S L O V E N I a N P H O E N
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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.