in need and considered each piece of clothing separately from the point of view of size, material, use etc. before allotting it to one or other of the bundles. On the basis of this careful distribution according to suitability we reckoned that certainly over 90% of the pieces would be used actually as clothing. After two years of experience in "making do" with clothing there won't be much that's usable that will go to waste! Particularly welcome were the many garments and pieces of material that were suitable for women's underwear and the gowns and evening dress, the latter two items in particular being of first class strong material -the sheet also was very valuable as linen.*
I thought you might like to see the enclosed note from Dr Mersol, one of the families to whom I passed on the clothing. He has a wife recovering from a cancer operation and four children 14-8 years of age. He is chief camp doctor and virtual representative and leader of the Slovene group, but his children are some of the poorest clothed in the camp. His largest son came to me to deliver the letter wearing his "best clothes" - that brown jacket you bought for me at Richmond, and which I took back with me to Lienz with elbows, sleeves and edges completely worn through!
280 The enclosed draft final report may interest you:
Report on TB Centre, Spittal June 1947 Personnel The chief nurse has been changed and the new chief nurse has shown more initiative, energy and authority than her predecessor. When she has had more experience she should fill the post most satisfactorily. The former chief nurse has taken over the supervision of the Centre linen and blankets, and is very fully engaged in repairing and altering such material as the Centre has. A fourth char-woman has been engaged to clean the barracks recently opened.
General The following statistics show (a) number of in-patients at beginning of month (b) number of beds free (c) total number of beds available and (d) average number of in-patients over the month. (a) (b) (c) (d) 1st March 48 19 67 49 1st April 55 12 67 59 1st May 62 17 79 64 1st June 69 42 111 -
All patients now lie on spring beds and we have a total of over 90 spring beds available.
A dentist's room has been equipped and the camp dentist visits the Centre two afternoons weekly. Cooperation between him and the Centre staff is excellent. A new system has been introduced of dividing all patients into four categories, according to the times at which they are allowed out of bed: small cards marked A, B, C or D are hung at the head of each bed. It is hoped that this will make easier the enforcement of rest periods by the nursing and other staff. On 19 May Dr. Gomez arrived from Trieste with the mobile mass X-Ray unit. The Centre medical and other staff helped in the testing of the unit, and the van finally departed for Judenburg on 4 June.
*Supply On the 13th May a large consignment of hospital equipment and furniture was collected from St. Marein camp and a few days later a quantity of cupboards were received from Grodig and benches from Vienna. Release notes for two cubic metres of wood and ten kilo nails have been received through the supply officer Klagenfurt and urgently needed bedside lockers are being made from the material. We have 281 now enough furniture and material to cover our minimum needs for the opening of all the barracks. Sheets still are our most urgent need.*
Construction Work on the open-air shelter has already started and it is hoped that as a result of generous help from the Camp the building will be soon finished. In the meantime a tent on loan from the Camp offers open-air shelter for the ten patients most in need of it. The regular damping of the canvas is being tried to reduce the temperature.
Welfare Further valuable equipment has been received from YMCA/YWCA, Klagenfurt. The programme of activities for the patients has been continued and extended but a temporary setback and drop in interest has been experienced as a result of some very hot weather. A walk taken by the majority of patients accompanied by doctors and nurses into the local pine woods to avoid the great heat in the afternoon was a success and will be repeated under close medical supervision.
Mass is now held regularly in the dining room and is well attended. A loudspeaker has been installed and connected up with the Camp public address system: the patients receive through this medium cheerful music, news and repatriation propaganda. The Camp orchestra has agreed to give the patients in the Centre a weekly open-air concert: the first concert will be held on Saturday evening.
Conclusion As this will be the last UNRRA monthly report on the Centre, an assessment of its development and usefulness may be of use. The Centre has been organised specifically to achieve the best treatment practicable for DPs of a variety of nationalities suffering from tuberculosis. It is adequately equipped for the treatment of 110-120 patients, the eleven barracks of which the Centre is composed being in a reasonable state of repair. The medical and nursing staff have such specialist experience in the care of tuberculosis as to make the treatment offered of a substantially higher standard than that available in individual camps: they are also provided with X-Ray, clinical and laboratory equipment not available to other camps.
For three months regular weekly staff meetings have been held, at which the departmental chiefs have met to 282 discuss the most efficient solution to the various problems that have arisen: the work of the Centre is thus well coordinated and an excellent team spirit has developed. The chief doctor is well-qualified for the post and is supported by a keen medical staff, a capable radiographer and a reliable doctor- dispenser, who keeps his card index of drugs with great accuracy. A hard-working chief nurse supervises the work of the other nurses with initiative and authority.
The two welfare officers are discharging this particularly difficult job with imagination and energy, although development in this department has been slow. The improvement in the morale and behaviour of the patients in the last three months has been marked. The two officers are highly intelligent and give valuable help in every side of the Centre's activities, although sometimes they lack forcefulness and initiative.
The admin. chief is a man with considerable experience in administration and personnel management: he is well qualified to discharge the functions of lay superintendent and in general to coordinate and supervise the activities of the Centre under the technical control of the chief doctor. Storekeeping of food and other commodities is carried out with great accuracy by him and a most reliable clerk- storekeeper (both were qualified accountants and bank clerks in Yugoslavia). The office is efficiently run by these two men and a clerk-typist, particular care being taken with admission, discharge and other records. There is good cooperation with the medical and admin. staffs of the camps served by the Centre.
The hard-working and variously qualified cleaning, maintenance and laundry staff is led by a resourceful and most energetic foreman, who works under the admin. chief. The kitchen has a capable chief who keeps detailed food and calory accounts and supervises the work of a reliable staff. The great majority of the patients are well satisfied with the food preparation and the doctors take a close interest in its quality.
Many services are received from D.P. Camp Spittal, without which it would be impossible to run the Centre: much material of great value has been received from the Camp. The closest cooperation is maintained between 283 T.B. Centre and Camp hospital, and relations are excellent with the various Camp officials with whom the Centre has to deal. Relations with the local Austrian health authorities are also cordial.
The chief doctor speaks good English, the radiographer, doctor-dispenser and the two welfare officers speak it to a limited degree, and the office staff have a sufficient knowledge to handle English correspondence. All senior staff except the chief nurse speak fluent German. The two welfare officers between them cover such a range of languages that they have to date had no language difficulties with the 133 patients that have been admitted to the Centre.
In general the Centre is sufficiently developed for it to run smoothly and maintain its standard of work with a minimum of supervision. The work of the senior staff in particular has been closely observed over a period of three months and it can be said with confidence that they are responsible, hard-working and worthy of trust. If for any reason (repatriation, resettlement, illness) personnel leave the Centre, the chief doctor and admin. chief can be relied on to recommend the most suitable substitutes available.
Notes (1) To the above survey of the staff at present employed it must be added that the personnel is by no means perfect. Much of the staff has had little or no experience in this kind of work. Differences in temperament have caused considerable difficulties so far as cooperation between different departments are concerned. One or two members of the staff are lazy or unwilling to undertake work that does not lie distinctly in their department - this latter failing is however rare.
(2) There is a general reluctance to being firm and enforcing discipline among the patients, although this is not peculiar to this Centre but is a characteristic of DP camps in general.
(3) The senior staff have also little experience or understanding of the establishment of simple routines whereby regular functions can be simply introduced and enforced: there is a tendency to adopt with enthusiasm an idea and after two weeks let it drop for lack of a systematic routine. This is particularly so in the case of health education and 284 propaganda.
(4) It is however hoped that these difficulties are largely to be ascribed to the Centre's "growing pains" and should continue to diminish.
The Pernisek diary:
13th June. I'm in Tyrol again, land of pleasant memories for me, as a hired hand with farmer Vincent Gugenberger of Ober Pirkach by Oberdrauburg. *The people of Carinthia call this district Tyroler Toerl or the Gateway to Tyrol, where the Pustrica valley begins, and Lienz is only a few kilometres away.* I know the Gugenberger home from earlier, because when we were at the camp in Lienz my wife spent a lot of time there sewing and they paid her in kind. **She had plenty of work, but the family suffered. Every day she travelled by truck with Hungarian prisoners- of-war who were repairing the banks of the river Drau, and returned with them in the evening.
Gugenberger really needs workers as it's the time for mowing, cultivating and hoeing. I'll have a go and see how it goes and how much I can do. The work I'm doing now is heavy, but I won't and mustn't fall behind the other workers. Mowing is hard and exhausting, and when I lie down to rest in the evening my hands are numb and when I get up in the morning I can't bend my fingers and the first hour of work is torture. I comfort myself that I'll get hardened to it, and in fact I have. It was easier at Tangerner's as we worked slower, more calmly, with good-natured Tone. He used to say, "don't be in too much of a hurry! Whoever overworks as a day labourer is a blockhead and if he dies from overwork they toll a basket for him, not a bell".
And now I'm an honest-to-goodness day labourer. When I started the farmer told me he'd no money for wages: he inherited the land from his father together with a large debt he's trying to pay off. So he won't register me with the labour office, but pays me in kind with food. Because we were starving in camp I was very happy, and in fact he gave me enough for the whole family. As workmate I've a retired railway worker Lojze, a strong, stocky man who likes to rest now and again for a chat when at work. Then I also get some rest! The lightest job for me is leading the horse, a heavy, slow beast, and the farmer is 285 pleased with the horse and with me, while he uses the plough to earth the potatoes and maize. Where the fields are small and narrow I do it with a hoe.
So all's well. Food more than enough, appetizing and nourishing. Before we start work there's "mush" waiting for us on the table, a porridge made from wheat, rye or maize flour boiled in milk in a large copper cauldron. While it's still warm the lady of the house puts large chunks of butter on top, and then the butter melts all over and forms a lovely coating as it cools off. The master prays and we all dig into the dish. The porridge is quite thick, and we cut it with our spoons and put pieces into our mouths. It's delicious and sustaining, and I'm always thinking of the morning slush in the camp and the morsel of sour bread made of anything except real flour.
During the morning the lady of the house brings us some lovely smoked ham and bread, and cider to quench our thirst. At midday there's vegetable or potato soup on the table, and ham dumplings made of bread. They're hard enough for snooker balls but very tasty because they're full of crackling and as large as the cockroaches which creep around the fireplace. We've salad as well, made sour not with vinegar but with the liquid from sauerkraut mixed with sour cream. Lojze and I have some difficulty getting it down! In the afternoon we've the same food as for the morning break, and in the evening a kind of maize cake immersed in warm milk. The bread itself is flat and hard. The people in Tyrol don't grow much wheat so they use it very sparingly, as do the people of Carinthia. The lady of the house only bakes bread once a fortnight and when it's cooled off locks it up in a chest so it doesn't get eaten too quickly.
We get meat or chicken quite often, and dried meat or mutton. There's a story about chicken meat. The village nestles in the foothills of the Zilja Alps and the Lienz Dolomites, and birds of prey, eagles, vultures, hawks and others, circle round high up above the villages all day on the lookout for prey. And the children are the watchmen! When they see a bird stop in the air and get ready to swoop down to the earth, they grab their sticks: and if the thief falls upon the chicken they scream and hit him again and again. Of course some hens get hit too, and the hen which doesn't get up after the battle goes into 286 the pot.
I can't forget the black flat cake: baked from the unleavened dough of wheat and rye flour, it was very tasty. She put it on the table when it was still warm, and after we finished the soup she brought in a large earthen jug filled with heated half-melted butter. We cut triangular pieces of black cake and dipped them into the butter - a simply delicious and sustaining morsel. The grease ran off our chins! We ended the meal with stewed fruit or small fruit cakes. At haymaking or the harvest season a lamb sometimes fell victim to our need for food.
What bothered me most about the kitchen however was the swarms of flies and cockroaches. In the camps we were free of bed bugs, fleas, flies and mosquitoes but in the farmsteads around here there's too much vermin. I don't know what the meals were like on Sundays as I went home to my family then.
Each Saturday early in the morning the lady of the house would fill my rucksack with food for the journey: flour, lard, salt and other things I'm supposed to take to the Alpine dairy maid. I started off before six, going towards Mount Hochstadel. The road was steep, the knapsack heavy: I was bent going up the hill, my knees almost touching my chin, and had to stop and rest quite a few times, but I enjoyed the magnificent view of the valley below. The river Drau wound her way through like a snake, and lovely looking villages and churches followed one after the other: Lavant with its pilgrimage church, Lienz, Nikolsdorf, Oberdrauburg, Graifenburg, all the way to Steinfeld. At about ten, breathless, I reached the Alpine farm on the side of the mountain and greeted the dairy maid, shouting very loud because she was deaf. Anyone could have heard our conversation: even the cows paused and looked curiously in our direction. She gave me a large piece of the fresh loaf I'd brought her, with some sour milk. She then made the hard boiled corn mush and covered it with warm milk. After the meal I sat down to savour the beautiful view of the Carinthian Alps and Dolomites, looking like serrated cathedral steeples reaching up into the sky. I was aware of an eagle circling majestically high above me.
Just before midday I used to start off towards the valley 287 carrying my rucksack of cheese and butter, lighter than the morning load. Going up the mountain I didn't look too closely at the mountain path, but going down I had to be careful as it became very slippery. I reached the farmstead in record time and handed over to the lady of the house the goods and messages and greetings for the children from the dairy maid. Then I took a bath in the rivulet nearby and changed my clothes, and Lojze and I went to Oberdrauburg station, very happy with rucksacks full of food, he to Villach and me to Spittal.
So one day followed the next and I was getting used to the hard labour on the farm. I learnt a lot of new skills, even how to look after cows and horses; and I must say I was quite happy among the farm animals. The work was heavy and I was very tired in the evenings. For my rather weak constitution this work was really too much - beyond my bodily strength. I was particularly exhausted after the Saturday morning climb up the mountain but I was healthy, my nerves were steady and I calmed down considerably. I was living in unspoilt countryside without gossip, radio or newspaper. The only contact with the outside world was the postman, but even he appeared very rarely. I was living outside the world like a bull on a pasture!**
16th June. Dr. Mersol asked me to convene a meeting of leading men in the camp to discuss the questions of organisations and of Dr. Vracko. People seem to agree that, in these critical times when a new war is inevitable, emigration across the ocean is the only solution. There are rumours the communists intend to carry out a coup and seize power in Austria this autumn. A Balkan Soviet Federation and a Danubian Federation - of which Austria will be a member - will come into existence in the autumn.
The Slovene Carinthian communists have started a powerful drive against us which will probably be stepped up; even the communists in the camp have become active and hold meetings at which they discuss how this or that one will be "singed". Yesterday they'd a meeting in the room of Tratnik the black marketeer. Trobec announced to his comrades that Yugoslavia will carry on with a non-violent repatriation, but if this doesn't succeed heads will roll and, if necessary, heads such as Blatnik's. So more difficult and unpleasant days await us. 288
Dr. Vracko has seriously lost favour with his collaborators because he visited Trobec. They don't trust him any more and don't want to go on working with him. We don't blame him personally because we know he's under particularly heavy stress. He worries about his family which stayed at home, it is calling him home very powerfully and he'd like to get support from us that what he's doing is right. Yet he'll be more miserable and perhaps more unfortunate if he continues as he's doing. We'll have to settle this friendlily and with great sensitivity.
My letter-diary:
25th June. Up to a fortnight ago we all expected the IRO, the International Refugee Organisation and successor body to UNRRA, to take over the UNRRA camps. My successor had already been sent here and then it was suddenly announced that the British army authorities would take over. There was chaos and confusion as a result. One thing was clear to me, and that was that if the TB Centre was first handed over to the IRO man and then after two weeks handed over by him to the army, all continuity would be lost and the efficiency of the Centre might suffer considerably to put it at its least. The IRO man speaks no German and is not particularly interested in the place anyway.
So when it became clear the army would take over I wrote to Colonel Hall offering to stay on a couple of weeks after finishing with UNRRA, so that I could overlap with the army authorities. He passed my offer to Colonel Logan Grey, his chief in Vienna, who said "he would be glad to accept Mr Corsellis's generous offer." So as things stand I should be home about July 11th. I'll let you know more as soon as I know.
This is the last letter I sent my mother. I returned home for good on the 5th July in order to complete my legal training in Oxford. The TB sanatorium was a remarkable example of what refugees can accomplish on their own, with relief workers or private agency personnel attached to them as "enablers". But some private agency personnel had serious limitations, and I interrupt the normal sequence of the Pernisek diary for a couple of pages to give an example of this.
I handed over the sanatorium to Violetta Thurstan, a 68-year old former hospital matron with a spectacular record of service with the British Red Cross in the First World War - twice in 289 Belgium, two months as prisoner of the Germans, Russia twice, Poland, Macedonia and France, invalided home with shell shock and the Military Medal. She wrote to me in England at the end of July:
I expect you will be wondering how we are all getting on. Luckily we are doing very well, all is quiet and harmonious - and everybody very good (except some naughty patients who went off to sleep in the camp for a change - coming back very early in the a.m. to their beds here). We are getting on quietly with some of the improvements. We have a recreation room now for the staff, and a flourishing occupational therapy room with a part-time teacher. It is still being proposed that we move to a better site - but nothing settled.
It has been a bad month for the patients, very hot and constant thunderstorms. We now have 84 patients - we get about two or three admissions every day. The dispenser asks if you could possibly get Vol I of Martindale's Pharmacopoeia - I understand you got them Vol II, but they urgently need Vol I. I promised to ask you about it. I am sure everybody would want to send you a message if they knew I was writing and then this letter would take many more pages than I have time for - so I had better stop.
She wrote again in November:
I got your letter yesterday and as I happen to have a free moment (I don't get very many) I will answer it at once. First of all we have moved. Away from the dust of the high road, the fog of the valley, the baking huts, the frightful difficulties with fuel, to a heavenly spot five minutes from a pine forest beside a trout stream, glorious views of snow mountains, facing south and flooded with sunshine. It is an old Messerschmidt factory near Seeboden, Millstaedtersee, very well adapted for a hospital, with central heating everywhere, a lovely kitchen all electric that can cook for four hundred people, constant hot water, a very good recreation room for the patients with piano, radio - a carpenter's bench and other amenities, a separate chapel - a nice garden but not very big.
I found this place and nagged at the authorities all the summer till at last I got permission to move. The next day the agreement between Allied Commission 290 Austria and International Refugee Organisation was signed and IRO at once sent a message to say we were not to move. I can't serve two masters and as ACA had told me I could move, I went on quietly and got all the patients up here. Then there was a fine to do. People rushed down from Vienna, and Dr. Clement said he did not approve of the move as the place was too small - it was only a short-term policy - it did not solve the T.B. problem etc etc (Nobody ever thought it did). Dr. Clement said he wanted a place for a thousand patients, we can only take a hundred and fifty here. I left them all to squabble among themselves and went on with the move and the comfort of having these patients so warm and happy and well done by - I can't describe.
IRO are very angry with me, but I can bear it - the patients are the important part. I could not leave them there to freeze. We were getting one metre of wood every third day - only enough to heat the ward for an hour and a half in the evening - there was practically no wood in the camp. I had 106 patients and 37 out-patients waiting to come in, kitchen not big enough serving meals in relays till 8.30 pm, no laundry, and with that large number of patients very very ill some of them, (one died the week before we came up) the washing had got quite beyond us.
Lekan and the staff are very happy to be here, and Dr. Kovacic is beside himself with joy as he can really have his patients well looked after now. We are not being obstinate about it. If Dr. Clement can find a place for a thousand patients, I shall be ready to move these people there. But there is no such building in all Austria as far as I know.
We are having the ambulance up here, and I hope a 15 cwt truck, so that we shall be fairly independent: rations come up in bulk. We have nothing to do now really with Spittal Camp. I wish you could pay us a little visit and see what a lovely place we have got. We are putting up three huts for the infectious cases - otherwise everyone is housed indoors.
You ask how I get on with Dr. K. Very well. I find him intelligent and cooperative. Old Puc is a fool and started by being very uncooperative. So I had him in and told him if he went on in that way he would find himself standing on the road with his little bag waiting for a new job, and he has been much better 291 since. But I don't find him very intelligent, and not at all up-to-date. Katrinka is moved to Salzburg. I have asked for a good welfare worker instead of a nurse, as I have a very good Oberschwester. I am sure there is more news but I haven't more time so this will have to do to go on with.
For forty five years I heard no more about the TB Sanatorium and Violetta Thurstan, and then the Pernisek diary threw light on something that had puzzled me: her dismissive mention of Dr Puc whom I had greatly respected, as had his fellow Slovenes. Then in 1993 a monograph on "Violetta Thurstan and her adventurous, exciting life" was published. Born in 1879, she died in 1978 at the age of 99, an authority on crafts and weaving among the bedouins of the Libyan desert. She had qualified as a nurse already in 1905, was present at the siege of Almeria in the Spanish Civil War and did recruitment, intelligence work and lecturing for the Royal Navy in the Second World War. In November 1944 she arrived in Cairo as a relief worker with the Catholic Committee for Relief Abroad and for the next two years operated between there, Rome and Austria. In 1946, when 67 but only admitting to 55, she joined the Displaced Persons Division of the Allied Commission Austria. Her biographer writes she was remembered with affection, respect and sometimes awe, but adds:
Violetta could be overbearing, and it is easy to understand how. Her range of experiences by 1947 made her formidable. Most colleagues considered her to be generous, firm but unsympathetic to those she felt "did not meet the mark". She made no excuses for her terse comments or irritated rejections of individuals found lacking. She never apologised whatever the circumstances.
Franc Pernisek completed the story in his diary entry of the 12th October 1948:
Dr. Franc Puc, the doctor at the IRO DP tuberculosis sanatorium at Seeboden, came to see me today for a long talk. A very unhealthy situation and tense atmosphere has arisen there. At first Mr. John Corsellis directed the hospital when everything ran very well as he was strict, conscientious, fair and completely impartial. In June 1947 he was replaced by an elderly sour-faced lady of bizarre temperament and behaviour, English, a Catholic, Miss Thurstan. She brought with her another lady called Ela: she was Austrian, a convert and a dress-maker by profession, 292 but Miss Thurstan installed her as senior ward sister.
Under Miss Thurstan's protection Ela became more and more autocratic, insolent and impertinent to the nursing personnel, ward sisters, office staff and even the doctors and interfered directly in their professional work. Today she has created an unbearably hostile atmosphere between herself, the patients and the nursing staff. The doctors gave the patients their medical advice, she hers: she has given the patients different drugs to those prescribed by the doctors and driven patients out of the chapel although the doctors had given them permission to attend services there.
So patients complained to Miss Thurstan, but she ignored their complaints and Ela continued to harass people to such an extent that one day there was even a brawl. Dr. Puc complained in his professional capacity to Miss Thurstan about her behaviour but she only shouted at him rudely. The doctors and sisters then sent a complaint signed by Dr. Puc and 26 key employees of the hospital to IRO headquarters in Klagenfurt, which naturally sent Miss Thurstan a severe reprimand. She reacted by reproaching Dr. Puc for disloyalty because he had signed the complaint, and threatened to prevent him emigrating to the USA.
He told me the whole story, full of anxiety and seriously afraid of the harm this petty-minded woman could do. I did my best to calm him down, suggesting he forget about her altogether and place his trust only in God, knowing that He will help him, as he is a deeply religious committed Christian. I also told him that no officer or manager in the IRO stays long, because of constant transfers due to unsatisfactory interpersonal relationships. He seemed to be consoled but I don't know if he was really reassured.
When I read this I worried about what happened to Dr Puc. Was he able to emigrate? I was not reassured until September 1993, when his daughter Marija told me what happened (see page 00). He got to the USA in 1949 with his wife, seventeen year old daughter and sixteen year old son and they settled in New York City. He found a job as a night-watchman and hospital orderly, learnt English, repassed his medical exams, requalified and worked as a hospital anaesthetist until retirement. The couple had seventeen grandchildren and died at the ages of eighty and 293 ninety-one, "very thankful for what they had and happy".
We now return to 1947 and the next entry in the Pernisek diary:
29th June. In the afternoon the executive committee of the Slovenian Social Committee had a meeting, after changing its name to the Slovenian Refugee Advisory Board. Dr. Miha Krek has chosen new members: Monsignor Skrbec, Pernisek, prof. Sever, Dr. Blatnik, Mavric, Lekan, Markez, Ambrozic, Dr. Puc, director Marko Bajuk. Dr. Vracko has been dropped. In the evening we had a performance in the theatre of Everyman, which was most successful. Brunsek is an excellent actor and also an admirable stage-manager.
294
C H A P T E R 1 2
1 July - 31 December 1947
Emigration starts, and at the same time a deterioration in food supplies and an increase in pressure for repatriation. A new Anglo-Yugoslav intergovernmental agreement on displaced persons adds to the Slovenes' fears, and the camp director for his part behaves with greater autocracy and insensitivity. Adult male Slovenes are too frightened to remain in the camp overnight, and sleep instead in the woods or in the barns of friendly farmers.
Morale rises with the arrival of a first consignment of Swiss gift parcels, accompanied by letters of support and good wishes. Pernisek takes part in a round-the-clock vigil of intercession in the chapel, praying for deliverance from the pressure. The unusual behaviour of the Slovene leader Dr Mersol suggests post-traumatic stress disorder. Relations between the Slovenes who have lived at Spittal since July 1945 and those transferred later from Lienz begin to improve, and mutually hostile factions unite. Yugoslav government secret agents continue to stir up trouble in the camp.
Military Government Klagenfurt banishes from the camp 54 Slovenes with their families, including the Perniseks, in response to accusations from Belgrade that they are impeding repatriation. Pernisek prepares to leave the camp but falls ill. He is admitted to the local Austrian hospital and his family finds refuge with a friendly farmer. The intergovernmental agreement is abrogated and pressure on the Slovenes lessens. Pernisek spends Christmas in the camp hospital.
295 The Pernisek diary:
1st July. Emigration across the ocean has started gradually with the first contingent for Venezuela, including some Slovenes, leaving Spittal camp early this morning. OZNA173 checked on the loading, as little Mr. Rak took a walk through the camp and conferred with Trobec. The camp director Novarino takes his leave today - each one is worse than the last.
17th July. Planned and premeditated starvation gets ever worse - starve them, freeze them to despair and push them back home and then they can say, "they went of their own free will". We got a thin red bean soup at lunch today, and the quality and quantity of the bread is very poor. And today they took away all the stoves from the rooms, leaving them only where there were families with small babies. Only barbed wire's lacking to turn us into a genuine concentration camp.
The well-known Major [sic] Maclean174 was walking round the camp today. He was the principal British liaison officer with Tito's partisans during the second world war. He speaks Serbo-Croat, and he's asking where and who are the domobranci and the chetniks. He comes across as an absolute cynic from the way he acts and speaks, going round the camp hunting and catching young lads and men and asking if they've been with the domobranci. If they say no, he asks if they are anti-communists; when they say they certainly are, he asks why, if they were anti- communists, they didn't join the domobranci. The man's a cad.
5th August. Maclean is back going round the camp and asking where the domobranci are, and these visits bode no good. Why does this interest him so much at this moment? If anyone knows where they are, he does. Can't he leave the dead in peace? Or rather, is his conscience pricking him?
The food's appalling, just water. The bread's of poor quality, and much too little.
173. Organizacija za Narodna Zascita, the Yugoslav secret police 174. Brigadier Fitzroy (later Sir Fitzroy) Maclean, Conservative M.P. and later junior minister and successful author. 296
7th August. A second contingent leaves for Venezuela. May God give them every happiness! It's said the country has masses of oil, not much drinking water and enough tropical malaria.
16th August. The Maclean Commission started its interrogations, chaired by Major Stood. They tried again to catch Mr. Kremzar, calling him to the kitchen to collect his ration-card in person, after the camp sergeant had arranged things with the FSS175 who were waiting in a car outside on the road, but the two of us were watching them from a nearby hill. The police drove off after talking briefly with the sergeant in charge of the kitchen.
1st September. Today it was my turn to be interrogated by the Maclean Commission, by a civilian who seemed a decent sort of fellow and spoke poor Serbo-Croat. It went something like this. "Your surname and Christian names". I give them. "Do you have any document?" I show them. He can't believe I have so many, because most people have none with them. "Did you live all the time at your birthplace?" I say no, because I studied at various places and lived longest in Ljubljana. I show him my Ljubljana municipal identity card. "Did you have a job in Ljubljana? Where?" I show him my certificate of appointment at OUZD176 and the one of my passing the professional examination. "Was OUZD a German agency?" I answer briefly no.
"Are you married?", I show him my marriage certificate. "Any children?" and I show him both children's birth certificates. "Where do you plan to emigrate?" "To England". He winces slightly, but says nothing. "Did you serve in the Yugoslav army?" "Yes". "Were you called up? Where? Became POW?" "I was called up at Slavonski Brod, but I wasn't made a POW". "Do you have relatives at home?" "I've a mother and sister in Ljubljana". "Did anyone threaten you?" "Personally, no. But in general, yes, like they did everyone else".
"Are you in contact with your mother and sister in any way?" "We write to each other, but that's the only
175. Field Security Service, the British army security police 176. social security organisation for workers 297 contact". "Are they happy at home?" "My mother was put in prison, they ransacked the flat. They shot her son, they took everything from my sister and she had to do forced labour for very many months, and they did the same to my mother. I think they're not happy in view of all they had to undergo, because they simply can't feel happy". He promised I'd get a certificate and the result of the interrogation in a few days. We rose and bowed to each other, and on 12 September this gentleman personally gave me a white card numbered L 658 with Maclean's signature, so I'm white!
9th September. *I had a bad headache and couldn't get up in the morning. I got up later, washed and shaved, but the headache got steadily worse. I felt chilled and shaking and the fever grew in strength. I took my temperature at around 11 am, and it showed 38.9 C. I vomited green liquid. Dr. Puc saw me and said I had severe blood poisoning in my left foot. Earlier I'd had a small wound in my fourth web space which got infected in the communal bathroom. I had to stay in bed till 15 September.*
19th September. The socialist newspaper Die Neue Zeit today carries a report from the socialist press service that during the next few weeks 7,000 Slovene refugees in Carinthia will be repatriated. So something is being prepared and once again the English must be concluding a dirty deal. On the 8th September an Agreement between the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia concerning Yugoslav displaced persons was concluded in Bled. It was signed for Britain by Charles Peake and J.S.Steele and for Yugoslavia by Vladimir Velebit and Gen. Lajt. D.Lekic. Its substance, as set out in the Die Neue Zeit177, is as follows:
The UK and Yugoslav Governments agree that their respective governments should jointly make a concentrated effort finally to dispose of the whole question of Yugoslav individuals and collaborationists still living under British control. To attain the best result, the Yugoslav Government will send a special high-ranking mission to the Special Commission for Refugees in Vienna. The mission will devote itself principally to achieving a close cooperation, and in addition will carry out the
177. The New Times 298 duties and be entitled to certain rights as set out below:
The Special Commission and the Yugoslav mission will exchange the necessary information to carry out the interrogation of every Yugoslav citizen who the Yugoslav Government wishes to be interrogated. The Yugoslav Government shall procure full information concerning organisations of Yugoslavs opposed to the interests of the United Nations and the repatriation of refugees in the British zones in Germany and Austria and in parts also of Italy.
The Special Commission will in the first place as its first priority carry out an examination of Yugoslav nationals in the British zone of Austria. Besides investigation in the camps a great effort will be made to investigate the past and present activities of all Yugoslavs living outside the camps.
The British Government will further in the shortest possible time move from the British zone of Austria to Germany all Yugoslavs in the camps who are suspected of having actively assisted the enemy during the war, or are suspected of being members of any organisations trying to overthrow by force of arms the government of their native country; or who are working and endeavouring to dissuade their compatriots from returning to their native land.
The Government of the United Kingdom is in principle prepared to facilitate the provision in the camps under its control of materials for delivery to the Yugoslav Government to expedite repatriation. Technical facilities will also be provided to speed repatriation, including in particular transport.
The Government of the United Kingdom will hand over all Yugoslavs present in its territories, against whom the Yugoslav government will prepare verified and authenticated cases of active and deliberate collaboration with Axis forces in a way in which the facts are established prima facie. But if the British authorities find that under its criteria a prima facie case of guilt has not been established, the individual will be released, if the person is in British custody.
Naturally the signing of the agreement gave rise to feelings of powerful fear among our compatriots in 299 and living outside the camps, and in particular those living near the Slovene border. People were terrified of the outcome of the dirty deal. We are of absolutely no account any more, rubbish blown into the foreigners' backyard, and they want to clean it up by whatever means so long as they get rid of us. This constant pressure to return home was bad enough so far. Now it'll be intensified still further, we'll be starved even more: more discrimination, disdain, persecution and oppression. They want to break our spirit, yet we trust in God. He will not abandon us, He will not humiliate us, He will save us. This is perhaps our last, although worst, trial.
24th September. Today's Vienna Welt-Presse178 denies the news item about the repatriation of the Slovenes. If such a well-informed Jewish paper prints a story like that, it does so with a purpose. The whole affair smells worse every day.
6th October. The new camp director has been investigating our theatre accounts and printing press for a few days, looking for hidden funds he thinks we've been using to maintain and supply an underground anti- Yugoslav movement. He's going about the job sternly like a policeman, and in doing so he's insulting and humiliating people. Even the mild Dr. Mersol has reacted and protested in strong terms. Up till now he has done all the interpreting. Our people consider each new camp director worse than his predecessor, and they are right. These people are only concerned for themselves, and are probably more afraid of the sack than we are of repatriation. This type of former officer is in the same psychological and social state when faced by possible dismissal as a convict after many years in prison, who's afraid of freedom and human society, as it's so long since he found his way around: the gulf is too deep and he's unable to bridge it.
An example of the director's intelligence was given today, when he interrogated Mr. Hocevar and me - him about the press, me the theatre. He was asking what we did with our income and how we bought the necessary supplies. When inspecting the press he came across a printed copy of the army plays: The End of the Road and Everyman. "Who translated these?" the director asks. "Oton Zupancic", Mr Hocevar answers. The
178. World Press 300 major's secretary tries to explain to him who Zupancic is. He asks again, "who's Zupancic?" "A poet and the best translator of English literary works into Slovene". "Yes, but what's Zupancic's job?" the major persists irritably. "He writes poetry and prose and translates mostly from English", answers Hocevar, who is also beginning to show some irritation. "But what does he live from? Is that all he's doing?" "Certainly", Hocevar answers briefly. "And is he really busy?" persists the major.
Dr. Mersol gets redder and redder in the face and shifts with embarrassment in his chair. "Yes, very busy", Mr. Hocevar answers rather abruptly. "Well, is he registered at the labour office?" the major asks very abruptly. Now there's a look of anger in Hocevar's expression, but he calmly and in a dignified manner explains that Zupancic is the greatest living Slovene poet and lives and works permanently in Ljubljana and so the Spittal labour office has nothing to do with him. Dr. Mersol had the greatest difficulty not bursting out laughing, and his chair was creaking with the effort. That was the end of the inspection, without anyone signing any official document about it.
12th October. The beginning of a week of a terrible war of nerves. A British military police sergeant from the FSS told Dr. Blatnik, "now a wild hunt for Slovenes is beginning" and, when asked who they'd be hunting, answered, "all the teachers and doctors and priests and the rest of the intelligentsia".
So that's clear now! The Yugoslav government wants to separate the intelligentsia from the people by any means, and that would completely undermine the foundations of our community structure. If the people are isolated, they'll pursue them with propaganda and threats of arrest, sow discord and quarrels, make camp life unbearable and harass them if they don't yield to government demands, and finally send them home.
Even now they're very frightened, because day after day the coarse and uneducated leader of the official Yugoslav mission, who has access to the camp, uses threats and doesn't simply try to persuade them but quite shamelessly drives them to return home. A few days ago he told a woman, "Madam, please return home: 301 in this camp you'll see terrible things in a few days' time". This kind of remark spreads quickly round the camp and people start panicking. Most of the men don't sleep with their families in the camp any more, but in barns on farms in the neighbourhood. The farmers aren't afraid of allowing this because by now they know we're honest and reliable people. Quite a few sleep in the forest, but the nights are cold and wet, and it's difficult to sleep in the open.
The Bled Agreement has started a severe war of nerves. The fears are justified because the British have committed injustices in the past: they've done this to us already, and they'll use hidden force in the future. What do a few thousand Yugoslav refugees mean if they are wiped out in the interests of Britain? They didn't care about millions of Armenians, Boers, Indians and Red Indians. They're used to it. Each page of British history is marked with the blood and tears of subjugated and betrayed peoples.
13th October. The first consignment of gift parcels from Switzerland arrived today and with the gifts a lot of private letters, particularly for families and young people. Some people showed me them and they make interesting reading. So there are still people in the world who have compassion for us and understanding for the oppression of spirit we suffer. The letters are full of expressions of sympathy and comfort. It's getting colder; a very strong wind was blowing the whole day.
17th October. I've fallen ill. I'm suffering severely from nerves, which affect my digestive system, and I've stomach pains again. This trouble recurs every autumn and spring. I slept at Tangerner's and as I was returning home in the morning I saw a long snake- like line of men walking across the fields. They were led by a scout who observed what was happening in the camp and signalled when to stop and when to go on walking. The men were dishevelled and frozen as the night had been very cold. Poor men, many have contracted rheumatism which will give them trouble for the rest of their lives.
23rd October. Last night London Radio announced that the British government had published the white book on the Steel-Tito agreement, a model of moral depravity: 302 they haggle over us as if we were goods. People are becoming more alarmed every day, and we mustn't hide the truth from them but must explain what's happening. Maclean is in Vienna again doing a deal with us as the objects, saying they'll remove us or arrange our emigration so that a minimum of refugees will remain in Austria. We're expecting to be moved this winter: that'll be an enjoyable journey in cattle trucks across freezing terrain into Germany!
There's no longer an item in the Austrian budget for the maintenance of DPs. Very reliable proof that they reckon that, if not this year, certainly next year, they'll arrange our emigration or removal or facilitate our removal. But I'm confident they won't succeed in breaking our spirit, do what they will. There are too many from Gorenjska and Krasje who never yield but rather bend and then spring back upright. We've been to see people who are deciding about our future and sent messengers with clear instructions and information and with requests to let us know to whom we should go to discuss this most important matter.
29th October. Visit of the National Delegate. Nande phoned me that Mrs. Berta Weiss was seriously ill. That generous and noble lady has done so much and collected so many things for us. May God grant her a speedy recovery and preserve her for her family and for us. I've told people and asked them to pray to God and the Mother of God for her recovery. Exile has given us many good people, and Mrs Berta is one of the most generous and compassionate. People are very worried about what will come out of the British- Yugoslav agreement on the return of displaced persons from the British zone of Austria; there are a lot of conflicting reports, and from the Tito side also a lot of threats. Mr. Pockar told Katra, "up till now we've been working for repatriation, now it'll be tougher".
30th October. The Swiss parcels have arrived and we took delivery of them. Everything is packed beautifully, and we hope the contents are equally good! There are 38 cases and 6 sacks of food.
1st November. All Saints! We're sad in spite of the glorious weather. The English police, the FSS, are rummaging in the card-index in the registration office; we're afraid of another camp raid as they 303 usually follow, the same as good weather is followed by gales and rain. In the evening large groups of men leave the camp to sleep in the forests, while those who have friends among the local farmers sleep in barns or haylofts.
2nd November. Sunday. Most of the men are sleeping outside, as could be seen from the attendance at today's Mass. The nights are very cold. People are furious at the British who are at this very moment making a pact with Tito and deciding how to get us back home. When will this nightmare end?
4th November. 2-4 o'clock I kept vigil with the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel. We've been holding a perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament since the 1st November. 5-10 in the evening the women and children; from 10-5 next morning the men. At the same time many of the men are seeking refuge in the woods. We're praying and entreating that a favourable solution be found to the refugee question through the efforts of Mr. France Gabrovsek in the USA. He's going for important consultations at the highest level. A visit of the Yugoslav commission has been announced for today. They didn't turn up in the morning. Last night there was heavy rain, and the nearer mountain peaks are white with snow.
Chief medical officer Dr. Mersol was in a disturbed state today. He works too hard and doesn't sleep for whole nights, sitting up working. At night he drafts or translates into English all kinds of memoranda and petitions, beside keeping his own record of events. The agonizing fear and worry about our future in recent days have undermined his nervous system in addition to undernourishment, and it's no wonder he's in a disturbed state. He's the whole time meeting up with and talking with dead domobranci. His physical constitution was seriously undermined by the injuries he suffered in the car accident in which the excellent camp director Ryder Young lost his life. If he had survived, things would probably have been much better for us because we'd have stayed in Tyrol; he had many friends among the higher military command and was well thought of and respected.
Every night about 150 men and lads flee the camp to freeze outside in the woods or the fields. We had a meeting of the reconstituted camp refugee committee today. Slowly the people from Lienz are uniting with those 304 from Spittal and the moral level is rising again. This can best be observed from the youngsters, who are much calmer and more hard-working in the classroom; the suffering of their fathers and older brothers has matured them, and they're also doing extremely well in school. There's an improvement among the older people too. Movement is slow, but it's again up-hill. It was difficult, but we made it. 6th November. Mr. Trobec is in the camp again together with his cronies. People crowd round him, some grasp at every straw in desperation and at every opportunity to lighten their anxieties, particularly those who don't seek peace and consolation in prayer. So Mr. Trobec can question everyone and build up a picture from which to prepare his report for those who sent him to us. He asked one girl, "well, how are things?" She answered, very bad, and then he answered, "well, they'll soon improve as you are praying night and day for a change. Very soon they will be quite changed". The weather is magnificent today, so people are more optimistic. It's amazing the influence the weather has on people's morale.
7th November. The Yugoslav repatriation mission are walking round the camp accompanying the anonymous English members, and talking at random with the people, asking how they are treated here, when they plan to go home or why they don't plan to go and who's advising them not to go, and similar questions.
10th November. At 5 this morning the British army raided the camp: we heard by radio they were looking for British military deserters, black marketeers and "some other people", but clearly they were looking for people wanted by the Yugoslav government. I was questioned. As I am a member of the camp committee I was very anxious until the end of the raid.
11th November. At last the bomb has gone off. At 12.30 the camp director announced over the public address system that following a decision of the military government in Klagenfurt fifty-four individuals must leave the camp (the married ones with their families) and be transferred to St. Martin179 camp at Villach,
179. "The barracks were built extremely cheaply, with no double glazing and single thickness wooden walls. .. In 1946 the barracks were used to accommodate DPs. Russians, Ukrainians and Poles from other camps around Villach were 305 because they are suspected by the Yugoslav government of obstructing repatriation and spreading anti- repatriation propaganda. They listed everyone by name, and I was among them with my family, so on the anniversary we must move again to an even worse place and with greater insecurity. I'm not going to St. Martin! The place is a den of thieves! From there they'll banish us to Germany. And then where?
The Bled agreement is being put into effect. I'll seek refuge with farmers; it won't be easy as there's no more work available on farms and winter is arriving in the countryside. God will help, as this is surely the last of our Stations of the Cross. It's an appalling shock for me and the family. I fear for my health: every autumn and spring I suffer pains in the stomach and duodenum, of nervous origin but sometimes very severe, and I already started having them during the last weeks of mental strain.
15th November. I'm beaten; the pains became so severe I had to go to bed. Dr. Mersol admitted me to the camp hospital, but I can't stay because I can't stay in the camp. I'll have to go to the local hospital.
17th November. On Dr. Mersol's recommendation I was admitted to the general hospital in Seeboden, and I'm in a large male ward. It's very unpleasant as it's a surgical ward: on one side there are very ill patients and on the other men talking and smoking up to 11 at night. The tobacco smell is pungent, like a Russian tobacco I often smelt before. Here it's exactly what the Italians call a "common shelter", "Qui si dormiva, si mangiava e si defecava"180. I don't know how I'll be able to stand the stale air. I asked the doctor at the morning round if I could be moved to a smaller and less crowded ward and he said he'd speak with the consultant who decides these matters.
18th November. My wife and children came to say goodbye: they're going to Villach. The weather's bleak and freezing and the children were cold. In the morning they transferred me to a smaller, airy and light ward for just three patients. *Mr. Franc Hradacky is
transferred there. The camp held up to 2,000 DPs. .. St. Martin was considered to be one of the worst camps in the British Zone." Stieber, op. cit., p. 235. 180. Here one slept, eat, defecated 306 manager of the steam-saw mill Moolbruecke, 62, a very pleasant man. He has a complicated fracture of his right leg which won't unite and often severe pains but doesn't complain - there's no moaning here, like in the big ward. The second patient is a pleasant lad, Joseph Troier, a railway employee, who has been operated on for a broken knee-cap after a kick in a football match. He's a keen soccer player and so is trying every day to get back on his feet, so far without success.* The company is congenial and we get on well together.
19th November. Sinko181 came yesterday to say goodbye but has caught a cold and is in the camp hospital. The doctors have advised my wife against moving to St. Martin as the child is seriously ill, so my wife and daughter are staying with the farmer Tangerner who was glad to take them. The English have played a good trick on us with the Bled agreement. This is only the beginning and St. Martin isn't the last place we'll be sent to. From there the route is to Germany, but then where? They've started with the leaders and then they'll soften up and terrorize the rest. But God will not abandon his people, nor our Blessed Mother. Therefore I implore with all my strength, "remember, most gracious Virgin Mary, that never has anyone who has implored your protection been left unaided".
Slowly the bad weather will be lifted. God is maturing and purifying us for his special purposes through suffering, and I'm secretly hoping this is the last major trial we'll have to suffer. The people are terrified and the Yugoslav mission is working on them powerfully, but they still don't put their names down for repatriation; they're saying, if they treat us like this here, what will it be like at home?
23rd November. I'm celebrating my fortieth birthday, in hospital. Goodbye for ever to the good times we had formerly: probably not much good awaits me in the future. A few more years in a cold foreign country, probably a few hard years! I dreamt of a beautiful home and a happy family life, now only a few years of struggle for survival and then the end, probably cancer. I'm very downhearted when I see how my wife is suffering, how she looks for an escape from our predicament and can't find one. A camp is a poor
181. Pernisek's 9-year old son 307 refuge, a poor shelter: but when even that's gone, one feels totally helpless. For a poor man abroad barren earth is even more barren, wrote Preradovic. A DP is a poor wretch, a being entirely without rights, despite the brave talk of human rights of our rulers. 24th November. My wife visited me with our daughter. She's very depressed, and told me a large group of people expelled from the camp are preparing to move secretly to the American occupied zone. She wants to join them but I begged and prevailed upon her to be patient and stay. We should trust God who will take care of us. I have to stay, as the consultant hasn't yet decided whether to operate. He sees me every day.
3rd December. It's my nameday and that of my room mate Mr. Franc Hradecky182. We both have visitors: our wives and daughters. We're all sad and the weather is bad, with rain, snow and an unpleasant south wind.
9th December. Today I had my twelfth injection. The consultant spent a long time with me and told me, "taking into account your situation and that of your family right now, I won't operate. I can see you can bear pain and discomfort: you're an undemanding and patient patient. You'll be going to somewhere in America, where you'll quieten down, live well and in peace and get cured without the knife, and all the physical symptoms will disappear". Obviously this surgeon knew all about my present situation. I certainly didn't tell him anything, so Dr. Mersol must have briefed him well. As my pains were reducing he advised me to stay in hospital another week and then return to my family. He thought I should be able to return to the camp as the Yugoslav mission had left.
11th December. A ray of hope at last! The Carinthian daily, Die Neue Zeit, carried a report from the Yugoslav Tanjug agency that the Yugoslav government has abrogated the agreement signed at Bled on the 8th September on the repatriation of Yugoslav DPs from the British zone of Austria. There is therefore a great hope our situation will improve and the dreadful pressure for repatriation will stop, and with it the inhuman treatment of refugees. Still, why was the treaty cancelled? Do the Yugoslav
182. the saint's day of St. Francis 308 authorities have something else in mind, or did the British lure them into a trap, and then were not prepared to carry out the agreement the way the Yugoslavs expected?
14th December. My wife is thrilled and the children are overjoyed that I'm going home. Perhaps we'll succeed in sorting things out by Christmas.
16th December. I left Seeboden hospital today, having said goodbye to the chief surgeon Dr. Kukusch, and the farmer Tangerner very kindly took me in his house. When I called at the camp, my friend Lojze Ambrozic183 told me the camp director thought all the refugees who'd been expelled would be able to return soon: he only had to wait for an order from above.
18th December. Dr. Mersol admitted me into the camp hospital, as he says I should stay in bed for at least two more weeks. I have to get my food ration card, but my friend Lojze will get it for me. When Lojze promises, it's done!
22nd December. Anica Dolenc told me Joze Novak attacked me yesterday on Ljubljana radio, so he's home already! He's completed his job, so there's nothing to stop him! He was the communists' chief agent and informant in the camp while performing the same function for the FSS. Now he'll be an informer among our people at home; when the people have had enough of him he'll be kicked out somehow. He also attacked Monsignor Skrbec and Dr. Vracko, labelling us agitators and criminals. All the same, the storm will pass, Slovenia see better times again and Comrade Joze Novak get his just deserts. 24th December. This year I approach Christmas with dread. We arranged to meet at 6 in the evening to celebrate in son Franci's hospital room, where there's a small Christmas tree and underneath a small paper crib, but it's all a tiny reminder of Christmas. We had just sat down when we were told to get out of the room as the director and Miss Meredith were visiting the hospital and they shouldn't see us. Still they didn't arrive at once. I find the behaviour of the staff very strange. Franci is admitted to the camp hospital with the knowledge and permission of the
183. Small farmer and grocer, emigrated to Canada where he died aged 76. He had seven children, one of them the present Archbishop of Toronto, Dr Aloysius Ambrozic. See pp. 00. 309 director and Miss Meredith, and we certainly have the right to visit our child on Christmas Eve!
Meanwhile they were giving out presents to the children in the theatre. Franci was crying, but understood it wouldn't be sensible to go out of the warm hospital room into the unheated assembly hall. At 7 there was a little Christmas party in the women's ward for those able to walk. The boys and girls under the direction of Mr. Rudi Knez sang some Christmas carols beautifully, and we all had tears in our eyes. Mr. Knez accompanied the choir on the accordion. I was overwhelmed and tearful: I lived through some sad Christmases but this was the worst, and my wife and daughter were crying the whole evening in their cold room. I visited no one and wasn't able to wish anyone a happy Christmas. After the party I crept to bed.
310
C H A P T E R 13
1 January - 31 December 1948
The army raids the camp again but Pernisek feels the worst of the persecution is over. Large-scale emigration starts and Pernisek visits the International Refugee Organisations's HQ in Klagenfurt to discuss documentation procedures. Representatives of Dutch and Swiss charities visit the camp and return home to redouble their efforts to collect aid. The Yugoslav authorities increase their efforts to spread dissent and disunity among the refugees and so discourage emigration.
Pernisek is now living with his family outside the camp and drawing the normal entitlement of Austrian civilian rations. He wonders if someone is making massive profits out of camp catering. A group of girls leave for Canada, most already engaged to Slovene boys who have gone there earlier. The Perniseks are allowed to move back into the camp, and the Argentinean consul starts immigration to his country.
Pernisek goes by train to another camp and notes how polite the Austrians have become to "bloody foreigners". He sorts out transport procedures, admires the camp's small industries and returns to Spittal. The first hundred Slovenes from Austria leaves for Argentina. Pernisek and his small team prepare the travel lists and other documentation.
The camp choir gives its last performance as it starts to disperse. A valedictory mass is celebrated for the next group leaving for Argentina. Soon the camp is almost empty. The Perniseks see the consul and are accepted. The Yugoslav communists try to hinder emigration and Pernisek is warned not to leave camp on his own for fear of them. As the year ends the Perniseks receive their entitlement of clothing, linen and footwear, and an Austrian shopkeeper wishes the departing Slovenes godspeed.
311
The Pernisek diary:
3rd January 1948. The New Year started with new disappointments. As I woke this morning good Sister Ivanka came into the ward and told me that English soldiers had raided the camp again. They were in position already by three in the morning, started their search at five and finished at nine. They took away four Slovenes and sent them to the concentration camp at Wolfsberg, and also came to the hospital but only had a look at the children's ward and then left.
After this unpleasant incident I once again begged God to preserve us from this kind of emergency and give me back my independence. I am totally independent in a way now but still can't do anything, and yet I continue in the firm hope everything will turn out happily. The New Year will bring an end to the uncertainties and unremitting fear, and our, and with it my, fate will take a turn for the better. Last year was one of the most difficult for us and brought with it immense suffering. Already in mid-April I'd a premonition something sinister would happen, because they wouldn't bar me from office in the camp without some political reason; there were indications even then that they would eventually drive us out of the camps to break our spirit.
5th January. At the crack of dawn the always brave and devoted hospital Sister Irena came and warned me I'm also on the list and had better find somewhere else to hide. Strange sensations take possession of me. If it hadn't been Irena I might have thought someone was pulling my leg to frighten me, but this girl has gone through too many frightening experiences in her own life and taken too many risks: she's truthful and has too good a heart to do such a trick. Nor can I imagine that someone would pull her leg, telling her I'm on the list just for fun; she's very intelligent and alert and spots things others aren't aware of. I'm ready for whatever happens to me. I'm in God's hands and know He won't try me beyond my power to endure. My conscience is clear regardless of any black list I may be on, and I've a feeling the worst of our persecutions are over. I'm happy when I see there are kind souls looking after me and I'm grateful to courageous Irena for her kind warning.
7th January. My daughter received a lovely letter from 312 her pen-friend Rita whom she's never met personally. These short and very affectionate letters are a great consolation to us, like a ray of sun penetrating long overcast days of sadness.
12th January. Miss Meredith is going round the hospital prying after me and the doctor in charge told me as kindly as he could the time has come for me to find somewhere else to hide. They changed my name to Perme Franjo, born 22.10.1906, occupation care-taker. So the trials go on. There must be an informer telling Miss Meredith of my whereabouts. I'd better not put his name down on paper, but I think I know it. 30th January. At midday I got up and went to see my wife who's sewing for Dr. Puc's wife in barrack 1. When I got to barrack 9 I slipped, fell and broke my wrist. I felt a terrific pain and almost fainted. Drs Mersol and Rijahin put my arm in a splint. Strange coincidence. My daughter was looking for me twice yesterday and once today to tell me my wife wasn't with Mrs. Puc, so I never met up with her.
31st January. Today I was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Villach, given an anaesthetic and had my fracture reduced. When I woke I'd a plaster on my forearm and hand. We're well treated in this hospital. In the bed on my right is the crippled member of the domobranci Jozef Janez, on my left Bergant, and there are two Hungarians and an Austrian also in the ward. An X-ray showed the bone has set excellently. When I returned home a few days later I didn't go back to the hospital but found refuge in barrack 36. Here it's very peaceful even if I'm close to the "beasts' den" as the next barrack is called. I'm also far away from prying Miss Meredith, because she doesn't come in this area of the camp: she can't stand the noise of the students in the "beasts' den" with their various musical instruments and general din. My good friend Lojze again arranged a food card and is looking after me. Nothing like this life-long friendship since we were together in the OREL184!
22nd February. Dr. Mersol removed my plaster. The bone alignment is excellent but the wrist is stiff, so every day I have a bath, ray treatment and massage in
184. Eagle, Catholic youth movement in Slovenia between the wars 313 the camp hospital, naturally with Miss Meredith's knowledge. Meanwhile there's still no permission to return to the camp although she is always saying we'll be returning because the Bled agreement has lapsed and the Yugoslav mission no longer has access to the camp.
8th March. Today I moved with my family into the barrack belonging to the firm AIKA which lets out these former autobahn barracks. The leaseholders want me to get a City Council residence permit so that I've permission from that side as well. The move went off very well and Miss Meredith lent me her official car for the whole day and gave me permission to take with me everything I need from my room: wardrobe, table, chairs and bed. I can't understand her. We didn't hit it off well from the very beginning, but now she's as kind and obliging as she can be. The barrack isn't empty yet, it used to be occupied by Dr. Francek Zebot, who has moved secretly with his family to the American Zone of occupation185.
10th March. I had a hard fight with the Mayor of St. Peter in Edling. The rooms had been authorised but he refused to issue the ration cards. He was really difficult but after I'd told him my whole life story he softened a bit and said, "na ja, you're a political refugee so I should and will help you". He's an old Social Democrat and uncle of Mr. Tangerner's wife. When he realised my wife and I worked for Mr. Tangerner he changed completely.
12th March. I've today got ration cards from the Council after four months of great deprivation and want, but with God's help we have happily surmounted these difficulties also. The saying goes, "when the need is the greatest, God's hand is nearest". A number of very good people, some total strangers, helped us tremendously in kind and by showering their love on us. Also Archbishop Rozman helped us a lot personally and through his new circle of friends, and Mr. Nande Babnik did us a lot of good by encouraging good local people to help refugees.
24th March. Today I visited my brother-in-law Mirko at
185. lawyer born 1911, brother of Anka and Dora Zebot (see page 00), later became a professor in the USA, author of Neminljiva Slovenija (Klagenfurt 1988) with chapters on Viktring and Dachau, and the Viktring tragedy. 314 Feld am See. As I got off the bus a gendarme stopped me, demanded my documents and asked where I was going and what for. It's my experience that if there's ever a flea or a gendarme nearby they're sure to attach themselves to me! I certainly didn't look like a tramp, and there are many roaming the roads nowadays. I usually dress appropriately when visiting people, but still the gendarme was suspicious. When I reached my brother-in-law and told him what happened, he and his foreman were very angry. The latter had been a gendarme in my birth- place during the war and knows our people well. He holds us in high esteem because he knows the suffering the Germans inflicted on us. We had a pleasant meeting and I invited my brother-in-law to visit us. The foreman gave me two pairs of new shoes for the children, realising that our clothes would have worn out by now, especially the children's.
28th March. Easter Sunday! Christmas was miserable and Good Friday much the same, but we're celebrating today joyfully. There was a good procession last night and a beautiful Solemn Mass this morning. When the priest intoned the Resurrection Alleluia, a joyful Alleluia burst out in our hearts too! Thank God our suffering is over. There are always fewer people at Mass, as smaller and larger groups leave on transports to all parts of the world.
29th March. Today my wife went with a large group from the camp on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Ema at Krka while I took my son to visit Mr. Hradecky, my room-mate in the hospital at Seeboden. He's been in Graz hospital a long time. Now he's started to walk. 21st April. My wife was sewing in Tristach, in the house of Johana Jagodic, the papal delegate's sister, up till the 19th April and then she suddenly fell ill: they brought her home and Dr. Mersol examined her and diagnosed severe jaundice. As we've permission from the camp authorities to be treated in the camp hospital, they came to take her there. Both the children are very frightened as they're behind at school. I hope my wife will recover soon; Dr. Mersol keeps telling me she will. I owe him an immense debt of gratitude for his kindness and goodness and have no means of returning it except by my sincerest prayers. 29th April. I went today with Father Cyril to the HQ of the International Refugee Organisation in Klagenfurt and we spoke with Miss Prentis. She didn't say much, 315 but her lady interpreter made the most of it and kind of took over: we can't do without interpreters, but they're often a great nuisance. The first question was if we were the people who kept on writing to the IRO: we answered yes, and she asked us not to. We both listened and said nothing. Then we asked her to speed up the procedures so that we could move as soon as possible to Argentina, and she asked if we had money for the journey. When we said no, she said IRO didn't have any either. We then went on to strictly practical matters, such as preparing lists of all those wanting to go to Argentina: it was decided the best would be a card-index with exact details.
We then went to a pub with Mr. Janko Hafner who works for the IRO, and talked over the practical issues in detail; he told us that OREL used to organise its one-day outings for its members better than IRO does the emigration of thousands of DPs. In the camps they've crowds of clerks who are bored stiff, as there are at HQ, but they're unable to produce reliable lists. He advised us to do it on our own and at our own expense, so that IRO would have more money left for emigration.
16th May. It's confirmation day at Spittal camp, with about fifty confirmands.
17th May. Our people from Spittal camp went on a pilgrimage today to Zihpolje and Viktring, the place of sad memories. It was a glorious day, such as we've had few this year. In Viktring church they prayed for their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers who were taken from there directly to their deaths, but suffered indescribable tortures before dying.
27th May. Yesterday the students went on outings to different places, and came home tired and hoarse. My daughter's class, which was led by prof. Luskar, didn't get home until 3.30 in the morning. Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi. It rained early and then the sky cleared and there was only a short shower during the procession. Three Dutch people visited the camp at the invitation of Mr. Nande Babnik: Dr. Koenver the director of Dutch Caritas, Dr. Govaert a medical doctor and Mr. Cleuren a photographer. They all speak fluent German and I've been allocated as their interpreter and guide.
After breakfast we attended Mass, where the guests greatly 316 admired the choir's polyphonic singing. Mr. Cleuren filmed the service and after it we joined in the procession. They were much impressed by the good order, cleanliness and neatness of the people, how beautifully they were dressed and the national costumes of some of the girls and women. I explained they'd brought them with them when they fled from home, but their ordinary dresses were old and turned. In spite of that, it's true they're better dressed than the local Austrian population. They admired the singing. During the procession Mr. Govaert asked how many rehearsals we'd had as everything seemed to go so smoothly. I told him we had no rehearsals at all, ever; our people are used to order and discipline from home already. "Yes," he said, "but one can see you've already been living three years in the camp".
In the afternoon I went around with the photographer who was filming scenes of camp life. Although everything was very poor, he was impressed again by the order and cleanliness of the rooms and friendliness and politeness of the people. He was surprised at the number of children and old, and even very old, people as well. We went to the cemetery and saw some refugee graves which he filmed. The guests also attended our evening May devotions which they liked. After that we improvised a concert of Slovenian folk songs for them in front of the theatre. Foreigners like Slovenian singing very much, those arranged for choirs and especially popular songs. They then heard two domobranci describe how they escaped from the mass graves at the Roski186 pits and hid for a long time in the woods before returning to Carinthia and rejoining their fellow refugees.
The Slovenes' insecurity and fear that the British might still forcibly repatriate them, were increased by Britain's refusal to admit that the original large-scale repatriations had taken place at all. Hoping to clear up this central issue on my return to England, I asked the Foreign Office for an interview. On the 12th June Mr Wallinger, the civil servant "dealing with refugee questions", saw me. I did not keep a copy of the letter I wrote Father Franc Blatnik at the time, but he gave his version two years later187
186. Roski pits = the pits in Kocevski Rog. See Nikolai Tolstoy's 30 page account in chapter 7 of his The Minister and the Massacres: The Pit of Kocevje. 187. "The official British answer concerning the repatriated domobranci", in The Viktring Tragedy published by the 317
The British press has all along kept silent about this English tragedy of shame, and maintains its silence even today. In 1948 Catholic delegates from a London organization questioned the government about its cover-up of indifference. The answer was that about 600 Yugoslav collaborators were repatriated at the end of May 1945; they had fled from the Yugoslav army into Carinthia and British troops had disarmed and returned them to their native country in compliance with international law. Apparently the delegates were satisfied with and did not challenge the answer.
John Corsellis, the well-known English welfare officer at Lienz camp who tried to understand and help our refugees, wrote about this to Dr France Blatnik in 1948, and explained the English position:
" In view of the answer quoted earlier John Corsellis wrote to the Foreign Office, astonished that the government could give an answer which was untrue. He told them he had been at Viktring at the time and seen with his own eyes how many had been sent back, and these were no collaborators. The Foreign Office wrote that they would be very interested to hear from him in greater detail and invited him to visit them. When he arrived, they started by asking what he had personally witnessed and then said, 'thank you for such a detailed account. It may have been as you describe but we have different reports. These speak of only 600 Yugoslav collaborators being repatriated. Perhaps the figures are not completely accurate. You must understand that our troops in Austria had a precise objective at the time: to organize a defence in the event of any attack by Tito or the Soviet Union. So they were not prepared for these collaborators to turn up, nor did they want to have much to do with them. That is why their report was perhaps here and there inaccurate or insufficient, but it's the only one we have. The officers who signed it have returned to civilian life, and the War Office cannot trace them to get them to give a fuller account of the whole affair, so that we are limited to what we have. You maintain that over 10,000 were repatriated. We do not dispute this, but all the same 600 remains the official figure for us because that is the one that appeared in the reports made at
Association of Slovene Anticommunist Fighters (Cleveland, Ohio, 1960) 318 the time. Thank you very much for the interest you have taken in the matter, and goodbye!"
Forty years later I discovered an answer to a Parliamentary Question in 1946 which gave the total as 900, so that the Foreign Office had been progressively re-writing history.
The Pernisek diary:
14th June. Today Mrs. Berta Weiss from Switzerland visited the camp. I'm acting as her escort and interpreter. Mrs. Weiss is interested in the everyday life of our people, and one sees tears more often than smiles in her eyes. The poverty upsets her greatly. In spite of it one doesn't see children or grown-ups in dirty or torn clothes, and people are clean and well combed, the men shaved, the rooms tidy and no bad smells, even where there are small babies in the family. She's the driving force in collecting aid for Slovene refugees, and puts her Catholic faith into practice. After she saw all the poverty she said she'd redouble her efforts to collect aid.
22nd June. *My wife had another severe attack of jaundice and the doctors diagnosed inflammation of the gall bladder. She was admitted into hospital, where she stayed until the 28th June.*
1st July. The Yugoslav authorities have been trying long and hard to entice as many people home as possible or prevent them emigrating. They know well that every refugee in his new homeland, when he ceases to be a rightless DP and becomes a free man again, will be a living and eloquent witness to communist atrocities during and at the end of the war and will open the eyes of all those who still believe in communism. They have failed because the officials they sent to the camps to persuade people have done it so crudely and inhumanely they ended up disgusting even those who yearned to go home with all their hearts, and so they didn't go! The officials deserve to be punished by the Yugoslav authorities, rather than press the British authorities to persecute and vilify innocent people on the grounds that they are agitating against repatriation. They've adopted a detestable tactic, trying to sow dissent, internal quarrels and disunity among the refugees so that they'll appear in a bad light to the rest of the world - the refugees will do less harm to the communists if they quarrel among themselves and are discredited. 319
They've started sneaking into the camps a variety of clearly criminal types, who try to link up with similarly corrupt, morally worthless, individuals as assistants and collaborators. Also they attempt to infiltrate them among emigrants going overseas so that they can continue their disruptive activities with them. They try to get on their side a collection of grumblers and discontents, of whom there's never a shortage, and the morally deformed. In Argentina some emigrants with communist leanings organised railway strikes, but there were no Slovenes among them! The results were serious, as the Argentine authorities have stopped the entry of persons of Slav origin, don't approve any more group passports for refugees and will only consider individual applications.
Every communist activity is directed from a single centre, from which all instructions emanate. Their paid operatives must carry out the directives unquestioningly if they don't want to lose their heads. The centre is the Cominform in Belgrade, which links up all communist organisations throughout the world. While its activities are highly secret, some of the latest directives for activists have seeped through. A recent one was issued on the priorities of communist activists in refugee camps:
to foment, support and continue divisions between differing political groups with the aim of exploiting the refugees in order to attain communist policy objectives. It's essential to foment dissention between refugee newspapers, and in the private lives of refugees and in their workplaces. They must promote conflict between old and new emigres, within the upper classes of the refugees and specially between the politically active. They must also cause rivalry between the more and the less able, so that the less able feel discriminated against. The refugees' fight against the communists must be transformed into a fight among themselves. All kinds of malcontents must be made use of, and hatreds, quarrels and antagonisms stirred up. Everything must be done to prevent positive and constructive activities growing among them.
Special attention must be paid to identifying frictions between the allied authorities and the refugees, and also between the camp administrations 320 and the refugees, so that the latter begin to hate their protectors. Disorders must be fostered between the occupiers, the local police and the refugees, so that the refugees always appear the villains of the piece, criminals, work-shy and ungrateful. The world should end up with the most unfavourable view and estimation of them, and in particular the countries to which they have applied for emigration. They should destroy any kind of cultural activities among the refugees, and discredit them in the eyes of potential future employers. To achieve this they should make use of ideological fellow travellers and individuals of low mentality, not excluding criminals. We've already read in the local newspapers of incidents where refugees have attacked isolated mountain farms and taken away goods, horses and cattle and even killed farmers who tried to stop them.
That's why more and more frequently emigration commissions from different countries are turning down people suspected of being communists. In our camps there have been several cases recently, such as Mr. Rak who applied for England and was accepted, but before the group left was locked up in Kellerberg and released a few days later. A Mr. Breznik was turned down but became very angry and violent, broke all the windows and the door in his room, and then openly attacked Mr. Vencelj Dolenc, hitting him and shouting, "it's you who keep on saying I'm a member of OZNA [Yugoslav secret police]". He also was put in prison. We know of other incidents and also read about them in the Austrian papers. There are few villains, but they manage to give all the refugees a bad name. This is exactly what the Comintern wants, and these manoeuvres are more damaging than the Bled agreement, arranged through diplomats. What's going on now is organised by dishonest journalists or dishonest police, and the world believes them. The diplomats, who will decide on our future fate, also know what's happening!
Three days later I reappear, this time as a lobbyist. My letter was addressed to an old Friends Ambulance Unit colleague, Peter Gibson, joint author with John Rose of the report to FAU headquarters of July 1945 which recorded that "the intervention by BRC/FAU" preventing the forcible repatriation of the civilians. Peter later became a senior IRO official in Geneva:
321 4 July 1948. Dear Peter, .. The question that is worrying me this time is the future of the students' home at Graz, and I thought perhaps you might be able to help me. ... IRO has said it cannot take the home over and the army will shortly be withdrawing support and it will be given up to the Austrian authorities and the "eligibles" will be advised to take the next opportunity to emigrate.
... Have the students got the wrong end of the stick and is there no cause for alarm, or is there a danger the students will no longer be able to study at Graz? ... I'm enclosing the relevant sheet of the letter that Mate Roessmann, chairman of the Slovene students' committee, wrote me and a letter I wrote to Captain Smith, secretary of the Refugee Defence Committee [in London] in which I give the facts as I see them.
I would greatly appreciate any comments and suggestions if you think there is anything one can do from this end; if the question is mainly one of money, it might be possible to get some help from students' or catholic funds here, at least so that those who have almost finished could take their degree or intermediate. You will understand how out of touch one is here in England, and the difficulties one has in disentangling truth from rumours and the impractical from the practical.
I hear pretty regularly from many of the refugees, but the news they give is very scrappy. I suppose the USA's announcement that she will take 200,000 DPs in the next 12 months (or was it 24 months?) will be a great help to you, always supposing they have not overlooked the little matter of transporting them. My last letter from Austria says about 100 DPs are leaving Spittal every week; if that is so generally, you must be doing pretty well.
The Pernisek diary:
15th August. **This is the third anniversary of the fine afternoon Stanko Skrbe, Ciril Lavric and I went to visit the church of Our Lady of Lavant in the next village. We were so hungry and starved you could see through us. For lunch we got plain broth and nothing else. The Russians had killed their last cow and eaten the meat themselves, and all that was left for the others was a watery zinc-coloured liquid! The three of us were walking like drunks, staggering from 322 one side of the road to the other, dizzy not from alcohol but from lack of food.**
We've settled into our new way of life here and the children are making normal progress at school. This is because we're getting our ration entitlement of food which is enough to live on and, most important, can prepare it as we want. We get the same quantity on our ration cards as they do in the camp, and the food we earn by working for farmers is a bonus. I've discussed this with Dr. Mersol, who discussed it with Miss Meredith and the camp director, and they couldn't believe it. I'm convinced some people are making a massive profit out of the catering in the camp, and one has to look for them outside the camp.
22nd August. There was a solemn celebration of the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary today and the chapel was full to overflowing. We started with a sermon and the litanies of Our Lady, after which we said together the new "Prayer of the Slovene Refugees" written by our bishop in exile Dr. Rozman.
3rd September. Miss Lieven from IRO HQ in Klagenfurt arrived and told us that some two hundred people will be transported to Argentina this month, and that all who can't go anywhere else are on the priority list, as are families with many children and intelligentsia. 6th September. Today Dr. Kacin from Gorizia visited us and made a favourable impression. A small group including Monsignor Skrbec discussed how to maintain contact between Slovenes overseas and those in Italy and Austria. The bond must remain strong and the ways of achieving it solid and efficient. Now, as the majority of Slovene refugees will be emigrating overseas, it's up to those in Carinthia and Gorizia to continue the political activities of Slovenes outside Slovenia itself, and keep good contact with Slovenes overseas. Let us remain as united in future as we are now, and help each other.
8th September. I went to Tristach near Lienz to visit Monsignor Dr. Jagodic and Dr. Basaj. We discussed how to get Catholic Action going again and reorganise it as soon as we arrive in Argentina; and also student affairs, particularly the university students at Graz, where conditions are improving excellently and peace and mutual respect have been reestablished
323 and the unrest between the Mladci188 and the Strazari resolved.
9th September. Some of our girls left for Canada after a long wait. They should have left in July but it was obvious they wanted to stay longer with us and parting had come too early, so that there was a lot of tears. It was difficult looking at them, healthy and beautiful in body and soul, like blossoms being strewn by the wind. Fortunately most were engaged to Slovene lads who'd gone to Canada earlier. Like slaves in the market, they were examined meticulously from teeth to nails and measured, weighed, scrutinised and sifted in all respects to guard against defect or deficiency. They were looking for the healthiest and fittest to work in hospitals, mines and beetroot fields!
On the evening before departure we gave them a lovely farewell party. If some of the good wishes expressed are in fact fulfilled, the girls will be happy and content. The main message was, "you've completed your search to settle somewhere and we'll do so eventually, and we hope we'll all meet again". Today there was a special Mass for them. The parish priest Lamovsek gave a warm farewell homily, with good advice and instructions on life in the new world. Anica Dolenc left. Parting was very, very difficult and she wept copiously, but so did everyone else. I registered the family in the camp: I'd applied to IRO earlier and was told we're accepted, so I hope we'll move in today.
12th September. Yesterday a sports festival started in the camp. The programme included soccer, volley- ball, light athletics, table tennis, chess and a gymnastics display. It continues today. There's a foodstall selling sausages, pastry, fancy bread, bonbons, etc.. Now that people are going, not home, but across the ocean, there's plenty of everything.
16th September. Today the Argentinean Consul Mr. Jose Ramon Virasoro came from Vienna. He had a talk with the Delegate Monsignor Jagodic and promised he'd give emigration permits to all Slovenes, and specially to families with small children. He authorised
188. Two rival student and youth organisations from between the wars, their names meaning "The lads" and "The guards/sentries/sentinels" 324 Monsignor Jagodic to give certificates of relationship to people who didn't have them but wanted to travel together with their relatives. Our workload increases daily! 24th September. We're enjoying a babje leto189. The whole summer we didn't have such hot sun as during the last few days, and I've been attacked by the latest camp disease, travel fever. I went for a travel permit although friends laughed at me and said nobody bothers with such trifles any more. But if there are fleas around I know I'll catch them, so I won't go on a longer journey without a permit.
The people at the district council were very friendly and gave me a permit for the whole of the British zone. This morning I went to the station and asked for a ticket for Trofaiach. The clerk was polite although I didn't have any change. The ticket collector greeted me effusively, "good morning, Sir, ticket please" and returned my greeting smartly, in a manner I never experienced before the war. I climb into the carriage. It has an light bulb and a clean floor without cigarette ends, although there are plenty of good cigarettes in Austria today.
*At Villach I have to change to the Leoben-Graz express. I get off and look around for the express. "Sir, here's the Graz express!" says the guard very politely. Goodness, how polite the Austrians have become to the "bloody foreigners"! I can't help but offer him an American cigarette. With a cordial smile he takes it. He opens the carriage door and gently shoves me in. The seats are reserved. "I've no reservation: they'll throw me out". Nothing I can do. He pushes me in again firmly, so I travel in a reserved seat all the way. I hardly sat down when the train fills up. I travel seven hours like a duke.
By 10 "my stomach was in my heels". I had very little food with me so I thought I'd better not eat yet. A tall, slender waiter entered the compartment with a large tray of hot, spicy salted pork sausages and rolls and announced, "gentlemen, fresh sausages". My mouth watered and I glanced towards the tray. The waiter took the hint and spiked a sausage on a fork. I was embarrassed as it looked as if I was the only one succumbing to the smell of meat although in
189. Indian summer - literally old wives' summer 325 reality I didn't plan to buy one. Most of the passengers were eating apples, so that I thought I was in a rabbit warren. So far as the sausages were concerned, I could only savour the tempting smell.
At midday there was again a bell. The waiter came to tell me dinner was ready and would I kindly come into the dining compartment. Trying to be diplomatic I told him I didn't have any travel ration cards with me, to hide my negative financial balance, but he said, "that's not important. What matters is that you have the money" and hurried on to the next carriage ringing his bell. That beat me! But I hadn't fooled him, because in those days money was as scarce in Austria as white flour at home during the war.
We reached Leoben seven hours later. No time for sight- seeing, I had to catch a local train for Trofaiach, packed with cheerful men returning home from work. In a corner was sitting a poor man, his trousers full of holes and patches, his striped underpants showing through. To hide the holes he tried to pull the rest of his trousers over them. The workers exchanged glances and started to pull their trouser legs the same way. My stomach started to rumble loudly so I finally eat.*
I reached Trofaiach at 3 and after walking twenty minutes found myself in the camp. It's beautifully situated, surrounded by woodland and with high mountains all around, and is well-kept and clean, even if it houses twenty different nationalities. The 300 Slovenes have their own area. Outstanding features of their quarter are the flower beds in front of the barracks, with a variety including "man's flower", tobacco with its wide palm-like leaves, and also lots of small children wearing short shirts. Thank God we have and will continue to have lots of children. This year there's hope of a good harvest. Our people are still full of vitality and healthy in body and soul.
I didn't come to Trofaiach to sight-see, but on official business, to sort out transport procedures because our group from here will leave for Argentina on the 30th September. The parish priest Rev. Klemencic was very happy to hear that emigration is now really taking place. We talked late into the night, and there were quite a few of us, Vilko Rec, Dr. Erman, Joze Rot and some others. We went to bed very late. Vilko Rec, a friend and distant relative, gave me his 326 bed, but was it hard! The palliasse was filled with wood shavings that had become compacted and unyielding as a plank. Poor Vilko, on top of all his troubles, to have such a penitential couch!
In no other camp where there are Slovenes have so many of our people been rejected for emigration by IRO. The lovely chapel is in my opinion the most beautiful of those in the camps: like a Japanese reception room, with red wood, red and gold paper and red silk curtains, it offers a beautiful and original interaction of lights and colour. Chaplain Malavasic arranged and looks after it. The camp also has a series of small home factories making aluminium bowls, soup ladles, other utensils, church decorations and similar useful and much needed objects.
Between Judenburg and Leoben, close by the railway tracks and not far from Judenburg there's a locality called Knittenfeld composed of large flat fields and meadows, where the Germans dumped the English and American planes they shot down and their own seriously damaged, unserviceable military aircraft. When our people were still living at Judenburg camp they found this planes' cemetery, and when they moved to Trofaiach remembered it and asked the British for permission to make use of the scrap metal. They started dismantling the plane wings, and piece by piece transported them to the camp and made bowls to take the place of the mess tins they'd used previously, ladles, kitchen pots and even altar monstrances. The articles were very elegant and useful, and the refugees earned good money from what they produced. I remember the names of two of these "industrialists", Krzisnik and Babnik, but there were probably more. They proved themselves masters in this art and successful dealers, supplying other camps. The English didn't disapprove: on the contrary, they were pleased the fields around Knittenfeld were cleared and made available for cultivation.
This very positive report on Trofaiach camp of September 1948 is the more remarkable when compared with one in the British Foreign Office archives dated 31 May 1948, only three months earlier:
The present inhabitants have now been resident in this camp for six weeks, having been transferred en bloc 327 from "S" Assembly Centre Judenburg. It is no exaggeration to say that they could scarcely have been in a worse frame of mind when they arrived here. In Judenburg they had acquired a reputation for being extensive and accomplished black marketeers and thieves. They had as a community several murders to their credit. In a large number of cases they had forgotten how to work. Communal feeling among them was non-existent, intrigues between and within the various racial groups were legion, and any form of communal activity or committee was used to further these intrigues. They were further deeply resentful of the move and tried to prevent it by every means at their disposal. Their moral state, in the strict sense of the word, was extremely bad.
Dr Gabriela Stieber, in her excellent study of refugee camps in Carinthia and Styria, records that the camp had undergone a thorough refit in 1946 so that it could be used by IRO as a assembly and transit centre within its emigration programme. There must have been a spectacular transformation between May and September, and Dr Stieber records some of the reasons:
The successes of social work in the camp showed themselves in the establishment of their own kindergartens and schools for the Slovene, Croat and Ukrainian children. ... Two camp churches were adapted, one for Roman and Greek Catholics and another for the Greek Orthodox community.
The Pernisek diary continues:
The return journey was slower but more interesting, with lovely countryside and villages. I've the happiest memories of the people of Trofaiach camp: they're good, peaceful, kind people, very united and harmonious among themselves. The people who've been rejected by the IRO have to leave the camp at once. They're being sent to Treffling, near us, and we'll probably still be able to rescue some of them.
30th September. Today the first group of 101 people left for Argentina quite suddenly. It was announced at midday they'd be departing at 3 am tomorrow. At 2 pm they were told they'd have to move at 5 today. Although they were more or less packed to go they were put out by such brainless plan changing.
1st October. The emigrants passed by the camp in their express at 7.30 am, dead tired after a sleepless 328 night in the station waiting room. It's hard to understand this strange way of handling people; do those arranging the travel really not think?
So at last the movement from Austria to Argentina started. It took a year to finish. An article in the Almanac of Free Slovenia for 1949 190 recorded how it was set in motion:
The agonising days that followed the Viktring tragedy left our people ready to go anywhere, to any peaceful spot under God's sun. Our eyes turned towards Rome and Dr. Krek, who was already planning, conferring, searching for contacts, lobbying and sending out letters in every direction, convinced we had to find a new homeland for our people where they could earn an existence through the work of their own hands and live in peace, if possible together so as to preserve their way of life towards the day they returned home.
He scanned the atlas and collected intelligence endlessly, exploring the situation in: Australia - Australian bishops in Rome had promised to do everything to enable us to emigrate there, but the problem of transport arose, and the situation was now urgent after three whole years of getting nowhere: South Africa - a rich and cultured country, but only willing to accept skilled personnel: France - not willing to consider a single refugee in spite of empty and unpopulated areas in its south: Ecuador - an obviously rich country, but culturally and economically underdeveloped and unable to offer our people anything except uncultivated land. How would they live for the first months, before the fields were tilled for the first time? Peru - no one showing any interest in emigration, and the same applied to Brazil. Venezuela - prepared to accept refugees but would send them to climatically difficult regions and pay them poorly. There remained Argentina, the country most ready to receive refugees, understanding their situation and offering the best conditions.
We had already had a number of our people, specially from Primorska and Prekmurje191, for some decades in
190. article entitled "The Slovene Social Committee paved the way for our emigration", signed DRF in Koledar Svobodne Slovenije 1949 (Buenos Aires, 1949) pp.162-165 191. Two regions of Slovenia, the first on the south coast, adjacent to Italy, the second in the extreme north-east, 329 Argentina, and this included a tireless idealist, Mr. Janez Hladnik. Minister Krek appealed to him, and he took up our case with such wholehearted enthusiasm that by November 1946 he had been received by General Peron, who agreed to take 10,000 Slovene refugees with families and children. This was our salvation!
Mr. Joze Kosicek, secretary of the Slovene Social Committee (SSC) in Rome, at once visited all the camps in Italy where we had people, explained the situation to them and suggested they should apply for Argentina. The response was unexpected with over 95% in fact applying. A special emigration committee within the SSC was set up in Rome without delay, to look after the detailed organisation - collecting emigration applications, compiling a card index of all refugees (we were the only nation in exile to have a complete card index of all its people!), providing everyone with movement permits and passports, negotiating visa issue procedures with the Argentinean consulates, cutting down the consulates' document requirements to a minimum (they always demanded the least documentation from us!) and finally supplying everyone with the wherewithal to travel overseas.
All this wasn't easy for refugees who did not have rights, legal representation, friends in the world or enough money, although we did have Minister Dr Krek, former ambassador with the Allied Commission for Italy, to intervene for us whenever necessary.
Mr. Hladnik persuaded the Direccion de Migraciones192 to recognise the Slovene Emigration Committee in Rome as the sole authority through which our refugees could obtain travel permits, and a special subcommittee with him as chairman was set up in Buenos Aires to settle all procedures there and make the necessary representations. Finally the first list of 500 Slovene refugees was certified on 6 February 1947, soon to be followed by others.
The consuls could not get used to the idea of almost all our refugees having no personal documents, and we for our part could never have produced the documentation they demanded, so it was essential to reduce their demands. We were the first to be granted group
squeezed between Austria and Hungary. 192. Directorate of Migration 330 movement permits and thus everywhere we had to break fresh ground. Eventually Mr. Krek's diplomacy succeeded in persuading the consular department to reduce the documents required from eight to three and recognise the International Red Cross passport. Other national groups didn't have the same difficulties because Mr Krek had opened up the route for them in the course of fighting to save our refugees.
When the issue of visas was sorted out - the consular department didn't want to issue more than five a day -the ice had to be broken with the IGCR193, as it had a representative of Tito among its members and did not want to listen when asked to finance transport of the refugees across the ocean. Forcing people home was clearly its first priority, as it was later with UNRRA and the PCIRO194, their slogan being repatriation at all costs. Our refugees in the camps had suffered heavily under that slogan and the inhumanity of their staff.
*IGCR, UNRRA and later PCIRO sent standing commissions to the camps, to interrogate people one by one, try to persuade them to return home and search for "criminals". Their procedures made our people feel they were appearing before criminal courts and being condemned only because they had betimes recognised the evil of the communist beasts, opposed them patriotically and chosen the route of exile so as to escape to a better future. But these visits had precisely the opposite effect. The number of those returning home dropped markedly; indeed the flow of fresh refugees increased, and this flow has still not ceased.
It was extremely difficult to argue the refugees' side of the case, when there sat hirelings of the communists of all nationalities in so many offices who made difficulties over every small detail. The Tito government delegation in Rome diligently lodged protests with the IGCR, UNRRA and specially with the PCIRO and the Italian government. How difficult it was to work in such an atmosphere,how hopeless were nearly all our cries and protests, all our appeals
193. Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees (1938-47) which was succeeded by UNRRA (1943-47) 194. Preparatory Commission for the International Refugee Organization, (1947) succeeded by the IRO itself (1947-51) 331 and entreaties, whether it was a matter of the rescue of whole groups or single individuals. How many journeys, visits and interviews, humiliations and insults Dr Krek had to put up with, and that many times, who at that time was working for the Slovene community.*
The first larger group [from the refugee camps in Italy] left for Argentina on the 6th June 1947.
The Pernisek diary continues:
4th October. I was called to the IRO office in Villach about a second transport to Argentina. With foresight and by good fortune I had with me a list of the people registered for it. They told me to start preparing the list at once, and I worked there all day till 7.45 pm and so missed the train. Luckily I caught the last bus and we went on with the list until 6 am, when good team work got it finished.
5th October. Busy all day writing health certificates and other data. Quite a few people who had registered to go to Argentina changed their minds, so we had to make totally new lists.
6th October. Snow has fallen on the mountains, it's very cold in the valley and it's rained all day. Dr. Blatnik leaves us and is off to Italy. Dr. Kalan visited us from Munich. We had long and interesting talks on political issues. Munich is becoming the centre for Yugoslav refugees, particularly Serbs, and is very convenient for this, much more so than Austria, as it's in the American zone and the German authorities don't have as much influence there as the Austrians have here, and the Germans don't have political obligations to other countries.
The Serbs have only started to group themselves together recently. It isn't yet clear which movement will prevail, the old and corrupt Carska party, which is Great Serbian and dynastic, or a younger party wanting moral and social regeneration of the state. It's widely believed the King has few supporters among the younger Serbs - and they are in the majority - and his supporters grow daily fewer. He's finished so far as the other Yugoslav nations are concerned but might still have a slender majority among the Serbs, and is also finished for the English and Americans. The question doesn't interest us any 332 more as we already have one foot on the other side of the Atlantic.
12th October. Visit of the Argentinean consul Mr. J.R. Virasora and other officials. His wife was presented with two Ribnica wickerwork bouquets of flowers, for herself and for Mrs. Peron. The consul promised she would receive it in person. Today he signed 257 visas which IRO has already paid for. A few families were turned down because of illness (TB).
17th October. The camp choir gave a lovely concert this evening and everyone was moved. They sang about twenty well known songs we'd often heard before, but today left us with really deep feelings, and the atmosphere was most pleasant. Everyone knew this was the last performance at Spittal camp for many of the singers: the camp is beginning to empty and members of the choir will be going in different directions. This gave an added dimension and quality to the occasion.
23rd October. Today 148 are off to Argentina, left-overs from the last transport. Last night we had a nice goodbye meeting for them in the reading room. There was Holy Mass at 6 this morning. Father Lamovsek gave a farewell address, recommending them to have boundless confidence in God. Now they're starting on a new phase in their life's journey, on a new era of hope for which they're spiritually well prepared and matured. He wished them all a safe journey into the New World and a new life. When the farewell song Marija skoz Zivlenje195 was finished there wasn't a dry eye in the congregation. At 2 pm the emigrants started gathering in front of the garages. It's getting harder and harder to say goodbye! At 3 they went to Villach and at 7 boarded the train for Turin, on which mothers got couchettes offering some chance of a rest and the others sat six to a compartment - an IRO train with well-heated carriages. 24th October. Today is the feastday of the Archangel Raphael, patron saint of emigres. Because we're all about to leave the camp we had an all-night vigil in the chapel before the Blessed Sacrament, with a large number of people taking part.
27th October. Everyone had a thorough medical examination and had to give a blood sample too. When they took
195. "Mary the whole of one's life" 333 blood from Mr.Nace Jeriha the doctor looked at the bottle, turned it upside down, shook it, added a bit of a white fluid, shook his head and told Nace, "please get your son and let him give his blood again for you. What we've here is mainly spirit". Nace grumbled, but proudly brought his son Lado who solved his father's problem. Now we're only waiting for another visit from the consul, and then the journey.
31st October. Feast of Christ the King. There was no special celebration as the choir is getting smaller and smaller. In the evening there was a recital in the theatre, when Dr. Basaj spoke well but too long, *We also finished the October rosary devotions in a lovely and solemn manner.*
This afternoon I had a long and disagreeable talk with Mr. Z. He registered himself and his children for emigration, but not his wife, so she hasn't got an entry permit for Argentina. She wants at all costs to go with her family and is begging us to find a way. The problem is really great - a man with small children on his own abroad, but she has given her husband untold difficulties and is simply a prostitute. It's her own fault the marriage is practically finished, and her character is such that it's most unlikely she'll ever change her way of life. Even if she promised one simply can't trust her. Her husband suffered a long time and now doesn't want anything more to do with her. Perhaps the time has come for her to start doing some penance for her former life style. There's no time to find a sensible solution and we're all very sorry for the children. What'll happen to them? I secretly hope Monsignor Janko Mernik, who knows the situation, will take care of them when they reach Argentina.
1st November. All Saints' Day. A particularly dreary day, but that's how All Saints' Days should be. My prayers are with my late father and brother. Father has been resting in St. Peter's cemetery at Radec for the last 33 years, my brother in some mine at Rog. My mother has been faithfully visiting my father's grave these 33 years and I'm very confident he's already in the presence of God: he suffered long years before dying and received the last sacraments. During the service to commemorate the dead, Father France Novak gave a very fine homily and the chapel was crammed full. After the service we formed a procession to go to the cemetery where we remembered 334 with hymns and prayers all the Slovene dead buried at Spittal cemetery. In the evening we had an excellent performance of the play "The Dance of the Dead".
3rd November. We're getting ready the new list for the fourth transport, of 800 people. The camp will be practically empty.
4th November. Medical examinations for the fourth transport, which means a lot of work. Tonight the British military band gave a concert in the theatre. Today it's music, a few months back these halls echoed with resolute and noisy calls, "go home"!
5th November. We have our hands full distributing certificates for the Argentinean transport. Some people don't want to go on and have withdrawn, hoping they'll get to the USA, and we have to cross off the list families with babies of less than six months. Children aged 2-3 have to go to St. Martin camp for a special medical examination.
6th November. **Today the camp director announced that 29 people who aren't eligible for IRO care must leave the camp and transfer to Kellerberg on the 10th November, among them one of our office workers Maricka Tomazic. We can't understand how this is possible: if there's a mistake she'll soon be back.**
20th November. The consul is busy all day. He's not choosy where Slovenes are concerned, accepting even the handicapped. The only people he won't accept are single men over 45, but if they live with a family they can go to Argentina with them. He's particularly keen on children and families with lots of children. My family had to wait to be sorted out and for recognition of our kin relationship. This wasn't recognised. A special commission attached to the consulate decides such issues. We paid $49 tax.
21st November. My family saw the consul, everything went fine and we were accepted immediately. He put us in the $7 group, so we won't be entitled to stay in an immigrants' hotel. By the evening most of the able- bodied refugees had been accepted.
23rd November. The families left for Canada today. I'm celebrating my own birthday in excellent spirits. How hard it was this time last year! Today I've an assured departure to a better future: there'll still 335 be great difficulties to overcome one by one with patience, but the green light is shining. With God's help we'll start a new life in our new homeland. The consul says it is a large and rich country with enough work and food for everyone; he's delighted with us and our lovely healthy families and many lovely healthy children who are not only our hope and joy but also the hope and joy of Argentina, a country ruled by a man with a great heart.
24th November. Someone has stolen Father Ciril's emigration permit and Argentine visa; the same happened the other day to Mr. Peterc. There are some dirty tricks going on, the work of a small group, or even of one man of deficient mind. No one could get to the bottom of the Peterc case, but now it's happened to Father Petelin it'll be sorted out as he won't stop at anything; he's already pounded the table in the camp director's office.
29th November. Today the remainder of the last Argentine transport left. There was a Holy Mass for them at 6 and they left the camp at 3 pm. The farewells were a lot easier than previously.
Mr. Janez Lavrih is warning us the Yugoslav communists are doing all they can to hinder our emigration and are thinking of kidnapping prominent leaders among the emigrants. OZNA has a widespread network. I was repeatedly warned not to leave the camp on my own, especially in the direction of Lienz or Villach.
A Yugoslav "attempt to hinder emigration" was described in a desperate letter Marija Jancar sent me from Graz:
I have to send you the very sad news of my husband Joze's arrest by the FSS at 4 am early this morning, when he was handcuffed and taken away together with a Croat. You'll understand this is the worst that could happen to me as I'm left without support or protection. You knew my husband well, that he was always an honest and good man who could never harm anyone. You could also have an accurate picture of his attitude to politics, that he could never have been a fascist, still less deserved to be taken away in handcuffs like a criminal.
You were our benefactor during the whole of the journey of sufferings our people had to live through. You can well understand that the Yugoslav communists will do 336 everything to put every kind of pressure on the intelligentsia to make any kind of employment and existence completely impossible for them. You'll believe me when I assure you my husband's only concern was for the completion of his studies and the welfare of his small family. We've only studied here and done nothing else, and have behaved exactly as you advised us. Joze said so often "Mr. Corsellis urged us only to study, and this is what we really must do". Of course I don't know the charges that led to his arrest. I'm only a woman and have no one here to say a word in favour of him and myself.
I ask you to help me. I've limitless confidence in you and believe that you, and you alone, can help my husband and me, if anyone at all can. Before all I ask you is to see he is given a hearing as quickly as possible. He's seriously ill with tuberculosis, and a prolonged imprisonment could lead to a worsening of his health. In deepest faith in God and justice I greet you with the deepest request that you help me.
Marija wrote again:
I received your kind letter yesterday and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your warm words of comfort and readiness to help. I enquired at the FSS offices several times and they told me they were only involved in carrying out the arrest and had nothing more to do with the matter. My husband was arrested under the Steele-Tito Agreement, and the so-called Maclean Commission is responsible for the case. I asked Miss Jaboor to find out on what grounds and evidence he was arrested, and she promised she would and I'm convinced she's done everything she possibly could, but sadly so far without success. Also Dr. Mersol cannot help me because we cannot contact the Commission or influence it, the more so because it's believed to be very friendlily disposed towards Tito.
My only hope here is Miss Graham196, who has already spoken once with Joze in Wolfsberg and who works in Klagenfurt, where the Maclean Commission is based. We DPs are powerless, and specially the intelligentsia, whom the Yugoslavs attack and persecute most. Joze was taken immediately to Wolfsberg camp, where he's in the "special section".
196. British YWCA representative for Carinthia, with whom I had earlier cooperated closely. 337 Arrests were made simultaneously in Spittal, Judenberg and here, and as far as we can find out they were looking for 30 people including Monsignor Skrbec, Professor Sever and Dr. Blatnik. 54 more inmates of Spittal camp were then ordered to leave the camp within 48 hours, mostly intellectuals including Director Bajuk, Dr. Vracko and Dr. Zebot, being accused by the Yugoslav Government of agitating and acting against repatriation. They must live privately or transfer to St. Martin camp near Villach until they are transferred to Germany.
I can't imagine on what grounds Joze was arrested. It's almost out of the question that the charge is based on his activities at home, and it's more likely it's because he's been hindering repatriation by his efforts to arrange study possibilities here in Graz and as the first chairman of the Slovene students' group. He may well have been arrested on fabricated and imaginary charges from the Yugoslav authorities, not based on fact at all, as has happened in several cases with most sad results.
As the Steele-Tito Agreement is interpreted here, and Joze writes on the same lines, his case will be considered first by an English commission and then by a mixed Anglo-Yugoslav commission and finally decided in London, presumably by the Foreign Office. Hardly anyone can help me here so that you're my only hope. Joze hasn't yet been interrogated. The food is no worse than here, he's been given five blankets and the barrack is heated. He's allowed to write to me twice a week and I can send him a parcel with food once a week and write to him without limitation.
Our local Member of Parliament, a Conservative who had served in the Grenadier Guards like Nigel Nicolson and had a distinguished record in World War II, by good fortune had known my father. I appealed to him for help and he sent a hand- written reply:
I was delighted to get your letter, and am sending it on to Chris Mayhew197 at the FO. It is better NOT to publicise individual names by a Parliamentary
197. Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Later Lord Mayhew. He told me in 1996 that it was on his suggestion that the Maclean Commission was set up, and that it had returned to Yugoslavia very few individuals, and then only when there was strong evidence to justify this. 338 Question - I have too many such cases already on my hands. .. Yours ever Douglas Dodds-Parker
P.S. What magnificent, and unadvertised, work "the Friends" do - they were always first on the scene with help in the various crises before the war.
Later he sent me Christopher Mayhew's response:
.. Jancar is one of those men whose surrender has been demanded by the Yugoslav Government on charges of collaboration with the Axis powers. You will appreciate that our international commitments oblige us to look into such allegations, but in order to ensure that no man is handed back unless a prima facie case of wilful and active collaboration has ben established against him to the satisfaction of English Legal opinion, we have set up a threefold screening procedure. A man is first of all interrogated by a member of the Special Refugee Commission to see whether he is in fact identical with the man whose surrender has been demanded, and to allow him to give an account of his wartime actions. He is also informed of the Yugoslav charges against him. [The case] is then reviewed by a legal panel who decide whether a prima facie case has been established. The case is then referred here and is again carefully scrutinised to see whether any relevant considerations have been overlooked, and the final decision is taken whether to hand him back or not. ..
You may be certain that Mr. Corsellis's testimony on his behalf will be considered in his favour.
A month later a telegram arrived from Joze announcing his release, followed by a letter in German which began: "Dear Brother! Excuse the form of address, but in my most difficult days and hours you showed yourself more than a brother." Four weeks later he wrote that he and Marija were on their way to Britain as European Voluntary Workers. If he had remained in Graz he could have qualified as a doctor after a few months, but did not dare to, fearing kidnap by the Yugoslavs after they had failed in their attempts to have him extradited legally. His later struggles to qualify and establish himself professionally are recounted on pages 000-000.
While I was lobbying for Joze, Geoffrey Stuttard198, a former
198. While with the British army in Austria he worked with, 339 officer with the Allied Control Commission for Austria, was appealing to the Foreign Office through Major Tufton Beamish199, MC, on behalf of the 54 inmates who had been ordered to leave Spittal camp, whom Marija mentioned. He received a reply from the Foreign Office which ended with a paragraph which is a masterpiece of brazen effrontery:
I am very much afraid that these unhappy people have been the victims of provocateurs who are constantly trying to drive a wedge between the refugees and their British protectors, since it has been explained to refugees in our zones on many occasions that nobody with a clear conscience need fear lest he be forcibly repatriated. This impression is heightened by the reference to our alleged surrender of 10,000 Slovenes - a canard which has been refuted on more than one occasion, but which reappears with conspicuous frequency in allegations purporting to come from displaced persons.200 (my emphasis)
The Pernisek diary:
1st December. Further transports have been halted for the time being but will, they say, be resumed in the spring around March. Probably we'll celebrate Christmas once again in Spittal camp.
8th December. Beautifully celebrated Feast of the Immaculate Conception, this time without the students. They are pushed to finish their studies before leaving for Argentina. A large number have already left.
11th December. Today Miss Meredith left for England; there was no special farewell arranged for her. People felt sad when many of her predecessors left, but it wasn't noticeable this time. She had a good heart but couldn't show it, and appeared cold and seldom laughed or smiled. She looked after the children well and devotedly, because what she did for them came from the heart and sincerely with
and later married, Anka Zebot (see p. 00) 199. Later Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish, Chairman of the Conservative Foreign Affairs Committee 1960-64. He had recently been on a parliamentary delegation which had visited refugee camps in Austria. 200. The letter, dated 15 December 1947, was signed by Chris Mayhew but no doubt drafted for him by the civil servants in the Southern Department. 340 compassion, her face lit up with a gentle smile conveying deep love. She had another virtue: she abhorred boasting and obsequiousness. I think she was a dour Anglican, but infinitely better than her Catholic colleague at Seeboden.
18th December. In the afternoon I went into town with my young son, and came across the OZNA spy Mr. Rak lurking just outside the town gate. I go into a shop and he follows me. It must be true they're after me.
24th December. We celebrate our fifteenth marriage anniversary on Christmas Eve. The blissful peace and deep happiness the day brings us are wonderful. We've a lovely crib and a beautiful Christmas tree which the children put up for us, and they had a Christmas party with some nice presents this afternoon. I can't bear to remember what it was like last year.
25th December. A holy day. Everyone joyfully wished each other a happy Christmas in the morning. Next year we'll be celebrating it in our new homeland, Argentina. We hope God will continue to bless us and we'll find a land of peace, the most important things being health and work. God was with us up till now, and will be in the future. Today the weather is clear but very cold. They regaled us with potica201, white bread and sausages. My wife's brother paid us a visit with his fiancee. He's still living in Feld am See but told us he's trying to emigrate with his brother to Canada. We were delighted by the visit as the children were able to see their uncle for the first time and we had a most enjoyable family get- together.
29th December. My wife and I were called to the store to receive the items of clothing, linen and footwear we were entitled to. We were given a lot of good new things; for me a new grey summer suit, two pairs of shorts, shirt, two towels, new pair of shoes, working clothes, pair of socks and vest; for my wife an overcoat, summer dress, winter dress, towel and pair of stockings; for my daughter a cardigan, lined jacket, summer dress, pair of socks and towel, for my son a vest, pair of shorts, towel and pair of shoes.
In the evening I was at prof. Janez Grum's wedding
201. A special Slovene cake for festive occasions 341 reception at the Weiss Inn in Spittal; the atmosphere was really pleasant and happy. I was wondering how this perpetual traveller found the time to get himself a bride, and such a lovely bride at that! I think this young man knows every hidden mountain pass in the Zilj Alps and the Andrach mountains; he must know all the farmsteads down to Sillian and the Toblas valley. He criss-crossed these mountains again and again, not for tourist enjoyment but as the most trustworthy courier between the Slovene refugees in Austria and Italy, preferring to walk on his own unless he had to take someone into Italy. He was blessed with God's special protection to an outstanding extent, but he's a very courageous character himself. Now this is the end of these dangerous journeys, and he'll have to travel without rucksack and mountaineering boots, in lovelier company on a longer journey! May God give them all blessings and protection in a happy marriage and the family life they're starting on.
30th December. In the morning it started to snow, and continued on and off the whole day, and we began putting our poor belongings into wooden boxes. I was again warned not to go into town on my own, but did go to Spittal to buy some tools. At the ironmongers they told me they had none left because our people had bought them out. The owner said:
We'll miss you. You were hard-working, honest people. All the years you were around we had peace, no thefts or assaults, you never pestered us and we felt relieved. You were ready to do any housework, and we could leave you alone in the house because you people are honest and not demanding in any way. On the other hand you were good customers and brought profitable business our way. We're already feeling the pinch from your departure, and in future we'll feel it even more. It seems that most of the Slovenes are leaving for Argentina. We wish you a safe journey: we're quite sure you'll all do well in the new world because you're industrious, capable, gifted, honest and very religious. The whole town and surrounding countryside are talking of nothing else but your departure, especially the farmers you helped so much.
We said a heartfelt goodbye and shook hands. We Slovenes can also say, "goodbye, good people!"
342 P A R T 3 : E M I G R A T I O N
not an end, but a beginning.
C H A P T E R 1 4
1 January - 5 February 1949
The Perniseks board the train for Italy and arrive two days later at a transit camp near Turin, where they wait for two weeks. One afternoon they visit the Basilica of Dom Bosco, founder of the Salesian Order, and a settlement of Catholic philanthropy, Cottolengo's House of Divine Providence.
They travel to Genoa and board the American Liberty ship S.S. Holbrook. Mrs Pernisek falls dangerously ill with jaundice and is carried to the sick-bay, where a Russian woman in the bed opposite her dies of pneumonia. Fearful, Pernisek and the two children attend the Russian Orthodox funeral rites. Mrs Pernisek recovers and they arrive on Saturday 5th February at Buenos Aires, disembark and go to the accommodation reserved at the "Immigrants' Hotel".
343 The Pernisek diary:
1st January 1949. A New Year, on the threshold of a new life in the new world. We're leaving our wooden town where we've lived four long hard years as second or third class citizens without even the most basic human rights. We were just numbers in the long, long list of displaced persons brought about by the second world war. We're leaving behind us terrible and hard years, but still we're sorry to leave and I'm experiencing strange feelings which I can't describe as I put our modest possessions into boxes. Something is gripping my soul, my throat and my heart, and no words are coming from my mouth.
We're leaving the old world still in ruins. Our homeland is close, almost within sight, just beyond the Karawanken mountains which are visible from here. I keep looking at them and remembering my mother, sister, nephews and other relatives and good friends there, whose hands I couldn't shake and say goodbye. I haven't written to them we're leaving for Argentina, I'll do so on the journey. I'm restless from hearing in the camp so many conflicting reports, and I have nightmares of being persecuted and hunted like a wild animal. We're taking leave of our fellow campdwellers, friends and acquaintances, of our unforgettable, good dr. Mersol, the parish priests and curates and the other good people still remaining.
2nd January. Those leaving for Argentina had a 6 am Mass said by the Rev. Klopcic, who told us to go into the new world in Jesus' name, carry it always in our hearts, cherish and revere it. Let us have unconditional trust in Him and walk with Him always. We will survive the new life abroad with His help, be it ever so hard, and conquer all difficulties.
We hand in our heavy baggage. All day my heart feels heavy and I see others feel the same. They don't say much but look as if oppressed by something: the nearer the moment of departure, the heavier the heart. Even my wife and children are silent. At 2 we climb into the lorries, and at 3 leave the camp. "God be with you: safe journey" is heard over and over again from those remaining, who waive their handkerchiefs while we use ours to dry our tears. Goodbye, good people.
344 At the station we were put straight into comfortable second class carriages and left at 6. The train moved slowly and nearly silently. Strange. We're leaving behind four years of anxiety, bitter disappointments and sad memories, yet the transition from refugee to free person isn't easy. It's quite incomprehensible, the feeling at this moment. We didn't cry when we made a hurried departure on the 5th May 1945, leaving behind everything - home, possessions, loved parents, brothers and sisters, friends and acquaintances and most treasured of all, our homeland. We didn't know if we'd be alive next day, and if alive where we'd spend the night, what we'd eat. We departed into the totally unknown - and left as if on a Mayday spring excursion. Perhaps fear took the place of the sadness of parting or we were given a special grace in those hours so we didn't hesitate what to do. Personally, I'm sure it was a special grace.
3rd January. The journey was unpleasant because the heating didn't reach the end carriages of the very long steam train. We travelled cold, and all the way through Italy didn't get any hot food or drink because we weren't allowed to leave the train, but were guarded strictly by Italian carabiniere who weren't kind at all. The sky was overcast and the countryside covered with snow: we stood at stations for long periods, thirsty, longing for a hot drink, with Italian police guarding us so that no one was allowed to leave, nor could anyone approach us. We moved mainly at night and were freezing, as cold as kittens.
4th January. At around 11, frozen stiff, we reached Collegno, the station for Grugliasco transit camp, where it was snowing hard and bitterly cold. The train was unloaded speedily and we found ourselves in a former mental hospital, which from the outside looked a large and beautiful modern building, inside decrepit. During the war it had been used by German soldiers, then by Jews and now it's a transit camp for DPs heading across the Atlantic.
The food isn't marvellous - every day macaroni and potatoes, stinking of petrol, probably cooked on petrol-fed stoves, but we do have plenty of good white bread. We don't see or smell meat anywhere, but we're not hungry and don't suffer from cold any more. The fixtures in the wash places and toilets 345 are all broken and there's dirt everywhere.
5th January. The people who were here when we arrived, left today and we quickly took over their better rooms. We found a large hall and people just flopped down on the floor and slept the whole night, as we didn't sleep at all on the train. In our hall there are a lot of children, but it's a little warmer because of the sun and some central heating.
6th January. Today is the feast of the three Kings. We're still confused and very tired. There's a nice chapel in the main building, still decorated for Christmas and with a lovely crib. I attended Mass and a sermon delivered by some young Slovene Salesian. The Mass communicated beauty and concentration, but the sermon was excessively sentimental. Sermons covered in jam aren't in tune with my spiritual disposition but perhaps suit women, who somehow manage to make sweet the most serious spiritual exercises and prayers: they even address the Sacred Heart pierced with our own most grievous sins: "O Sweetest Heart of Jesus". The chapel was full of women.
8th January. I'm bored doing nothing. It must be beautiful here in the spring as there's a large, wooded park, but now the trees are bare, the beds and lawns covered with snow. There are high hills in the distance, one with a large and prominent castle. In the park I met some Slovene students from Graz, very interesting, serious lads. Ciko Skebe was the most amusing, constantly cracking jokes and pulling people's legs. Very pleasant!
**In the afternoon I took a tram to Turin with my daughter and a small group. We got there quickly and first went to see the Basilica of St. John Bosco, the founder of the Salesian Order. It's really beautiful. The Sacristan gave us a guided tour and told us a lot about the marvellous life of the Saint. What didn't he tell us about the relics? The godfearing man I'm sure never lied, but his enthusiasm certainly carried him away. He assured us a great flask was truly water from the river Jordan from the time when Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist. O sancta simplicitas! Thank you, pious Sacristan, for the pleasure you gave us! After touring the church we all knelt at the altar of Mary Help of Christians. I thanked Her for all the graces She obtained for me and begged Her again to grant us 346 a safe journey to Argentina, the land of which Don Bosco so often dreamt and to which he sent his missionaries.
After prayer I looked around for my daughter, but couldn't see her. All the young ones were gathered around the "live" crib and everything was moving - the stars in the sky, the star above the crib, the lights shining in a profusion of colours in the houses of Bethlehem, the shepherds and sheep coming and going, and the angels dancing in the meadows and floating in the sky! None of us had seen anything like it before. Anica Semrow gathered the young people around her and they started singing carols. A crowd of Italians surrounded us and listened, and they switched off the current to the crib so that everything stood still, except the stars above the crib and the stream which were left on. The Sacristan reappeared, crying "Che bello! Che maraviglia!" and we put some change into his hand, thanked him for his tour and left. We then went to see the huge Salesian Institute next the church. In awe and deeply moved emotionally and spiritually I walked round the rooms where Don Bosco worked and spent his remarkable life so full of love, devoted to young orphans.
Next we visited Cottolengo's House of Divine Providence which isn't a house but a whole neighbourhood, a part of the town, a marvellous establishment without state financial support, depending solely on the people's voluntary contributions. Its centre point is the church where those living in the settlement pray night and day, adoring God, revering him in the Host and dedicating to Him their manual work. We walked past the huge laundry where the good Sisters were washing everything from nice clothing to the most revolting old rags from poor people. I marvelled at the physical and spiritual strength they must possess to do such menial work day after day.
We passed through a number of hospital wards where terminally ill patients are confined to bed, more or less for the rest of their lives. Anyone would be shaken by the experience of seeing such misery; and we were profoundly touched by the depth of faith, confidence and love of God of these Sisters of Charity who are leading such dedicated lives and alleviating the suffering of the poorest of the poor. They must be really holy women. For all this work they receive as reward a piece of bread, a simple 347 religious habit and a medal of Our Lady made from humble aluminium. But there awaits them the rich reward and honour with Him who rewards all who give a glass of fresh water to the needy in love.
I left with this thought: "You think you've gone through much sorrow in your life? Just look at what you've seen here in a short time, without even seeing the worst. And you're worrying about what'll happen to you in the new world? Look how beautifully the Good Lord takes care of all this misery because the people here trust him totally, pray to him with thanksgiving and serve him faithfully.**
9th January. It's a dreary, misty cold day. The room is warm and we're happy here. In the afternoon I walk in the garden and meet up with some acquaintances. I enjoy the company of the students from Graz. Dr. Blatnik, now living in Rome, paid us a visit.
10th January. There are rumours we won't be here long, but will soon depart for the promised land.
11th January. The list of people for Argentina was posted, my family is on it. We leave the camp on the 14th for Genoa, and on the 15th board the American military transport ship Holbrook.
Sunday, 16th January. The day of departure. My wife's ill. At Spittal they gave us tins of meat for the journey, larger than usual and the label written in Arabic, so we didn't know the contents. They were fish prepared for Indians and very strongly spiced. My wife and the children ate them because they were very hungry. I was put off by the strong smell and only took a mouthful, preferring to remain hungry. The strong spices probably caused my wife's illness, because she has a weak liver. The children, Father Ciril and Sister Francka were not affected. We were faced with the dilemma: stay or go? My wife decided we should go but I was very worried.
**At 2 we had vespers and benediction in the chapel, sang with deep emotion "Mother Mary went to a foreign land" and " Mary, all men's guide through life, steer us through our suffering path", and all had tears in our eyes and left the chapel with reluctance. We prayed confidently to Mary for God's mighty protection and for a successful journey.** We left the camp at 6 and were put on the train which was 348 well warmed. We had a comfortable compartment for eight people, and our group was composed of our family, the parish priest Martin Rados and two sisters - congenial company, apart from Father Rados's severe cough. We slept very little.
Monday, 17th January. We reach Genoa harbour at 6 but are not allowed out, and armed police immediately guard the train. At 8 the dockers start loading our baggage onto the ship Holbrook which is moored in front of us. Then we're told to get off the train and line up according to the numbers given us by IRO officials. We step forward to receive our passports and, with these in our hands, proceed in line into a large hall. There the harbour police checked our passports again, and our hearts almost stopped beating at this last police check on European soil. Everything went fine, everyone was very polite, they had no list of wanted people.
We boarded by a long gangway and members of the crew examined our passports once again. It was all done very calmly, politely, quickly. They separated the men from the women, the men going to the male section and the women to large communal dormitories prepared with comfortable beds and clean, new, fresh linen. We parked our hand luggage and went to rest for a little on our beds. So here we are for a few weeks in our new, comfortable, hard home on the waves.
*Slowly we crept on deck, where more and more people were gathering. People were also crowding onto the harbour pier. We wait for the ship to move. I watch the sailors inspecting the heavy ropes with which the ship is attached to the tugs, which are ready to take the strain. Then "Let go anchor" and we hear a monstrous roar. After the rattle of the heavy chains subsides the ship begins to vibrate and we hear the noise of the engines, which shake the ship as it glides silently and slowly out of the harbour.* The pier recedes and people wave us goodbye.
People's faces have turned serious and sad and most are crying. Goodbye, homeland, goodbye our land and the old world, goodbye our beloved parents. Slowly, very slowly, the ship slides forward through the water and the grey hill falls further and further behind and grows more and more grey. The tugs guide our leviathan quietly and cautiously, now and then changing direction to left or right, one tug 349 accelerating and the other slowing down. Finally the tugs release the ropes and start receding from the ship, while the sailors drag the ropes on deck.
*Now the siren wails, the ship shudders, the engines roar and the ship vibrates as it slides majestically into the Bay of Genoa and the Ligurian Sea. Silent and sad we slowly leave the deck, the day fades, it grows cold, night takes us in her embrace. Our first night at sea!* Around 7 we are summoned to the restaurant, a huge room, spotlessly clean, elegantly furnished with beautiful, spotlessly clean tables, chairs and fine cutlery. We are attentively waited on, and plenty of nourishing, savoury food is served on metal platters, just what we need after a whole day without warm food and an exhausting journey. After four years of grim starvation we're given a really well served good supper. We take a short stroll on the deck and then go to sleep.
Tuesday, 18 January. The Ligurian Sea is notorious for its stormy weather and we're overcome with sea- sickness. Franci noticed I wasn't well and didn't leave my side. During the morning I was sick, then sat on deck and the fresh air brought some relief and finally I felt much better. It was late afternoon before the sea calmed and people returned to the deck. Some are still leaning over the rails and looking in to the sea.
*We passed the Balearic Islands around 4 pm. We are being followed by a flock of white sea-gulls which overfly the ship from time to time and then swoop down and float on the surface of the water like small white boats. Each single body, silhouetted against the azure sky or the dark blue of the sea or the multi- coloured rays of the setting sun, is breath-takingly beautiful.*
Wednesday, 19th January. In the Mediterranean. My wife fell seriously ill during the night. One of the IRO doctors on board, an Italian, saw her early in the morning, just looked at her and told her to go on deck. By 9 am she was suffering from stomach cramps too painful to bear, which spread to her fingers, hands, feet. I went to the ship's chief doctor and asked him to see her. He came immediately, asked her a lot of questions and examined her carefully. He asked her to grip a pencil between her fingers, without success. 350
At that moment dr. Rijahin, a Russian refugee who was the doctor at Peggetz and Spittal camps where he'd treated my wife, came by. As he was just a passenger with no official capacity of ship's doctor he didn't want to interfere, but did manage to tell the ship doctor's interpreter, dr. Kremzar, how he treated my wife in the camp hospitals. The ship doctor listened carefully and told my wife she'd be better soon. He went away and got a morphine injection which he gave her and then took her in his arms and himself carried her into the ship's sick-bay. Soon she was given a second injection of morphine and two litres of an intravenous transfusion. He's a young, very sympathetic American doctor. When my wife was resting on deck after discharge to get fresh air he came in person every day to ask how she felt.
What kind of a boat is our S.S.Holbrook? It's an American Liberty ship which was transporting American soldiers and equipment across the Atlantic to Europe during the second world war, a very large, very comfortable ship with mess decks for the sleeping and living quarters of the soldiers, a very large kitchen with gas-oil cookers, huge cold stores, a most modern well-equipped hospital and separate dining rooms for officers and crew. On deck there are plenty of comfortable easy chairs, so there's no need to fight for one.
The food is simply ideal for half-starved refugees. For breakfast fried egg and bacon, cereal with milk or porridge cooked with milk, tea or coffee with milk, bread and jam and a small glass of fruit juice: for lunch ham, salad, potatoes, gravy, bread, pudding and fresh fruit; and for supper sausages, roast potatoes and French beans or ham, salad, bread, pudding and coffee. During our deep sleep we slid silently into the Atlantic Ocean.
Thursday, 20th January. Gibraltar is already far behind us and we're sailing quietly on the Atlantic which is calm and dark blue with a slight breeze caressing long, low waves. We're following the African coast. At 7 am Father Lamovsek said a Mass for the recovery of our Mummy; every morning between 6.30 and 9 Masses are celebrated in the officers' saloon and in this manner we all nicely take our turn. Attendance at them is impressive.
351 *After breakfast we made our beds and then stayed on deck. The sky was clear, just a few tattered clouds, and the sun was scorching so we took off our warm clothing. The heat will grow every day as we slowly approach the equator. We're sitting or lying on the deck chairs, chattering. The children are enjoying themselves in their own ways.*
Friday, 21st January. Burial at sea. In the morning I went to see my wife in the sick bay; the children aren't admitted even though they'd love to see their mother. She's still deeply jaundiced, and yesterday was given two intravenous infusions and two injections of morphine for severe colic. The doctor told me she was severely undernourished and very weak, but assured me it wouldn't be very long before she recovered. In the bed opposite there was a Russian woman seriously ill with pneumonia. The doctors are afraid of this disease because these patients can't stand the night dampness and sea air: that's why they're warning us not to stay on deck at night. The sailors check the deck so that no one sleeps in the open, as the air in the cabins is becoming more and more oppressive.
The poor Russian woman died during the night. At 5 pm all the passengers gathered to pay their last respects. A funeral at sea is deeply moving. The sailors brought the corpse tightly wrapped in linen and put it into a loosely woven metal net, and then put it on a make-shift platform. Russian Orthodox priests, not in church vestments but in their own civilian clothing, said prayers over the body. Then each group said the Lord's Prayer in their own language, for the repose in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean of the soul of the deceased sister. Then the soldiers slowly lifted the wooden plank on which the body was laid and, while a hymn of mourning was sung by the deep bass Russian voices who took the place of the tolling bells, the body was slowly lowered into the ocean, feet first with a heavy iron weight attached, and quietly slid into the waves. Instead of flowers, the eddies from the watery grave provided their own wreath-like formation. The children and I were gripped with a chilly fear as we thought of our own dear gravely ill mum in the sick-bay.
Saturday, 22nd January. It's a beautiful day and our ship is swinging and swaying quietly on the silver-blue waves of the ocean. The sunshine grows warmer and 352 warmer. I visited my wife in the sick-bay and found her looking better. She also was very shaken by the death of the Russian woman. There are a lot of ill people on the ship now and the doctor is very busy. Many are suffering from flu, a consequence of the train journeys and the really scandalous conditions at the transit camp in Grugliasco.
There are floods in the bedrooms because some of the toilets and pipes serving them are blocked. A number of passengers are completely careless and unconcerned about hygiene; they must be thinking they're still using open latrines into which one can throw anything, paper, rags and all kinds of rubbish. The principal offenders are the Russians, not the old emigres but those who escaped during the second world war or soon after, and those who escaped from the labour camps: also the army deserters and criminals. They all wear clear marks of past sufferings in Russia first and then in German labour camps. Even the priests show these types of remnants of past sufferings and abuses. Most of them lived for many years in forced detention as convicts or in forced labour camps, and became stubborn, rebellious, indifferent. Yet they remained deeply religious in spite of all the abuses and hardships showered on them. They respect only God and put their only hope and trust in Him.
What can you expect then from the many working class people who were exposed, in Slovenia or in Germany, to the Gestapo's most inhuman abuses and harassment and forced to eat from cattle troughs? Now they are not amenable to reason or advice, but are stubborn and rebellious. The majority are heading for Paraguay. How will they be able to make a better life for themselves there? Especially since they don't seem to be united, but rather disunited and full of hatred for each other. It took two or three days of hard work to clear the toilets and pipes, bedrooms and sitting rooms. The sailors supervised, we worked.
Sunday, 23rd January. It's our first Sunday on board. The American flag was flying on the mast during Holy Mass. The officers as well as the crew members who were off duty came to hear Mass. The day was lovely but getting hot: we're already in the tropical belt.
*Wednesday, 26th January. It was a sticky night and 353 nobody slept well, but came on deck early for some fresher air. Fewer and fewer people have flu and most of the passengers are in good spirits. The children lie asleep in the deck chairs. I'm leaning over the rail watching the waves when something starts to flash. I see a shoal of silvery fish rise from the sea, fly 200 yards and then disappear in the water. These must be the flying fish we learnt about at school, but could never imagine what they'd look like. I wake the children, they run to the rail shouting with delight. They ask me endless questions, eager for an explanation of the phenomenon. No lecture in school, no photo however good could replace the experience of seeing real flying fish. My son and daughter run to wake their friends to see the fish flying. They come running, followed by their parents and other grown-ups. How marvellous is creation in this otherwise terrifying ocean.
Thursday, 27th January. A very hot night. Shoals of flying fish still accompany the ship, but today we've new companions - dolphins, who are giving us an entertainment, playing like children and racing us. Tonight we're allowed to sleep on deck.*
**Friday, 28th January. The Equator. At 6 in the morning we sail past the island of San Fernando, which belongs to Brazil. It's far away, small and rocky, a high security prison for the most dangerous criminals. I spot a small white boat heading for the island and Mr. Kremzar leans over the rail by my side and explains it's a patrol boat and there's no way out of this "hell in paradise" and escape is quite impossible. He adds:
Think how lucky we are to have escaped a similar hell and to be sailing free and in peace towards genuine and democratic freedom. I shudder to think of Ljubelj, Vetrinje and the four years of fear and humiliation that lie behind, when UNRRA and IRO staff looked down on us as inferior beings, lorded it over us and ordered us about like black slaves; and of the fear and lack of the most basic necessities, of unrelenting persecution and bans that forced us to hide in the hills and mountains and wander in every kind of weather, half-starved, frightened, exhausted, resting our only hope in God's protection.
With His mercy we survived. I lost two lovely sons - I'm 354 not complaining and don't quarrel with God over this: He gave me them, He took them from me. One son is left, almost miraculously and after many prayers on his behalf, and I'm asking God to let me keep him. He was betrayed and condemned to die, his brothers prayed he be returned to me, and he was. I'm old, my wife no longer young. I cried in anguish but have forgotten the harm that was done me.
When we left home we did so quietly, without sadness or anxieties, like on an excursion. We didn't think of the homes and possessions we were abandoning, our jobs or how we'd travel, we thought only of escaping some days of savagery and confusion. We didn't know where to go, where we'd end up, who'd feed us, where we'd spend the night. We went into total darkness and insecurity without a guide: yet we were completely calm. Think of what I'm telling you now. This was a very special grace we obtained through our prayers to Mary the Help of Christians to whom we appealed, to whom we dedicated ourselves and for whose protection we begged. This peace was a special miracle of God's love for us.
Now we know well where we are going, that we'll have a hard life and hard work for months and years. But we'll be free - to earn our own daily bread which won't be lacking as we're heading for a country rich in resources, our Land of Canaan: free to work, pray and speak. We're not entering a new land and a new environment unprepared. We've had four years of strict novitiate and of uninterrupted spiritual retreat and so we should be spiritually mature, accustomed to scarce resources, diligent, industrious and united. You're still young, you've a good half of your life still in front of you. Grab life's opportunities with vigour and fight life's battle for survival with unshaken confidence and trust in Mary, Virgin and Mother of God who'll not abandon you unless you abandon her. Try to tune your life with the will and providence of God who's leading you and all of us into a new life in a new world. God must have a plan for us; only let us respect it and submit ourselves to His will and, believe me, we'll be happy in the new world. My years are counted, I won't be able to do anything remarkable, but I'll continue to fulfil my duties with unshakable trust in God so long as I'm able to.
So the two of us measured the distance between land and 355 the heavens, sat, meditated a little and then ate the excellent and abundant lunch the Lord's providence had provided us.**
*Saturday, 29th January. Under the Southern Cross. A glorious morning and a calm sea, shining blue. No real waves, just little curly ones. We're expecting a very hot day. The whole ship is bedecked with small flags, and at 2 there's a special ceremony, the christening of the sailors crossing the equator for the first time.*
Tuesday, 1st February. I'm still quite ill though the worst is over; but I don't dare eat or drink anything. It slowly appears that only those who drank iced tea at dinner on Saturday fell ill. Contaminated ice, and not meat, was to blame. My wife and children didn't drink at dinner and had no ill effects. When the doctor saw my wife on deck he ran to her asking if she was all right; when she answered yes, he just folded his hands as if in prayer and went off very happy.
*Wednesday, 2nd February. We're slowly approaching our destination. The water grows less deep, its colour turns to emerald and the weather is very good. May God grant us a safe journey for the few remaining days until we reach Buenos Aires. They started returning our documents, kept safe by the captain himself, a sure sign that the end of our really pleasant voyage, apart from the last three days, is approaching. This is our first carefree and enjoyable vacation in the form of a sea trip for eight long years. I'd welcome a repeat of such a lovely and peaceful sea vacation. At 2.20 the ship took a right turn and started sailing down the coast of Brazil.
Friday, 4th February. In the morning we had the usual devotion for the first Friday of the month and had many things to tell Jesus. We offered up to Him once again in reparation and reconciliation all the bitternesses of the war years, all the suffering and sadness of the four refugee years, the starvation, harassment and persecutions, and prayed for His help, protection and blessing in the new homeland. We're well prepared for the new life, spiritually toughened: may He show us His mercy and help in our difficulties at its beginning. We didn't abandon Him in our most bitter hours, we shouldn't leave Him when 356 we start living under better conditions than before.*
The ship stopped at 8 am. Our destination, Buenos Aires, and our promised land Argentina were six miles in front of us. The cleaning of the ship is in full swing. The outside was newly painted by the lads and young men during the voyage and what remains to be done is to clean the spots that had been fouled during the food poisoning. We're waiting for medical and immigration check-ups. The officials came on board at 8 last night when the ship stopped briefly, checked our documents, stamped them and took with them the duplicate copies. I was very pleasantly surprised when I received the Immigration Commission's living and ration cards for fourteen days for the Immigrants' Hotel, and feel much relieved: it'll help us over the biggest initial difficulties. The officials told us that the police at the Immigrants' Hotel will issue us with personal identity cards which will entitle us to live without hindrance and enjoy the same rights as any other Argentinean citizen.
The medical check was nothing special; they only examined our eyes, and that to see if anyone suffered from trachoma. Of all the refugees they found only one Slovene with it, a bachelor called Pekolj, who was refused permission to stay and will have to go back. There was no difficulty at all with the handicapped people, all were accepted; they were very generous with them. I noticed this particularly in the case of one Slovene man; if I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't have believed it. He had one totally paralysed arm, and we all had to lift up both our arms. But the doctor himself grasped this man's arms and lifted them up and then let them drop. So he didn't notice the paralysis, or didn't want to notice it, I don't know ... The Argentinean pilot who will guide the ship into harbour came on board.
Saturday, 5th February. Arrival and disembarkation. The tugboats bring the ship into harbour and we wait to disembark. There are Slovenes on the pier waiting for us, waving handkerchiefs to greet us. We start disembarking at 9, and go to the customs with our personal luggage. They open our poor bags and let us go. They work fast. We go immediately to the Immigrants' Hotel to get a bed each and a place to stay, and then straight on for chest X-rays. They're searching for people with tuberculosis of the lungs. 357 They found a few but the problem was solved somehow and they were allowed to stay. I found the first meeting with those who came to Argentina before us rather depressing. They seemed to have nothing nice to say, only complaints that they can't find anywhere to live, they're quite desperate, they want to go back, etc., etc. Some women in particular were insufferable with their complaints and this had an upsetting influence all round.
Well, here we are! This is the end of the life of a refugee wandering the world. We're starting a completely new chapter of our lives. Every beginning is difficult, but let's confront any new difficulties with courage and strength. We're really and fully free, in a rich country, they're offering us work, prosperity can be seen all around us. With God's help, if we persevere and don't demand too much, we'll succeed in organising a good life for ourselves.
358
C H A P T E R 1 5
Tragic to say, this country, my second homeland, was better to me than my native land.
Argentina
The refugees were nothing if not articulate. While it was still in progress, they published their perceptions of the event of supreme importance to them, their emigration, which of course amounted to their successful survival as a community. I begin this chapter with extracts from the relevant chapter of the Free Slovenia Almanac for 1950. It discusses why most of those in Italy and Austria put Argentina as their first preference, and lists the areas where they settle.
The Pernisek and Kremzar families then give their experiences as immigrants, followed by the Bohinc family of eight and Stanko Jerebic who arrives on his own.
They are followed by Jorge Vorsic, after a year of engineering studies at Graz University: Mariano Loboda, for whom Argentina is the only chance because he has his mother with him: Stane Snoj, for whom the contrast between Argentina and home is so traumatic that he would if possible return to Europe by the next boat; and architect Bozidar Bajuk, who tells his family's story from Slovenia right through to Argentina.
359 The Free Slovenia Almanac for 1950202 records the preparations for emigration up to the end of 1949:
The groups in Italy decided almost unanimously to emigrate to Argentina for several reasons. The allied authorities were very anxious to relieve Italy of the refugee burden, and Argentina was the first government to open its doors in a hospitable manner to the Slovenes and simplify its official entry regulations. Conditions were reported to be favourable, especially for workers, with enough jobs and reasonable rates of pay, and there were countless opportunities for anyone fit and prepared to work, with an economy developing at a steady pace and a cultural life reviving. Most settlers remained in Buenos Aires, where it was easiest to find jobs, and in spite of a desperate housing shortage the Slovenes are step by step approaching an acceptable standard of living.
Substantial groups have dispersed over the enormous country to Tierra del Fuego, Comodoro Rivadavia, Miramar, Mar del Sur, Chapadmalal, San Luis, Cordobo and in particular Mendoza, where there is the largest and best developed Slovene settlement outside Buenos Aires. Smaller groups have settled in Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru, with a few in Brazil and Paraguay.
While this was happening immigration arrangements to the USA, Canada, Britain and Australia also matured. Canada in particular has accepted a good number of young Slovenes and they have organised themselves there well, establishing a sound economic base for their future and starting up cultural and religious activities. IRO has arranged transport, a boon for our families who could never have paid on their own.
Our people started arriving in Argentina in very small groups, a couple on the 25 January 1947, six more six weeks later, another six after five weeks and so on. The Immigrants' Hotel was not opened to refugees until September, and till then the only spot, where new arrivals could lay down their bundles and seize any work they could find next day, was a modest guest house on Austria Street. Large-scale transports
202. article entitled "Slovene refugees depart in different directions" in Koledar Svobodne Slovenije 1950 (Buenos Aires), p.128 360 started on 21 January 1948 on the following ships:
Santa Cruz 300 Stevard 253 Ravello 145 Santa Cruz 517 Sturgis 393 Sturgis 305 Empire Halverd 168 Bundy 241 Black 179 Stevard 552 Heinzelman 183 Holbrook 492 Olimpia 116 Olimpia 244 Langfitt 233
In addition to these groups of hundreds of immigrants, other boats arrived monthly with smaller groups, the last on September 1949. The Slovene emigration to Argentina of over 5,000 is now closed as is also probably that to the rest of South America.
Franc Pernisek's diary ends with his arrival in Buenos Aires on the S.S. Holbrook with wife, daughter aged 13 and son aged 9, but a letter from him completes their story:
The first two years were very tough. For three months we lived with twelve other families in an empty warehouse but then found something on our own; a single room, sharing a kitchen with two other women. My first job was with a carpenter but I soon began work for the Slovenian Association and stayed there eight years, helping our people in all kinds of ways with their search for accommodation, their children's education, job applications, completing official formalities etc.
We arrived in Argentina just when there was maximum expansion and a shortage of workers and office staff of all kinds. Our people were thrifty and hard- working and quickly got their own houses, and finance houses offered loans at very favourable rates. That's how I built my own house.
Eight years later I found a job in the office of a textile factory and worked there for twenty-five years until I retired at the age of 74 on full pension. My son studied at the State University in Buenos Aires and has worked as an architect since 1966, is married and has four children. My daughter started work already at the age of 14, first in a stocking factory and later as a secretary with different firms. She is married to a lawyer and has three children; their daughter has just qualified at university as a biochemist while their two sons are still attending university, studying engineering.
The Perniseks enjoyed more than forty years of married life in 361 Argentina, until Antonia died in 1991 at the age of 85. Franc still lives there with his daughter, son-in-law, son and seven grandchildren in the same house or nearby. His friend France Kremzar died some years ago, but his son Marko, a successful business man and writer, tells what happened to his family:
It was in 1949 I changed from refugee to immigrant, as happened to most DPs in the UNRRA camps in Austria. It wasn't at all easy for people to decide where to go. After finishing my time at that very good Slovene college, the "Secondary School - DP Camp Spittal an der Drau", I enrolled at the University of Graz but had only completed half a year of history, philosophy and psychology when I was told our days in Austria were ending and we had to choose the country we wanted to go to. I could have emigrated to the USA but there were three other members of my family who depended on my decision, my father and mother and my mother's sister, all over sixty and thus anything but desirable immigrants. As I didn't want to leave them on their own I returned to Spittal and we started the procedure for emigration to Argentina, a country which accepted whole families and wasn't too strict about age.
The Argentine Consul arrived and handed out application forms. Friends in the migration office advised me not to put myself down as a student but invent a more practical occupation, and having none I wrote electrician. The Consul looked at us and said he couldn't accept three elderly people with only one family member of working age, however good an electrician he might be and in spite of the favourable health certificates, and to cut discussion short told us to report next day an hour before he was due to leave. We were the last people he saw. He stared at us for a long time and then signed our papers without a word. We were emigrants.
IRO organised the travel: train to Turin, weeks in a transit camp and train to Genoa. The boat, the "Willar A. Hollbrook", belonged to a US line and was completing its short life transporting Slovene, Croat and Russian emigrants to Buenos Aires. A US shipyard was then to convert it into scrap, but it is said to have sunk on its final journey to the States.
Our voyage went smoothly and the US navy fed us well. Because of my basic knowledge of English I was given the job of keeping my compatriots informed over the 362 loudspeakers of everything from the Captain's orders to items judged of interest by the transport commander, a Norwegian civilian IRO employee. When we disembarked IRO gave us a final gift: a tooth- brush and two cartons of Lucky Strikes per passenger. We sold our eight cartons when we landed and from this, our first commercial transaction on the American continent, accrued the capital with which we embarked on life in Argentina. Previously we had had no money because we escaped from home with only our lives and the clothes we were wearing, and since then had lived within the "closed economy" of the beneficent UNRRA.
There was a large number of DPs on the transport and the Argentinean authorities in the "Immigrants' Hotel" were very strict: you could stay only two weeks finding work and lodgings. They woke us at seven, served breakfast at eight and locked the dormitories to prevent "abuses". They also gave us lunch and an evening meal. I started looking for work, father looked for somewhere to live, while mother and aunt sat on a bench in a neighbouring park. I couldn't find work until we'd a permanent address and my father couldn't find somewhere to live without the guarantee of a job. Most families split up, the men going off on their own to work on public construction jobs and the women to domestic work of a superior or lesser nature depending on luck. A few fortunate ones found work and accommodation in factories, while some families with several children travelled on into the interior, into unknown territory.
When our two weeks were up we hadn't found anywhere to live and they let us stay on another week, and in the meantime we were visited by a fellow Slovene who had been living in Argentina since the world crisis before the War. He knew my father and suggested a solution. He lived in a suburb of Buenos Aires and was married with two sons and a daughter who boarded in a college during the school year so that they had two rooms free, and he proposed that my mother and aunt should look after the house and garden so that his wife, also a Slovene, could return to work. I'm still grateful today to that good man, who in course of time became godfather to our son Andrej.
As I knew nothing about electricity in spite of an old book I got hold of in Austria to teach myself, and recognised after two attempts I had as little 363 aptitude for carpentry, I started work in the "Goodyear" factory as a cleaner. At last we had a roof and I earned enough for us to eat, but we still had nowhere to go when the children returned home from school in the holidays, and so it was agreed we'd contract our living space, and we stayed with that family for about two years. My father, a journalist, found a job as a cleaner in a sanatorium and I progressed to specialised workman, assembling the cabins of heavy lorries. The work was exhausting but better paid.
One day the trade union decided to strike, so while waiting for the dispute to end I worked as a building labourer on a new estate being put up in the middle of the pampas not far from us. Eventually an agreement was reached that the firm would improve the daily pay, and in return was entitled to make workers employed for less than a year redundant. I was among those sacked, and so kept on my labouring job at the building site and claimed the compensation for dismissal I was legally entitled to. I was paid eventually. Never before had I had so much money, almost two months' pay, and I discussed with my father what to do with it. We decided to buy a groundplot, a little parcel of land in an uninhabited area which already had planning permission for housing. We then obtained a loan from a building society and with the help of bricklayer friends built ourselves and moved into a pretty little house, while the growing inflation made loan repayments easier.
The job in the "garden city" was temporary and I kept on looking for a permanent one. I heard a Swiss textile firm had built a new factory and was waiting for new machinery from Europe. Next day I presented myself at the still incomplete plant and asked to speak with the man in charge. A Swiss mechanic saw me and I introduced myself as an apprentice weaver. When I admitted I'd never seen a textile machine in my life he got angry, but I noticed that one of a bank of new looms had already been installed and they were trying it out with some cheap thread. I asked him to let me learn on this machine while he was installing the others. He burst out laughing, but agreed on condition that I performed with the same speed and quality as the professional weavers when all the machines were ready. I was paid at unskilled rates but he taught me the job and I passed weeks loosening up and testing machines while they were being 364 installed. By the time the factory opened I could work as well as the others, making fine cloths for suits and overcoats for the local market and export, and I still possess a union card as a cashmere weaver.
From the beginning I combined work with study. I attended a business administration course to improve my Spanish, and this taught me both the language and book-keeping, of which I knew absolutely nothing. When I asked if I could inscribe at the university on the strength of my European certificates of secondary education they told me I'd have to follow a lengthy procedure to get them recognised, sending them successively to the Ministry of the Interior, the Foreign Ministry, the Austrian Foreign Ministry in Vienna, the Austrian Ministry of the Interior and finally the University of Graz. The Rector had to certify the authenticity of the documents and they had to return the same way. I thought they'd been lost by the time I was told by the Ministry of the Interior to collect them. It took a year and the certificates returned with annexes attached, covered with seals and signatures, each certifying the authenticity of the signatures on the previous document. So now I could enrol with the National College of Buenos Aires to take examinations equivalent to the baccalaureate, pass them in a year and complete my secondary education following Argentinean requirements.
I was still working as a weaver by day and studying at night and week-ends, and was told when I applied to the University Faculty of Economics and Commerce I'd have to pass some more examinations in commerce, for which I needed another year of secondary studies. Eventually, after four years, I was able to enrol and return to the university.
Now I had to find an office job near the university if I was to be able to study. This brought with it a new problem, because I'd earn less in an office than as a textile operative; so I asked mother how much I'd need to earn for the four of us to live as modestly as possible. A North American firm offered me a job, but the salary was fifty pesos less than the minimum mother set. I told the personnel director the extra money was essential and he said if I worked well I'd be earning as much or more in a few months. I insisted I had to have the money at once but he 365 couldn't give it. Just as he was sending me away, a man passed through the office in a great hurry - I learnt later he was the managing director. Perhaps he'd seen my expression, because he asked the personnel director what the problem was. On hearing it was a matter of fifty pesos, he said, with a very strong American accent, "why not give it him?" and that was how I got my office job.
On top of work and studies I devoted time to our community life, as did most of the Slovene emigrants. We met each Sunday after Mass, celebrated by our Slovene priests. Soon this was happening in several parishes, where we organised cultural and sporting activities. Our teachers had begun gathering the children of school age together as soon as we arrived, and although they'd the same difficulties over employment and food as we had, they taught them every Saturday, as they'd done previously in the refugee camps. Some families who had a little money sacrificed it for the Saturday morning school, and the teachers taught without expecting any kind of payment - a tradition that persists until today.
Small cooperatives were soon set up to buy land in the suburbs and so the "Slovene Hearths" started, and very often families without houses of their own helped set them up in their neighbourhoods. They provided bases for the Saturday schools and included classrooms, a chapel and a multi-purpose hall for theatre, athletics and dances. Then we built a Slovene Cultural Centre which brought all the "hearths" together, and the teachers joined together and combined their study programmes and adapted them to new needs. Later we started secondary education courses on the same lines and then a university.
So we divided our lives between work and study during the week; and between study, family and community at week-ends. Many devoted even more time to work within the community. We were very conscious of living abroad against our real wishes, and this despite the welcome the Argentineans extended to us.
I qualified as a public auditor within the prescribed four years and then married. Later I returned to the university and took a degree and then a doctorate in economics. After two years with the firm where I started, I changed jobs fairly often so as to learn more and gain wider experience before graduating. I 366 soon started working with international undertakings in the area of finance and ended up as deputy managing director of one of them. But that's another story.
Marko Kremzar married a fellow Slovene, Paula Hribovsek. She has already told how Director Marko Bajuk first refused her a place at the school in Peggetz (pages 00). Now she continues her story:
I came to Argentina more or less on my own but joined a family - Mr Pavcic, a grocer owning his own shop in Slovenia, and his two daughters in the same class with me at school, who more or less adopted me for emigration, just as Stanko Jerebic attached himself to the Kremzar family. This happened quite often. We stayed two weeks in the Hotel de los Inmigrantes where Father Orehar, who he was in [spiritual] charge of our community in Argentina, came to visit us.
There was a group of girls working for two partners, a Serb and a Croat. Like many of the Serbs and Croats, they had money when they arrived and set up a machine-knitting factory. Father Orehar asked if they needed another girl and thus found me a job, while the two Pavcic girls found different work. The man who ran the factory rented a house two or three blocks away for his girl workers - nine Slovenes and three or four Croats. Only the Slovenes lived in the house, *and later the boys called it Babigrad or granny-castle!* They were good employers and treated and paid us well, and we were quite content. A family (father, mother and daughter) ran the Convikt; the mother cooked for us and we paid her. Accommodation was free, and we were paid enough to save some money.
The factory had a rooms for the machines, a cutting room and one for sewing and ironing. I'd no special skills, so I started as an unskilled worker. I kept to one job, sewing the pieces together by machine. I'd used a machine at home, but not this kind. In the evenings I took typing and Spanish courses, but not short-hand. A year later I was called by a friend who was working in a factory office where there was a vacancy. I went, was interviewed, did a short typing test and was appointed. My Spanish didn't need to be particularly good, because I was working with numbers! It was better paid, and I continued there six years from 1951 until I married 367 in 1957. They were good employers, and the room where I worked was alright with about eight girls, all Argentineans. The other Slovene girl worked in the next room. I also remained in the house until I married, although no longer working for the knitting factory: we shared the rent.
I first met Marko in Spittal. I didn't know him well, he was just one of many students. We continued in Argentina the pattern well established in Slovenia and continued in Austria, of girls limiting their circles of friends to fellow girls and boys to boys, until the boys were old enough to start work and enjoy an income sufficient for them to contemplate marriage. But every Saturday and Sunday we went to our church and were there all day. We had Mass and meetings. The girls felt secure, knowing it was probable they'd marry; they wanted to marry and have their own families, but didn't feel any urgency for finding a man: in the natural course of events a man would probably find them! In my circle of friends at church gradually one and then another found a boy friend and went off and got married, and this was a natural progression. I was in about the middle. But there was a group of girls who didn't marry because the domobranci were killed. Some of them continued to live with a brother or sister who was married, and some are living alone today. Of the nine living in the Convikt only one became a nun, and only two remained unmarried. So 20% remained unmarried, and many of those who didn't marry are now teachers.
Ten days before the SS Holbrook left Genoa with the Perniseks and the Kremzars, The SS Black left with the eight members of the Bohinc family. Juliana Bohinc tells their story:
Every day father and one of my sisters left the Immigrants' Hotel to look for accommodation but returned with sore feet. In the end they found a small house we could rent with our scant resources, 65 km from the capital.
How marvellous to be on our own again and in a house! No matter it had no furniture; we sat on the cases holding our few belongings. No matter the kitchen lacked pots and pans; by candle-light, we heated water for tea on a kerosene heater we'd bought in Austria. We had some bread from Buenos Aires with us, and that was our first meal. We laid the coats we were wearing out on the floor and settled down for 368 the night, not without first thanking God that we'd left behind us the perils of war and those that threatened after it. How happy we felt in the knowledge we were all safe and sound!
Next morning we got to know our closest neighbours who were very friendly. But what confusion! They spoke the only tongue they knew, Spanish, while we tried Italian but found that hands and gestures were more help. We soon heard some fellow countrymen lived in the neighbourhood, who'd spent the first post-war years in refugee camps in Italy and crossed the ocean eight months earlier, and so seemed veritable veterans to us. There were also a few families who'd arrived twenty years ago and spoke Slovene, and they were our counsellors and more than once interpreters.
We first had to find work. At 65 father became a bricklayer's mate, something he'd never done before. He took the train at five in the morning and got back at nine in the evening, because there was neither industry nor good jobs where we lived and 60% of the locals had to travel two or three hours to get to work. My oldest brother was found a job nearby; the pay wasn't good but he could work extra hours. One of my sisters worked for a family in the capital, while another sister and I found some sewing near home in a workshop making slippers, where the pay was also very low. We were advised to place our younger brothers aged 13 and 15 in a college like the present technical school where they had to study for five years, as this was the only way they could obtain admission.
Once we'd taken stock of where we were living and how things were, we resolved to build a house of our own near Buenos Aires, where the job prospects were better, as soon as possible. My father was interested in the areas with larger groups of Slovenes and bought a plot of land in one of them by instalments, as was the custom. The monthly instalments were almost the same as the rent we were paying, and we were saved by the relative cheapness of food. We fed very modestly as we were anyhow used to a simple diet, we spent the absolute minimum on clothes and there was no question of any kind of entertainment. We suffered severe shortages of every sort but didn't complain, but set our sights on moving, to provide us with more friends and better work. 369
I still dreamed in secret that once I lived near the capital and knew the language better I could take up my beloved books again and continue with my studies, for I'd completed secondary school and matriculation, with the exception of mathematics, at the refugee camp in Spittal. In mid-1950 everything seemed to be going well and father was very happy with a better job as night-watchman. But one morning he got home, lay down, exchanged a couple of words and went to sleep -for ever. His heart, which had suffered so much from all we'd experienced for so many years and now seemed about to enjoy happiness and the fruits of his labours, could manage no more and called it a day.
The day we buried my father I buried my own plans for the future.
Forty-five years have passed since we took root in this part of the world, and I think our parents can look down from eternity with satisfaction on their six children, thirteen grandchildren (all, according to their ages, with secondary, tertiary or university education) and up to now seven great-grandchildren. We all share the tongue they handed on to us as our common family language, and follow the example of honest work they set us.
Most of the emigrants travelled in family groups, but not so the 16-year-old Stanko Jerebic:
In February 1949 I landed on my own in the then bustling port of Buenos Aires, but with many friends gained during three long years of refugee life. We were taken to "The Hotel of Immigrants" where I, a minor without parent or guardian to guarantee my good behaviour, was shut up in a room on the top floor with a small group with similar backgrounds. An armed marine was posted at the door with instructions not to let us out till someone came to our defence. This had little effect on us youngsters, as we'd liberated ourselves from worse situations in recent years and reflected that every country was entitled to interpret the concept of freedom in its own way.
After four days a merciful soul did appear and signed for me, and the door of the refuge opened. I'd been told Argentina was developing rapidly, a lot of building was going on and people with relevant skills were in 370 great demand. I was reminded of this in the Plaza Britanica, when I was accosted by a gentleman with a very thick beard and loud voice who saw me gesticulating and asked if I spoke Italian. With the aid of the language of Dante we agreed that next day he'd meet with me and four more lads, all experienced carpenters, to go to a neighbourhood they were building in the suburb of Lanus. I didn't have much difficulty recruiting my team, one of whom had in fact attended courses in carpentry at Spittal refugee camp.
It isn't easy to improvise skills in carpentry and our job at the site wasn't likely to prove very long-lived. So I leafed through the classified advertisements of a German newspaper and found what I was looking for, a coffin factory requiring precisely five carpenters, and thither we went. While they finished building the factory, the good man sent us out without comment to five small workshops for us to study the difference between European and local coffins. He sent me to a small undertaker who made coffins for use in his own business. He was smart enough to realise I wouldn't be a conspicuous acquisition as a carpenter but might be useful preparing corpses for the death vigil. I didn't object as it provided me with the means to eat, and was anyhow not unrelated to my admission to the medical faculty of the University of Graz some months earlier.
I continued to leaf through the German-language paper. I went in tie and polished shoes to offer my services to a firm advertising for a book-keeper, as by that time I'd completed eight lessons in book-keeping at a Pitman School. I'll never forget the accountant's guffaws when I told him of my professional skills, but there's another thing I'll never forget: how the good man stayed behind after work every day to teach me, then let me take over the books after a few months and praised the quality of my work. I stayed five years and learnt enough Spanish and book-keeping to justify my existence.
Curiously, in spite of the difficulties we had finding work, it was those first years that led me to devote myself to cultural, and especially theatrical, activities within our community, as if the small seed of creativity sown in the refugee camps burgeoned into fullness after the many years of silence imposed on us by the occupiers. The community activities of 371 our first years in Argentina never developed on the same scale later on, although we then had less need to be worried about meeting our daily needs and so had more time for activities not involved with work.
Jorge Vorsic remembers his first weeks in Buenos Aires with equal clarity:
*A few pictures retain the vivid focus of first impressions: our arrival from the raw winter of Europe into the sweltering South American summer, and being towed into port by tug and tied up in front of a grey building which at the time seemed enormous, the Immigrants' Hotel. There we were lodged in huge halls in beds of I don't know how many tiers, all metal, and shared the building with dark-skinned, black-haired scantily-dressed people who'd lost everything in a terrible earthquake in the province of San Juan, more than 1,000 km away, thus meeting on our very first day with authentic inhabitants of these lands. Later in the week we were passed from queue to queue and crowned the bureaucratic nightmare with repulsive photographs clipped onto identity cards, authenticating us as genuine, legal immigrants. To start with I was given about 45 dollars.
The first few days brought some unforgettable experiences: someone discovered a bar in the railway station where you could buy whole milk for a few cents, and after so many years of semi-starvation with milk out of the question, this seemed proof we'd arrived in a rich country with everything available in abundance. Going for a short walk I was lost in admiration of a 34-floor skyscraper which towered over a pretty park, unable to believe such a building could exist. Then I visited Santa Fe Avenue and was dazzled by the lavish window displays of things I'd never seen before, and overawed by the number of well-dressed men, all wearing waistcoats and hats and, more impressive still, practically all wearing black moustaches. In short, everything astonished me.*
The day came when we had to leave the hotel. I was with my parents and my sister's family. Most of our fellow Slovenes had arranged where to go: some to relatives, others to houses arranged for them by people who'd arrived earlier. In our case, a cousin who'd arrived a year before suggested we share his flat, while my sister's family was put up in the 372 small house of a godchild. *We loaded our few belongings onto a small truck and set off for the other end of the city, along wide asphalted roads traversing luxuriant parks.*
When we arrived the worry was how to find a job. In Austria I'd helped a painter friend during the holidays and so thought I should look for this kind of work, but a 40-day strike had put a halt to all day-work and my cousin found me a job in a branch of a large firm where he'd already attained the position of weaver. I started as an unskilled labourer, and as the firm was run by Germans and I could speak the language they treated me very well. It was there I first noticed how the Germans looked after their "own people" - we could learn from them. It was left to my workmates to exploit my ignorance of Spanish and indulge in jokes at my expense.
When the strike finished I found a job as a commercial painter and worked there for two years. I must have had some aptitude as my last employer, Herr Narr, didn't want me to leave and offered me a post as foreman. But now I'd some knowledge of Spanish as well as a year of engineering studies in Austria and I longed for more appropriate work. I found a job as a technical apprentice in industrial engineering, and at the same time studied Spanish in a German college where the instruction was in German. More important still, we were able to take the local equivalences to our Abitur exams thanks to our intellectual leaders, under the guidance of Dr Bajlec. I'd passed the Abitur in the secondary school at Spittal, and in due course passed the necessary subjects and was awarded the title of Bachelor of the National College of Buenos Aires. With honours!
I then inscribed in the University of Buenos Aires Engineering Faculty but only reached the fourth year due to constraints of work. Later on, when I was already married and had a family, I decided to study economics and business administration and took a degree after some years of sacrifices. I've been involved in teaching since 1960 within the Engineering Faculty of the Industrial University of Argentina. I became Director of Industrial Engineering of a firm, employing 6,000 people, and for the past 20 years I've worked for the firm owned by the Slovene Herman Zupan.
373 I'd the good fortune to meet Mirjanka, a Slovene and also a university student at that time. God united us and we've five children, all conscious of their Slovene descent, and nine grandchildren who speak Slovene and mostly already attend Slovene infant or primary schools.
*Mariano Loboda is remarkable for his commitment to Slovene community activities at all levels. He starts his story in Austria:
Hope of returning home to freedom and justice became weaker and weaker so that most people started to think of emigration overseas. At first we were against this because it meant going still further from our beloved native soil, but reality was inexorable. The first opportunity for emigration arose in the middle of 1948 - to the USA, but only for people who had friends or relatives there to sponsor them. Commissions from Venezuela, Chile and Canada soon followed with offers for healthy young people able to work, but not for families with children or old people.
One fine day the loudspeakers announced the visit of a commission from Argentina and we secretly looked in the atlas for this unknown and far away country, because it was the last chance for many of us. My mother and I joined the long queue of families with numerous children and older folk and saw a gentleman in a white shirt, with black hair and white skin who smiled in a friendly manner - Dr. Virasoro, the Argentinean Consul in Austria. "Let them all come", he said with a sweeping gesture, and his aides noted our personal details. I shall never forget this generous invitation to people without homeland and almost without friends in the world, which opened up before us a small hope of a future with self-respect.
Departure day in December 1948 soon came and I boarded the train not fully conscious I was going so far away, perhaps for ever. Some of my friends had gone earlier and others would soon follow so that parting wasn't too difficult. I remember how we were summoned to the dining room after some hours at sea and saw an enormous table full of great pieces of white bread and all kinds of cold foods and other prepared dishes. My eyes were dazzled, having seen nothing like it for years, but my stomach suffered from the motion of the waves and I ran to the deck to 374 part with the little food I'd eaten hours earlier, and I was obliged to forgo the delicacies. I recovered after a couple of days and from then on the voyage was highly enjoyable. During it we painted the ship's deck and for this were given several packets of Lucky Strike cigarettes.
We disembarked on the 15th February 1949. The heat was infernal and I looked ridiculous wearing my clothes from Austria, which we'd left in mid-winter: my best trousers were for skiing and caused smiles on the streets of Buenos Aires where the temperature was around 32. The differences between this new world and Slovenia or Austria were enormous. What we most regretted was our inability to speak Spanish, as the intensive course in the camp proved insufficient. Climate, customs and food were completely different, but what surprised us particularly was the kindness of the people: no one rejected us, everyone tried to help and no one laughed at my poor Spanish. On the contrary, they did their best to understand what I was trying to say and more than once helped out with a few words of English or German.
I quickly sold for $15 the packets of cigarettes I'd earned by painting on board and changed them into 60 pesos, which constituted the initial capital for this new stage of my life. Within a week people from a building firm came in search of bricklayers and bricklayers' mates and offered board and lodging on the job. I enrolled with a number of friends and we were then able to leave the Hotel of the Immigrants and start building a factory in the suburbs, 15 km from the capital. The site was enclosed by a wire fence. After the first day's work I ran round the perimeter and with a friend crossed the fence with a feeling of exploration into the unknown. But being a bricklayer's mate wasn't easy for a former student unaccustomed to physical work, and more than once I was on the brink of despair.
Two weeks later I received my first pay packet of 190 pesos or $45 and bought a few clothes to go out on Sunday to a Salesian college in the city where a Slovene priest used to celebrate Holy Mass. Here we gathered, gossiped, told each other what had been happening to us, swapped information on jobs and lodgings and reminisced about life at home and in the camp. I soon joined the Slovene Society and a society for young catholics dedicated to missions. 375 We joined different bodies instinctively, to feel less isolated in this strange environment. This was healthy because it integrated me firmly into society, but it also led to my giving up my studies.
After three months I got a job in a metal factory, and later in a repository and then became the first and sole employee of a newly established Slovene credit cooperative. This failed to grow as expected due to unstable economic conditions, and so I took worked for a textile firm and ran the cooperative in my spare time. After ups and downs I ended as manager of the cooperative, the post I still hold today.
In 1955 I married a Slovene girl I got to know in the organisation for young Slovenes. With her I've a lovely family of three daughters and two sons, who are all now married to Slovene boys and girls and have made us ten times grandparents. After several moves I built the house where we now live, and where our children and grandchildren return every Sunday to enjoy a family reunion. All my children have their own houses and acceptable standards of living, and all have completed secondary education - and one of them university.
From the first I played a full part in the life of the Slovene community, where I occupied a variety of positions. Thus I was on the executive committee of the central organisation, the Slovene Society of Buenos Aires, and president for four years. I'm also active in the Slovene House in Ramos Mejia, a satellite town of Buenos Aires where some 300 Slovene families live and which is one of the seven Slovene centres in the capital. Since it was established in 1958 it has run courses in Slovene language and history, at one time attended by 150 Slovene children and today by 65. Classes are held every Saturday morning, the Slovene history ones being taken by me for two hours every week since 1974. I was also president of this Slovene House for four years.
I've also taught Slovene history three hours a week since 1988 at the Ravnatelj [Director] Marko Bajuk Slovene Secondary School of Buenos Aires, which was founded by Dr Marko Kremzar in 1960 and had 132 pupils this year, coming from all the Slovene centres of greater Buenos Aires. I was a member of the Slovene National Council, a kind of Slovene government in exile, for four years until it dissolved itself on the 376 democratisation of Slovenia after the free elections and democratic constitution of 1989.
Even if it may seem frivolous I'll also mention that I'm a member, and have served as president, of the Plus Ultra Club, composed of seven former pupils of the secondary school in DP Camp Peggetz. We founded it in 1952 and have since met regularly once a month and been active as a group in the most varied cultural and social activities of the Slovene community. We've maintained books of minutes of the annual assemblies and monthly meetings from the very beginning, and I doubt if there are many similar cases. What unites us is the friendship we forged in the DP camp.
All my activities within the community have been and are unpaid but in spite of thousands of hours sacrificed for the common good I've never lacked the means for my own financial progress, and I've derived limitless spiritual gratification. God rewarded me in giving me a marvellous family and a respected position among my people and Argentinean society. Deo gratias.*
*Stane Snoj was 16 when he arrived in December 1948, and his conclusions summarise Slovene attitudes to Argentina:
For most of us it was our first encounter with the Hispanic world. When Slovenes want to emphasise their ignorance they use the expression "spanska vas" which means literally "Spanish village" and signifies "I haven't a clue" - just as I haven't the slightest idea what a Spanish village is like. Spain is for Slovenes more distant than other European countries: but we went still further away, to a South American country with characteristics still more strange.
Slovenia is an alpine country of small cities and picturesque villages scattered between rolling meadows and encircling hills with little rivers and streams flowing from the mountains. Accustomed to such scenery, we found ourselves on a hot summer's day in an endless plain and a giant city of four million inhabitants, with regular and endless squares, not to speak of the other differences - customs, climate etc. To celebrate Christmas in the full heat of summer for the first time was so strange we could never forget we'd left home on the other side of the Atlantic. In a word - our initiation was so bitter that most of us would have returned to 377 Europe on the first boat if we'd been able to. But there is a saying that there is no evil from which good can not come.
A spontaneous spirit of self-preservation arose and united us in the face of all difficulties. During those first months the only help we could expect was from ourselves, as we were without language, money or acquaintances apart from our fellow Slovene immigrants. It was natural to hang closely together, and soon larger groups of emigrant compatriots, always with a priest, sprang up in areas within greater Buenos Aires and the interior. Those who perforce had to live apart suffered greatly.
Hardly had the first contingents arrived before the priests arranged to celebrate Mass in Slovene in a Buenos Aires church, and this was the weekly point of reunion for all of us, every Sunday - the mandatory meeting no one wanted to miss. Before and after Mass we'd a great gathering in the courtyard and on the parish pavement, united by the life and lot we'd shared in the refugee camps of Austria and Italy, where we retold our experiences with Argentineans at work and in search of a home, and updated on social news. Our political and religious leaders set up United Slovenia, a society for mutual aid which acted as our spokesman with Argentinean society, and at once periodicals and reviews began to be published in our language. Soon there appeared the first Slovene course books for primary school children and organisations for young people, religion and culture. We simply started up again and adapted to our new circumstances the customs and activities we'd brought with us from Slovenia and from the camps.
Today, 46 years later, there exists within the republic of Argentina a Slovenia in miniature which has become famous even abroad.* How was this possible - this "Argentinean miracle"? It is good to recall:
1. That as refugees we had no money; we started with the 50 pesos we were given, and our only capital was the determination to earn a livelihood by hard and honest work. We'd a great capacity to put up with difficulties, to adapt to living on a little and, at the same time, a determination to improve our lot.
2. The ways we helped each other. As we were poor, we could only do this through the personal credit we'd 378 earned at work: a request on behalf, or word in favour, of a Slovene, coming from a fellow Slovene, soon became the best form of recommendation. I speak from personal experience, because during my years in Argentina I changed jobs four times, always for the better and always supported by the recommendation of some Slovene friend. It was the same when we were looking for somewhere to live during the first months. 3. The way we also helped each other when it came to building our houses. I can quote from the experience of myself and my wife, who originally settled in distant Mendoza, 1,100 km from the capital. Five of the Slovene families where she lived bought plots and helped each other build their own houses, starting with the families with most children.
4. The way we didn't, despite our own extreme poverty to start with, forget the members of our families who remained beneath the communist yoke in Slovenia. We knew they were being treated like third-class citizens and subjected to all kinds of tricks, raids, confiscations and moral and material deprivation, so the first pesos we earned were devoted to buying aid parcels. For example, my father-in-law sent packets of food and second-hand clothing to his wife who was on her own with their five young daughters to look after. Communist functionaries raided the houses and stole many of the things sent from Argentina, but the answer to protests was simple: write to your husband to send some more.
5. The way, while still building our own homes, we contributed money for the construction of our cultural and religious centres in Buenos Aires and the suburbs, and also in Mendoza and Bariloche.
This is the story of the great majority of the Slovene immigrants, although not all. To behave the way I described we had to remain faithful to our moral, religious and national values for which our forefathers had struggled at home and for which we had to emigrate from Slovenia and continue the struggle abroad. The Christian ideals and philosophy of life which the Church succeeded in sowing among the people during its thousand years in Slovenia - this was the "miraculous" formula that saved our tiny nation. What happened to us Slovene emigrants in Argentina since World War II was only a repetition of an old story. 379
This evaluation of the Slovene experience in Argentina is complemented by the comments of Henry Ziernfeld, a Slovene who settled in Canada after engineering studies at Graz Technical University, and visited Argentina a few years ago:
Most of those who were in Graz came either to Canada or the States, and very few went down to Argentina -I remember Milan Ecker, Brusnikin and Joze Markez. There's a strong community life among the Slovenians in Argentina, a lot more than in North America: here we've become much more assimilated.
The standard of living of those in Argentina is at the moment very bad because whatever savings they had they lost through inflation. Those who have their own businesses are better off. But others, even though they graduated down there, still after so many years cannot afford to retire, because inflation is eating away whatever savings they had. They were doing reasonably well before. They told me after the war all the banks in Argentina had corridors in their basements full of gold brick, because they made so much money during the war selling wheat and cattle- meat to the allies. All the money simply disappeared; politicians transferred the gains into their private accounts in Swiss banks, and Argentina, despite many natural resources, is still a poor country.
It's sad, because the Slovenian community worked very hard: you can see quite a difference in their village there. A big chunk of the Slovenian people were sent to Lanus, one of the poorest areas they were allotted in Buenos Aires. They built a really modern village, very nice, and not very far from there you can see all these clapperboard houses, streets just a sea of mud. These people were there before. And when the Slovenians came they had nothing, they were just put there in the middle of this garbage dump almost, and they built something.
380
C H A P T E R 1 6
Canada
The Free Slovenia Almanac for 1949 and 1950 describes the Slovenes' first two years in Canada and records their emotions and perceptions at the time. Individuals follow with their own family histories.
First a sister, her brother and her future husband, whose first jobs are domestic worker, farm labourer and railway and forestry worker; and then a married couple who eventually establish themselves as surveyor and librarian.
Another family group follows, composed of two engineering students, formerly close colleagues and friends at the University of Graz, and the two sisters they are soon to marry in Canada. And then a succession of individuals who illustrate Slovene resilience and the variety of occupations they adopt, including draughtsman and technical designer, physician, Archbishop and teacher.
381 Canada was the first country to welcome Slovene immigrants on a substantial scale. Up to October 1948 it had accepted more than the rest of the world combined, the totals then being:
Canada 624 Britain 96 Venezuela 60 Argentina 232 Brazil 85 with smaller numbers accepted by Chile, Ecuador, France, Spain and Sweden, and only 3 by the USA. At the end of 1948 the first Free Slovenia Almanac, lavishly illustrated and running to 190 pages, included a five-page survey of "Slovenes in the World" and a whole page on Canada. The article is of particular interest, written as it was while immigration was still taking place and mirroring the perceptions at the time, without benefit of hindsight:203
Canada, land of forests and lakes, was the first country of North America to open its doors to our emigrants. They came after special commissions selected them in the camps, and had to sign on for a work contract for ten months and only when that expired could they freely choose their own jobs. The first group of forestry workers, which left in October 1947, successfully completed their contracts for this heavy, and up to then unaccustomed, work. A good number soon had, as a letter records, '$1,000 in their savings accounts; and all the same don't imagine they're not well dressed and every one of them hasn't helped their people back home.' The letter continues: A second group, this time of girls, arrived in January 1948 and are employed as domestic helpers and hospital nurses throughout Ontario. A group of seamstresses and tailors arrived in March, the first to be allowed to bring other family members with them. Some stayed in Montreal while others went on to Toronto. They were followed in April by 82 lads for work on the railways, and then some workers on farms, sugar cane plantations etc., and then in September our largest group - of girls, who went mostly to Toronto. Did they cause excitement! You can imagine the numerous reunions of sweethearts in the new homeland.
How agreeable is life in Toronto! I first heard about the city during evening chats on board ship when we were told that the most nearly comparable
203. Koledar Svobodne Slovenije 1949 (Buenos Aires, 1949), pp. 175-7 382 climate for us would be there. As we waited in Montreal for the fateful decision on who'd be sent where, we were after two hours of struggle divided up "s sivcem". We found it difficult to part with our compatriots and fellow seamstresses and tailors who remained in Montreal.
Eight of us went on to Toronto - the first Slovene refugees in that enormous city - and were distributed between several factories so that we were at most in pairs. It was hard to wait till evening to meet together and talk over the day's events, but we were all in our own ways toughened by the experience of refugee camp life and gradually adapted to our new circumstances. There are a lot of old Slovene settlers in and around Toronto, and we get on really well with many of them.
Our refugee community has grown a lot since the arrival of the girls, the railway workers and those who've completed their contract year, and will grow still more when those who've been scattered across the breadth of Canada complete their year. We've as yet made no progress with cultural activities because we're struggling with so many difficulties and have no one to depend upon but ourselves, though there'll be big developments once we're used to the language and have got to know the rules, what we may and may not do. Of course we arrived in our new homeland penniless, all our possessions having been lost or destroyed for us.
What no one can rob us of is our faith, Slovene culture and eternally beautiful Slovene songs. This is our whole wealth, for the sake of which we'll dispose of and honourably replace the bitternesses of the Slovene nation. Our only cultural performance so far has been a concert of Slovene national songs by the choir of our lads working on the Ottawa-Toronto railway. "Old" and "new" Slovenes from all over Canada and even from Cleveland USA came, and Slovene song echoed back and linked our hearts with home and our fellow-countrymen, reminding us of our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. "The Student Blacksmith" transported us for three hours to our birthplaces and we even forgot we were in Canada.
We've time and opportunity enough in Toronto to fulfil the duties of our faith, and once we've been sent a Slovene priest we'll also hear Slovene Holy 383 Mass. As at home in the parish, so here the House of the Lord gathers us together each Sunday, to share our burdens with God and pray for his help for ourselves, our suffering family members and our homeland, that he should bring as soon as possible an end to godless communism and lead our scattered brothers and sisters back into the arms of our beautiful Slovene homeland. To all Slovene refugees, scattered around the wide world, we send heart-felt Toronto Slovene greetings. May God be with you!
There follows the more detailed report for 1949 on the early days in Canada:
When we set out for Canada the threatening nightmare of daily moral and physical pressure on us from all sides in Austria, the unclear situation and the dark future indicated, particularly to us younger ones, that we should leave as soon as possible. That led us to apply to the Canadian commissions visiting the camps, submit to all the examinations and interrogations and assemble for the departing train. It's true a one-year work contract oppressed us somewhat and tied our hands, but we knew that a year soon passes and after that a new life awaited us.
On arrival the employment office took possession of us. Some were sent to build new railways, others to forest work, particularly in the north, and a few to places with different industries, and most of the girls to private households for domestic work or as nurses or nursing aides in all kinds of health resorts and hospitals. Work was found for many in farms, mostly in the west in Manitoba and Alberta. So we emigrants were soon scattered all over Canada from Vancouver to Halifax with countless miles between us.
Often we found ourselves completely isolated among strange people, but all the same smaller Slovene circles and societies were formed. 40 men were sent to work in the forests north of Kapuskasing, others on the La Perade line in Quebec province and the Smithfalls and North Bay railway lines. They didn't stay long in the same place but moved with the job, the team at North Bay covering the whole line between Smithfalls and Port Arthur. After completing railway jobs some teams were transferred to the forests, and groups were split up into smaller sections and dispersed over the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. 384
The compulsory contract work was however soon over and we thought about moving elsewhere and finding occupations of our own choice. Most rushed to the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and they looked like becoming the central territory for the Slovene refugee-emigrants. The true centre became Toronto, where for the time being the majority of Slovenes are, and also our Slovene priest. In addition to Toronto, the group employed in the Bata shoe factory in Batawa near Trenton is also growing. A smaller community is gathering in Montreal, but it's expected there won't be a new influx of people there because it's difficult to find work. Some lads are also in London Ontario. Many decided to look for mining jobs when their year's contract finished: one such group is at Noranda Quebec and another at Sudbury.
The girls have also been scattered, but the largest group is in Toronto and there are a good many also in Montreal, with smaller groups in Bellwile, Guelph, Pariz, Preston, Hamilton, Cemptville, all in the province of Ontario, and also in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and in Quebec.
Earnings during the contract period vary considerably. Workers on the railways and in the forests have been quite well paid, while the girls who have been worst paid have been those doing domestic work and on farms, busy early morning to late at night and receiving $40-45 a month. In Canada as everywhere Slovenes have proved themselves hard-working and enterprising, and some have saved so much during the period of compulsory work that they've been able to consider building their own houses or at least buying a building plot. This is a matter of joint effort and so the best expression of mutual aid put into practice. Two or three lads combine their savings and buy a house. That's how we've already got four Slovene houses in Toronto, two in London Ontario and one in Smithfalls.
For a long time we didn't have our own priest, although Dr Janko Pajk came as often as his parish duties allowed. In December 1948 Dr Jakob Kolaric of the Congregation of Missionaries (Vincentian Fathers) came to Toronto and we now have regular Sunday Masses in the Church of Marija Chenstochova. From time to time the Croat priest Dr Rudolf Hrascanec has also come to celebrate Mass. Attendance to start with was 385 modest, but now around 200 Slovene refugee-emigrants regularly gather for Mass and a conversation afterwards.
There follow the memories of individual settlers. Marija Suhadolc, nee Plevnik, spent her contract year in Halifax:
I didn't leave Spittal until September 1948: I was one of the later ones and found it very hard to make up my mind where to go. The idea of leaving Europe, that there is no chance to go back, of starting off life in a strange country, was not very pleasant. So my brother left in June 1948 and I in September. He went with a group of young men needed for work out in the woods or with the farmers; and then later on the authorities were looking for young girls and I went with a group for domestic work. Before that they were looking for seamstresses. We had an interview and were checked physically to make sure we're in good condition, and anybody who had any sicknesses or whatever would be refused. I wasn't shocked by this really, because I guess I didn't have that fear. Had I been sick I think I'd be really worried whether they'd accept me or not: there were a few cases where people that were not feeling so good would send someone else for the X-Ray, just to qualify.
I decided for Canada, though reluctantly, because my brother had already gone there and we thought it was still closer than Argentina. At that time we were still thinking of returning to Slovenia; we'd save the money and go back when the opportunity came. We didn't come with the intention of staying here. Then all of a sudden you heard after a few years, "oh, so- and-so bought a house in Toronto". Bought a house? .. he wants to stay here? Then it followed, people started getting married and establishing themselves and then taking life seriously, and reality set in and of course Canada became our second country, our second home. We love it now, we're happy here, and fairly soon it became our first home.
It'd be interesting to analyze the cut-off point, when emotionally and de facto it became our first home and was no longer our second one. Hard to determine. I suppose in most cases the birth of our first child; when you're still single your feelings are different. You've mixed feelings and your home is still where your home was. Then as you get married you sort out your feelings, and I think we became Canadians when 386 we got married and the first child was born and we bought a house and so on. Then you begin to feel you're part of this country.
It's interesting what a substantial proportion of my generation married fellow Slovenes and how few married Canadians or other nationalities. There were very few "mixed" marriages. A few married partners from Germany or Spain - some studied in Spain, met girls there and then emigrated to Canada - but most married Slovenians. We were very attached to each other when we came to Canada and there was this church that was rented in Toronto and the Slovenian group would meet there for Sunday Mass and it was a big, big congregation and meeting everyone in front of the church, it was beautiful. And the whole Pristava side204 tended to result that there was quite a strong feeling of sharing our recreation together.
I was never seriously ill, I don't remember being ill so as to have to go to the hospital or seek medical help. We had periodic examinations and of course before going to Canada everyone was examined and X- rays taken and so on. I suffered from quite an appreciable degree of undernourishment in Austria but this didn't seem to have had a noticeable effect on my constitution or health, no anaemia I was aware of. My first child was born in 1953.
As soon as I arrived in Canada there was no problem about food. It took a while before you realised that it's plentiful, that I could have as much bread as I want, which I craved for while in Austria. There was plenty of time for a healthy, balanced diet to eliminate fully any results of the longer-term deprivation. I do recall my periods stopping while I was in Austria. I think that was due to the malnutrition, and they didn't come back until I came to Canada, quite a long time. This didn't worry me too much because I'd heard from other girls who'd experienced the same thing, so I wasn't the only one. They were looking for a medical answer and were told it was quite natural under those conditions. People in the camps were quite surprisingly healthy and had very few infectious diseases and kept themselves clean. Most of us were young and active and tried to help ourselves just as much as we could, and a lot of
204. traditional Slovene community country club with facilities rather similar to that of a youth hostel. 387 people would go out in the farms from time to time, to help and get some extra food. I remember I did that during the summer.
*When I arrived in Canada I spoke a little English because I learnt some in school, and I was able to express myself or ask for the direction and so on, but pronunciation wasn't as good as it should've been! The English we learnt in the camp wasn't the best because it was taught by our professors and I guess they learnt from books.*
When I came here as a domestic worker I worked for a family in Halifax by the name of Daley. He was a well-established lawyer there and was very good to me. My contract was for one year as a living-in domestic worker and I started in September 1948 and finished the following year. Then my brother who stayed in Nova Scotia decided to come to Halifax, and Mr. Daley helped him to go on with school and encouraged me to take night courses. So we decided to stay another year and I took courses in English and book-keeping, but found them a little difficult because my knowledge of English wasn't sufficient to grasp the different technical words. Anyway I used my time to get some education and learn the language as much as I could.
There were a few friends I'd met in Halifax, also Slovenian girls, with whom I spent my time, and my brother was there, so I was quite happy. But I was sort of looking forward to going to Toronto, where the majority of Slovenians were. In 1950 my brother, who was enrolled in St. Mary's University in Halifax, decided to join the Jesuits and had to go to Guelph, a place close to Toronto where they had a novitiate. I decided to go with him and stay in Toronto. Mr. Daley sent a letter of recommendation to the President of Simpson Company in Toronto and I was able to get a fairly good job, office work: I remember having a big book and keeping records. That was something very exceptional at that time. Most other people were still struggling and doing all kinds of manual work to get ahead, so I was very fortunate.
Then I took night-courses in typewriting and bookkeeping and English and so on in 1950. I met my husband in 1951 and we got married in 1952 and moved to Hamilton. I continued working for a little while, 388 then stopped. At that time it was like you get married and you have a family. That followed naturally, so we had a family. I didn't need to go out to work to supplement our income: my husband bought a house and we rented out upstairs, so we got some income and were able to get by.
Marija mentions that her brother emigrated three months before her. Now the Rev. Professor Josef Plevnik, S.J., he describes his first years in Canada:
We came over on the ship Saturnia which was the Italians' big liner, confiscated by the Americans as part of war reparations. The upper decks were luxury and they still had Italians and others there, and the lower deck was for the refugees. Steerage. When we came to Halifax the first impression of Canada wasn't very good because we couldn't see for fog: Halifax harbour can be that way. Then they processed us and I was the interpreter; I did my best but missed a few things of course.
That first night in Halifax harbour, there are quarters where they take these newcomers, refugees. They locked the doors on us and there was a panic amongst the Slovenians. They said, "they brought us way here to Halifax, and now they have us". So the mistrust, you know, was there. They were never totally sure whether you're really free or not free, even at that point. Though it sounds crazy that's the way it was, a moment of panic. All they wanted was to keep these guys together, not to wander round: they didn't want to hunt them next day all over the city!
They had a list with our destinations, and mine was Kantville, Nova Scotia, about thirty miles south of Halifax. I left with the second group for Canada, June '48. The first went into the bush and the railways, and that was early February. I was very lucky, we went to farms for a year, better than the first group in many ways. Better still than the Poles who came on the farms with a two-year contract, because they gave us only a one-year one.
After the year we were released. We had a guaranteed pay of $45 a month plus room and board on the farm, which was to help the farmers - the Canadians were not great at being farm hands. That's no mean work ... and we didn't mind it. After the DP camp days you're willing to pick up anything! I had the first decent 389 meal after four years and was able to recover what had been drained from my system. Not overnight; I worked on the farm no harder - I was raised on one back home in Slovenia and take to that kind of work - and I worked as I used to as a teenager, but my bones ached and I couldn't sleep and I thought I was getting rheumatism. It wasn't that at all, it was just the whole bone structure was soft - not enough food for four years. I was a growing boy. Calcium deficiency, but by Christmas it disappeared.
And then I spent perhaps the only winter in my life without a cold, because I had to work in the bush making pulp-wood, out in bitter cold and snow every day. The farmer made use of me to cut a lot of pulp- wood. It was an old farmer, 70 years old, Eisenhower was his name. So there I was, working, memorising my English vocabulary! I was the only Slovene on the farm. I had to have one year there, and then began my studies. My sister was already in Canada and the family for whom she worked was a family, the Daleys - a rich lawyer. He offered me a job: I could wash the two cars every morning and shovel the snow and bring in the fire-wood, for the room and board and something like $25 a month, and I could attend a Jesuit college, the Marist College in Halifax. He brought me there to introduce me to a Catholic college, and that's where I met Jesuits for the first time in my life. I eventually entered the year after that.
I began with grade 11 which in Canada is a little better than grade 5 in gymnasium and I knew most of the mathematics, about 90%, although my English was poor, my Canadian history was poor and all that. But anyway I said, "look, I know most of the maths. Why don't you let me into first year college, which was the equivalent of grade 12 there?" So they said yes, but after two weeks forgot about it and I reminded them. It was, "OK on a trial basis until Christmas, and if you don't do well at the end of the first semester exams, back you go to grade 11." I was 19 or 20 by that time. Anyway, I worked hard and was first in the class and they looked at me, "how could this stranger get better marks than others?" So there was no question about my going back to high school, I just continued and after a year entered the Jesuits.
The man Marija married, Dr. Tone Suhadolc, now gives his story. 390 He was 26 when he started on three years of French, English and German studies at the University of Graz but achieved little, because he already had a doctorate in law from Ljubljana and didn't take his academic work in Austria very seriously. Also he had been held for some months during the war in the Italian concentration camp at Gonars, where conditions were so harsh that many died. He himself contracted a serious lung condition:
Before leaving Austria I worked for a while for the IRO, the International Refugee Organisation, in Graz. When they were taking people for Canada, they were accepting only the hard-working guys, and so I registered as just a farmer's boy with a few years of schooling. Then I came to see the Canadian Consul in Graz and the German girl there - we had worked together in that IRO office - said, "hello, Herr Doktor". Oh, I said, I'm finished! Because Germans really like to use those titles. Here nobody cares about them. But somehow the Consul didn't hear.
In Canada I had to sign a contract to work half a year on the railway and half a year in the bush, cutting pulpwood. The months on the railways were tough, but we were young and out in the country, and we had fun really and good food. In the bush it was harder because if you didn't work you didn't make money. I left early because I still had that excuse that my lungs were bad. I went for X-ray, and it was real bad because it showed all black on one side as I'd had pleurisy in the concentration camp.
So I came to Hamilton and worked in a steel company, and, boy, that was hard work. But we had to take whatever there was for the first job. Then luckily after a few years - we worked shifts, nights - they allowed me to work just days so I could attend university night courses in accounting. I finished that and changed the job and then everything turned OK, but it started with a number of very hard years. I never used my Doctor Juris because here it's completely different. I'd have had to start all over again. It took me twelve years to qualify in accountancy. From '48 to '60 I was working in the steel company. The first few years I never even thought I'd be able to change, especially when I married after two years. I bought a house and then you have to start, and it took me five years to get through the course. It was tough.
391 In the steelworks I was doing some of the hardest physical work. Oh! That was hot! Hot! I couldn't even see for sweat, but there were ... those fountains and I just put my head down to cool it. But then you move up a bit, and year after year it's a bit better. I started steel work at about the age of twenty-nine and did it for twelve years, from twenty-nine to forty-one, but of course I was a farmer's son and so basically strong. Used to working! There were a few other Slovenes in the same steelworks, mostly students, fellow students from Graz.
I had three children: two boys and a girl. A teacher, a doctor and an engineer, the girl is the teacher. One is married. Three lovely, lovely grandchildren - their father is the doctor. We're lucky, we're happy here and we feel Canadians now more than anything else. All three live in Hamilton so we're at least once a week all together. It's beautiful.
So in the end it has worked out for most of us. It's funny. Even the newcomers from Yugoslavia are lazy at home but when they come here they work like hell. Now, at least when they come, they're helped quite a bit, but when we came there was nowhere. People are still coming, not that many now, but almost a steady flow. And there's a Pristava205 in Hamilton where we meet together and a church and a big dance hall, and then we have the Slovenski Park, like a big Pristava -there's another big hall there.
The presence in Halifax of Marija Plevnik and her brother Josef made it easier for Stefania Pavlin when she moved there on her own and with only limited English:
When I came to Canada in 1948, I had to work under contract as a maid in Quebec City with a French family for a year. After that a priest here in Toronto somehow helped us, writing to various Catholic universities in Canada, I think through bishops, to see if they could assist some of these European students. Very few replies came back, but some did. One was from Mount St. Vincent College in Halifax. The students there put on a play, HMS Pinafore, and the proceeds went for the tuition of a student. I was asked if I wanted to go and said yes.
205. traditional Slovene community country club, with facilities rather similar to those of a youth hostel. 392 *So I went on the train to Halifax. I was entirely on my own and the only Slovenian in the school. I met Joze Plevnik and his sister, but they were there for only a year and then he joined the Jesuits and she went to Toronto, so I was once again left alone. I had my little piece of paper, my diploma, and they said, that's fine with us and they accepted me. I was there till I graduated in 1952, and that gave me a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in philosophy!
Then I went to visit my brother in Ottawa who was by that time married and had a child, and was teaching economics and statistics at St. Patrick's College; and from there I went to Toronto, to the wedding of Plevnik's sister, and then I looked around and said, well maybe I'll stay here. So I looked for a job and found one at Canada Life Insurance Company in the mathematical department - mathematics was my second major subject - and worked there for a year, but found after a year what I was doing was .. well, nothing was automated so you had a calculating machine on your desk and you were converting mortality tables from 3.5% to 3.25% or vice-versa, and that was it. I found that very, very dull, so I enquired and a year later enrolled at the Faculty of Library Science at the University of Toronto and graduated a year later.
I didn't manage to finance that year very well, because at Canada Life I was paid $35 a week and couldn't save very much. So the year I went to university I moved from a room where I was paying $7 a week to one for $4 a week. It wasn't really heated but I had a very good landlady: she invited me for dinner on Friday nights because she had a priest as a guest every Friday and didn't really want to be alone with him so I was the guardadama. You know the lady - Denka Skof; and she also invited me for Sunday dinner, so that was for $4 a week! Yesterday I called my brother who lives in Ottawa, Antony Stukelj, and he told me he met you in August 1945 in Austria and was asking if there would be any possibility for study in Graz or Vienna and you explained that right now there were Russians there, and possibly it might be a good idea to explore the possibility of going to Italy. And that is what he did, and I went with him the following September. He studied in Bologna. I went further south to finish high school because I was younger than the rest of them, and they went to Bologna, and my brother 393 finished law there, he graduated in 1947. He came to Canada and had to work the year like everybody else, on a farm for six months, and then as a carpenter in a Catholic college, St Patrick's College in Ottawa, in the workshop. Then they said, "you're educated, how would you like to teach something?" and he said, "if you give me some books, I'll give it a try", and he did. He's a very meticulous individual so he prepared all his lectures and was teaching there for a few years, and in the summers worked at Central Housing & Mortgage Corporation; and then he switched and worked full-time at Central Housing and part-time at the college.
I struggled to get an adequate command of English and spent a lot of time in the library. Yes, it was hard, it was very difficult. The nuns were very helpful to me; even in Quebec City, when I was there as a maid, there was this professor at Laval University, her name was Ruth Robinson, she invited six of us girls to her home once a week and had a lovely tea prepared for us, and she would just converse with us. This was the idea. I think I was the only one that kept in touch with her until two years ago when we visited her, my husband and I, in September and she died in November. She was 90 years old, bright as could be. We had kept in touch over the years, and visited. She was marvellous. I've kept in very close touch with people at Mount St. Vincent College and have lots of friends there. My husband was in London Ontario, he went to the University of Western Ontario, and he managed to get good enough English the same way, just by going to university and struggling through it, also working at a hall run by Ursulines as a chauffeur and painter.*
Peter Pavlin now gives his side of the story, up to his marriage with Stefania: [? retain 1/2 or 1/4 or less of the following]
*My story starts way back at the age of seven when my mother died and thirteen when my father died, and I became a sort of late orphan and was housed and educated in various colleges and institutions. This made me street-wise from a very early age, I don't trust people. If I didn't know you, what you were forty years back, I wouldn't talk freely.
In the domobranci, as a very tough sergeant-major, I was the youngest one in the group and they trusted me 394 with all the platoon, 30 men. I was like an officer. I went through Ljubelj and stayed in Vetrinje, and when they were returning the domobranci from Vetrinje I decided to take off, with three others, to Villach. We stayed with a farmer the whole summer, and then we found out later on that you were organising a camp in Lienz and the school started to open and that was the perfect opportunity for me to go back to school and finish my high school. I arrived in August, just at the examination time, it was the sixth grade. I then continued in Spittal, and in the fall after the Matura* I went to Graz, to chemical engineering. I only did one year there.
And after that I went to Canada, emigrated as a labourer on a one-year contract. I started off in Kapuskasing206, doing an unskilled labouring job like everyone else. First the railroad, then lumbering. On the railroad it was heavy labouring, fixing, laying the tracks. Actually the tracks were laid, we were just repairing them. This was a private line, from Kapuskasing to Smoky Falls. We were using sledgehammers. You got tired because you weren't used to it, but eventually your muscles got used to it. On the railways I was one of a gang of 60, all immigrants, half students. 40 - 50 were Slovenes, and the others Ukrainians and Serbs, and when we went lumber-jacking we were more or less the same group. We were still young, and it was a tough job.
After the year, I'd saved close to $1,000, which was a lot of money in '48, so we were very well off. I got this working scholarship in London Ontario at the University of Western Ontario, where my daughter finished her degree now, forty years after. And now we're going to her graduation in October. I was together with a Polish immigrant, Paul, and we went by train from Kapuskasing to Ottawa to see the capital of Canada, and from Ottawa down to Toronto, seeing the countryside, then in Toronto, Eaton's store, we bought the first expensive jackets and pants, you know, because before we were just lumberjacks - we got dressed like human beings - and then we went to London and I went to this college run by the Ursuline Sisters, and they interviewed me and asked me if I was alone.
206. a small town in Ontario on the railroad, 650 km NNW of Toronto. 395 I said, "I've a friend of mine with me", and then of course Mother said, "we only have one position", and I said, "I'm sure you have something for him", so she said, "bring him up", so I bring him up and we both got the job, we split the job, half and half, job- sharing, and ever since we worked there and attended university. They gave us board and lodging and fees and we did part-time work like washing the dishes, cleaning the classrooms, working in the garden, driving the car, we were general handymen, and of course occasionally the Sister was arranging a blind date for us because we didn't know anybody and there about 300 girls there in the college and there was always some poor soul that didn't have a date, and of course we were the ones who were escorting them to dances. So that was part of the college life there and of course we had to get adjusted to the new surroundings, to the language, and particularly I was handicapped quite a bit because I'd never really studied English at the university, neither did Paul. Well, he stayed there and graduated in chemistry.
I was taking sciences like geology, chemistry, physics and geography when my professor, a Dr Stoppl, a mining engineer, took a liking for me and said he was going to give me a job if I wanted. So I said, sure, so that's where I got the summer job which became a permanent one, permanent until I decided not to.
It was like exploration, real pioneering work because we were searching for minerals in places where nobody had been before; and because we had no maps, we had to produce our own. The only map we had was from aerial photography, which showed the contours of the lakes and the rivers: they were just black lines and the rest we had to fill in, the outcrops, the forests and so on. So in the 1950s we were literally pioneers until my future wife drew me back to Toronto. Then I started land-surveying, in '55, and for another four years before my articles were completed, in Ontario Department of Highways. Our daughter is 23 years old and not married. The first boy is married, the second one is not.
The next five accounts of immigration to Canada are from another family group composed of the mother, a former teacher in Slovenia, her two daughters who obtained entry permits as domestic workers, and the two men they married: they had both qualified as engineers at the Technical University in Graz while living in the special refugee camp for students there. 396 Joze Opara, one of the husbands, begins their story:
I came to Canada in 1948. The first year was very tough indeed, the second better but still difficult, as in 1950 an engineer couldn't find work even as a draughtsman. Then it was OK after the Korean war started in June 1950. Business was booming and I got a job in Massey Ferguson, starting as a design engineer up to 1962 when I became a senior project engineer, until leaving them in 1970. As a single man I was living reasonably all right already by 1951. I didn't have a house, because it was very hard for houses, but I had a car and a good job. I was able to buy our first house just before we married in 1955: by then I was well paid and we saved money.
I was a qualified engineer when I left Austria and all I needed was my Canadian professional acknowledgement which I got in no time. *I came to the examining commission and was asked only one question: is Professor Keurausch still teaching in Graz? I said he's not holding lectures but he might still be an active member of the faculty. That's all, because the chairman of the commission studied in Graz and knew the standards there, and a diploma in Graz was as good or possibly better than the same in Canada. I got my membership in the Canadian Mechanical Engineers Association in 1951 and am still a member, and I was Vice-President for all Canada for ten years.*
When we married, Bozena's mother lived with us and took care of the kids while Bozena continued working for the Catholic Family Services. For the last twenty years she was manager of operations, a senior and responsible post - second in command. Bozena's mother was a teacher, and came to Canada 1948 with Bozena and Marija on contract. Mother was 52 and couldn't come on contract on her own, but was allowed in company of two daughters. They worked as domestics for a year and had reasonably good experiences, but had to work hard. In Austria they'd been half starved, with almost no clothes and little money, so in comparison they were very well off.
But in 1948 it was not bad in Graz. Food was enough or nearly enough. We were still having ration cards, so I went to the lecture in the morning and I could buy coffee, a piece of bread and a sausage. Life was 397 almost normal for what a poor student would expect at university, better than in Ljubljana. And for clothing we were better off than in Ljubljana.
Polde Cop was Opara's fellow student at Graz and married Bozena's sister, Marija. His route to Canada was unusual:
Some American universities offered scholarships and there was also a possibility for anybody who had a sponsorship, and then a bit later, in 1949 and '50, more people were admitted, not restricted to sponsorship or colleges. Canada was usually limited to single people, unmarried, who had to be physically in very good condition, and I remember the first Canadian mission to the camp was atrocious. They were measuring people and feeling their muscles and didn't allow you to have one filled tooth or scar! Only physically perfect specimens! And then the Swedes at the United Nations said, "are you selecting bulls for your country, or what?" and they were a bit ashamed. The second mission was different. It even accepted people with tuberculosis, and later we found out why: tuberculosis here was dying as a disease, the sanatorium on Lake Sinko was empty and the doctors needed customers! The medical profession is pretty closely connected here with politics ... So they got people over with TB and cured them. A friend of mine was completely cured, and he's now 76 years of age.
Some from Graz went to Argentina, but only a few because somehow we had our own doubts whether that was a good choice. Our leading political group was thinking this is the thing to do, "we get them down there, it's all in one group and they will all work together." We were rather saying, "we'll stay around and maybe the US and Canada will cave in." I was the one who had to swallow my words or pride after this; I was always saying I'll never go to South America .. and went to Bolivia! But I got a job in my profession. I said I won't go to Canada to work a year in the bush somewhere and lose another year.
I was offered a chemical job in Bolivia. In the Austrian camps I was the first to get a job in his profession. It was a success and I'm very proud about it. In Bolivia I'd probably go higher than here, but of course it's a different country altogether, technically that is. I moved on to Canada because my girl was there, and then the question was, who'd go 398 where? Would she come down? She had her mother there and her sister ... quite a force! I knew how that country looks, but for her it'd be a bit of a shock, and the immigration law in Canada was that females could get anybody over as long as they married. Marriage was the key.
My first Canadian job was with Shell in Montreal. It was very difficult to get work: I applied to over fifty companies, not blindly, and the answer was, "no vacancies available" though they were actually advertising for staff. The Technical Service Council was one of the organisations looking for people - and they were the first that started doubting. "Oh! ho!" they said, "they didn't give you a job and here you are back again looking for one? How come?" The National Employment Office was a company doing the same thing. I got the information from the blackboard. Imperial were looking for twenty chemists, and Colgate for twelve, and all the rest, and they replied in the same breath, "no vacancies". Now what the hell's going on? Finally I hit it. An Irishman working for a paper company said, "we need a chemist and can't get one. I'll ask for you." And how I knew this guy? Maria's mother cleaned their house now and then, and he was a chemist. He comes back and tells me no, but then his wife couldn't be quiet: she squeaked! She said the boss told him they didn't hire foreigners or Catholics.
Imperial the same, I found out from the office. I found from Shell they wouldn't have hired me three or four years ago and wouldn't have hired a French chemist either. But they were strapped: Shell was doubling the refinery's capacity and hired chemical engineers to be ready by the time this happened, and in desperation took anybody who'd come along. And maybe the policy had changed at the top, because after all you can be racial up to a point and for so long, and then it doesn't work any more. But even then, they couldn't overcome this business suddenly. At that time DP was a bad word. When you go through powerless in life it hurts, but it's minor. You expect that. At my last position - I told the youngsters about this and they said, we don't believe it. Because the situation is different today.
I don't know of anybody in our group from Graz who went to Australia. One is in Venezuela, Vovk, and a number are in Argentina, Buenos Aires mainly. All the rest 399 are in the US or Canada. The joke in the 1950s went: the people went to Argentina, the opposition to Canada and the leaders to the US! It was a very good description, and that hurt! Because those leaders were pushing people to Argentina, and they themselves finally emigrated to the US. That was bad. Not all of them. Bajuk and others went down there. But Skrbec and Basaj.
Polde's wife, Marija, describes her own emigration in 1948:
I didn't have sponsorship for Canada or come under the quota, but came under contract for domestic work in Fort Arthur for Mrs. T.B.Howe, a daughter of the Minister of Trade and Commerce, and she didn't make me work very hard. I was able to read English and she'd take the cookbook and say, cook this and cook that. I had a good time, I was my own boss, but I think she probably realised I was following my conscience, to see I'd done what I'd contracted. I stayed with her for one year - after a year we were free. She was very easy to get along with; I usually did her chores and when I didn't feel like doing anything I'd ask her, what am I to do now? and she'd say, go for a walk. So I knew! It was a very good code!
After a year we all came to Toronto because our friends were here and we were looking for jobs, and it was difficult to find one. We needed one immediately because we'd no funds, so there was something in the diet kitchen of the hospital and we stayed there a few months. Then I got a job in a bank and my sister got one in St. Anka's Hospital, because she was involved with the medical professions. Then we got married.
Like Polde Cop and Joe Opara, Henry Ziernfeld also studied at Graz Technical University, but only completed two and a half years of machine engineering and had not got his degree. He had a tough time when he arrived in Canada:
We left Graz for Bremerhaven in April 1948 and came to Halifax on May 19th and then straight to Winnipeg on the railroad, where we got supplies and new working clothes. We had nothing and were taken to Eaton's department store and got everything we needed, I mean gloves, boots and overalls. The next day we went to Southern Saskatchewan, where we stayed five months, exchanging old rails with new ones. I was pulling 400 the spikes with a big crowbar and then nailing those rails again, and the first two weeks we broke so many hammers you wouldn't believe! They'd a team of two guys just bringing new hammers from that car where they'd the storage. Because if you missed the spike, you hit the hammer across the rail and it just broke off. But after two weeks we became experts: you just looked at the spike and could drive it in with two, three hits and it was in. In that gang there were about eighty people, Slovenes and some Croats and Latvians, mostly from Graz, about twenty from the University and sixty from the city.
After that they sent us to the bush to make pulpwood. We went from Saskatchewan to Northern Ontario, between Nipigon and Bildmore, a camp from which we went every day in order to cut wood. With the railway I wasn't too tired really, but after we came to the bush that was terrible! For the first five weeks I was so tired I didn't have strength to go to eat: I just came to my bunk bed and flopped down and that was that, I just fell asleep, and a number of times I went for the snack, usually at eight o'clock at night, and just had tea and maybe some cookies. In general so far as food was concerned, about two weeks after we came to Canada we already came to a normal situation, like we couldn't eat more than normal. The first two weeks we ate whatever they brought us! They were bringing piles of food and we were gobbling up everything, they couldn't carry fast enough! I remember I asked if I could get some more canned peaches which I liked very much, and the guy brought me five cans and I just finished them up without any problem.
The timber work almost killed us because we had to carry logs, sometimes a foot and a half in diameter and eight foot long, and bring them to a yard, and we usually got the worst trip possible that no Canadian would touch. They'd say, oh! no! I'm not going to work it for that, but we'd no choice. We had to clear that 66 ft strip and just cut everything down; and whatever wood we found there we had to pile up in the yard. Occasionally you had a big log and you had to carry it one or two hundred feet. That was very tiring because we weren't used to it.
After four months in the woods they gave us a choice, to be on our own where we wanted or another job in Red Lake in a gold mine: and there were five or six who 401 said, let's go to see what the gold looks like, and worked there for a few months until July. Then I came to Toronto and applied for a job and got one right away. I came on a Friday and after the long weekend went to the unemployment office and they gave me a job down on Garton Street making toys, dolls and things like this. I worked there two years until Joe Opara, who was working with Massie Harris, said he could get me a job there, so I went for interview and got a pretty good job as a quality control inspector. The other guys were envious and I was there for a year.
Then I went back to university, Toronto University, and started electrical engineering. From mechanical engineering I thought I liked better electrical, so I started again but only finished two years, because tuition was very expensive. In '52 it was $640 and my weekly wages were only about $32, out of which I had to pay for my room, food and clothing, so I couldn't save much. I was studying and working and conditions were getting tougher and tougher, and when I came to the third year I failed. I was working night shift as seamster and didn't make it so I left school. I repeated that third year and didn't make it a second time, because it takes full-time studying: you can't do a proper job and then study, because there's so much laboratory work and homework and so on, and I was half-asleep at the lectures. So I had two years and after that got a job. I worked for another company as an electrician's helper for a few months, and then in 1956 started with a consulting engineering firm and stayed there until I retired two years ago.
In the beginning I probably got a lot less salary than I'd have if I'd completed my engineering training, but then in the last ten or fifteen years we had good rates and bonuses so that I actually retired two years earlier, I didn't even wait till 65, and I'd enough money to make a comfortable living! It was a very satisfying and interesting job, working as a draughtsman and then as a technical designer. My wife was also working, for Canadian General Electric on the assembly line. With our joint income we lived really very comfortably and were able to afford to visit Europe fairly frequently, twice a year if we wanted to! We didn't have any pension plan in our company but I was able to save quite a lot, because sometimes we got a very good bonus, in good years 402 sometimes amounting to two or three monthly wages, which was fantastic. If we'd had children things would have been tight, but as it happened we didn't, so things worked out financially really very well. And because I'm a handyman I saved a lot of money doing all the maintenance on the house and on the car and electrical installations and plumbing.
Of my contemporaries at Graz, Kermavner, Sfiligoj and Joze Lekan are in Cleveland: Lekan is an engineer and Sfiligoj a chemical engineer. When they emigrated to the States, after six months they were recruited into the army, and after they left the army they got a G.I. grant so that they completed their university. And Ivan Kukovica's now in Guelph, not far, about fifty miles from here.
The really hard period for us was the first ten years, anyhow for me, because I was going to university for three years. For the other people maybe it was just a couple of years. I remember that after 1956 - I got married in 1959 - at that time I had practically no money! I still had some debts to pay back and didn't make much money as I started rising from the bottom, but I was happy. It was a technical job, not something like in a factory, where I could maybe progress a little bit. But once I got married and settled down, then with the two incomes we could live reasonably comfortably.
Dr. Gloria Bratina had completed two and a half years of studies before emigrating, just like Henry Ziernfeld, but her subject was medicine and she did succeed in qualifying later and is still working as a doctor:
I came to Canada as part of the quota, together with a sister and two of my brothers. When we arrived we were supposed to work in sugar beet, but they found out that is not our way of working and so it changed very fast to the hospital and medical laboratory. I studied besides and soon came to Toronto and did exams for medical technologists with St Mikes Hospital.
I was trying to get into medical school here, but there were too many students and it was too expensive, so I got in touch with Graz medical faculty again and they readily accepted me and I went back and studied there. But I got married here first and then went back and studied and qualified as a doctor in Graz. 403 I had to repeat one semester and do the anatomy exams. It was much easier to study because at the time we were first there post-war we were very insecure, but now there was a certain security. I'd my husband to support me and I knew I wanted to go back. I'd good friends there and we studied like crazy. I'd some of the same professors there, and some colleagues: Sumar Dusan, who went back too from California, and Fritz Frank and Jurecic.
Several of us did some semesters in Graz and then came across to Canada or the States and after some years here returned to Graz to finish our degrees. There was quite a pressure at that time down there, they said you have to decide, you have to go somewhere because with UNRRA pretty soon you aren't going to get support. Then we saw we cannot study here and we wanted to finish, and there was some possibility there. Quite a few people. Rak Maks stayed there and finished and just came back to the States when I decided I wanted to go. He said, "it's too difficult, don't go" and I said, "no, I'm going!" We were financially very insecure, and then my husband finished his PhD here and said, "now you can go."
My husband was also Slovenian. He did two degrees in engineering down in Yugoslavia already and then over here did a Master's and a PhD. He's 75 but still teaching at the University of Toronto, Professor. He studied first in Slovenia, then went to Italy and was studying in Bologna - there were many down there - and came to Canada in '48. I had no children, I missed that. I was married too late and studied too late! When I came back I found an internship right away at the hospital; I had some friends I taught medical technology before, medical students, and I came back and called the number of the residence and they found me a place right away. So I started at the general hospital and finished my medical and then opened my own practice and did a lot of obstetrics and general medicine during the first twenty years and then some teaching for the Women's College Hospital.
Then I gave up teaching but my practice continues and beside I'm Medical Director at the Senior Citizen's Home, Lipa. It's interesting. Residents there, earlier were at Peggetz too. Mr. Ziernfeld's wife is doing quite a bit of help, and they go there practically every week. There are sixty-four people 404 living there, one floor each for the extended care type of people with nursing care, and the upper part is more like residential. The majority are Slovenian but there are other nationalities including some Croats. Most pay from their pensions but some cannot pay and there are collections for them. It's a Slovenian community-supported enterprise.
Another Graz student, Vida Rosenberg, found a congenial job immediately she completed her year of "directed" work:
At Graz I studied law but my heart wasn't in it because I said, what can I do with it? That came at a time when we knew it was very unlikely the regime will be toppled and we'll return. Not that any education you have isn't very helpful. I had altogether, with Ljubljana, five semesters and then I got a visa for Canada and arrived in May '49 and stayed in Quebec City and then came to Toronto. I needed money so I started work right away in a hospital, cleaning the lab ... cleaning, what else? First I worked six days a week and was waiting for a year to go so I'd have two weeks paid vacation to find a job. As soon as my vacation started I went to the unemployment office. They said the Manufacturers' Life Insurance Company might have an opening. And what's so strange is that the first day I came to Toronto, from Quebec City where I stayed for six weeks, I walked on Bloor 207 and there was a beautiful building with a wrought- iron fence and a lawn like you see only in England, and I said, if I could ever work in this building I'd be the happiest person on earth!
So a year later the unemployment office gave me the address, 200 Bloor Street, and I came to it. It can't be true! It cannot be true! And there it was, and I was shaking, I was so nervous. I gave them my papers and they gave an exam; and the manager of the department came and said, no, we really cannot give a test to somebody with that education, and I thanked God for all those papers! So my five semesters of law studies were worthwhile! The manager asked me after a few months, do you know somebody as good as you? I need a replacement. So I got somebody else a job. Then he asked me, my friend in another company needs somebody. Do you know somebody that would be as good as you are? So that was terrific, wasn't it? I worked there five years in the accounts office for
207. a well-known street in Toronto 405 mortgages, and then got married and stayed sixteen years at home. Then I went back to the company, and when I started again I was 47, and I got quite a nice level. So that was good! The man I married wasn't a Slovene, but a Croat. He escaped much later, in 1950. He was a famous sportsman, rowing, of international standing. He never really quite got settled here. He worked in despatch for a transport company. We've two children and one grandchild.
My next "new Canadian" was a big and physically impressive man, vigorous, simple in manner, direct and lacking in self- importance. Although the busiest person I saw, I never felt pressed for time. I didn't remember him from 1945 although we were in the same camps for two years, because in those days I was the "important person" and he a 15 year old schoolboy - one of eight hundred. But I remember his father well: a square- built stocky man with bristly hair, moustache, strong chin and determined expression. He was chairman or secretary of the camp social welfare committee, and I imagined had been a prosperous farmer at home. His son, the Most Reverend Dr Aloysius M. Ambrozic, Archbishop of Toronto, corrected me:
Not really prosperous. The farm was extremely small and he had to do other things: he started a grocery store and that was our main source of income. But he was a kind of political leader within the municipality, involved in all sorts of things. Very much like his own father, the same sense of humour and quick temper! It's interesting you remember him, because it's a long time ago.
We came to Toronto in 1948, actually to the vicinity of Toronto. Somebody sponsored us. We'd an uncle, a Franciscan priest208, who was trying to get us to the States. Thank God he couldn't, because I know exactly where we'd have gone. Eventually I'm sure we wouldn't have stayed there in Wisconsin, beautiful hunting country, but ... Anyway, the US wasn't allowing us to come in so he found somebody in Toronto to sponsor us. We came as a family, as one unit. We were lucky, together all the way through. My parents and five boys and two girls, seven kids, ages nineteen to seven. I have to take my hat off to the Canadians! And the way our neighbours helped us! A year later two of our friends who were domobranci who'd been sent back,
208. Father Bernard Ambrozic, OFM. See Dr Kolaric (1977) Skof Rozman (Klagenfurt) passim. 406 escaped and were hiding for three years, eventually escaped to Austria. They wanted to come to Canada, two young men, and we went to our next-door neighbour, a Mr.Keeler, an Anglican I think. So we said, "look, somebody has to sponsor these two young guys. We can't, we're not Canadian citizens as yet". Yes, he signed on the dotted line without any question! No question, and I don't think those two guys ever went to him to say thank you! No question! That's the kind of thing I find so extraordinary.
We were on a farm which wasn't ours: my father was a kind of caretaker, and the only trouble was the way he threw himself into that job - by that time he was over fifty and wanted to prove to himself he could still hack it, as he in a sense lost everything at home - and within two years he had a very bad heart attack. He recovered but still wouldn't give in, so he had a second heart attack, and from then on had to take it very easy. The most difficult thing was to accept he was no longer going to reestablish himself to his dreams of being whatever he had. And the other difficulty was none of his sons really wanted to be what he dreamt of himself being, because farming just wasn't the kind of thing they wanted. I left home immediately almost after we came here and went to a seminary to do theology studies, but then each of my brothers as they left home - it was one more sad thing for my dad. And they're perfectly fine fellows, perfectly good characters. Well, he eventually accepted that, and actually I'd say the last eight years of his life - he died in '71 at the age of 76 -were peaceful, he was happy, he enjoyed the grandchildren, some writing. So I think that once he accepted certain things he lived and died happily.
My mother was a different type. I find women so much more realistic than men. Men are a bunch of ... romantics! And my mother: she was mother of a family wherever she was, and she worked, worked all the time. She survived my father by eleven years so she died in '82. I think the shocks for her were more not her own, but my father's, her heart must have bled for him. Materially, we survived those years because we lived on a farm. My father was given so much money for caretaking. The rest was - they worked on the farm and sold their produce, particularly chickens and eggs. We sold eggs by the thousands. We lived very modestly, but we were not 407 in the least hungry and had no real material fears or anxieties.
Of my brothers, one has done well. He's rich, I think he's really rich, not from his law practice but from his investments and so on! But the others are all well-situated, no problems, no messing about. Because - and I say this without any envy at all - but there are some people who really make themselves rich. In the old country they'd be caught in the social web and they'd not be able to rise above it, whereas the new country does offer that possibility, and some of these people have really done extremely well. In fact, now they're getting older they're paying for it, because they'd work fourteen, sixteen hours a day when they were younger and they could afford it, and of course you can't abuse your system for very long.
I have left the story of Ivan Kukovica till last because it fittingly illustrates the resilience and tenacity of purpose of the Slovenes. It will be remembered [p.00-00] that both Ivan's parents and four of his eight brothers and sisters were among the civilians who were sent back from Viktring and killed by the partisans, but he escaped. He now continues his story:
I stayed in Viktring and Lienz until you organised the student camp in Graz, and then I went there. I was studying civil engineering, I'd two years in Ljubljana and another two years in Graz but I didn't finish before I migrated to Canada. When I first applied for Canada they asked me, "what is your occupation?" I said student and they said, "sorry, we don't need students." One of the girls in the camp was translating there for that commission, and I asked for my petition to be back as unsolved, and I was called again: and next time I said, "I'm a lumberjack", because I did have some experience of cutting trees! Under that pretence I came to Canada. For the first year we had to go to a government job to repay our voyage, so I was working on an extra gang - they put you on the railway tracks with the engine and three or four cars, and we were living and cooking there and working on the railway. Physically the work was tough, but I was selected to be a bullcook, peeling potatoes, bringing water and cleaning up the room. The rest had to go out with pick and shovel, so I was spared the physical work. When September came they disbanded that extra gang and I was sent as a lumberjack to Northern Ontario in 408 the bush, cutting trees. I liked the work outside.
After I finished that year I moved to Guelph because I knew a lady friend who was there already. I said, "do you have any job for me there?" and she said, "I don't know anything right now but come over, you'll get it". And I did. Oh! In a pickle factory cooking the syrup for the pickles! I hated that job. It lasted a year: I still didn't speak very well English, and by that time I met this Dr. Anthony Musgrave from Scotland in the church group and he said, OK, I'll help you out, I need somebody like you for my work. So he gave me the job as a technician. There I learnt English properly, and so much biology that I switched to biology and finished my degree. I then went teaching - biology and sciences, chemistry, whatever was necessary, because our school was a smaller high school with fewer professors. This was in Guelph, my first year was 1965, I was then 45.
I learnt in Austria that my family was killed in Teharje. I didn't know exactly how, or how many at that time, but when I came to Canada I knew already they were dead. When did I get married? My wife came to Canada six months before me, as a domestic. She was also a student, Marija, studying maths in Graz, so we knew each other and she was waiting for me: we were engaged informally. She served one year as a domestic with a doctor there and a very nice family: we're still sending letters at Christmas. Her work was easy and they respected her, they knew she was educated and it was more like a companion and nanny to the children than a domestic. After she finished, she came to Guelph and we were married. Buying our own house was very difficult. At that time the Canadian soldiers were just arriving back from Europe and there was such a shortage of accommodation I couldn't find anything. My wife became pregnant soon after, and the landlord told us that before the child was born we had to move out of their place, and I was frantically looking around. I found two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom, with bathroom sharing with six other unknown people, and the running water was only in that bathroom. It was really very difficult.
So in despair I said we had to do something about it. By that time we'd saved $400 and with that I bought a double lot and started to build my house myself with cement blocks, and moved in when I had the roof and 2 x 4 partitions inside: I didn't have any plaster, I 409 could see from the kitchen into the living room and from the bathroom! Life was very difficult for, maybe, the first ten years of our marriage. You see even after I was a technician at the university I was poorly paid. This was a temporary job, I was never sure of anything, so because of that I also had to decide .. well, I had to do something else, and then I went back to classes: I started to study and my boss there, beside Dr. Musgrave, the dean of that department, he said, OK I will help you, and he gave me a job paying $2000 as a librarian in his department which was very nice: you see, that job wasn't very demanding, I was able to study at that time. And he helped me: I had only $2000 to look after nine kids; I already had the whole family by that time. But when I started to teach, from then on things improved. By that time I already built the second house, myself again, and then we built the third one, and from then it was much easier.
All our children except two are married, and we have fourteen grandchildren, the youngest a month old. My son Thomas is unmarried, and another daughter who's just moving from Toronto to Florida with another company. Thomas is a chemical engineer, and he's young. All my children have a university education. However my wife, she had to sacrifice her career. She was very good at maths, but having the family she had to stay at home and look after them, and she's quite happy doing that!
I don't intend to retire. What for? I mean, as long as I can walk I can work. I retired at 65, a teacher has to quit, and soon after that I joined a real estate firm, and I'm quite happy to see it through. I'll be 75 next February. One of my children is a doctor in Ottawa. Marianna has a degree in commerce and is working with a leasing company here in Pittsburgh. Then there's another chemical engineer, in Edmonton now. One has a degree in English: she's not doing anything, she's looking after her young child right now. One of the daughters who's not married yet is working for the Motorola Computer Company and was sent on a loan to Florida. One's a helicopter flyer and he's still in Guelph. One's a dentist, also in Guelph. They're all over the place.
I'm so sorry I lost my mother for nothing, and I couldn't repay her for anything that she's done to me. When I learnt my mother was dead, I felt such an enormous 410 loss.
Of my brothers and sisters, Andrew, the one who got lost, is working in Toronto. He didn't study far around, and he's a shipper in a biscuits company: he's married and has three sons. The youngest brother stayed at home and died two years ago. I sponsored my two sisters to come to Canada after about ten or twelve years. They were both married at that time, and the two girls and their husbands came over and are living now very close to me in Guelph.
The older one, who was fourteen at the time, married a tailor and then he died from heart failure and she's on her own now. She has three children, they're married and so on. The younger one married a cabinet maker: she went to Germany first and he established himself there in the same trade. Then she came to Canada and he established his own company, and now he has a small company here in Guelph. They've two children, they're in school now. One is helping him in the shop, the other one is in school. They're doing fine. Nobody is starving now, we're all well off - well off, I mean, comfortably, I don't say I'm well off! But comfortable. Traditionally with nine children one should have gone into the church, but nothing happened this time, not even a nun! However, one is very religious, maybe too much. Sometimes when you're like this, you're more catholic than the Pope. But OK, we get along anyway.
411
C H A P T E R 1 7
United States of America
In spite of the brave promises of the President, emigration to the USA in fact starts later than to Canada and Argentina and is in the main limited to families guaranteed by sponsorship. Many settle in and around the great manufacturing cites of Cleveland and Chicago.
The first to tell his story is a farm worker who loses a leg towards the end of the war, is retrained in Austria as a tailor, spends his working life in the States in that occupation and when reaching the age of retirement retrains as a car mechanic. Next, a man who loses an eye serving with the domobranci but in spite of the disability is accepted by the States and ends up as a machine shop worker.
Other immigrants become a NASA engineer, a quality control technician, a chemical engineer, a clinical pathologist, an anaesthetist and a nurse; thus making life-time contributions of a rich variety to their country of asylum.
412 Emigration to the United States on a substantial scale started later than Canada, Britain or Argentina. The Free Slovenia Almanac for 1949 again provides a mirror to the refugee perceptions at the time:
Only now are the United States opening their doors to European settlers, although the Truman offer had been published to accept 200,000 (to use his words) "European democrats who have become victims of totalitarianism". In this manner we receive satisfaction from the highest level from the USA, when up till now the whole world abuses us as "traitors". But so far not a single larger group of Slovenes has gone, only individuals. These, however, have included the best and most influential, to name only Dr Miha Krek and his family and Bishop Dr Rozman. Apart from them only emigrants with exceptional backgrounds such as priests, monks, university professors etc. have gone to the USA. A major task awaits: to plead our cause with the world's most powerful politicians and revive the old Slovene emigration, part of which responded so magnificently to our most urgent needs (the League of Catholic Slovenes, the American Homeland, the Bishops' Welfare Conferences etc.). Let us hope that 1949 will be the year of significant group emigration into the United States.
The Almanac for 1950 records what happened:
... The US Law Concerning Refugee Immigration authorised a total of 205,000 individuals. Work and accommodation for every European refugee immigrant must be guaranteed by an individual called a "sponsor". This has proved splendid for the individual immigrant - whoever comes already has a roof and employment - but it makes emigration itself more difficult, taking up much time precisely in the search for sponsors.
The way the law has worked out is very instructive to the Americans and to us Europeans. Three parties cooperate, the government, IRO and private organisations - denominational, humanitarian and national. The government is involved in (a) the screening commission, which screens candidates with regard to their past, specially political (b) the consul, who only gives visas if the candidate for immigration satisfies the general regulations regarding health, capability to earn a living, moral antecedents etc. (c) the immigration inspectorate in 413 the transit camp before embarkation, which checks all documents and tests.
Most of the Canadian Slovenes I interviewed were middle class, but those in the States formed a more representative cross- section of the refugees and the villages they came from. I attended the regular monthly social in Cleveland Ohio, the principal centre for the Slovenes in the USA as Toronto is in Canada. Those with memories of the refugee camps were invited to come forward. Frenc Cenkar got up: he had something he wanted to tell me and was visibly relieved when he got it off his chest - it had been bothering him for forty-five years.
Frenc Cenkar, like Plevnik, Suhadolc, Ambrozic and Kukovica in Canada, came from a farming family, with a large holding near Ljubljana. He had lost a leg in the fighting towards the end of the war and was being treated in the hospital in Lienz. When fit for discharge he was sent down the road to the nearest refugee camp, but was refused admission. Probably the Slovene receptionist had been told by UNRRA the camp was officially full and had not been given clear instructions about what to do with emergency cases, and I may well have been the UNRRA officer responsible. The twenty-two year old Frenc was shattered by the lack of sympathy and humanity shown him by a fellow Slovene sitting behind the desk. Dr. Mersol was the bilingual physician who was at the time Slovene Superintendent at the camp and Group Captain Ryder Young the well-loved UNRRA Camp Director who died shortly afterwards. They turned up at the reception office just after Frenc had been refused admission, as he recalls:
I go out and I cry, and Valentine Mersol and that English officer that was killed in the jeep, Group Captain Ryder Young, come up. Mersol asks me, "what happened with you?" I cry, "I've got nothing. I've got crutches, I don't have a leg, I've got no place to go", and he asks me what had happened. I tell him, "they don't want to take me in", and that English officer over there say, "rightaway go back". I go back, and that English officer just say to that Plesko, take him rightaway in, and he takes me in.
They later asked me what I wanted to do. For the whole of my life I wanted to be a mechanic; but the people from Ljubljana say you're no good for mechanic, you don't have a leg, you must be a tailor. And I can do nothing and I learn to be a tailor. Then I married in Spittal in the camp church, and we got a child and emigrated to the United States. I got a sponsor: my cousin, a priest in Minnesota, found some sponsor for 414 me, and we came here, me and my wife and nine months old daughter. I start working right away here, and I work until my pension. That's it.
Already in Peggetz I started learning to become a tailor, and by the time I left for America I was a good one. When I was born I was just a farmer, and lived on a big farm in Slovenia. However I left and I never go back. I was taught in the camp tailors' shop where there was a school. There were maybe twenty, not more; mostly, they don't have a leg or they are invalids. I worked all my life as a tailor, but now when I go on pension I quit. I never liked tailoring! And I go to school for three winters and now I fix the motors.
When I arrived in America I could speak no English, not one word. I could speak a little German, not much. It takes me maybe five years to learn enough English to be able to survive and then I make citizen papers. I work thirty-three years as a tailor for a Slovenian firm, Josef Eis on West Side Lorent 53 in Cleveland. When I started I got 75 cents per hour and when I quit five years ago $8 per hour. But I worked piecework all thirty-three years. We could live reasonably well on that. I let my wife work too, at the same place also as a tailor, and my mother-in-law watch children at home.
I've got three children, all girls, all married, and two grandchildren. Only the youngest one has got two girls, one five and one two. The middle one married a soldier that was captain in the American Air Force for seven years in Panama Canal, well paid. Her husband is from Scotland, they live in Georgia now. He bought himself out of the Air Force and once in a while they come and visit me now. My three daughters live very good. One got a mechanical engineer and one got an accountant. They got good salary. For every Christmas they're given by company $6,000 bonus.
I've never been back to Slovenia, I want to go this year. I've already bought a ticket. I still have one sister and one brother, and I don't know when I come over there that I know somebody. You know, the people over there, they look much older! I get letters regularly from my brother and sister. I got a big farm over there that was mine. It was like that in Slovenia, the oldest sons got the farm, and 415 then you buy out the brother and the sister. And that farm was mine, but I was here and I wanted to give it to my brother. They didn't want it and his brother's son has now taken it on, so it is still in the family.
Before I lived in Cleveland and now I live in Geneva. I bought a small farm house. I don't have any cows or pigs, just got four cats and three dogs! And my wife. Now we live alone but for many years my mother-in-law lived with us. She died two years ago, 93 years old, and she was a really hard worker, that lady. When she was 90 years old, she cut the grass by hand!
There were I think quite a number who lost a leg. Lots. Some didn't have an arm: I lost a leg. They were very good at that camp hospital. They gave us lots to eat and nobody can complain. I'm now enjoying myself as a mechanic. Not before.
The next Slovene was also of farming stock and had lost an eye while serving with the domobranci. His whole family escaped to Viktring - parents and a sister and five brothers aged between 22 and 3. There had been seven brothers but the eldest was killed fighting the partisans and another had been conscripted by the Germans and sent to the Russian front, taken prisoner and eventually sent back home to the family farm in Slovenia. From there he wrote to his parents that he could not manage on his own and urged them to return, and the call of the land was strong enough for the parents and four children to accept voluntary repatriation in the autumn of 1946. Only Anton Oblak, 22, and his sister, 15, stayed on in Austria as they had received affidavits from an uncle in Cleveland, and emigrated in May 1949, when the USA started admitting sponsored refugees:
To start with we lived with my uncle right here in 66th Street and St. Claire, where he had a furniture store. There's still the name over there, Oblak. First, it was kind of hard to get work but I was with my uncle for a while, helping him in his store, deliveries and things like that. Then I started different jobs: I went to Fisher Body, I think for about 85 cents an hour at that time, and then I got work in a cafeteria, cleaning the floors and toilets and all kind of things and stayed there about three months. I was ready to pick up any kind of job, and after that I changed jobs to some others, you know, different shops, and in the evenings we went to school for English. And I got a job then, about a 416 year after that, at a brick yard - heavy, dirty work.
I went to machine shop evening school and started machine shop work, and brick yard during the day. After that I found a job in a factory which was better, and when I told them I was at the school machine shop they gave me a good job. So I had a good job on a good machine making pretty good money during the Korean War and the Vietnam War: working ten hours a day, and at that time, $3.50 or $4.00 was a lot of money, especially when there was overtime. The owners of the shop were Slovenian guys, here before the war, but they were pretty good to me.
In 1958 we got married. She was a Slovenian girl, her father was here with his wife and two children. In 1957 my sister married one of the Slovenians who left Slovenia in 1945, a domobranec. At that time we invited my father and mother here, so they were at both our weddings. It was nice. My wife's family had remained in Slovenia, only her father left at the time when we left Slovenia. He was in Vetrinje and went to Spittal. I knew him there, but I never expected I was going to marry his daughter! He eventually came here a bit later than I did, and was organist and musical director here at St Vitus Church as soon as he came over until he died. We didn't have children. We adopted a boy. My sister has got six.
By the time I arrived in America I could speak a little English. We had some evening courses in Spittal. When I arrived here I needed to go to evening classes to improve it, to have enough to be able to work. In the camp in Austria I had had all kinds of jobs. I was a camp policeman while I was in the school. I was 22 when I started first year of that gymnasium, and I went to school with those kids who were in first year! But we were four of us like this. You know, we would do that. I attended school full-time and made first and second year, and half of the third. You know, the priest I mentioned before, Jaklic, saw us standing around on the corners, nothing to do, and said, "you boys, you shouldn't waste your time like this. Go to school, you'll learn something". So we went to school. Then they organised the agricultural school and I went to that.
At Spittal my sister was working in the sewing workshop, I think there were about ten girls there. Here she 417 worked for a while with my uncle, helping his wife with the housekeeping, and then got a job in a factory. Both of us were able to earn enough money to be independent within two or three months. A few years later, in 1953, I bought a house. I had $1,200 of my own money, and there were two houses on one lot, price $15,000. So we had to put $5,000 down, and we had a $10.000 mortgage loan from our Slovenian Lodge. I had only $1,200 at the time but I had a lot of friends, and I got from them $300, $400 so that I got my $5,000 together for the payment, and then I paid them off. That's how it was done.
Miro Odar was one of the first to take the school-leaving examination at the secondary school in Lienz. This entitled him to admission to the Technical University in Graz, where he studied mechanical engineering for two or three years:
I came to the United States before I finished. Before I had a chance to go back to university I was drafted, to Korea, where the war was still on. I saw active service. The fighting was terrible, but not as terrible as Vietnam, they say. I went through two wars, and that's enough for anybody! I was lucky, I wasn't injured. I wasn't even an American citizen and I was complaining loud, because the United States is the only country that takes non-citizens into the army, because the old idea was that to serve in the army is the citizen's privilege! But for us, either you go and serve, or you go back to Europe. Quite a choice! It wasn't easy.
So I lost two years. Then I wasn't ready to go to school and two more years went by. After that I went back to university and got my degree after five years study at Case University in Cleveland under the G.I. system, which helped financially. Once qualified, it was easy to find work. They got me even before I graduated, just on my work, and I was called by NASA. I stayed with them for fifteen years, and then they killed the project - well, that's the United States - didn't allocate any more money, and so I was out! That's the way it goes. I was so happy, because I was told that in the Government you never get laid off. Not quite true! Then I went to work for C.D.Climent engineering, and I'm now retired. I've two children and three grandchildren.
The Slovene I worked with most closely at Lienz was Franc Sfiligoi. Conscientious, unselfish and always cheerful, I 418 admired and trusted him sufficiently to have a rubber stamp of my signature made for him to use on all routine documents to release me for other work. I was particularly concerned to discover how life had treated him in America, and was told this by his son Marko and daughter-in-law Heda. There were six in the family in 1945. Franc aged 50, his wife and four children: the oldest son who was a medical student, then Marko aged 19 and twins, a boy and a girl, aged 15. Marko explains:
My father was a banker, treasurer in a co-op organisation which was strongly backed by the Slovenska Ljudska Stranka, the Christian Democrats, the central co-op bank in Ljubljana. It served all cooperatives which were strongly catholic-flavoured, and they had their offices in almost every village, where they organised the peasants and the country folk into cooperatives to promote the economy and give them a chance to survive. We owned our own home and my mother, who was a pharmacist, owned her own drug store, separate from the home, quite an established business, and just before the war we had started, with two other families, the beginning of a chemical industry in Ljubljana.
Franc escaped with his 15-year-old son to Viktring. On the way they were captured by partisans and about to be executed when domobranci rescued them. The other two sons reached Viktring with their domobranci units, but the elder was sent back by the British and killed in Teharje. Mother and daughter stayed at home in Ljubljana. Marko continues:
I was with the headquarters of the domobranci and was to go with the first truck on the Sunday morning to "Palmanova", and we said good-bye to everybody. Then General Krenner came, looked at us and said, "you all get off that truck. We're going last and not first". We were very unhappy because we thought we'd be in Palmanova that afternoon rather than the fields of Vetrinje. And that's how I'm here.
My younger brother and I went to Bajuk's gymnasium in Vetrinje. I was up in the eighth grade, and was among the first to graduate in September. My brother was schoolmate with my wife, and they graduated in '48. We started from the very first day outside under the tree in Vetrinje! I strongly recall that. My wife was there one day, and then their tent had typhoid so they weren't allowed there. One girl died in Klagenfurt in hospital. I attended school there about two or three weeks, and soon after we were 419 transferred. I remember the British school inspector in Lienz, Mr Baty, because there was quite a bit of discussion: he couldn't believe he could find such a seriously organised school in a refugee camp. You knew my father well back in Lienz, you knew his character and so on. In Austria before he emigrated he was continuously employed by United Nations or IRO. He had had some very good positions up in Judenburg and Klagenfurt, so he spent quite interesting years all through this refugee time.
In Judenburg he was secretary to the British Major commanding the camp; his office was in front of the Major's office. Repatriation commissions were coming from Yugoslavia in 1947, 1948, to talk with refugees. Through his office walked our neighbour from Ljubljana, who was part of one of these Yugoslav communist commissions, a high official in the foreign ministry in Belgrade. He knew my father really well, so they recognised each other: "I can't stop", he said, "I'll talk to you when I come back through the office". On the way out he stopped, they chatted, one very red, one very anti-red, but personally very close. He asked him, his name was Drago Kunc, "tell me, what should I do, should I return?" and he gave him a flat no. Then he asked, "how is my wife?" and he told him, and details of everything else, and later on said, "do you have any contacts with her yet?" "No", "Well, when I get home to Ljubljana on such and such date be here in your office, and I'll make her call you and talk to you". And this happened.
Anyway, he came to America and initially had to go to North Carolina as a lift operator. He was invited by the Craig family at weekends as sponsors and came to Cleveland, and found a rather good job in a factory as a quality control technician - the Korean War was still on. So he established himself in the Slovenian neighbourhood. Both my younger brother and I were in the army, so he was by himself.
After we returned from the army I got married, and my brother and my father lived very close, next door to us. In 1955 Tito for the first time indicated he'd let families get united when they were divided. So my mother and sister were living in Ljubljana and my father was here, and that year my mother came and joined us. For the next 15 years they lived very close to myself and my brother in the Slovene 420 neighbourhood in St. Clair. In 1960 he retired and for the last ten years was very active in the Slovenian social clubs. He was a leading force to build that memorial chapel on the Slovenska Pristava, and he organised a lot of travel for the older groups through the United States and Canada. In 1965 he had his first heart attack but survived, and lived a very normal life always, and in 1968 he went back and visited Ljubljana.
My sister didn't come with my mother because she married already very successfully in Ljubljana and stayed in our home, and has a very successful family back there and is back and forth between the United States and Slovenia all the time. As a matter of fact she just left on Monday. In 1970 my father had a second heart attack which was very sudden. He was normal, active up to the very moment. He just gasped and it was good-bye. Beautiful, actually. Marvellous for him, and for his wife and the family. No one had to suffer. Especially when he had had one before, so everyone was aware that the life is not for ever.
An interesting point you may be able to add as you knew him so well, and you know how attached he was to Slovenia and how he was suffering through those years, and the fact that he lost his oldest son in the massacre by Celje. After all those years that he spent back here in the United States, he went back in 1968 to visit, but he didn't want to live in Ljubljana any more. He was very happy to go on a visit, to see his old friends, my younger sister and her family and so on. And they made him an offer, since my mother and my father were both retired, that they'd live in the house again, and my sister and my brother-in-law were wonderful people so far as my parents and all of us were concerned, but he didn't accept that offer, he didn't want to stay, he wanted to return to the States. After all that suffering, you'd think that a man would use the first opportunity, but that goes I think for all of us! First my father died, then my mother and then my younger brother, so my parents didn't experience my younger brother's death.
I thank God that he kicked me out of Slovenia in 1945, because he opened up the door for me, otherwise ... a lot of people are not agreed with me, and my wife's mad at me! She says we left a beautiful country and all - yes, we would personally, both of us, have had 421 a very nice, soft life if this hadn't happened, but we wouldn't have all these opportunities, we wouldn't have such interesting careers. We have three sons: the oldest is a journalist in Washington DC working for the famous Kipplinger Associate Editors, very well-known, the second is in material management, married here in Cleveland, very successful and nice, the third is still unmarried. He's a chef, works at the university and has a degree in culinary arts. After some years of professional life he went back to get another degree in culinary arts, specialising in bakery and pastry, through the university.
So family-wise we have a very successful family, three grand kids, two in Washington DC and one over here so we can't complain. We have a granddaughter here nearby. Two of our sons are married, the third isn't. We have three grandchildren, a boy and a girl from the oldest guy who's a journalist, and a girl now from the second guy who lives nearby. The oldest is seven and a half. Our children are very well assimilated, American born, all three speak Slovenian which they use in their careers very successfully, and the oldest travels zig-zag in Europe back and forth, has wonderful experiences and memories from London and so on, and they bask on our experience of the fact that they're diversified and have connections on both continents quite well. We're much happier that they've been brought up here and not in Slovenia. I can see even with my brothers' and my sisters' children, I think our kids have a lot more to go on, and it's easier for them to do what they want and choose, much easier.
I have to say one thing. I don't know what the other people will say, I've never from the day I left home felt defeated. I never felt down in Lienz, I never felt down in the other places where we were, I never felt defeated or miserable or that I would be crying and envying other people for instance who were on top of it. For some reason or other it was almost like a challenge or fun, going through all these experiences! Even in the US army, or in my profession here, I never felt that I was downed for some reason or other, or my past experience or background was really against me.
My wife finished high school in Lienz in '48, was a schoolmate with my younger brother - met you! They both went to medical school in Graz, but had to leave 422 before they could finish. She came to the States on a scholarship to Marian College, Indianapolis, and the College sent her on a scholarship to Graz. She finished biology and chemistry and we got married after I got out of the army.
We met in '48. It seems the first moment she came to Hochsteingasse I was the official DDT man, the pumping man. I pumped her and she accused that I've never left her alone any more, I was a pest! Anyway in '53 we married here and then we had three boys. She stayed home, and after 18 years went back to finish her internship and medical technology, and the last 23 years now she's a very successful immunologist, a clinical pathologist in the hospital. We enjoy skiing, mountain climbing, camping, biking and travel. We have a very happy family life, strongly flavoured Slovenian, but completely integrated in American life. We've absolutely no problems with living in the American society. Why should we? We're superior! We're from two continents!
One of the most remarkable to go to the USA was Dr Puc. Although he knew very little English on arrival he still succeeded, when over 50, in passing the rigorous examinations required to requalify as a doctor, while supporting himself as a nightwatchman and later a hospital orderly. On top of that he sent regular packages home to help support the three children, who were too young to accompany their parents in 1945 and had to be left behind in the care of their grandparents. This account has an additional interest because it is given by his daughter (Marija Remec, nee Puc) who was only 13 at the time, so that we see the events through the eyes of a young teenager:
In May 1945 I left Slovenia with my father. My younger sister was only 4 and was seriously sick, so she stayed at home. We walked day and night and the next day and came to Skofja Loka. The two other children, who were only 7 and 9 years old, just couldn't walk any more, so my parents decided to leave them with my dad's parents. Then we went on and were never able to go back, and they were unable to come over until 1954, when they came to the United States. For nine years they were living with their grandparents, and then my aunt took them because it was all complicated back there. When we were in Trzic there was some shooting and we hid among the rocks and then we just kept on going, and at night we just slept wherever. 423 We went over Loiblpass carrying backpacks and it took us three or four days.
So my parents, my brother who was 12 and myself 13 were in the DP camps, first at Vetrinje and Peggetz in Lienz. I think we were among the middle of those who arrived in Vetrinje, and my father became involved in sanitary conditions and the ambulanta209 and all that. Then we had the school start right there in Vetrinje, the gimnazija, in the field and then in that castle. We lived in a tent, like, in the field for the whole time. I don't remember getting wet but the worst memory was the drains, that was really bad, and lice. They came round and pumped us210.
I remember the forcible repatriations because we had a girl with us whose fiance was sent back. She was alone without any relatives, so she stayed with us because we knew her at home. She said, "oh, they'll never come back", and she just cried and cried. And I remember how sad everybody was, and when the news came people didn't want to believe it. In a way I was young, I didn't really quite comprehend it, I think.
Somehow my mother got - it was my birthday and she begged or whatever - a couple of eggs, and a lady let her make some kind of pastry, actually it was fried, and brought it to me for my fourteenth birthday. I ate it and my stomach wasn't used to it and I got so sick! How she ever got this lady to let her into her house and even make these things I don't know, but she did and then she brought them over. She was so happy that she could give me something, and I ate too many and got sick!
We knew Dr Mersol well. I attended the gimnazija and after school took piano lessons with Majhenic, my Slovenian teacher. I joined the choir and had to help keep our room clean, and a lot of homework. No sport, we just had all kinds of gymnastics. Mrs Pernisek and my mother were good friends and they used to correspond. We lived in the same barrack in Spittal so I knew the two children and Mr and Mrs Pernisek.
There was a girl working with my dad in the TB sanatorium
209. camp clinic 210. with DDT powder 424 in Spittal, actually the one whose fiance was sent back and killed. She worked as a nurse, Minka Bozic, with him a lot also in Seebach at the sanatorium. We just saw her today, stopped at her house: she lives here in Cleveland and we've stayed friends all the time and keep in touch. She was a little older than I, and remembers all that exactly.
I remained at Spittal camp until we came to the United States in 1949. We weren't able to go to Canada because they found some spots on my brother's lungs, even though it didn't turn out to be anything. But anyway, because my dad was a doctor they said that this time we didn't need a sponsor, so we came to New York City but, because we didn't have a sponsor, we didn't have anywhere to go. Father Bernard [Ambrozic], a friend of my parents, the same as his brother, helped us, and we each went a different way. My dad started as a night-watchman in a hospital, my mother as a domestic helper and I also worked for a family for a year, and my brother went to a turkey farm in Pennsylvania.
We first lived in New York City and my dad worked in the Bronx, where he had a room. I lived with the family I worked for in Jamaica, Long Island, and on Sundays he and I would meet, usually at the church. Then we didn't have anywhere to go to, so sometimes we'd go to his room and make packages to send home. That was after a while, earlier we used just to ride subways and visit parks. My mother worked in Connecticut some way away and was only off every two weeks. So every two weeks she came down and visited my dad and me, wherever we were.
My dad became an orderly in a hospital and then wanted to get to schooling again. So he studied and worked as an orderly, and studied and studied, and took the advanced New Jersey Board exams as a physician and passed them first time. He had to learn English and was over 50 years old at the time, and then first had to be an intern and then a resident and then became an anaesthetist, so he never had his own office. He just worked as an anaesthetist at St. Mary's Hospital, Hoboken, New Jersey until he retired at about 65. Then they moved out to Chicago so that they were near us. Dad died in 1983, he was 80.
The family I worked for during the first year were Slovenian people, who worked for the United Nations 425 and wanted their children to learn Slovenian because they just spoke English. At that time I didn't speak any English, so that was very good. They were pro- communist I'm sure, they had to be, but Father Bernard Ambrozic knew them and they were very kind. We got along fine. My brother, who was 17, was working in a turkey farm in Pennsylvania, but my dad had a cousin who was a Benedictine monk in Colorado and taught in high school, so he took my brother into his school there. Later he went to medical school.
I had three sisters and a brother back home in Slovenia. So when my parents became citizens they applied for them to come over here and the government there wouldn't let them come. They said my brother had to go into the army first. Then they applied for my sisters, separately. They were younger, and they could come. Then eventually my brother was able to come. So the whole family was here, which was fine.
I didn't have to go to high school any more as I'd got my papers evaluated. I got a partial scholarship and worked for Loreto Heights College in Denver Colorado and went into a nursing programme there, starting from the very beginning and taking four years to qualify. I got my degree there, and then came to Hoboken and worked as a nurse and lived there with my parents until I was married. My husband is a chemical engineer. He was at Graz probably only about two years until 1949, and then finished his schooling here in the University of Illinois. Then we had six children and I didn't work! As soon as we were married we moved seventeen times because of my husband's work - he had to start different chemical processes in different refineries. We ended up in Chicago again because his parents were there. Then my parents moved out there too, so we were all together, which was nice. My brother now lives in Chicago too. We live only a block away from each other. He has six kids and is a paediatrician.
The first grandchild is due next month. My youngest child is 24, the oldest 36: he's a chemical engineer, the next is para-legal, the third a mechanical engineer, Martha a computer science engineer, Monica a nurse and Carl works in sales for Michelin tyres. They all had a college education and four are married. Martha gets married next year and the youngest is still single.
426 My father's youngest sister is still living, his youngest brother just died a couple of weeks ago. I've been back myself once, seven years ago. Dad went quite a few times, they took one of my daughters with them once. Three of our children went to this course they had in Koroska 211 for the Slovenian schools and then they also took a trip to Slovenia. So five children were in Slovenia already, all except one, and he's sorry he didn't go! Hopefully he'll go too.
Dad had a tough time for maybe five years. He was born in 1903, so he was fifty when he took his medical board. Then it became, not marvellous, but OK. When he was an anaesthetist in a hospital it was better. He earned some money and they bought a little house there, close to the hospital at Hoboken, New Jersey. Dad knew that maybe he wouldn't be alive if he had stayed at home, and they were never sorry, I think, that they left. They liked to go back to visit but then they liked to come back again.
On the whole, I've maybe more happy than unhappy memories of the camps in Austria. I really made good friends while we were there, and I still correspond with my classmates in Argentina. The ones that I've over here, we're still good friends and keep in touch. I think it was harder for my parents. I was young enough not to realise how hard it really was, and for them it was awfully hard to have three children still back home, you know. For me, somehow, really it was hard to get used to having brothers and sisters again, it was hard for us to get ... we are really close now again but it took several years, because the three of them were close to each other, and I was almost like an outsider to them when we met again.
School was tough and somehow I readily forget all the bad memories. And now when we write to each other we just keep saying, "oh, remember when we did this and remember when we did that, and it's amazing" .. You probably know Marco Kremzar from Argentina? Well, he came to our house twice in Chicago and said, "you know I can't believe that we were apart for so many years, and we were sitting down and talking like we just met a week before". Probably a lot was because we correspond, and somehow I guess we think alike a lot and we can just carry on ... He's a little older than my husband and I are, but we lived in the same
211. Carinthia, in Austria. 427 barrack at Graz and he married a good friend of mine, my class-mate, so that all helped, we stayed friends.
I really don't know why dad decided to go to America rather than with the main group down to Argentina. I just thought at that time that America would be better than Argentina. It seemed like people who couldn't go to America had to go to Argentina, and Argentina took everybody. If you had a sponsor or could come to America, it was better. That's how I felt, I don't know if my parents felt the same way. Of course with the three children still in Slovenia, America is a lot closer than Argentina. I've never been down there myself but that's one place where we really would like to go. I think when my husband retires we might just do that, because we know a lot of people down there. My father-in-law settled down here alright. He wasn't in business. He lied about his age, made himself ten years younger and got a job, but I don't know what he did. He was fairly high-powered in Slovenia. Here no, but he was happy and cheerful. I think it was a lot harder for my mother-in-law. She came over later and was very bitter about having to leave everything, everything being taken away.
By the time my dad died the whole family was well established. We all went through college and made it and each one is well established. My dad never really had much, money-wise, but all the time he was working at the hospital as an intern and a resident he was sending packages of money back to Yugoslavia to take care of my three younger sisters and brother. My mother was 91 when she died. They both of them ended up reasonably comfortable and were very thankful for what they had. They were happy, my mother never was moaning about what she left back home: she had to work hard and didn't mind that. Well before the end they had thoroughly fulfilled lives - 17 grandchildren!
428
C H A P T E R 1 8
Britain
The jobs the Slovenes do for their probationary period in Britain are similar to those in Canada and the States. Those interviewed start off by being a coal miner, living-in domestic worker, dish-washer in a hospital kitchen, hospital ward orderly and nurse.
The miner sets up and runs his own furniture factory employing a hundred workers, the dish-washer becomes a broadcaster and the ward orderly a leading authority on the care of the mentally handicapped. The women all too often sacrifice promising careers to the needs of their families, but in doing so reinforce their children's strong pride in their ethnic identity and powerful work ethic.
The first report on emigration to Britain in the 1949 Free Slovenia Almanac was not encouraging:
The majority of Slovene new settlers in Europe, around 600, are in England, mostly from the Italian camps but with a good number from Austria. They started to arrive in December 1947 under the "Westward Ho" scheme, and around 50% of them work in the coal mines, 20% on the land and 20% in factories, with the remaining 10% engaged in miscellaneous jobs such as instructors, interpreters and hotel staff. Some have found private accommodation but most have remained in camps set up for the purpose - hostels run by the National Service Hostel Corporation - living together with settlers from other nationalities such as Serbs, Poles, Balts etc.. Their conditions are difficult because they are paid less than the English, but have to pay just the same high social insurance contributions. They find their environment unfriendly and feel themselves strangers amongst the cold English. Dr. Kuhar cares for their spiritual life and also celebrates Holy Mass three times a week. They await the arrival of the curate Kunstelj, which would revive them substantially. They feel they are being exploited and would be glad to move elsewhere if they could. They publish a duplicated news sheet. 429
When Father Ignacij Kunstelj arrived in 1959 he sent a more cheerful article. A Slovene coalminer told him:
The work isn't hard though it's underground, and the pay's quite good, though rates vary a lot. Worst off are the youngsters, if they're only on basic pay, as they're left with little. I sometimes work Saturdays as well, to increase my pay a bit. You have to send money back home, where everything is lacking except "freedom". My needs are soon satisfied: a mug of beer Saturday evening, writing paper and stamps.
A land worker living in a hostel told him:
I'm getting on quite well. Work is variable, the people the same: some friendly, others show quite clearly that they're the bosses. You're seldom invited into a home, and then for the most part for a cup of English tea, the cure for all ailments at all times. I earn more when on piece work but have to work harder. Those who have moved onto farms say they're doing well: enough to do but also enough to eat. Generally they like us on the farms because we're used to hard work. I won't change in a hurry.
The first person I interviewed came from a modest background but ended up rich. To understand the rugged pertinacity that led to his later success, a brief summary of his spectacular escape from Slovenia is essential. Janez Dernulc was the eldest of nine children, and his parents ran a small farm. He was with the domobranci in Slovenia and had to escape abroad in May 1945:
No alternative at all; I knew I'd be killed. Maybe not so much that I was involved with the war myself but because my family was in the opposite party, the party the communists wanted to get rid of. I was twenty-four, and I left behind my youngest brother who's here now, seventeen years younger than me - I'm the first and he's the ninth - and four sisters and mother at home. One brother was with me and died in Kocevje, and one was in Buchenwald and died about a month before the end.
After two weeks at Viktring Dernulc's unit were told they were being moved to Italy and were loaded onto trucks:
They were not too crowded. No, it was done the English way, proper. Then the truck pulled out and I knew 430 that Italy is there, and we were going the opposite way. I think to myself, "you're going the wrong way. How is that? Maybe the road is broken or something, and they will take us a little bit around" and all of a sudden there were thousands of us there in Bleiburg station. They said, "halt the truck" and the soldiers searched us. If you had any money they took it, if you had a watch, they took it. I thought to myself, "what the hell is this, why are they searching us?" The English behaviour was different straightaway. "They've sent us back, and what can we do?" Then on the station were partisans, and they put us on the train, not a proper train, cattle trucks. You felt stunned.
They were sent to Slovenia, held two nights in a school where some were beaten up, though "not really heavily", taken by lorry to the village of Mislinja and from there marched further south:
We were marching six abreast, and it was maybe one o'clock in the morning when Lad Vinko said to me and two others, "I'm going to escape: keep near me", and all of a sudden he said, "now or never" and we just jumped. It was at the end of a house and the forest after. We jumped behind the house and were straightaway in the forest. A lovely feeling, to be free. But we were still 120 miles from home.
Only courage and coolness enabled them to reach home a week later, after numerous adventures and narrow escapes, walking by night and sleeping by day. They hid at home for two months and then crossed the border to Italy and on to Austria, where Dernulc rejoined his father in the camp at Spittal. When three years later it came to emigration he still chose Britain in preference to Argentina or North America, in spite of his experiences at the hands of the British. He speaks fluent but fractured English with a strong Welsh accent:
I didn't speak a word of English when I arrived in Austria. I knew a little Italian and German and of course Serbian, but no English at all, and I didn't start learning for two years, though some started straightaway in Austria. But in 1947 there was a chance we were going to England or America or somewhere, and I told myself I'd better start. How? A student said, "I'll show you how", and started teaching me. And when I came to this country I knew twenty lessons. That student came here as well and knew a little bit more and I said, "how am I to carry 431 on?" and he said, "you know enough to start: you carry on now".
I've been here forty years in this house, since 1950. We were 600 or 700 Slovenians who came to Britain - 10,000 Yugoslavs altogether - and 50 or 60 in this area then, but some went on to Canada, not a lot. Some went up to Lancashire, some to London. In this area there are still about 20, but a few already died. For me coming to England was very nice, very good, everything was so quiet and calm. In Italy you went on the station and it was noisy: we came here in England and there was nobody nowhere, no signs or anything like that. People were nice. We talked to people here and they were treating us very, very nicely, we were like one of them straightaway. Some started talking, "it's better living in America, we go there, or we go to Canada," but somehow I never really wanted to go.
When they brought us to England they sent us near York. The doctors checked us and we stayed about a week, and then they sent us down near Cambridge to Bottisham and said, "now you're going to learn basic English". Before that they examined everyone and asked, "do you speak English?" and some said, "a little bit." They went straight to the work, to the pit. But the main group went down to Bottisham and were there twelve weeks and learnt English. When he asked, "do you speak English?" I said no because I thought I needed a little more. A few knew a bit more than just nothing, and the teacher came in the evening and gave us private lessons and we have to pay him ,1 each for about four or five lessons. So after twelve weeks we come to Wales here, to Ogden, a group of 20 of us, all Slovenes, all friends of mine. Some went to Yorkshire, some to other parts.
The pit instructor straightaway spotted I knew a few words and then it was like I was his interpreter. When we went down in the pits, him and I were talking and the others were working! That was no problem with me - I knew about shovels and all those things. I didn't know about pits really but I guessed a lot, and the boys wanted to know what this means and that means, and I just explained it probably means that and that. Technical words, and things we didn't see before, conveyor belts and things like that.
My programme was to work in the pit, but in the first 432 twelve months I had to learn English. I had an afternoon shift, and in the morning I got up at nine and wrote and read and wrote and read for one or two hours every day. At the week-ends I went to Barker's and had a little bit of dance, relaxation and a good meal. That was for twelve months. Then I stopped learning and was just reading and talking to people. I got on very well with the miners - they called me "John the Pole the Madman". At the beginning I was labouring, and they gave me some parking and things like that to do, but after I came on the coal. Other miners had 18 feet of stand and I had 22. The minimum wage was still ,6.50 but the top wage for the colliers was ,17 a week and I was already knocking ,23. I worked seven days a week and nights and Sunday afternoons, and that's why they called me "John the Pole the Madman" and never showed any resentment. Never. They said we are cleaner and tidier than anybody else! I never had any problems in the shops, never needed to pay in advance and in 1950 I bought this house.
I started my own business about 1954. I and my partner, Mr. Jug, were working in the pit and we married two sisters. He was good with wood, and made a little table lamp at home in the kitchen. Somebody saw it, "ooh! This is very good!" and so on. In the end we have a chat and he said he wanted to go out from the pit, because he had a problem with his chest and the pit wasn't good for him. One morning he said, "let's go tomorrow morning and buy a machine." "Where are we going to put it?" We knew there was a garage empty down here in Park Road and I said, "we'll ask him. Maybe we can put it there." We bought the machine for ,165 and it was called The Super Seven; you could adapt a couple of little things on it, and because he was so clever I think we done fifty jobs on it after! He made it a guard here and there.
Then him and I work in the pit, I had a day shift and he had afternoon, and he done a little bit of work in the morning and I in the evening, and we were doing that for about two years. We didn't have orders or anything and started slowly, making a bit of articles and selling it. Then a couple of people came, friends of ours, and said, "you should have British Home Stores for that." I wrote a letter and they replied, "will I come to London and bring the table lamp with me?" I went and they said, "oh, no, no, no, no; that's no good. But what about this?" and 433 gave me a sample of a barrel table lamp. "Yes", I said, "we can do that", and went home. I went back to British Home Stores as the Western Woodcraft Company, and they gave me the order for 1,200 of those table lamps, and straightaway we had to leave the pit and start work and from then on we gone on and on and on, so that in 1958 we had 60 people employed, in 1963 we had 128 and kept between 95 and 120 until 1976. After this time it declined, and in 1981 we closed down.
We Slovenes meet every year, once up in Rochdale and once here in Bedford. But it seems to me, there's not really business genius amongst us. Not many, very few. What have they done? A couple of doctors, a couple of surveyors, all the ones who were students qualified. There's Dr.Jancar, he's become a senior doctor in the end, and when he come here in Bristol he was a nurse. He couldn't go to university here and somehow by-passed it, went to Ireland and got a degree there, came back and was consultant and on and on.
My children have been no problem. The boy didn't speak English at all when he went to school five years old, and three days after he didn't want to know anything about Slovene. He spoke English. Unbelievable! It was just like overnight he knew English! He speaks Slovene as well, no problem. The children speak English so well that when they were in grammar school their language was the nicest. They passed their exams and went to university, got degrees. They are very interested in my background and went to Yugoslavia for Easter. We are quite a close family. Very much. That's my grandson. Three years old.
My father came here three months, I don't know how many times. We visit them some time, and they come here. All his wish was that he would come to England once, as a young boy and then after. Maybe that was the reason I came to this country; otherwise I might have gone somewhere else. When I came here and saw January, February, no snow outside, no winter, I thought to myself, where are we now? This is unbelievable! In our area at home there is heavy snow in the winter for three months and you are cut from everything, frost, 30 below freezing Centigrade. And here it is summer all the time, and it somehow stuck in my head that it is stupid to go anywhere else. 434
The secret for somebody adapting to another country is hard work, being tolerant and trying to use a little of your savings to bring you a little bit of rewards. There are really no poor Slovenes here. They've all got their houses and they are all practically well- off insofar as they've all got a pension, most of them extra pensions, there's no real poverty as far as we're concerned. There's one or two who've gone back and they're very disappointed: one went home because there was a family there and he was by himself. I only know for two really. Most of our people here are really happy, as far as I can say.
When we came to Britain we were treated very fairly by the British, we came and were one of them straightaway, no problems at all. In the Union, in the pit, the Secretary, a communist, always wanted to talk with me - no problems whatsoever.
Most of those who came to Britain did so under the EVW or European Voluntary Worker scheme. They had to be healthy and under thirty-nine. The men went to the pits, farming or heavy industry and the women to hospitals, textiles or domestic work. The two Guden sisters - the sisters Dernulc and his partner Jug married - volunteered for domestic work. They had been overtaken in Slovenia by such an appalling family tragedy and been so deeply traumatised aged 16 and 19, that the UNRRA camp welfare officer took special pains to find them an understanding and supportive family where they could stay together.
Anica Guden had witnessed her mother, father and three brothers being killed by the partisans and had only escaped their fate by feigning death when shot in the shoulder and hand. Her sister Marija escaped because the partisans had taken her away an hour earlier to show them where the family kept their livestock. For the next two years the sisters survived the German occupation on their own as best they could and then fled to Austria in May 1945 and spent three years in camps before they emigrated:
We were told we were going to Cambridge to Professor and Mrs Steers. His subject was geography and she was teaching and lecturing at St. Catherine's College. They had James aged three and Gracie aged one, a professional nanny in the house, two gardeners, a woman to clean and a special woman only to do the silver; and my sister was cooking and I was to help nanny with the children and Marija in the kitchen. 435 Eventually I took over the children. When we arrive Mrs Steers say, "Anica and Marija, we know all your tragedy. You come to this house, this is your home. We are your new mother and father, and address us as such". They give us the front door key, we go anywhere we like. But we make straightaway a good impression because we didn't go out, we didn't go to any mischief, we always stay home. Mrs Steers sent me to the British School of Motoring so that I can drive the car. I then drove the Professor when he went to some lectures to London, take him to the station. The children by then go to school and I take them, one this way and one that, so I did a lot of driving.
I got married there as well. The Professor give me away as my father, didn't cost us not a single penny. Then Mrs. Steers would like that my husband would get a job in Cambridge. For this we could have a flat because it was a very big three storey house, but by then we thought the sooner we go on our own feet the better. She was sad to lose us, but my husband starts working in the pit in Wales and so we got married in March, and by December I come because he had to find accommodation first.
We have the most wonderful life there, Mrs Steers was a proper mother. She was a most marvellous woman. Life really started there, really from the beginning, because we was for such a long time in such poor, such humble circumstances, and when we come into a house where the table was covered with a tablecloth and all things were for breakfast, I cried, cried. For three weeks I cried because I can't think that this could be true. And then I think, why I have this such a good life there, when my brother and sister at home, what do they have? Have they still got anything? But she was a most marvellous person, she was really. We have visitors every Sunday, and they come in the kitchen and she said, this is our Marija and this is our Anica. She was always calling down, you know, to have a glass of sherry. She was more than mother to us, really more than mother to us.
In fact the sisters did not need to feel isolated, because they regularly saw some other Slovenes who had been with them in the same refugee camp in Austria, and were now in Cambridge, one married to an Englishman and the others doing domestic work in one of the women's colleges. Marija Guden continued: 436
We entered England as European Volunteer Workers. Technically we had to remain in the same employment for two years, and after that we were free. We only have ,2.50 a week but we have twice a year holiday separate, and also wherever they went, we go. Oh yes, we know Scotland very well, and Norfolk, Cromer. When they have holidays we take the children with us. The children, a nanny, my sister and home help, went on the night train, and Mrs Steers and I would go by car, a miniminor, with all the luggage. We would stop and spend the night at Darlington and then the next day continue. We stay in Dunbar. Mrs. Steer have four sisters, one married to a Harley Street doctor, another working in the Home Office, and we each year holiday in Scotland, and we was living in a castle! And every family brings a cook with them, they were all working. Oh, we have unbelievable, it was a dream life we have in Cambridge.
And while we was in Cambridge too she have important guests there. One day Fieldmarshal Alexander comes. She bring him in the kitchen and he was in uniform, and she just said again, this is Anica and this is Marija. I'm sure she explained to him where we came from because she explained to everybody our story. That's what I mean, you see, she really feel us, that we part of family. It was different when I have a job in Ljubljana with children, and that was Slovene, my people. But when I come into complete strangers, to Cambridge, she bring any guest, everyone she bring in the kitchen to say this is our Marija and Anica. That really was something you feel, you begin to feel that you belong somewhere again. Very, very kind people, very kind.
So you can see from all this we telling you that she was really marvellous, a mother, and every night she go kiss her children and she come in and kiss us goodnight and we would have radio on and she would say good night darlings, and she'd kiss us both. Every night.
That time we couldn't speak English at all and she communicated with German. We understanded German but can't speak, I still can't speak and read German. We never gone to any English school, that's why our English is still ..., but if you listen hard you can understand! She was speaking fluently German, that's the only way we communicated, but she said, "after 437 you decided that you stay in England, you better start to speak English". Her children started young to talk and they had a nanny who can't speak any other language, and then Mrs Steers says would you like to have some newspaper to read and probably you will be learning more and then she did order some newspapers and we started. Now I read paper very well but as I say the English is still not so correct because we didn't have no school at all. We speak no Welsh but the Welsh people here are speaking slowly and they think we are Welsh!
In Cranmer Road the children was very nice, no worries at all, but dreams was very bad. We dreamed, we dreamed, and when I wake up I remember we were in England, in Cambridge, and nothing to worry about. But when they go for holidays and leave us once by ourselves in charge, then I was afraid again in the night, I somehow thought I have no anybody now to tell a noise, to protect me. That dream is still there, not for very often, nightmares, that the partisans come in and want to .. . When we heard the dog barking we was both shaking, Mrs Steers always comes and she say, don't worry, you in a safe place here, no harm will come to you two. The nightmares were very, very, very strong when we were in Austria, in Cambridge they were still very, very, very strong. Now they declined, but sometimes they come and my husband, he come down in the morning and he said, you know, I was dreaming that the partisans are after me. And I'm still frightened, I'm still very frightened if I'm by myself at home.
Franjo Sekolec and his wife Bernarda were as content as the Dernulces and Jugs that they had chosen Britain rather than America or Canada, although aware that they might have been better off financially if they had crossed the Atlantic. For brevity I have attributed all their words to Mr Sekolec:
The last time I saw you I was interpreter to Mr Newsham, the administrative officer in the UNRRA camp at Spittal. One day he was absent, and you wanted something from one of our workshops for which he was responsible and said, could you have that and that, and I said, yes of course, and you said, but I haven't spoken to Mr Newsham, and I said, it's alright because I've authority from him to sign anything I like!
**I was among the early ones to arrive at Viktring with 438 the soldiers, the domobranci. We were convinced, the first few days, that the domobranci were being sent to Italy. But the day before we had to go, we learnt that in fact the transports are going to Slovenia, to Yugoslavia. So that evening we told all the soldiers the truth. Some decided to go back to Yugoslavia: they said, "it's the Lord's will, and we go as well". And some said, "no, we'll hide in the civilian camp", and that's what I did. I remember some people said, if everybody went, then why shouldn't we go? I got some civilian clothes from Dr Handjelic, the priest, who died in Argentina, and I disappeared into the civilian camp.
It was a pleasant life, I must say, in the camp. The only thing was, we were worried what is going to happen, about the future, and of course occasionally we were hungry, but the worst thing was the worry. We didn't suffer from direct fear that we might be sent back, it was about the whole future, how we are going to live. Because there was not much future for us in Austria, because its economy was ruined and they couldn't find enough of a living for their own people, so how could they possibly for us as well? And what to do with the children? How to get the children out?**
In April 1948 I applied for permission to go to England as an EVW, a European Voluntary Worker - not for the coalmines or anything in particular, just generally - and attended a commission sent by the Ministry of Labour. In May I got the message I had been accepted. I arrived in London on the 19th June and on the 21st June in Eastleigh near Southampton where there was a camp. On the 2nd July I went to Sandtoft hostel, Doncaster, a YMCA hostel.
I'll explain how it happened. I remained in touch with Mr Newsham when he left back for England. When I heard I had been accepted for work in England I wrote. He answered that I should inform him immediately I came to England and he could help me find a job. So when I arrived in Eastleigh I went the same day to the post office and sent a telegram that I am here. He was already warden of Sandtoft YMCA hostel and went to the Labour Exchange and said, "I need an assistant, there's too much work", to which they answered, "we have already told you we haven't got anybody". He said I'd just arrived, was in Eastleigh and was willing to come to him, and they said, "fair 439 enough, we will send a message to the camp". So I was called to the labour office in Eastleigh. The camp were quite surprised that I got this invitation to Doncaster to start work, but that was it! That was how I came to England.
Why, when most Slovenes went to Argentina, America or Canada, did I choose England? Ah, now that's a different, a romantic story. I had already applied to go to America, had written to Dr Miha Krek, who was the Deputy Prime Minister212, to find a sponsor for me. Then my Bernarda - we were not married at that time, we married here in England - went to England, and what I think is, I go too: because we already planned to marry when we settle down somewhere. Dr Thompson213 thought wrongly Bernarda could get on to the medical register, and didn't know that the regulations were changed a month before.
There was a medical check, but not as stringent as for Canada. Canada was the cattle market! And I had worked already for nine or ten months as a heavy worker, a platelayer. The member of the commission from the Ministry of Labour said, show me your hands, and I showed him the callouses.
So my first job in England as assistant warden of a small YMCA hostel was a good one. But it was soon closed down and I was moved to another hostel near Lincoln with about 200 or 250 people, all Ukrainians. They were members of a Ukrainian division under the Germans taken to England as prisoners of war. I saw the closure of all these hostels was coming, and managed somehow to get permission from the local labour office to move to London: there I could only get a job in a hospital and was washing up dishes for about two years, and then - we were under restriction I think for four years - found a job as a porter in a chemical factory and then gradually got into the BBC. I took an examination and started work as a part- timer, and that went on and on and on. Eventually I was doing broadcasting in the Yugoslav section, Slovene subsection, and got more and more work and was able to leave the regular job and live on what I earned at the BBC. I worked about ten years as a part-timer and then in '63 or '64 got a full-time,
212. in the war-time Yugoslav Government in Exile in London 213. a Scottish UNRRA camp medical officer who had befriended Bernarda, who was then still Dr Bernarda Rihar 440 pensionable job and am now a BBC pensioner!
Quite happy, you know, and very glad I came to England. My adopted country has treated me better than my own native country, I can say that. Those who settled in Canada and America are probably on average materially better off than those in England, that's true, but all other things are different. I mean you don't take anything with you once you die. We married at the end of April 1949 and had our wedding breakfast in the house of Dr Thompson, a lovely person. On a small scale she was very careful with her money, on a large scale very generous. Her home was in Scotland in Edinburgh, she had her father there, but she lived in Leyland, and later on in London.
Bernarda was a widow and I was a widower. We met in Slovenia, before Vetrinje. My first wife was killed during the war when the Germans bombarded the town because the partisans had infiltrated it after the collapse of Italy, and Bernarda's husband died at the same time from enemy action. I had a son and she had a daughter by our first marriages. In 1954 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees gave a lecture here in London which I attended. I explained to him the position and asked him about it and he said, "I personally went to Tito and he promised to allow these people to go out to join their fathers and mothers and whatever". A few months later in fact the Yugoslav authorities allowed people to go out, so we immediately applied for both of our children. By that time they were already living with one of her sisters, and after a few weeks we got the permission. They were about ten and a half years old and continued their education here. My wife was not yet working as a dietician but was still studying at Queen Elizabeth College at Campden Hill. She had to study for a year and a half to qualify as a dietician - she was a fully qualified doctor from Slovenia but only half her qualifications were recognised.
It was very hard for the children because they didn't speak English. But they soon learnt, especially the daughter because she liked talking, was very talkative, and that's how you learn the language! For the boy it was harder. At that time we were living in Holland Park, a lovely flat with six rooms for ,2.50 a week, a controlled rent. I got the address through the BBC Welfare Officer. There was plenty of room for the children, with just one 441 tenant: we let one room and got for it nearly as much as we paid for the flat! They went to the local primary school. Then we managed somehow to get Milena into a grammar school, a Catholic convent school, which was a good education, but Luca had to go to a secondary modern school.
Milena qualified in Russian Studies and European Literature at the University of Sussex and met her husband on the train to Cambridge: he finished his first degree in London but took his doctorate in Cambridge. So they met when they both travelled to Cambridge because Milena was teaching Russian at Bishop's Stortford, near Cambridge, and living in Cambridge. She was teaching at the only grammar school teaching Russian language, and was very successful because all her students managed to pass their examinations.
Now she's teaching French and German and English as a foreign language in Australia and her husband is teaching modern history at the University of New South Wales. They've been in Australia for 15 years but have not taken Australian citizenship, and they've three children aged 22, 20 and 18.
Luca is a physicist. He studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic for both his bachelor's degree and his doctorate in physics but now works in computers for the Swiss near Zurich. He married a Slovene who came here about sixteen years ago from the new Yugoslavia as an au pair to learn English. They've two children, 17 and 15, and they speak Slovene. We go to Switzerland nearly every year and we've been to Australia. We have lived 28 years in this house and have marvellous neighbours. They're all good, they've accepted us as a matter of course.
The two strongest groups of Slovenes in Britain are in Rochdale, Lancashire and in Bedford. More in Rochdale because of textiles. Those in Bedford went because of the brickworks, but most got out of them and went to Luton in the car factories and some in gardening. There are not much more than about 20 or 25 in the London area, but of the new ones we don't know how many. Some worked in families as domestics and most of them married. There were quite a few boys here who wanted to marry. A lady suggested that girls from Primorje should come over here, and some of the so-called Venetian Slovenes did come to London 442 as domestic workers and married our chaps! But many Slovenes married English or Irish wives because there were no Slovenes left. The Katoliska Misija214 in South-East London near the Oval has a Mass once a month; we bought the house 30 or 35 years ago and there's a chapel in the basement.
Dr Bernarda Sekolec added:
When I was working in a hospital I was supervising staff and sitting together with one of them drinking tea and he asked me, "and who are you really?" I didn't know what to say, so I said, "I'm a DP, displaced person", and he looked astonished: "So you are DPs? And I thought DPs were half savages!"
Four names recur repeatedly in this study - Pernisek, Mersol, Bajuk and Jancar. Remarkably, two of them are still alive - Franc Pernisek in Buenos Aires and Joze Jancar in Bristol. Jancar was the student leader. He was interviewed three years ago, not by me, but by a fellow psychiatrist for a profile in the Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. His story is remarkable for the picture it gives of his life before World War II, during the war, in the refugee camps and in emigration. His origin was as modest as that of Dr Mersol. The latter was the son of a low paid railway worker, while he was the son of an also modestly paid village organist:
I was born in Slovenia and had a very happy childhood and young adult life until 1941. I attended a grammar school in Ljubljana and travelled by train to the city every morning from home in a village nearby, earning my keep by helping other pupils who were not doing so well at school. I became head boy and received quite a few prizes, but the most exciting was when I was invited by King Peter, with the other 40 best pupils in Yugoslavia, to stay with him for a week in Belgrade at his White Court. The school made sure we were smartly dressed, giving us each a new suit and new shoes. The Court sent a royal railway carriage to Ljubljana and five of us, with a professor, went in this, attached to the Belgrade train. Yugoslavia was then divided into eight provinces, and from each the five best pupils had been selected. When we arrived in Belgrade, we were taken to a hall, where each of us was fitted out with a Crombie overcoat.
214. [Slovene] Catholic Mission 443 The next day we went to the Court where we met the King and received a silver and gold medallion of Peter II. We visited the grave of King Peter's father and went to the theatre, to the Mint and to the airport to see the first German Junkers passenger plane. Every night we went to the Court to visit the King. The final day there was an assembly of ambassadors to the Court, and it was a really beautiful evening, with Court music and presents from the Queen Mother. The press had been with us all along, and Fox Movietone News were filming. It was a fantastic experience.
During the summer I travelled a lot, learning about people and life; I cycled along the Dalmatian coast and in late summer I used to climb, as well as participating in athletics and winter sports. Unfortunately when I started medicine in Ljubljana the war began in the spring of 1941 and we were occupied by the Italians. They let us study for about two years and then the university was closed. We students were helping in various hospital departments; I was working in the Eye Department with the famous Professor Jevse, who had an international reputation and was very encouraging to young people. Unfortunately I was taken to a concentration camp in Gonars, Italy, in 1942, and when Italy collapsed in 1943 the Germans occupied us. Once again we were working with the underground, helping in hospitals and treating people who had been involved in fighting against the Nazis, the Communists and the Fascists.
The war taught me a lot about psychiatry, particularly in the concentration camp, when men's masks dropped, and you see each man as he really is. There were both university professors and road sweepers who were most helpful and real people; while others, without their masks, weren't really the people we had been seeing before. I spent a week in the death cell at Ljubljana. They said that if any Italian was shot outside, they would take people from our cell to shoot them. We were hostages. It seems unbelievable, but we became stoically indifferent. They would come at 4 am and call out names and these people would be taken out and we just put their names on the wall and went to sleep. Everybody who walked out neither cried nor swore - just defiantly walked out.
When we were being taken to the camp they chained us together and put us in cattle trucks. We sang on our 444 way to a concentration camp because we were out of the death cells. At St George's station, near Gonars, we were thirsty and you know how the railway engines used to be fed with water; we put our hands out to catch some, but the soldiers beat us back - wouldn't allow it. When we were walking towards the camp people spat at us and called us "banditi". Yet two years ago, I went to visit Gonars and met the people there, and they were so nice! We went to see the memorial to the people who died in the camp and it is very well kept. I said to myself, how can man be so excited for religion, politics or nationality, to do such cruel things? This was a great school of experience for me - one which I don't want anybody to repeat or go through, but I learnt a lot from it. Our Bishop from Ljubljana215 intervened through the Vatican to release the Slovene students, pressure was brought on Mussolini and we got free.
At the end of the war I went to Austria as an anticommunist refugee, where we were in camps, hoping one day we would be able to restart our studies. Eventually the Russians left Graz. It was much easier for us to study there than in Italy because, Slovenia being such a small nation, we couldn't produce our own medical textbooks, and so we used German ones. It was terribly difficult to find anywhere to stay there because there were thousands of refugees. I met Captain Ryder, chief of that sector for UNRRA, and he was very sympathetic. We went round and round Graz to see if there was any place that could accommodate students and found an empty grammar school and moved into it just before Christmas.
Soon after we were moved into ex-German barracks and were able to start studying, but life was hard. The first Christmas we only had 600 calories a day - a bit of soup with cabbage in it. Then a young lady came along - Iris Murdoch, a student herself. She was deputy director in the refugee camp and we became very friendly; she is the godmother to my daughter and we are regularly in touch. When I was in the final year we had to do three weeks' residency in the neuropsychiatric department. The professor had left through denazification and they had recalled Professor De Gasperi who was nearly 90 years of age. He was a contemporary of Adler, Jung and Freud but
215. Bishop Rozman. See pp. 00 and 00. 445 didn't belong to any of these schools, he was independent. He said, "psychiatry has a great future providing you remain a doctor first, then a neuropsychiatrist. You have to examine each patient carefully because he has both a mind and a body, and you have to know which is affecting which". He was an excellent lecturer and I got so involved then that I decided to do psychiatry.
In 1948 we landed in West Wratting, near Cambridge, and again Iris Murdoch was there as a student and was very anxious I should restart my medical studies. She took me to London to meet the Duchess of Atholl. I was very impressed to meet a Duchess for the first time; she spoke very good German as well as French. Of course, I didn't have any English then. She said, "if you go away for a year somewhere to learn English, then we'll be able to get a place for you either at Oxford or Cambridge". But I had come to England as a European Voluntary Worker and there were only two places to go - either the mines or agriculture. I had to get out of these, though, if I was going to continue medicine. One day an ex-Indian Army Sergeant Major came along, looking for someone as a male nurse in the YMCA camp at Gloucester. I went but there was really nothing to do, because they were all healthy people. They spoke every language from Europe except English, so I didn't learn any English and I was getting quite frustrated.
I went into Gloucester one day looking for a Catholic church, hoping that somebody would know some language other than English. There was in fact a young priest who spoke Italian, and I asked him if I could get a job as a nurse in Gloucester. He said, "no, it's impossible", but added, "I know a doctor near Bristol who is in charge of mentally handicapped people; would you like to work with them?" I said of course I would, because I wanted to do psychiatry. One day he collected me, and we went to see Dr Lyons at Hortham Hospital near Bristol, where he was the medical superintendent. This was the longest interview I have had in my career, it took nearly three hours. He wanted to know all about the war and what was happening in Europe; his wife knew a bit of German and the priest translated into Italian. Then he said, "I'll take you, providing you don't wear the clothes you're wearing now" - I was in my best suit - "you are kind to the patients and you learn the English measures of medicine". These were the three 446 conditions, and I was appointed to the highest possible grade, which was nursing assistant Grade I.
I then asked if he could also give a job to my wife. He asked, "does she speak better English than you?" I said she did and he accepted us. When I'd been there over a year, he called me into the office one day and said, "now, you are finished here", and I was worried because I thought I'd got the sack. "No", he said, "you're going to be all right. You've learnt enough about mental handicap, but you'll need a lot of terminology in English and Latin so you must go to a general hospital". I went to Bristol Royal Infirmary where I worked for a year and was rotated through every department, on both day and night duty, so that I had really great experience. I came to think that every medical student should have at least six months working as a nurse. When I became a doctor I was able to ask nurses what I knew they could do, and also criticise what I knew they were doing wrong.
I wrote to all universities in England and Ireland. Bristol were willing to accept me, but I would have to wait two years, because there were so many ex- servicemen who had priority. However I got very friendly with Professor Darling, who was in charge of the Dental Department where I was nursing his patients. He said, "would you like to do dentistry?" and I said I would; I had given up hope of doing medicine. He arranged an interview with the professor from Newcastle, who accepted three years of my medical studies, with some extra time to qualify as a dentist.
Just then a letter arrived from Professor Shea, who was Dean at Galway, and he offered me a place there. This was in January, and he said could I come as soon as possible, so that I wouldn't miss a term. Of course I had to get a visa, and somebody had to give a guarantee for me. My wife and I were able to save some money, and with the help of friends I managed to scrape together enough for the journey and off I went to Ireland. There, the Rector asked me if I had means to support myself; I said yes and I started, but it was very hard work. I remember reading Boyd for the first time, until about 3 o'clock in the morning, and I had only got through about 20 pages. I realised how much English I lacked, so I went to Professor Kennedy and asked if I could do my exams in October, but he said I should do them in June. He 447 told me he'd studied in Heidelberg and agreed that what I didn't know in English I could do in German. We had to do philosophy and psychology, for which we had a Franciscan priest as professor. I went to see him and told him about my difficulties with English. He said, "are you a Latin scholar?" When I said "yes", he told me that what I didn't know in English I could put into Latin, and this would be acceptable. This was another encouragement, but then there came a crisis.
I remember vividly that it was St Patrick's day when I walked along Galway Bay wondering what to do next. My landlady was asking me for money and I owed her two weeks' rent already. I thought the best thing would be to go to the Police and ask them to deport me. I didn't know anybody to borrow money from, and there seemed to be nothing else I could do. The next day, Iris Murdoch sent me ,100, and this saw me through.
At that time, all Galway students had to go for their final year to Dublin. This was really important to broaden our knowledge. There are three medical schools there and one examining body, each with their own professors and hospitals. We Galway people could travel round them, and we found out from the Dublin students which were the best in the various specialities. We made our own timetables, and the standards were very high; the schools were competing and the senior professors had all had experience in Europe. One course in particular I enjoyed very much was obstetrics and gynaecology, and I became very friendly with the Master. He called me in and asked what my plans were when I qualified. I said, "I'm going into psychiatry" and he said, "You're wasting your time". He offered to appoint me Assistant Master, which at that time was a big job. I thanked him, but let him know I would stick to psychiatry.
I had my wife and daughter in Bristol, and had to find a secure job. They advised me to try Ballinasloe, where I obtained a job. It was a 2,000 bed hospital. In 1950 special services for the mentally handicapped were poorly developed. However I've visited and lectured in west of Ireland more recently, and they've developed very good services now.
After some time I felt so tired of books that I wouldn't attempt any other qualifications; it had been such 448 hard work, struggling to get my degree. However a new medical superintendent was appointed, Dr Shea, the brother of the Dean who had accepted me. He said, "look, you have to get your Diploma in Public Medicine or there is no future for you, you will always be junior". So I started again, but the requirement for the DPM then was that either you passed the lot, or if you failed any part you failed it all. It was very hard, and there was no time off and no tutorials; I had to take the exams in my study leave.
After the DPM I thought I was lacking in medical experience and went straight to the Mercers Hospital in Dublin, where I had been a student. They offered me a post as a senior house physician and I spent a very happy year there. After a few months they called me to the board room and I was worried as to whether I had done anything wrong. There was a colonel, ex-British army, who was the chairman, and he said to me they were watching my progress, and would I be happy to accept the post of registrar in charge of the hospital? Nobody was actually running it then. There were students and junior doctors, and the senior staff were coming and going, but there was no organisation.
As registrar I organised both the students and the housemen, so that every consultant had a student and a junior doctor. Unexpectedly I had a call from Dr Lyons in Bristol, who asked me to come and see him. I went, and he said, "if you want to succeed, you must come back to England and prove that you are capable of doing the job". So on 15 May 1956 I came for an interview at Stoke Park. There were five people with the DPM for one JHMO position. After we had been interviewed I was told I had got the job. Just before I left Ballinasloe Dr Shea produced a book and said, "read this, and you will see where you are going; how lucky you are. It is a very famous hospital". It was the first Stoke Park Studies by Professor Berry.
In 1988 Dr Jancar was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. In his citation he was described as: one of the College's most senior and distinguished members in the field of mental handicap. He has been a distinguished member of the College since its inception and has served on all major College 449 Committees. He was Vice-President 1981-1983 and an outstanding Chairman of the Section for the Psychiatry of Mental Handicap when he was a pivotal force both within and without the College in establishing the specialty of the Psychiatry of Mental Handicap on a firm footing at a time when its very survival was being seriously questioned. The four years of his Chairmanship 1979-1983 saw a remarkable turn-around from uncertainty, low morale and apathy to a new found enthusiasm, optimism and improved recruitment with mental handicap once again raised to a high profile.
A much loved figure in Bristol where he was consultant at the Stoke Park Hospital Group for 25 years until his retirement in 1985, Joze, together with his colleagues, built on the long and distinguished tradition which Bristol has in research and service provision in mental handicap, pioneering new approaches and establishing an enviable service with some of the best facilities in the country.
Equally active and influential at national and international level, he was a member of the Mental Health Act Commission from its inception, Chairman of the Mental Health Group of the British Medical Association, Council Member and Chairman of the Research Committee of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Mental Deficiency and a Member of Council of the Psychiatric Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. A researcher himself he has contributed extensively to the literature on mental handicap and is author and co-author of a number of books and chapters and many scientific papers. His book with Dr Eastham on Clinical Pathology in Mental Retardation is a recognised classic which has been translated into Italian.
Joze has been variously honoured in this country and abroad. By any standards his achievements are considerable, but they are made all the more remarkable when one learns that he came to this country in 1948 a young, married, final year medical student with no more than a smattering of English and a very uncertain future.
The Slovenes shared three characteristics: devotion to their faith, a passionate love of their country and a determination that their community should survive and flourish, especially through their children's education. The Bajuk family 450 epitomises all three: the grandfather Marko was the dynamo behind the unique educational achievement in the camps, the father Bozidar the archetypal devoted schoolmaster and the four sons professionals who have embarked on socially useful careers. Three generations of Bajuks were part of the Slovene Saga. It is fitting to close this account with the tribute one of the grandsons recently paid to his father Bozidar Bajuk, who died in Argentina in 19xx at the age of xx:
"You are sorry I'll soon be departing to the Kingdom but I tell you I'm happy! You can't imagine the clarity with which I take leave of life. I understand that all the things I've lost and suffered have led to this one result: I can contemplate the outcome of my life, and I've won! I've saved my family, have four children in professions and eighteen grandchildren all well launched in life, preserved faith and freedom and, above all else, handed on all the values to you -my children. Thanks be to God!"
These were my father's words a few days before he died: Bozidar Bajuk, secondary schoolteacher of Latin and Greek in Slovenia, bricklayer, carpenter, librarian, translator and above all educator, not only of his children but of several generations of young Slovenes in Mendoza216, choir director and, most recently, again teacher of Latin in the Archdiocesan Seminary of Mendoza.
In my earliest memory of him he is sitting in his study in Ljubljana, a large room, or so it seemed to a 5 year old, its only furniture a desk and chair in one corner surrounded by walls lined with books. The library was his world to which he was devoted, and its loss the cause of bitter sorrow.
One Sunday in May 1945, in an atmosphere of uncertainty and prolonged anxiety, we found ourselves on the road to Austria. The war had ended but a new chapter of Slovenia's sad history had begun; communism and the danger it brought. My parents and grandparents decided to leave the soil of their fatherland to save their families and find, who knows, the long-awaited peace and freedom. At the time I didn't realise what our journey meant, a journey lasting days and nights. What is stamped on my memory is my parents' fear,
216. the city in north-western Argentina where many Slovenes settled 451 anxiety and exhaustion, and seeing them cry and pray devoutly, searching counsel and light. The exiles' procession was endless, their fears increased by uncertainty and by the partisans' seizure of power and approach in pursuit of us.
Our crossing of the Alps lasted several days! The picture that remains is of a gigantic encampment of awnings and shacks improvised from every kind of material, carts, horses, stew-pots with meagre food and a chapel in which everyone prayed, imploring the Almighty's protection for their families, their soldiers and the homeland left behind. I remember the bells calling us to Mass and the heartfelt, sad hymns loaded with devoted faith and hope. The Virgin Mary was our hope - the steady companion of our pilgrimage. Weeks later we were transferred to the refugee camp in Lienz, and now started perhaps the happiest days of my childhood. At once all the activities of the new community were organised: the first days at school, the first luncheon and distribution of clothing. Food was sufficient and life seemed normal but our elders were not happy: they longed for news of their families and what was happening at home. Then came confirmation of the hand-over to the communists of our army from Vetrinje and the massacre of 12,000 youths and men in Teharje and Kocevski Rog. Many mourned the feared loss of loved ones, and the Calvary continued.
Then we were in the camp of Spittal, and there I was prepared for my first communion. Once that lovely ceremony was completed they served us children an unforgettable feast; for the first time we received a large piece of white bread, but few had the heart to eat it. I hid mine under my shirt, to share it with my brothers and parents. It was a great day.
But happiness didn't last long. The English camp administration was in communication with the communists, who were circulating lists of the men they wanted, and a few days later armed soldiers and officials appeared in the morning and searched all the huts. I remember the shining boots of an officer who pointed his revolver at my mother and asked where my father was - he was listening from his hiding place above the wooden ceiling of the room. Again we saw our parents weep! The officer repeated his threat next day, and my brother Marko and I threw 452 ourselves against those boots and that officer, trying to drag him to the ground - our first intervention in defence of our family. Thanks to Providence and to brave friends we left the British zone of Austria and after days of uncertainty met up in Salzburg with our father who'd crossed the frontier with his brother independently of the rest of the family group. We then passed a peaceful time in the camp of Asten.
Every so often groups of families and sometimes unmarried sons on their own left the camps for the Americas and Australia in search of a new homeland, of the Promised Land: we all wanted to leave a Europe in convulsions. How can I forget the blackboards which appeared early in the morning with the host countries' details and conditions for aspiring emigrants? In 1946, 1947 and 1948 we saw father return home sad and worried; clearly having four children and being a classics teacher were not qualifications for aspiring emigrants. Our friends went off and we remained, burdened by the fear we'd not be able to leave.
But the day came even for us. The Argentinean Consul looked at uncle, aunt, parents and finally the four children forming a perfect human staircase, and said, "my country needs lots of people, lots of children - there's lots of work to do there!" How happy we were! The next day he escorted us personally to the train which would take us on a thirty-day journey to Genoa, our point of departure. On board, father spent the whole time studying a booklet, "I speak Spanish." We children became aware of what I now know to be the everlasting conflict - between the hope and happiness of arriving in our new homeland and the burden of uncertainty and of the unknown.
In the Immigrants' Hotel the question was: and now where? Someone asked if any corner of the country had mountains. The answer was Mendoza. We didn't know where it was, but we left for there in October 1948. On arrival we all combined in the task of producing mountains of wooden crates for Tunuyan cider, and with our earnings bought our first kerosene heater for cooking, winter overcoats and the first mattress for granny, who was ill with rheumatism and suffered greatly from the hard ground. We then made light folding bedsteads which increased daytime floorspace in the room of 3 x 4 m, all we had for eight people. 453
On the 15th March classes started and for the first time they dressed me in a white dust-coat, the primary school uniform, and the first expressions we were taught were, "good morning" and "I don't understand". At eight one adapts very quickly to new ways of learning and those first years of primary school are a mass of beautiful memories, of happiness and enthusiasm. As children we always felt "different" and I didn't like this at first, but it became more bearable as time passed and in the end it changed into pride and a part of our personality which continued to mature, within the aim of always excelling.
We four brothers followed secondary studies in the Central University College, which had a bias towards the humanities. At the same time, and particularly on Saturdays, we took part in the meetings and cultural activities of the Slovenian Society of Mendoza, where we had contact with the mother tongue and the history, geography and culture of the fatherland. Speaking in Slovene was always encouraged at home. Reading took the place of systematic study of Slovene grammar and made it possible not only to preserve the language but also the love of Slovene culture. Our parents encouraged us to integrate into the institutions of the new environment in which we were growing up, and we took part in the religious institutions, student organisations and all the cultural life of Mendoza.
Each of us chose his own university career with complete freedom. Father divided his day between work as a bricklayer and activities for the Slovene Society, the choir, youth and student organisations, Slovene language classes and the many tasks linked to his love of country. Because of the costs of our studies, ours was the last family that arrived in Mendoza to achieve its own house.
Our life at university progressed. Marcos, the oldest, in the agricultural faculty, where he's continued as its professor of Special Agriculture; Jorge, the third, completed medical studies and works as a clinician and surgeon; while Andres has devoted himself to economics. For seventeen years he's been based on Washington and worked with the BID (the Interamerican Bank of Development) and will move to Paris, where he'll be responsible for the management of the 454 countries which are members of the Bank.
My life steered itself in the direction of architecture. My first commission was the family home, the joint efforts of all the brothers enabling us already during our university studies to acquire the site and with official finances build "the house". In this way we could recognise the sacrifices our parents made for so many years on our behalf. The vital cycle of our family progressed, and the new house witnessed the creation of four new hearths and four new families; while our parents looked with pride from their own new hearth and revived library on the growth of their offshoots.
All my life I saw how my parents confronted every job - including physical work which was totally opposed to their natural bent - with the same optimism and cheerfulness. Something always impelled them, an ultimate aim gave them the courage to achieve their goals. What drove them was a deep love for their children and their country and a rock-hard faith in the Lord and total submission to His will. They were devoted to the Virgin Mary, Mother of the redeemed and Protectress of the sufferers. When father died in 1989, mother told us how he always prayed that the Virgin should guide and accompany him, also at the time of his death. He died on the first Saturday of December, the day dedicated to the devotion of the Virgin which both followed all their lives.
This account is not simply a succession of memories but has another contribution to make, a deep and heartfelt tribute of gratitude to all those who worked together for the success of this adventure: my parents, bold friends and the international and religious organisations who knew how to listen and respond to this generation's appeal for help. The richness of so many experiences march in review before my mind and I've an ever clearer feeling of the important influence they have on my life today. I feel the wish to give, to my family and to society as a whole, the great wealth I've received. Above all, to achieve good architecture for those most in need of it, is what I find most satisfying. I'm happy to be sharing with my wife and our six children the commitment of life in this Argentina of today and the challenge of the search for freedom in the new Slovenia. This is my time of sowing!
455 Just as three of the Kremzars' five children, all born in Argentina, have returned to Europe, accompanying their Sloveno- Argentinean husbands to settle in Trieste or back in Slovenia, or in the case of the son continuing his studies in Austria; in the same way a grandson of the great Director Marko Bajuk has returned to Ljubljana to pursue a successful career as a singer, together with his Slovene wife, equally busy as a psychologist. Thus two families, which played prominent roles in Austria and in Argentina, have reestablished personal links with the home country and are contributing to the ever increasing two-way traffic within the modest Slovene world community.
456