LJUBLJANA

This song  I first heard in the winter of 1941 when Ljubljana was occupied by the Italians. Because of the curfew, introduced by the occupational  authorities, we were sitting at home, playing cards  late into the night, waiting for the national resistance radio broadcast  to begin. This song was the starting signal!

In April 1941 my family left Novi Sad. My parents took my brother Oto and me  by train from Petrovaradin on the way to Maribor, because my father came  from that area. On the way, we were detoured to Zemun, a suburb of Belgrade , just across  the river Danube. There,  waiting for the train to Zagreb, we had a chance to observe what German air force did to the city. The ruins were still smoking, the city appeared devastated. It was an introduction to what was to follow in the next few years. 

About half way between Belgrade and Zagreb the train stopped because of an overpass. which was destroyed by the Germans. We had to get of and carry our luggage across a high embankment to the other side where another train was waiting.  I remember having to carry a heavy suitcase. After that we traveled without incidents to Maribor, then already called Marburg by the  German occupational forces. They lost no time in transforming Maribor into a German city.  My parents found a small apartment, nice and bright and clean. My brother Oto and I decided to go higher north, to the vineyard country to visit the eldest brother Edo, a teacher in a small village Mala Nedelja. The bus, still  operating regularly, dropped us off at the side of the road which lead  to the top of the hill to   Mala Nedelja.  When we got there we realized that the German  SA police were there before us. They were just loading Edo, his wife Zlatka and their  three months old baby, along with Zlatka's parents, onto  a truck. Oto and I prudently did not go close, it would not be safe  to be identified with Edo at that moment.  That night we slept in the village at the house of a member of the Royal Yugoslav parliament who was still in Belgrade. We left Mala Nedelja the next morning and returned by bus to Maribor. On the bus I met a young man who told me that in Ljubljana, under the Italian occupation, all schools are still open and working normally.  That is how I made a decision to leave for Ljubljana. The Germans have not yet had a  full grip on the country, recently occupied, so I planned to go  by train without having to worry to be turned back by the German Police. My father took me to the train station where we parted. That  was the last time I saw him. I arrived safely  to Ljubljana, then already a part of the Italian Kingdom as 'Provincia di Lubiana'.  

In Ljubljana I went to my aunt Mimi, she had an apartment on the  second floor of a building on Miklosiceva 4 . She ran  a boarding house, and some well known citizens of Ljubljana  were regular guests in her dining room, mostly for lunch, some also for supper. Her sister, my aunt Milka was also taking her meals there. There was no room for me there .  The spare room, next to the kitchen, was already occupied by another refugee, a teacher by the name of  Mr. Babich.  I was 'billeted'  to my cousin Milena and her husband Stane Blokar  on Podmilscakova 49. In that same  house lived a well known Slovenian painter Jama.  Blokars also had a roomer  already, a student of civil engineering by the name of Stane Janezic. I was delegated to share  the room with Janezic. It was a large bright room, and it was nice to have someone to talk to.

The day after my arrival  to Ljubljana I visited the High School in the district of Bezigrad , close to the Blokar's apartment. With  my credentials from the high school in Novi Sad, I was accepted in the last year of the high school program (gimnazija). This  was around May 10, 1941. I did not loose much time since my departure from Novi Sad.  The beginning of life in a new school, with new friends, in a  new environment was a difficult change. The language of instructions was Slovenian, for me a new experience since I never attended high school in the Slovenian language before.  The teachers received all of us refugees with kindness.  There were several other students in the class  from the parts of Slovenia occupied by Germany. On June 28 we graduated from high school without having to go through the customary written senior matriculation exams.  Because of the irregular situation, our last year of high school certificate was valid as our graduation diploma.  In the picture above we are standing in front of our school, with our class professor and all my friends. Many of them gave their lives during the struggle of 'our finest days'. There are also my good friends Marjan Bacnik and Marko Kadunc, both killed by the partisans. 

In the summer of 1941, following my graduation,  I visited  my brother Ferdo and his wife Emica.  They were teachers in a small village Duga Resa in Srbska Krajina, Croatia. On my return to Ljubljana I found my brother Oto there, he escaped from Maribor , still under German occupation. In the photograph, taken on Christmas, 1941, my brother Oto and I are walking past the  Italian High Command on Kongresni Trg in Ljubljana.  Another important event of the summer, my cousin Milena Blokar had a baby, baptized Ana. Also that summer  I went with my two brothers,  Edo (who has in the meantime  escaped  with his family from Zagreb, on the way to Srbia where they were to be exiled the previous April by the Germans) and Oto and two other refugees to a part of Slovenia called Bela Krajina. There we cut wood and prepared piles for 'cooking' charcoal. We stayed in a barn previously inhabited by some  Italian soldiers. The place was thick with flees. This  was a rather 'different' experience. At the end of summer we returned to Ljubljana.  

In September I enrolled in the first year of mechanical engineering at the University of Ljubljana. Some lectures  started early in the morning, and on many dark winter mornings  I walked  from Bezigrad, under the Roman Wall  (excavated  remains of a wall built at the time when Ljubljana was a Roman trading post called Emona) along the city streets to the Mechanical Engineering building.  Those days were almost normal. We were taking some subjects at our M.E. building, others in the main university 'palace' on Kongresni Trg. There we 'suffered' through mathematics and physics. Two hardest subjects.  In attendance were all first year engineering students there was no room for all of us to sit.  On one occasion a civil engineering  girl came and set on my knees, hoping that I would give her the seat  Than found an other place.  The Mathematics classes with professor Plemelj stabilized by having a regular attendance, however, the Physics given by a well known professor Peterlin, became very small and only the most dedicated and gifted students remained. I was not in that class of students. How very silly of me! It would help me endlessly in later years. The engineering classes like Technology, Descriptive Geometry, Design,  were given in the mechanical engineering building. Perhaps the oldest and most unimpressive building on the campus. In the same building we also took the subject the First Aid, given by a female medical doctor.  That was the first year of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ljubljana.

Those first months of Italian occupation the life in Ljubljana was in a way normal. However, the studies at the university were clouded by appearance of the communist led Liberation Front (OF). As the Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the communist switched from anti imperialist propaganda to anti fascist rhetoric in support of the Soviets. Our to a degree peaceful coexistence with the Italian occupational forces has ended. As the Liberation Front became stronger The Italians reacted by clamping down on our freedom of movement which played in hands of communists and Ljubljana became split. Their propaganda was effective, we started fighting each other. The Revolution was born. At a meeting at the Faculty of Engineering with Dean Vidmar present, we had open disagreement between the communist led Liberation Front and those of us supporting the forces of general Draza Mihajlovic. A communist led revolution that claimed thousands of innocent lives.

During the relatively peaceful 1941 autumn weeks we enjoyed going to opera, theater, movies, Sunday mornings to our customary promenade. Every Sunday at about 11 AM young people of Ljubljana came to walk along the King Alexander street and across the railway tracks to Tivoli park boulevard. Young ladies and young men walked up and down this rout, talking, discussing and glancing at those they liked. In the picture above one Sunday morning in the autumn 1941 on the promenade on the Tivoli boulevard walking with  good friends. From the left: Marko Kadunc, Bozo Golob, Stanko Kos, Marjan Bacnik, Gala and Rozina. The revolution gradually ended the romantic life of the young. This became a lost generation of unfulfilled dreams and youth. For all this we blame the communist led Liberation Front.  Many people were killed on both sides of the revolution, for no lasting reasons.