It is likely that a chapel was erected in Grčarice (Masern) soon after the settlers arrived in the middle of the 14th century. Being God fearing and with much of their lives revolving around their religion, constructing a place of worship, which also doubled as a meeting place, would have been a high priority. Encouragement and assistance for this would have come from the regional parish in Ribnica (Reiffnitz), or from Count Ortenburg, or both.

The villagers, including the Slovene subjects of the Count living in the hamlet, dedicated the chapel to patron saints Primus and Felician. The two saints were brothers, born in the 3rd century and living in Rome. They had converted to Christianity for which they were beheaded in 305 AD, during the persecution of Christians by Emperor Diocletian. Already in 1689 Valvasor identifies the brothers as the patron saints of Masern, which proves that the chapel was erected years before that.

But even before Valvasor identifies the patrons, the chapel had a small bell which served the village for nearly seventy years. Leopold Raktelj, a priest of the diocese and the chronicler of Grčarice, wrote in the periodical Slovenec in 1936 that the bell was one of the oldest in Carniola-Kranjska. He writes that the inscription on the bell was: “IESU CHRISTE FILI DEI VIVI MISERERE NOBIS. AMEN. Aº MDCXXI”, fixing the year of its casting at 1621.

Raktelj also states that in 1895 there were two other bells in the tower, each of them larger than their little brother born 274 years before. All three were installed in the newly built bell tower when it, as part of the overall church enlargement, was completed in 1845. The enlargement was possible when the cemetery surrounding the church was moved to the open space along the road to Göttenitz.  The existing cemetery had become too small to accommodate the dead from the pox in 1836. The freed up space not only allowed the elongation of the church but also significantly enlarged the village square.

The two larger bells were embossed with a picture of the garlanded St. Joseph and of a cross as well as the inscription “OPUS JOSEPHI REISS NOMINE HAEREDUM VINCENTII SAMASSA ANNO 1816”.

According to the chronicler, a new priest (Leopold Raktelj) took up his posting in Masern on December 2, 1895 and moved into the recently refurbished parsonage behind the church. There was a formal installation event on December 17, 1895 and high religious and public officials came to the village for the event.  The new priest was initiated with great pomp and there were spirited celebrations afterwards. And when the guests were leaving, the bells were rung so hard that the larger of the two developed a crack. This was perceived as a bad omen, especially since the other bell already had a crack. But it was the small bell that survived.

The villagers, eager to correct the situation, started negotiations with a caster to have him melt down the damaged bells and use the metal as partial payment for their replacements. The 3,000 Florin for the new bells were to be borrowed from the Kranjska hranilnica, the regional savings bank of Krain. Already on January 10, 1896, the two damaged bells were lowered to the ground. But the bell caster Samassa insisted on advance payment which, after repeated pleas from the villagers, was finally approved by the bank.

The new bells arrived in Ribnica on Good Friday April 3, 1896.  The following morning, on Easter Saturday after Mass, a group of villagers went to fetch them from the railroad station. When the approach of wagons with the bells was announced by blasts from the steam whistle at the sawmill complex in Jelendol, a procession of all the villagers, with the priest at its head went out to meet them. “At four in the afternoon, the bells were installed and were pealing a joyous alleluia.  Young and old cried aloud. All night long were they rung; the celebrations ending at five o’clock in the morning”. “Resurrection!” the chronicler exclaims.

Twenty years later during WWI, the two new bells were requisitioned for the war effort to be melted down for ammunition. Again, the little bell of AD 1621 had to re-assume its former, centuries long tasks, duties which it had turned over to its larger brothers a mere two decades ago. But the war not only claimed two bells; it also took 64 able men of the village of which eleven never returned.

The wooden roof of the bell tower was replaced with tile in 1911; the roof of the church in 1921. And in 1923 the village purchased three new bells which were dedicated on October 26, 1923.
 
The little bell was retired after the three new bells were installed in 1923. It was relegated to passivity on a stand in a corner of the bell chamber in the tower next to the newcomers to again become a silent participant and a reminder of ancient days. To be kept in reserve, just in case. Many times I swung its clapper against the rim to hear the mellow sound which had so nobly served the villagers of Masern during the many centuries of our past.

The larger newcomers, each of a different size, were purchased in part by the villagers who for years had been collecting money for the bell and clock fund. A large part of the money had been coming from the villagers who had left for America. Seed money for the purchase had been provided by the parishes of Dolenja Vas and Ribnica. The new bells served the now much larger congregation by sounding the time of day, delivering unique messages heard in the remotest part of the village or ringing in concert on special events and joyous occasions.

On July 8, 1925, the clock in the tower again started telling time after not doing so since the new bells were installed. Two workers from Osilnica adapted the mechanism to function with the new bells for which they were paid 1,500 Dinar.  And at 7 o’clock in the evening of January 1, 1926, a moderate earth quake shook the village and produced several cracks in the walls of the church and the parsonage. There was no other reported damage in the village.

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The ultimate fate of the ancient small bell and its three newer brothers is tied to the battle in the village between the “Plava Garda” and the Partisans starting on September 8, 1943. This was the last stand of the Garda, also known as Četniks, adherents of Yugoslav royalists under General Mihailović. The Garda, surrounded in the village, kept fighting for 3 days until their ammunition ran out and they were forced to surrender.

(Another faction, the “Bela Garda”, Slovene Catholic nationalists opposing Tito, was destroyed a few days thereafter by the Partisans in a major battle at the fortress of Turjak, 10 miles north-west of Ribnica on 13 September 1943. Remnants of both factions later merged into the Slovene anti-Communists known as the Domobranci who pledged allegiance to the Nazi occupier with lethal consequences to themselves after the end of WWII).
 
During the battle, the partisans used howitzers to silence the machine guns of the “Plava Garda” firing at them through the openings in the bell tower. The bombardment set the roof of the church, the wood inside the masonry walls of the tower and the steeple on fire. The heavy wooden beams, on to which the swinging mechanism of the three bells was mounted, were last to give way and the bells came crashing down.

On one of my returns to Grčarice, Norbert, the son of Anton Tscherne the former Auersperg game warden, talked about the battle which started in the afternoon of September 8. In 1941, Anton had decided not to resettle and remained in the village.

When the shooting started, Anton moved bed mattresses against windows to stop stray bullets from entering and made the family sleep on the floor until the fighting was over. And yes, the precaution was warranted as became obvious from several windowpanes that were shattered in the following days.

The church caught fire on the first night of the battle. The Tscherne family could not see the flames, their house being at the far end of the village, but the burning enveloped the sky in a brilliant glow that lasted deep into the night.
 
But most memorable to Norbert was the sound of the bells landing on the stone floor and on top of each other after their respective support beams weakened and at intervals let go of their load. The sounds, louder than ever before, were strange and different, befitting a death-knell, but this time a knell for themselves.  Strange and different, but by then their individual tone had already changed from the familiar ring to an unfamiliar groan, the heated metal having robbed them of their former voice.

The battle lasted for three days and nights. And when the hoped-for relief did not appear, the tired survivors of the “Plava Garda” surrendered to the Partisans and an uncertain fate. After surrender to the NOV (National Liberation Front), a court-martial in Kočevje condemned most of the 97 survivors to death and after the trial they were returned to the parsonage in Masern in the middle of October 1943. On October 24, twenty three of them were executed and buried in the forest off the road toward Glažuta. 43

The others were executed and buried in Jelendol, the saw mill complex two kilometers away on the road to Dolenja Vas. The bodies buried in Jelendol were exhumed in the 1980's and the Register of Deaths in the parish church of Dolenja Vas records each of them by a number and the remark, "death due to a shot in the back of the head".

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For six years until 1949, the bells had been lying where they fell. That year, the still standing walls of the church and the bell tower were taken down, removed and the grounds leveled and seeded. At the beginning of the clean up, all three were taken to Schaffer’s barn for storage.

During the electrification of Grčarice in 1953-54, the new inhabitants of what had become a workers’ village decided to contribute some of their labor to the communal good. To build a new church was, in those postwar days, out of the question. Instead, the workers’ council decided to sell the bells and with the proceeds purchase the wire needed to bring electricity from the transformer station in Jelendol to the village.

The bells were offered to the municipal organization Dinos in Kočevje and when a few days later it sent an oxcart to pick them up, Dinos paid on the spot. And shortly thereafter, the two damaged bells were broken up at the factory and the pieces melted down.

The entire transaction was done without the knowledge and permission of the parish office in Dolenja Vas which took the matter to the District Court. The court decided that the still intact bell weighing 258 kilo be turned over to its rightful owner, the Dolenja Vas parish. It was kept there for many years but ultimately disappeared without a trace. The court also ruled that the funds from the other two could, as was planned, be applied to purchasing the wire for the transmission line to bring power to Masern. Details of the proceedings are in the District Court of Novo Mesto under number GZ 287/54-3, dated 15 October 1954. 44
  
Whatever happened to the small ancient bell remains a mystery. It simply disappeared.
 
- - - -

During the years the bells hung on the beams up high, they functioned as the heartbeat of the village and guided its daily rhythm. But the brain behind it was the gigantic clock, mounted on a platform on the level just below that of the bells.
 
Narrow steps, starting at the choir level, zigzagging upward on one of the four walls of the tower, reached the clock platform as their first stop. One more set of steps led to the bell chamber, the level from which the doomed Plava Garda fired their machine guns in September 1943. The steps to the first platform were climbed by the sexton once every week to rewind the clock. He allowed me to come along and watch him turn the cranks, being still too small to help him with this chore.
 
The mechanism, a gigantic grandfather clock really, was powered by two huge stone weights, each hanging from a pulley wheel for the rope whose one end was fixed to the platform. The other end was tied to a drum in the mechanism which was cranked to raise the weights, thus winding up the clock. One of the weights ran the time mechanism while the other much bigger stone powered two heavy hammers, one to strike the big bell with the hour, the other to hit the middle bell with the quarter.

It took a week for the weights to descend the tower before they had to be rewound again. But the clock never stopped, its long pendulum, swinging in the space of the tower, never taking a rest. The weekly rewind was done by the sexton before dusk and before he had rung the middle bell reminding the villagers to come to evening prayers.

After I became an altar boy I was allowed to climb the ladders on my own to watch this array of toothed wheels, levers, gears, rods, pulleys and ropes perform their timely spectacle. The most fascinating of these was at noon when the escape mechanism started a whirring of wheels and movements of levers that produced the four strikes of the fourth quarter on the middle bell, followed by twelve more on the big bell for the hour of noon. While this was happening, the big stone descended a sizable distance away from his smaller brother, which always caught up during the next twelve hours.

Unperturbed by this frenzy, the pendulum worked the escape mechanism, gearing, rods and finally the two arms of  the clock face on each of four sides of the tower. Rods carried the hours and minutes from the mechanism through the bell level up to a gear box and from there horizontally to each clock face above the large openings in the tower walls. And through these openings flowed the sound of time to the remotest fields and forests beyond the village center, especially to places from which any one of the four faces of the clock could not be seen.

While the chiming of the two bells telling time was heard throughout day and night, each of the three had their individual voice according to a fixed protocol established by the parish.

- - - -

Apart from announcing time, the bells could be rung from the small entry space in the base of the tower just behind the portals. From there, the ropes reached the bells through holes in the vaulted ceiling of the tower base. Normally the ropes were hung on hooks on the wall to keep them out of the way of churchgoers passing through. But on Sundays the bells were rung from the choir level above to keep the entry to the church clear.

All three bells, Big, Medium and Small were rung in unison for two minutes just before morning Mass. But 30 minutes before that, two bells were rung briefly for several minutes to remind the faithful to get ready for church. Medium and Small were rung on weekdays, but Medium and Big on Sundays, conveying a greater duty with their bigger sounds.

Each of the three, if rung individually, also conveyed special messages on extraordinary occasions.

To the commanding voice of the Big bell had been assigned the job of sounding the fire alarm and requesting the immediate gathering of the firemen at the firehouse. I remember hearing it in 1938 when the Tscherne barn was struck by lightning. There had been the fires in ‘34 and ‘36 but they had started during the night when I was asleep. But I heard it several times when Karl Schaffer, the fire chief decided on a dry run. Being so close to the church and the firehouse just across the square, I got there with the first of his men and watched the others as they came running, some out of breath, from all parts of the village.

To let the village know that this was a dry run only, Medium was rung after all the firemen arrived at the firehouse. This procedure superseded a prior one in which Medium was rung, announcing the “all clear” as soon as some, if not all, firemen arrived. This had given those who suspected a false alarm time to wait and see. But there were a few times when Medium was sounded immediately after Big stopped when it became obvious Schaffer was drunk and had decided to have a dry run and ring the Big bell himself.
 
While Big sounded the alarm and Medium announced the all clear, Small was the messenger of sad news, be it at any time of day or night. Single strokes, expertly executed by the ringer pulling the rope in a way so that the clapper hit only one rim of the bell at “paused” intervals, announced that the priest was on the way with the Host to a dying villager to hear the final confession and administer last rites. All who heard, of course knew who the dying person was, given the size of the village and its ability to rapidly spread either news or gossip. And as the priest with the host walked by, those meeting him along the way dropped to their knees, crossed themselves and bowed their heads.

After that, the people were expecting the next, often inevitable follow-on sound, again from the Small bell. If the ringing was briefly stopped twice, the deceased was a man. If there was only one interruption the deceased was a woman.  Thereafter, Medium and Small were rung for one minute three times a day each day until the body was buried. They were rung at eight in the morning, at noon and at four in the afternoon, the sequence starting after the interrupted ringing of Small had announced the death of the villager.
  
After the mid morning Requiem Mass, the “paused” tolling of Small was also the final accompaniment in the procession to the cemetery. The procession was led by the sexton Michitsch carrying high the black cross with white skull and crossbones, his clothing hidden by a white knee length smock embroidered with lace at the bottom, at the end of sleeves and the collar. Behind him the altar boy similarly dressed, slowly swinging the chain of the incense vessel to keep the embers glowing and produce the incense cloud. (When I was the altar boy, I did this).  Following was the reverend Jože Rozman, (1934-39) reading aloud from his breviary. He was also in a similar smock, but his head was covered with the black biretta of the Catholic priest.

The cart with the coffin was drawn and pushed by the bearers, some of them having dug the grave on previous days. While digging, they were surrounded by us children and some adults watching the bones of the prior occupant appear on the heap of earth alongside the grave.

Behind the cart walked the family and behind them, relatives and villagers who came along for the final goodbye. Some also came in anticipation of the wake to follow, usually at the Kren inn, it being the nearest to the cemetery. There was the likelihood of sausage, ham and cider or even wine, or perhaps even a few jiggers of slivovitz; our way to celebrate the passing of a villager.

- - - -

I remember several times when the interrupted ringing of the small bell started yet another event lasting several days. Among them are three that I recall particularly well.
  
The first of these, in 1939, was the passing of Grandma Sturm who lived by herself in number 22 in the eastern part of the village. She had one son who had left her years ago for a city in Austria where he married and had a son and daughter. The old lady had been in failing health and had notified her son and he came, but only after having been notified of his mother’s death. The burial, however, could not be delayed until he and his wife arrived, so the funeral preparations were assumed by neighbors, the old lady not having nearby family for this last act. The preparations included the making of the coffin, a job always given to Father by default, he being the only person in the village with a shop and tools needed for this task.

The initial part in this was the measuring of the body. This time I kept insisting that he take me along to which he finally, if reluctantly, agreed after consulting with Mother.  She had no doubts saying that it was time for this eight-year old to see a dead body at close range. “Besides, he knew her well when she was alive, had she not talked to him when he passed by her house and given him candy! She is no different now except that she is dead”.
 
The body was already laid out in the center of the large living room. They had dressed her in black and placed her on the bier, a platform of planks resting on two saw-horses. She was to lie there until put into the coffin when it was brought to the house. Until then and until the morning of the funeral, the body was watched over continuously by villagers who came to pay their last respects. After kneeling and bowing their heads toward the body and mouthing a prayer, they sat on benches or chairs at a respectful distance, having jiggers of slivovitz. Many stayed until the empty bottle was no longer replaced with a full one. But some alternated in staying through the night, a custom surely as old as the village itself.

As instructed by Father on the way to the Sturm house, I took the end of the unfolded carpenter rule to the toes of the body and held it there until he noted the length at the top of the head. After a little chat with those present and a few jiggers of slivovitz, we left. He had work to do and work quickly to have the coffin ready in time.

The needed materials and supplies were kept in his shop.  Air dried pine planks from the village sawmill, rolls of strong black paper, boss-relieved with angels sprouting wings.  Nails, screws and handles for the bearers.  All within reach.

He made a form-fitting coffin, the sides wider at shoulder height but from there tapering toward head and foot. Top and bottom flat, the edges fitting the six cornered shape. All outside surfaces, except the bottom were covered with the embossed black crepe paper folded over the edges and tacked to the boards with decorative nails. The inside was lined in white cloth.  I helped him with most of the tasks, finding for him the hardware or tools he needed next; holding the boards while he was cutting, planing or nailing, handing him the next nail from the bucket. When all was done, I was sent to the Sturm house to say that the coffin was ready. And when they brought it to the house, the body fit.  How he got paid for this or any other coffin I do not remember. Mostly, it was labor in kind for work on his farm.

There was the time in 1936 when the deceased was Hedwig Rosa, the one year old daughter of Franz Jaklitsch, for whom the coffin had to be white. Lacking the embossed crepe paper in white, Yiorgo pulled us to a store in Ribnica to get some. And as was usual, we stopped at Grandma Ilc for a chat, a quarter liter of wine for Father, a soft drink for me and a bit of hay for the horse.

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The second death, in 1940, was that of Michaela Primosch, the second wife of Josef Primosch living in number 16, diagonally across the cistern from our house.  Joseph’s first wife had died some years ago and he found the younger woman in another village deeper in the forest. It was a loveless and unhappy marriage, as was apparent from the violent arguments that drifted across the cistern bowl and through our kitchen window.
 
Josef was one of our two musicians, the other being Anton Tscherne living at the opposite and far end of the village. Both played the accordion at dances held at the Jaklitsch or Kren tavern with Josef being the preferred musician. Their music, in spite of some discordant notes, provided the rhythm which overheated the spinning couples and fired the merriment of others not already inflamed by wine.  They played not only during the warm summer months as part of village festivals such as Easter, Ascension or Patrons Day when dance platforms were erected in the courtyard of the inns but also on cooler days when the dancing was done indoors in the large public room of either place. No dances were held at the Tschinkel tavern; the proprietors, Rudy and his aging mother no longer up to the hassle ever since the father and husband had died some years ago.

Josef had three sons, the youngest at fourteen, the other two a few years older.  All three practiced on their father’s instrument hoping to become as proficient as he was. In good weather, after the last chores of the day, they practiced outside on the bench next to the front door. Their tunes, drifting across the village square on cooling summer evenings were always welcomed by tired villagers, resting on benches lining the wall to either side of the front door. But especially welcome were the tunes played by the father.

One day the loud voices from the Primosch house across the cistern turned unfamiliar and alarming which made me run there to see the reason for the change.  I was one of the first to arrive and from the bottom of the stairs to the attic I saw the three sons lifting their 40 year old dead step-mother out of the noose of the rope. Village gossip had it, according to Mother later on, that the poor woman was driven to madness by her husband and his sons. “This had been apparent in her confused speech and flashing eyes”. These days, a more likely diagnosis would be clinical depression.

This time, the length of the coffin was provided to Father who made only a simple box, the raw cut of its boards not hidden by black crepe with embossed winged angels. There was minimal attendance at the vigil and there was no Requiem Mass and the usual procession from the church to the final resting place. The four men took the coffin there directly from their house and buried it in a grave dug in the unconsecrated corner of the cemetery. She had not died in grace.
 
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The third burial was on April 19, 1941. It was that of Hans Michitsch, at twenty seven the younger of two sons of the sexton, killed in the days following the invasion of Yugoslavia by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on April 6, 1941. All fighting was already over on April 14, the armistice signed on April 17 to become effective the following day. However, the news had not reached all Yugoslav units and Hans was intercepted on the way back to Masern on April 16. Riding a horse he tried to evade one such unit, but they judged him to be a deserter and shot him dead.

A Slovene from Rakitnica brought the news and Franz Jaklitsch, as head of Sturm 13 the new village chief of Masern, sent a group of his men to bring the bloated body back to the village. It was placed into the coffin on a bier of sawhorses in the firehouse, since the smell was already too strong for the house in which he was born. Father had been instructed to make a simple box only, the planks unadorned with any religious symbols. It was covered instead with the red swastika flag of the Third Reich and men of the Jaklitsch militia stood continuous guard until the day of the burial. According to Jaklitsch: “Hans was a hero because he was rushing back to join his militia in defending our German-friendly Masern from being ravished by the retreating cowardly Serbs”. He was now free to say this openly, there no longer being a State from which he had to hide his subversive political activity which included the conversion of the Schaffer fire brigade into a village militia called the Sturm.
 
Given the tense days of April 1941 and prior months and years of progressively increasing hostility between the Reich-friendly Gottscheer and the Slavs, the possibility of a raid from the surrounding Slovene was promoted as real and the label of “Hero” was willingly accepted. But not by the Reverend Josef Gliebe, parish priest of neighboring Gotenica (Göttenitz), a vocal critic of the polarization and the young propagandists that were causing it. And so, the burial of Hans Michitsch became a face-off between Gliebe the cleric and Sturmführer Jaklitsch, our new village chief.

Since the Reverend Rozman left in 1939, Father Gliebe, like so many other priests from Göttenitz in the past, tended to the spiritual needs of the village. He came on Sundays to hear confessions and after that hold Mass, assisted by the sexton and myself as the altar boy. He also came a few days during the week to give religious instructions and some lessons at the school house after our teacher Aloizij Dežman, as an undesirable Slovene, was encouraged to leave the village in January 1941. Gliebe and Father were good friends and he often stopped at our house before walking home to Gotenica, his own parish.

The parents of Hans Michitsch, both deeply religious, particularly the father who as sexton of the church had served three priests over two decades, were very unhappy that instead of the cross, a swastika flag covered the coffin of their son.  And they were incensed over the insistence by Jaklitsch that the customary funeral service be subordinated to a military one, with the swastika flag replacing the cross all the way from the firehouse to the cemetery including the requiem Mass in the church. An honor guard, dressed in Sturm trooper uniforms with swastika armbands was to accompany the coffin all along, including standing at attention alongside the casket during Mass.

The reverend Gliebe would have none of it. Either a traditional funeral or one without him!  He would not be persuaded to change his mind.

This time Jaklitsch lost.  He was not yet certain of his newfound power, so soon after the collapse of the hated Slavic State; the liberators, the victorious and kindred Germans having not yet arrived. He surrendered to the pressure of Gliebe, the sexton, my father and others and agreed to let his un-uniformed men carry and accompany the coffin, the raw of its boards hidden by a cross embroidered sheet. And on April 19, Gliebe held the requiem Mass, assisted by me as the altar boy and the sexton, his tears wetting the stone step to the altar on which both of us were kneeling. It ended when he and I as the chorus, provided the final ‘Amen’ to the priest’s ‘Requiescat in pace’.

On the way to the cemetery after Mass and to the “paced peal” of the small bell, the black cross with the skull and crossbones was carried high up front, but this time by someone other than the sexton who assisted his wife as they walked behind the coffin carried on shoulders by friends of the deceased.  As insisted on by Gliebe: not in uniform. At the gravesite, apart from the words of the priest, there were no speeches and no “Sieg Heil’ salutes as Jaklitsch had demanded and after the last shovelful of earth was dropped by those nearest to the family and the deceased, most ignored the invitation to come to his inn and went to the house of the sexton instead.

- - - -

Gliebe had won this round, but it was his last. His victory over Jaklitsch made him into a bitter enemy of the new order, the young Gottscheer trained by the Reich to be devoted adherents of National-Socialism. These young fanatics, who in January 1938 replaced the much older leadership with a Catholic priest as its head, saw in this defiance of Gliebe an opportunity to attack the Gottscheer clergy, the majority of which was hostile to their cause. This clergy, with its centuries-long influence in the community, foresaw in this new ideology the destruction of their own. This was made evident to them by the new leaders who, freed from the prior restraint by a hostile State, announced in the weekly Gottscheer Zeitung, its front page now emboldened with a swastika: “Catholicism is treated in the inner leadership circle as a ‘universalistic vision of the world’ which must be exterminated.” [Die Umsiedlung, pg.86].

But, in spite of Gliebe’s words, Hans Michitsch did not ‘rest in peace’. In this clash of conflicting ideologies, Franz Jaklitsch had the final word.

Jaklitsch as Sturmführer of the Masern militia (now called Sturm 13), insisted that the temporary simple cross bearing the name and dates of the deceased be replaced by a massive free form stone into which was inserted a marble plate engraved with a swastika. This instead of the planned slab engraved with a cross, the customary memorial at the head of graves of each family that had a plot in the cemetery. Nevertheless, the stone was installed after a few months by men of the militia over considerable opposition from the parents, many of the villagers and the Reverend Gliebe, all to no avail.

And on August 3, 1941 as part of a huge rally, 800 uniformed, swastika arm-banded men and women from Masern and neighboring villages assembled in the village square and marched to the cemetery to formally dedicate the stone, representing the victory of the new ideology over the old. The 800 included the similarly uniformed youth, the Gottschee version of Germany’s Hitler Youth of which I was now a part.  But much more on that later on.

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The bells did more than announce time and tragedy. They were rung at christenings, weddings, on high holidays during processions and other joyous occasions individually or together in various combinations of tonal mix and durations fitting the occasion. But on Thursday before Easter they became silent; a sense of quiet anticipation permeating the village.  The hammers of the clock were disengaged from the mechanism and the ropes pulled up high - out of reach of an intoxicated Schaffer, just in case.

Their place was taken by the “Ratch”, a mechanism with a ratchet wheel which, when cranked, produced an ugly clapping sound heard throughout the village. It was up there with the bells and operated by the sexton when the bells “were away” but only to call the believers to morning Mass or evensong at the end of the day.

But at nine thirty on the morning of Easter Sunday, the bells resumed in concert and with renewed vigor rang out the usual reminder to get ready for Mass, this time High Mass at ten.
 
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The significant event of Easter Sunday was the Resurrection procession interrupting High Mass before Holy Communion.

Preparations for this started in the morning of Saturday and were directed by the sexton and the fire chief. The chief’s biggest task was to get the route of the procession within the village lined with young birches cut in the forest and dragged into the village. There they were re-erected by placing the stems into holes made with crowbars. At each of the two entries to the village, two tall birches were tied at the top to form an arch signifying the village gate. Schaffer saw to it that this was done properly by some of his firemen.  He also saw to it that their brass helmets and his bugles were polished and all uniforms in decent condition.  And since they were to lead the procession, he gave them a drill just to make sure they understood his commands. All this was joyous fun for us youngsters watching the proceedings and sometimes getting in the way.
 
Other firemen were assigned to the sexton who had them make ready all other items needed during the procession.

Special attention was given to the baldachin, the canopy we called the “Himmel” (heaven) that was carried above the priest by poles during the procession. It was a rectangular piece of fabric measuring about two by three meters, stretched on to a frame into which, at each corner, was inserted the spiked carrying pole. The underside of the fabric was colorfully embroidered with holy figures and multitudes of angels looking down on the priest underneath. To each of the four sides was attached an eight inch wide red velvet panel, trimmed with a red velvet rope from which were hanging closely spaced swaying tassels.
 
Under this canopy the priest was to walk in the procession holding up the monstrance inside which rested, on a golden sliver of a moon, the holy Host. He held it high for all to see, including those watching from behind the birches. All were, however, expected to bow or drop to their knees and cross themselves as the Host was being carried by.

The baldachin was normally folded up and kept in the sacristy with the other festive items. Now it was assembled and raised up by four poles which were inserted into holding rings on the benches of the center isle of the church, ready to be lifted out when the priest moved under it and the procession got underway. After the procession re-entered the church, the Baldachin was returned to its place in the center of the church between the benches of the center isle.
 
And down from the wall behind the altar came the church banner, embroidered with the portraits of Primus and Felician, the Patron Saints. It also was mounted on to its carrying pole and made ready to be carried high by a single fireman trailing the fire brigade.

Yet other men busied themselves with the “Böller”, the cannon noisemakers from the days of the Turks, placing them in the locations where they were to be set off during the procession.

Women readied the festive gold embroidered vestments of the priest and the embroidered tunics of the sexton and the altar boy, who was ordered to make sure there was adequate incense in the freshly polished burner. The women also decorated the altar and replaced the ordinary candles with the much larger and festively decorated ones used only on this and other special days.
  
And in the back, in the choir space above the benches, the village soprano and Franz Jaklitsch, the cello accompanist, practiced their respective talent which, when joined together, would be a substitute for our non-existing village choir during this Easter Mass. High Mass required the voices of a choir to respond to the “Dominus vobiscum” chant of the priest with a chanted “Et cum spiritu tuo”. This and other responses normally came either from the altar boy or in his absence from the sexton, during weekday Mass when chanting was not part of the service.

Our High Mass, of which there were several throughout the year, the chanting response was much abbreviated mainly so as not to overtax both the struggling soprano and the uncertain cello. But she always insisted on singing an Ave Maria, an effort that normally caused the congregation to cringe and afterwards led to debates on whether or not she should be told the hard facts about her voice. But after Father Rozman left in 1940 and was not replaced, this was no longer necessary since the occasional service delivered by Father Gliebe of Göttenitz/Gotenica was no longer celebrated with a High Mass.

- - - -

There was a multitude of other activities during Easter week.

Already on the Palm Sunday a week before, villagers brought to church bundles of freshly cut willow reeds, the catkins displaying their new growth with soft furry coats.  The reeds, after being blessed by the priest, were believed to have the power to keep away evil.  They were kept in various places on the property, on doorways and inside the house and as homage around the crucifix hanging on a wall.
 
And on Thursday after Mass the bells, including the little hand bell of the altar boy, were silenced, all crucifixes were covered in black and black ribbons were tacked on to the church doors.

On Friday morning after Mass, the priest prostrated himself at the altar and afterwards led the parishioners, mostly women in black, their heads covered in black kerchiefs, in prayer past the simple paintings on the wall, each showing a Station of the Cross. Throughout the day all labor ceased, fasting was the rule and the eerie silence throughout the village was interrupted only by the ugly clapping of the “Ratch” in the bell tower, a small version of which was used by the altar boy during Mass, taking the place of  the hand bell, if only for a few days.
 
Another round of blessings took place on Saturday during and after Mass.

During the service, the priest blessed the basket of food the woman of each home had been preparing with great care for days and brought to church. The basket, covered with a white embroidered cloth, contained parts of the various foods eaten during the year. Among them were the colored “Easter Eggs” and the boiled smoked ham and grated horseradish. It was hoped that the blessed basket would continue to provide throughout the coming year. But weeks before this event, the priest, in sermons, reiterated the religious purpose of the blessing. He did this in a chiding manner because the size of the basket and the quality of its content had become overly competitive among some of the women of the village.
 
The blessed food in the basket was also the main part of the festive Easter Sunday meal to be eaten after Mass. Until then the Lenten fast was expected to be observed.
 
While the Saturday Mass was in progress, the sexton prepared a charcoal fire in a cast iron basin outside in front of the church gates. After Mass, the robed priest blessed the fire, another essential part in the life of the village, if at times a destructive force as it was in 1882 when it destroyed nearly half of the houses in the village. This done, the man of the house would ignite from this burning basin his own kindling which he took with him to light the wood in his hearth at home.

Industrious youths lit from this holy fire dried sponges on a wire and ran to take the fire to those mostly elderly who could not come themselves. In addition to ample thanks expected was also some form of more tangible gratitude.

- - - -

After Mass that morning, as every year on this day, all small kids under ten were invited to the annual Easter egg hunt on the grounds of Gertrud Hönigmann, the elderly widow living alone in her house at Masern 16, our neighbor across the cistern bowl. She had been boiling and coloring the eggs throughout the week with the help of some of the older girls of the village. The cooling eggs were dunked in warm water, colored by the powdered dyes sold at Ivanka’s general store across the square. For days thereafter, Gertrud and her helpers struggled to wash the rainbows from their fingers and hands.

After gathering all of us around her and her girl helpers, she gave the signal and we all ran off in different directions. The eggs were hidden under bushes, leaves, pots, in stacks of firewood, in stable troughs, in the hayloft and other secret places not used in prior years. Some of the very small cried because they were too slow, but Gertrud showed them the few yet undiscovered spaces. Just to stop the tears.

But especially sought after were the eggs wrapped in paper that also contained a coin. This allowed the lucky ones to take part in the “Egg hacking” game later in the afternoon on the square, usually supervised by a fireman if not Schaffer himself. You offered your egg to be steadied in a depression and from a measured distance a gamer would toss a coin and try to make it stick in the egg. If successful, he got the egg. If not he had to forfeit the coin to the owner of the egg.  Again there were tears because many an egg was lost to the bigger boys who had been practicing for this event. But the fireman made sure all was done fairly and those who argued were excluded from continuing.

It was Gertrud Hönigmann, a good friend of our priest, who persuaded me, nearly eight years old, to become an apprentice altar boy in the winter of 1938/39.  Father Rozman was about to lose his present altar boy Albert Primosch, the thirteen year old son of the musician who was finishing his schooling that summer and refused to continue beyond that. Other boys were not interested, in large part because the anti-clerical attitude of the Reich had now reached also into Masern and being an altar boy was no longer encouraged or desired.

Gertrud was my tutor in learning the Latin liturgy with which the altar boy answered the priest during Mass. She gave me passages to memorize which I had to demonstrate when I went to see her after class. When I did particularly well, my reward was a coin and an especially large one when I finally recited a large part of the Pater Noster. In the spring I was prepared enough to serve the priest with some help from the sexton during weekday Mass and by Easter 1939 good enough to take part in both the High Mass and the associated procession.
 
As a result of becoming an altar boy I did get some ridicule and hostility from some of my schoolmates. But even more so from Albert, my predecessor who later that year became the leader of our branch of the Hitler Youth group under fourteen years of age. But when in the fall of 1939, Father Rozman was moved elsewhere by the diocese, I was the sole altar boy for Father Gliebe who cycled in from Gotenica (Göttenitz) to attend to our spiritual needs and hold Mass on Sundays, if at a later hour. I had not yet learned all my replies, but since he was somewhat hard of hearing, I just mumbled the difficult parts.
 
- - - -

Later on Easter Saturday, the villagers lined up in front of the confessional to await their turn for the mandatory annual confession of major and minor transgressions. This was also required on other high holidays, but neglecting the purging of one’s sins on Easter was a mortal sin. Final absolution came, however, only on the next day when the holy Host was laid on the tongue of the repented sinner who, as part of a long queue, finally arrived at a kneeling space before the communion rail in front of the altar. A rail crafted by Father during the major renovation of the church interior in 1937.

- - - -

The procession started when the fireman brought the Patron Saints banner through the open doors of the church. Schaffer, now in his impressive uniform including ribbons and medals, had assembled his men leaving a distance between the end of his fire brigade and the church entrance. Adequate space for the banner, the incense swinging altar boy, the sexton with the holy water and finally the baldachin under which now stood the monstrance-carrying priest; in that order.  With all in place, Schaffer blew his bugle and the fire brigade, with Schaffer’s second in command leading the procession, got under way. The congregation spilling from the church followed the Baldachin, with some of the more eminent villagers leading the other believers.
   
Its route was from the portals of church toward the linden and from there past the Jaklitsch tavern toward the chapel of the Lady of the Seven Sorrows. There it stopped long enough for the priest to bow toward the flower decorated door and offer prayers of thanks to the Lady inside. After that, the procession rounded the chapel and made its way back to re-cross the square, pass the church and walk toward the cemetery at the other end of the village. There the priest offered a prayer for the souls and resurrection of the deceased after which the procession turned and made its way back into the church where the participants returned to their seats.

With all settled, the Mass continued with Holy Communion and the final blessing of the congregation. After that, with all three bells ringing in unison, all rushed home for their long awaited big Easter meal. Later on in the afternoon the festivities continued in one of the three taverns and there was dancing late into the night, especially so since the following day was Easter Monday, a restful public holiday.
 
A similar procession was held on Ascension Day 40 days later, but it was a one day event, one that was not preceded by week long preparations.
 
There were other church festivals throughout the year, but Easter was the most prominent and meaningful. In part, because it signified both the end of the cold and the beginning of another round of planting, tending and harvesting; of giving birth and burying the dead. And in between, living with both the joys and sorrows the almighty was sending the villagers’ way. Only to arrive at the end of yet another cycle that had carried them through the centuries year after year in a place they called Masern.

- - - -

But the most anxiously awaited festival was “Kirtok”, the day of our Patron Saints Primus and Felician. (Kirtok was the equivalent of Kirchweihtag, the German version for church consecration day). It was held on the Sunday nearest to June 9, the day of the saints. On this day the world came to the square of Masern in the form of a village fair.
 
There were preparations for this day also, albeit of a kind different from those for Easter Sunday. The square was cleaned, potholes filled, the droppings of horses and cows on their way to the cistern collected and disposed of.  Women washed the windows facing the square. And as for Easter Sunday, two young birch trees were erected at each of the two village entrances. This time their tops connected by a ribbon on which was written in large letters ‘Primus und Felician’.

There was frantic activity at the Jaklitsch tavern, both inside and out. This tavern was the best suited for the event; it was directly on the square and had a large walled-in courtyard.

In this courtyard, a raised dance floor was erected with planks from the Tschinkel saw mill. It was bordered by a railing to prevent excited spinning couples from missing the edge. The floor had, in one corner, a slightly raised part for the man with the accordion, the player alternately being either Josef Primosch or Anton Tscherne.

The space surrounding the dance floor was filled with cross legged tables and benches otherwise stored in the large barn at the far end of the courtyard.  Additional barrels of beer were delivered, rolled into the ice cellar next to the main house and readied to be rolled out again to be placed on a stand and fitted with a spigot.
 
Inside, Regina and her women helpers hired for the day were preparing the food to be served with the beer. Krainerwurst - the Slovene boiled smoked sausage, a specialty of the region, was served with mustard and a slice of bread with both Jaklitsch and Regina hoping there would be enough for the many guests. Guests not only from Masern but also from other neighboring villages in the enclave;  many of them of marrying age, each hoping to spot a dancing partner in the crowd with whom they could start a relationship that might lead to matrimony. These events offered an opportunity to the young men of neighboring villages to find a mate and over centuries led to severe inbreeding in the enclave.
 
- - - -

The merchants arrived very early in the morning. They stopped their horse-pulled wagons around the edge of the square and immediately began setting up their covered stalls behind a temporary barrier erected by the firemen to keep the road through the village clear. Their wares were laid out on tables or hung on racks, but kept out of sight by covers or curtains until the end of Mass.
 
Already in the afternoon of the day before, the traveling circus had arrived on the square:  several horse drawn wagons, on one the cage of the dancing bear and on another the pieces of the “Ringelspiel”, a brightly painted merry-go-round that needed to be assembled in place. This task the men of the troop began immediately after the fire chief allocated a place for it. The space was quickly surrounded by the young and the erecting activity was watched intently especially by the older boys. Boys who the next day were to be selected by the operator to climb the ladder to the platform around the main mast and, at his command, push the spokes of the structure at whose end was suspended, on a chain, a seat for the customer.  The boys pushing the spokes were the engine for this amusement park staple, payment for it being one ride in return for four rounds. Skirt-wearing girls were, for obvious reasons, not chosen but some were, after much shuffling, selected to serve as ballast during the initial tests. Free of charge.  After that they had to either pay or talk one of the boys into letting her take his earned ride.

Testing began as soon as the erection of the carousel was completed; the older boys crowding the operator, begging to be selected as pushers and earn rides.  Unfortunately, as one of the smaller boys, I was told that I was not yet strong enough and had to run home to beg Mother for the coins needed for rides. By the time I returned the colorful merry-go-round was ready for paying customers and I was told to await my turn in the queue.

Already on display was the dancing bear. It had been urged to climb from the opened cage in the rear of the wagon on a short ladder to the ground. There it now sat waiting for its master to be satisfied with the quantity of coins he was collecting in his cap while cautioning the audience standing behind the circular barrier to be quiet and make no drastic movements that might enrage the beast. While this was going on there was hushed talk about the adequacy of the muzzle and the strap held by the master whose skill and strength were needed to keep the beast under control.
 
And when no more coins were being offered, he urged the bear with a slight tug into the center of the circle and made it stand up. There was silence when the full height of the animal revealed itself and it started to turn on hind legs, its paws hanging down from its outstretched front legs. After the master led it in a number of full circle turns, another tug on the muzzle strap brought it back to its four legs and it was led up the ladder into the cage. Only after carefully bolting the door, turning back to the silent audience and bowing was there applause, the concern about an enraged beast now no longer present.

Dusk had arrived and there being no artificial light on the square most went home, but some of the men made for the tavern for a quarter liter or two and only then were they ready for bed and tomorrow. Meanwhile on the square around their wagons, the circus people were having their meal and getting ready for sleep, while at a respectful distance some of Schaffer’s firemen unobtrusively kept their eyes on them. Just in case.

- - - -

Mass on the following morning, while not much different from any other, seemed to be exceedingly long.  And when the final “Amen” followed the “Ite, Missa est” and “Benedicat vos omnipotens ….” , the doors swung open and the congregation spilled out only to merge with those who would not wait and were already milling among the stalls looking for bargains.

Women carefully examining cloth bales to be made into dresses, skirts, kerchiefs, aprons or underwear. Either for themselves if they owned a sewing machine or as barter for others who did not. Or checking out the size and weight of skillets and pots, wooden spoons, earthen bowls, rosaries and trinkets; items not sold at Ivanka’s store.
 
Men were at stalls considering pants, jackets, shirts or hats, some of them “slightly” used. Others were looking at metal items for the farm not made by Johann Sbaschnig the village smith; rakes, scythes, whetstones, flint stones, lighter fluid, axle grease; all items for which they would have to walk to Ribnica or the even more distant Gottschee City. Some also looked at shoes since the village shoemaker was overbooked and would not make their new pair until months from now.

Some of my school mates and I, a few coins in our pockets, hung around the stalls selling fancy pocket knives but had coins only for the cheapest version which could barely cut a hazelnut twig without bending the blade. How I would have loved one with ivory covering the handle and a blade made from Solingen steel!  We also wandered among the stands selling sweets, but here the candy cost more than that in the glass jars at Ivanka’s store where sometimes she would drop an extra piece into the cone she expertly fashioned from a sheet of wrapping paper torn from a roll.

Others made for the “Ringelspiel”, surrendered their coins and waited, safety chain in place, for the other seats to get filled. Only then would the attendant ring the bell to signal the boys on the platform to start pushing and get the spinning underway.

By early afternoon, the tables at the Jaklitsch courtyard were filled and stacks of bicycles that had brought young men and women from other villages lined the walls of the main house. Dancers spun to the three quarter beat, waitresses for the day were rushing about with filled pitchers of foaming beer and Regina was boiling yet another pot of sausages. But later, she found time for a ride on the carousel which, however, was not to be since the weight of her ample figure nearly tipped the mechanism, forcing the attendant to return her money.

Not all coins were handed out at the stalls or for rides on the carousel. Some were spent at the Jaklitsch beer stand that also sold bottles of soda pop. Yet others were saved for the ice cream man.

He arrived around noon and, surrounded by kids, was escorted into the shade of the linden where he asked for water and a few moments of time to wipe the sweat from his face.  He had come a long way.

He brought his colorful sorbets from Ribnica inside the ice filled cooler box on wheels to the sides of which were attached the two wheels of the tricycle. He pedaled from the seat over the rear wheel and steered with a bar attached to the box in front of him.

After setting up the stacks of cones in ring holders attached to the sides of the cooler, his business was brisk selling both to kids on the square and to customers drifting over from Jaklitsch. By late afternoon, however, most of the older clients preferred draft beer or wine and the few youngsters milling around him no longer had any coins.

With the containers not yet empty and the contents getting soft he resorted to exchanging what was left for eggs; two eggs for one scoop of sherbet.

Word got around fast and again he was surrounded by kids who knew where the hens laid their eggs. And with the mothers making merry at the Jaklitsch tables, getting them was easy.  Soon the containers were empty. How he made his way back to Ribnica on the bumpy road without much breakage we never learned.

- - - -

The last “Kirtok” was on June 8, 1941, one day before the day of the patron Saints.  This was ten days after the Gottscheer Zeitung, on May 29, announced that Hitler had decided to take us back into the Reich. The full meaning of this decision had not yet penetrated the minds of the villagers and this festival day was not much different from those in years before. While the carousel had arrived the day before, there were fewer merchants since some, being Slovene, now preferred to stay away, given the political atmosphere.
 
And there were fewer at Mass; the service being upstaged by a parade through the village of Sturm 13 men and youth, their marching song interfering with the service inside.  And later, before the dancing got underway, Jaklitsch gave a short speech from the dance floor but made no reference to Hitler’s decision. No point in interfering with the fair!

Which ran its normal course except for an alarming development; three year old brother Paul had gone missing.

A tearful Mitzi brought the news to the parents who were on a bench near the dance floor. She had been put in charge of both Paul and me but lost sight of both of us while spinning on the carousel. She soon found me but not Paul, in spite of having looked everywhere.

Father talked to Jaklitsch and Schaffer who ordered some of their men to look for the lost child. And as more and more people were searching in all unlikely places, the festivities soon became disrupted and some of the half emptied pitchers of beer were losing their head, fewer orders were being placed for sausages and it took longer to fill the seats of the “Ringelspiel”.  But Paul could not be found.

After getting nowhere, with many having given up, it occurred to Mitzi that he may have wandered into the fields, the most likely being the “Unterbinkl”.  The thought occurred because the week before all five of us had been there again to clear more of the intruding underbrush. During the day we had run out of drinking water and Father sent me with the pail to get some more from the drinking well in the village.

With all this in mind, Mitzi ran to see if Paul had gone there, fearing that, like Grandfather’s dog, he might have fallen into one of the many crevasses. He did go there and she soon spotted him returning, an empty water pail in hand. With streaming tears he cried out: “I took water to Father but he was not there.”

Father Gliebe conducted Mass again the following morning and gave thanks to the Almighty for protecting the child.

- - - -

Since the very early years, the spiritual welfare of the villagers of Masern was looked after by a parish priest from Göttenitz who held Mass, gave religious instruction to the children and maintained the church ledgers which containing the dates on births, marriages and deaths in the village. When Göttenitz was unable to attend to Masern, other priests from the district parish of Ribnica held Mass.

This was the case for centuries before 1689, the year Valvasor mentions Primus and Felician as Patron Saints of the chapel. In 1741, Masern was transferred to the Ribnica parish and with the arrival of Father Anton Wallisch in 1767, the village, for the first time, had a resident chaplain. And that same year, Masern now at 38 houses and 160 souls, became a sub-parish subordinated to the parish of Dolenja Vas.

Father Anton Wallisch was the village priest until 1771. For 51 years after he left in 1771 until 1822, there again was no resident priest. Among others, Father Anton Namre from the Göttenitz parish looked after the spiritual welfare of Masern and during this time maintained its ledgers on births, marriages and deaths. And when these ledgers were filled, Father Namre started a new set in 1773.

Father Johann Munini arrived in Masern in 1822 and stayed for 15 years until 1837. After he left, there again was no priest for 30 years.

Father Johann Posnik arrived in 1867. Posnik, who had given up the priesthood in 1884, became the full time teacher in the village, inaugurated that same year, but he continued to give religious instructions and maintained the ledgers. He remained in the village as a teacher until 1892.

Father Leopold Raktelj arrived in 1895 and stayed until 1908 when he exchanged roles with Father Franz Sturm from Poljanske Toplice.
  
The Reverend Franz Sturm remained for 16 years but disgraced himself in 1923 when it became known that he had made Leni, the spinster sister of the village smith, pregnant. The villagers stopped attending church services and openly called him “Hurenbock” which translates roughly to whoring he-goat.  When they stopped paying him his wages he took legal action, but his health suffered and he died in July 1924. For the following three months, Fathers Gliebe of Göttenitz and Karel Škul of Dolenja Vas alternately cared for the parishioners.
 
Paul Klemenčič, the first German speaking Slovene priest arrived on October 30, 1924.  He became much loved and admired in the village. Mother often talked of him with great fondness, reminiscing of the comfort received from him after she arrived from Dolenja Vas in 1930. She had come into a village unable to speak its language and which, apart from the priest, his housekeeper and a few kindred souls with similar burdens treated her as an inferior Slovene outsider. And she came into the house of her hostile mother-in-law who called her the “Kroinar”, the derogatory word for a Slovene used in the enclave. And the Kroinar came, she said, with an “illegitimate seven year old cross-eyed daughter burdened so by the sin of her mother”.

Paul Klemenčič christened me on March 5, 1931. Due to serious illness he left the village for the hospital on May 30, 1933 and died there the following year.
 
His replacement, father Jože Rozman, a Slovene who also spoke fluent German, came in 1936 but he was transferred out by the diocese in 1940 and not replaced. He had served the village well and was much appreciated, at least until the late 1930’s, when the National-Socialist ideology imported into the enclave brought the anti-clerical climate also into our village and undermined his position.  Rozman, one of those who for centuries had served the village, was no longer respected or much wanted by the majority of the residents. I was his last altar boy and sad to see him leave.

After Rozman’s departure, Father Gliebe again looked after our spiritual welfare, including religious lessons to the children, if only sporadically. As had done many other priests of Gotenica (Göttenitz) in the past. But during 1941, in the months before our departure, Gliebe was no longer wanted.

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