It was the smell that was first noticeable when we pulled up to the small stationhouse of stucco walls and terra-cotta roof and Yiorgo had been slowed to bring the carriage to a stop. It was different from the smells that were familiar; be they from the frying meat or freshly baked bread in Mother’s kitchen, the fresh sawdust in Father’s shop, the fetid aroma steaming off butchered pork in the bracing November air or the pungent smell of the dung heap at the far end of the house.

It was different also from the fragrance of the pines when the sap was running. Or the smell of oil laden steam, hissed out by the huge engine powering the blades of the village saw mill that cut the logs into slices, not unlike the machine at a present day bakery.
  
The smell was strongest standing on the coarse gravel between the tar saturated ties holding the rails in place. The mixture of tar, coal and carbolic had quickly replaced the dust laden air we had been inhaling on the unpaved lane through the fields from Dolenja Vas to nearby Lipovec, the local stop of the railroad linking Kočevje/Gottschee to the capital of Slovenia.

Father and I were on the way since the early morning of that day in the spring of 1935 to take the train to Ljubljana to see Mother in the hospital where she had just survived a serious operation. Grandma Ilc had come with us from Dolenja Vas to the nearby station at Lipovec to take Yiorgo and the wagon back to her house. She would come to get us when we returned late that afternoon.

This was to be my first time on a train, my first travel to the big city. A first time for many things.

The gleaming surface of the tracks merged in the distance from where the train was to arrive. Eventually, a spot appeared above the rails, a spot that rapidly began to grow and take shape. With it came a rumbling sound outdone at intervals by the shrill of the whistle as if to tell me, the barely four year old kid, to get off the tracks.

I stood even closer to Father as the hissing of the monster locomotive brought the train to a halt and waited, huffing impatiently for us to climb the stairs to coaches high above the rails. I did not see the station attendant raise the red disk signaling the engineer to resume the journey, being far too eager to find a window seat which was easy, the coach being only half full. The whistle blew again and through the window, which Father had lowered by the two inch wide leather strap, I waved to Grandma as the train pulled away.

It took one and a half hours to get to Ljubljana, stopping on the way so often that the train never seemed to get back up to speed before it had to brake again.  The longest stop was in Ribnica where there was some maneuvering to attach freight cars to the end of the train. At further stops the coach began to fill up, mostly with kerchief-covered women carrying heavy wicker baskets, on the way to the market in Ljubljana. In between the stops and open valleys, where farmers were already busy tending their fields, Father hurriedly closed the window to keep out the dense, spark-interlaced coal smoke whenever we entered one of the many tunnels. And when the conductor came, Father handed him the small cardboard ticket he had purchased at the station. After he punched a hole into it, he asked me for mine. But when he saw that his look frightened me, he started to grin.  “You will need one only after you grow up”.
   
At Grosuplje where the tracks from Kočevje joined the main line between Ljubljana and Novo Mesto, there was a lengthy stop. We had to wait for a gap between trains having priority on that line. Father leaned out the window and bought two long reddish sausages with mustard and bread from the vendor. The first and best Frankfurter I ever ate.
 
The next excitement was the tram ride from the station to the hospital.  It was crowded but some one offered Father a seat. I sat on his leg, taking in a new world passing by outside. So many people on so many streets, along so many buildings in which were so many stores selling so many different things, paling all items that Ivanka’s store in Masern had to offer. When after many stops came ours and we got out, we had to walk a short distance to the hospital behind a high wall. And as we entered, there was another new smell, the smell of disinfectant, a smell that brings back that moment whenever it enters my nostrils again even after so many years.

The first disappointment came when Father was told that I could not come with him to see my mother. Children were not allowed in the ward. I would have to stay in the lobby room. He promised to come back soon and the smiling nun in white, on her head a white cap with wings that flapped when she walked, led me to a chair as Father climbed the stairs and disappeared.

But he did not come back as promised. I soon began to cry, ever louder and without stopping. The nun in white tried to console me and when she could not, became angry; I was disturbing the peace of the lobby. Others also tried but I, who had now lost both of my parents, could not stop. I cried myself to sleep only to wake up again to freely flowing tears after I realized where I was and abandoned.  Only when finally an embarrassed and apologetic Father finally appeared was my misery at an end. And it turned to joy when we walked back to the tram stop and he announced that after lunch he would take me to a movie house. I had heard about movies but had never seen one, there not being a house for showing movies in either Ribnica or Kočevje, the furthest I ever got away from home.

At a gostilna, a tavern much grander than that of Grandma Ilc, Father wanted me to have soup. But I insisted on two more Frankfurters; both nearly as delicious as the first one in Grosuplje.
 
In the dark room of the theater, the newsreel showed some crisis in Abyssinia.  But of the film that followed, I remember only a huge ship being pushed around in a sea of big waves. Nothing like the little boats I had pushed into the floodwaters that flowed past our house in the spring after the snows began to melt. Here, the high waves that kept crashing against the sides of the ship showed a scary reality. And after a particularly high one with white foam at its tips damaged the ship which then began to sink, there appeared standing on the lopsided deck a figure in vestments; on his head a bishop’s miter, in his left hand the staff of his office and at the end of the outstretched right arm a hand pointing upward to heaven. Soon it was only the bow of the ship that was pointing upward and that too disappeared into the waves. I was frightened and held tightly with both hands on to Father’s arm.

The worst, however, came when I asked Father who the bishop was who just sank with the ship.  It was Saint Nicholas, he whispered.

On top of all the things this tender four year old had been through this day, that remark was more than I could cope with and I started crying again; loudly if not louder than at the hospital.  I had just seen Saint Nicholas drown, the very Nicholas who came to our house every December 6, bringing with him my presents that I was to get for being good the entire year. And now that he was dead, who would bring me the presents I had earned?

Father could not console me and angrily complied with the request to take me from the theatre. “Others are complaining” the attendant had said. I still cried on the tram and stopped only when we got to the train station and he bought me another Frankfurter and a ginger ale. And on the train he tried to convince me that Saint Nicolas did not drown, that movies are not for real; only shadow play. I would “see this is so when next winter he would again come to our house with presents of which there surely would be more this time”. And when in the following December this was the case, my occasional nightmares stopped. I finally believed it; until then I was not convinced by all those telling me that what Father was saying was true.

Grandma Ilc was waiting for us at the station in Lipovec.  I was tired and with no more surprises to come being again on familiar ground, I quickly fell asleep.  But not until after I heard Father tell what happened in the movie house. Grandma was angry at him for taking me, an impressionable child to see that kind of a movie. How that conversation ended I did not hear, being fast asleep.
 
There were five more trips on that train to Ljubljana, each with its own story.  The final one, in December 7, 1941, however had no return. Instead, it continued on the main line toward Zidani Most and beyond that to our still unknown future.
 
- - - -

The rail line connecting Ljubljana to Kočevje (Gottschee) city was placed in service in September 1893.  The line was a spur off the connection between Ljubljana - Novo Mesto and beyond, leaving the main line for Kočevje at Grosuplje, just east of Ljubljana. The 70 km single track line which brought the world to Lower Carniola and the forest had many stops along the way including the one at Ribnica and at Lipovec near Dolenja Vas. The economic benefits to this neglected part of the land were many; the major one the ability to expeditiously transport lumber and agricultural products out of the area.

Newly built steam powered saw mills, built throughout the area, cut the abundant lumber into more easily transportable building materials. Such a saw mill was put into operation in Grčarice (Masern) in 1922 and it became the main employer in the village. The production of charcoal, a village industry, received a boost since the existing demand in distant cities could now be more profitably satisfied.
 
It also brought industry to exploit the cheap labor and the abundance of lumber and made desperately needed medical care more available. The latter mainly due to the now easier access to the regional hospital in Ljubljana.

A prior attempt to capitalize on the abundance of wood failed due to the absence of such a transportation link. A wood powered factory built in 1835 in Glažuta near our village to produce glass products failed because sand, the raw material for producing the glass was not available nearby and had to be carted in from Croatia. It was shut down as being unprofitable 21 years later in 1856.

The new railroad also eased emigration for those Slovene and Gottscheer seeking a better life elsewhere, mostly in America. The connection to the main line between Vienna and Italy simplified the route to Trieste, the port where those leaving boarded ships to Ellis Island, most of them never to return. It eased the way there for Father’s older sister Johanna and his two other siblings Paula and Frank and many others of the village and the region. It brought Father, aged seventeen to that port in 1910 for his journey to Brooklyn where he lived with the now married Johanna and complemented his knowledge of farming by learning carpentry in a furniture factory.

The same train brought him and his precious Yankee carpentry tools back to Masern in 1914 to serve in the Austrian Imperial Army or else lose the right to the inheritance of his father’s estate. This was made clear in the letter from his father, forwarding the draft notice to his oldest son. Not responding to the call would have surely altered his destiny; perhaps for the better. And I would not be writing these lines. Nevertheless, this train spur to its dead end in Kočevje, accessible to Masern at the hamlet of Lipovec had a big role in our lives and in the enclave and has a sizable part in the stories I have yet to tell.
 
- - - -

After the diagnosis that she needed surgery and before she entered the hospital, Mother prayed to Holy Mary to help her get well. She also pledged to make the pilgrimage to the church of Marija Pomagaj and thank her for hearing her pleas.
  
Marija Pomagaj (Mary, help) was in Brezje, approximately 40 km or one hour train ride beyond Ljubljana.  The original chapel there, enlarged at the beginning of the 20th Century into a large church, had become a major destination for pilgrims long before that.  This caused the priest in charge, Janez Novak, in 1875 to exclaim: “In Brezje there is a miracle-working image of Mary, of which every pilgrim can confirm the words of holy Bernard: - It has never been heard that you abandoned anyone who fled under your protection, who asked for your help and begged for your intercession. - This is certified by pilgrims from all over Slovenia, Styria, Carinthia, Trieste, Istria and Croatia.”

And after the surgery mother also got well. Dr. Oražem in Ribnica, who had diagnosed a tumor in her stomach, had insisted that she have it removed immediately.
  
This was in the early spring of 1935, just when the annual planting was to begin. An awkward time to be spending in a hospital, but since her life was in danger there was not much choice. We were told that the surgery was to remove a grapefruit size growth from the stomach. This was accepted as fact, however she intimated decades later that it had to do with her reproductive organs but would not go further.  Perhaps even she may not have been told the real facts.

The surgery was highly successful and she was in the fields again by mid summer after having spent much of her recovery period with her mother in Dolenja Vas where she would get better care than in the house of her mother-in-law. She would also be nearer to Oražem, her doctor.  But the pilgrimage was postponed until after the harvest. Mother was certain that the Mother of God would not mind.  I was to come along on this, my second trip on the railroad.
 
So when Mother and I set out in late September, all of the harvest was safely stored and most of the late season’s work done. What remained was the annual slaughter of the fattened pigs but for that we needed the first frost which was still one month away.
  
The afternoon before, we walked to Dolenja Vas and stayed the night with Grandma Ilc to be nearer the station. Walking the entire way there and back was all part of the pilgrimage she explained. But I suspected that the stay with Grandma was meant to give me an overnight rest.
 
This train ride was no less exciting than the first and I also got the promised Frankfurter in Grosuplje. But even more exciting was getting on a much more impressive international train in Ljubljana. A train with a much bigger locomotive, pulling longer carriages all marked with different destinations and numerals.  Mother found seats in the third class coach already filled with pilgrims as became apparent when most of them got out with us at Brezje. All making straight for the huge cathedral into which could fit several of our Masern church.  It had altars on both side walls but the main one up front was the biggest and the tallest, all covered in shining gold.

I remember all this because after many years, a repeat (non-pilgrim) visit refreshed my dimming memories and assurances were given that nothing had changed in the decades since. And now as then, a long row of pilgrims, mostly black clad women with kerchief-covered bowed heads, stood in the slowly forward moving line fingering rosaries. All waiting for their turn to reach the raised platform, get on their knees and then crawl around the altar which held the image of the Holy Mary. They had come to either ask for help or give thanks for help already given. Another long line led toward multiple confessionals in which the sinners were seeking forgiveness.
 
Mother led me to a pew, put her bundle next to me and ordered me to stay until she came back. After I promised not to cry she joined the line and waited for her turn to circle the altar on her knees.  I fell asleep and dreamed of St. Nicolas on the sinking ship. I was happy when she shook me awake saying it was time to find a place to stay overnight.

This proved to be hopeless; there were no beds to be had in this town full of pilgrims. All I remember of Mother’s search for a room is that she did not find one and in the end we spent the night on the benches of a gostilna in the company of many others with the same predicament. I also remember the separation between those whose prayers had been answered and those who had come to plead. On our side of the room was gaiety but on the other there was only gloom and perhaps a wish to be across the room on their next visit.  But soon I was asleep.

Next morning there was again much time on the hard benches of the church as the holy Mass progressed through its paces, interrupted only by the unusually lengthy sermon. Again, Mother left me sitting while she stood in line to receive the Host. And after the Mass was over there was lunch at the gostilna followed by the walk to the station to wait for the train, more hard benches on the way to Lipovec, and the long walk home.

For me, all of four years old, the journey to Maria Pomagaj was not only another train ride; it was proof that when you pray hard you get better. And this belief was soon to be put to the test. For Mother it was the fulfillment of a promise for prayers heard. But for her it was also a two day break from the chores which had accumulated in her absence and were waiting for her return.

- - - -

I was on the train twice the following year, my third and fourth time, both times on the return home from the children’s ward of the hospital in Ljubljana, the hospital where Mother had her surgery. Each time, the way there had been in an ambulance from Ribnica; specifically from the clinic of doctor Oražem who had set my broken leg in a temporary splint. Each time the same leg; the fractures on the upper right leg only two inches apart.

The first time was in the spring of 1937; a simple break that healed quickly and I was back to normal in less than two months. The second, eight weeks after the first, was a compound fracture which kept me in the same ward, in the same bed, twice as long. When I arrived there the second time, in the ward were children who remembered me from before. The recovery at home was much longer than the first and for a while I, like Father, used a crutch to get about.

- - - -

The first fracture was due to a fall while running toward the back door of the fire chief’s house to seek the protection of my twenty six year old friend Karl Schaffer, the fire chief’s second son.  I tripped and fell on the uneven dirt and gravel of the driveway while being pursued by the nine year old Albert Kresse, four years my senior.

Albert was part of the quartet of bullies forever seeking confrontation with defenseless village boys. Their taunting usually produced either a run-away of their target or a futile response such as throwing a stone at the provocateur.  When this was the case, the resulting beating was justified as an act of self-defense.  They did this either individually or if it suited them, as a team. But when they were confronted by a group they backed away only to get revenge for their humiliation by dealing with the individuals separately later on. While their bullying was indiscriminately heaped upon all of the defenseless, I had become their unique target for several reasons.
  
Albert Kresse was Katharina’s older son. He and his younger brother Anton were supported by their cousins Karl Sbaschnig and Rudolf Tscherne. All were related to the Tschinkel brothers living at Number 12. Rudolf’s father was a landless villager who once reneged on a verbal contract with Father and carried a grudge against him.

The brothers continued to intimate, in spite of the recent re-survey and amicable settlement negotiated by Franz Jaklitsch, that during the village-wide survey in 1825 by the surveyor Colanetté, their family was cheated of a large part of land which was awarded erroneously to the Tschinkels of Number 15. This lingering resentment was helped along by Grandma Gera who maintained close relations with the Tschinkel brothers of Number 12 and their many relatives who lived elsewhere in the village. She did this to spite her son for surrendering her house to his wife, the foreigner, the hated Slovene.

As a result of this lingering resentment, inflamed by Gera’s doings, I became an object of revenge to the four nephews of the brothers at Number 12, an easy target of their bullying, most likely encouraged by their uncles and aunts. Since Father’s and Mother’s complaining to their parents had little effect, I gradually learned how to deal with the problem. I stayed at home, playmates were invited to our house and when in the village, I was often accompanied by sister Mitzi, a strong teenager who was my unhesitating defender. In addition, Father and Mother appealed to Jaklitsch and other friendly villagers, whose children were also, if far less so, bullied by the quartet. They, in turn began to confront the parents of the bullies and, as a result, my life gradually became less troublesome.
 
But until then, when playing with other children in the village, they would isolate me and chase me toward home. The leg broken on Schaffer’s driveway was the result of one such chase.

- - - -

I fell partly because I was an awkward, non-athletic child. I was forever falling, as was evident from the perpetual scabs on both knees, always visible since like all boys, I wore short pants during the warm months. But the main reasons for this fall were the long stockings Mother had me wear in the cold months instead of the long pants worn by all other boys. And when, as a result of this event, she relented and finally dressed me the way all others were dressed, I still kept falling; however, the scabs were now hidden behind the patch of each long trouser leg.
 
Until the incident in Schaffer’s driveway, the knee scabs were hidden by those long cotton stockings. (The rips at the knees always carefully re-knitted with yarn of never matching color). The stockings were held in place way above the knee by pink rubber bands normally hidden by the trousers of the knee length pants I wore all year round. But the stretch of the bands had, apart from the slippery skin, nothing to hold on to and the stockings they were suppose to keep in place were forever sliding down. And they slid down faster when I was running hard. Normally this was not serious when there was time to stop and pull up stocking and band before both settled on the ankle and became a hazard which caused me to trip and fall. As a result, I always came in last when running with other boys on either side of my age; they were not burdened with the get-up my mother insisted on. It was however, bruising to the ego when they laughed and called me a girl as they watched me struggle to pull things back in place. Apart from me, only girls wore stockings held up by rubber bands; a good reason for being perpetually and mercilessly ridiculed by my peers.
 
But this time, running from Albert, there was no time to stop and adjust. The stockings and bands had slid to the ankles and when the right foot caught the stocking on the left ankle, the forward fall snapped the upper bone of the twisted right leg.

My loud cries first brought Karl from his shop in the attic of his father’s house where he had his saddler’s workshop. Mother came running, Father followed, others came from all directions. Albert had disappeared.  Father, and others who had been through a war and had seen fractures, realized that the leg was broken and asked for boards and bandages to fix the leg in a splint. The fire chief issued commands to firemen present to race to the firehouse to get what was needed. With the splint in place, I was lifted by many hands on to Father’s carriage, brought to the scene by Father’s friend Johann Krisch.  Johann had harnessed Yiorgo and softened the flat back part of the carriage with layers of blankets and pillows for the long ride to doctor Oražem in Ribnica. Johann came along to bring horse and wagon back since both parents expected to come with me to the hospital in the ambulance.  I remember nothing of this; but heard it told many times later.

I do, however, clearly remember lying on the table in the operating room of the hospital where they were about to set the leg and encase it in plaster. Then there was the nun-nurse who said she was about to place a cloth over my mouth to make me fall asleep and that I was to start counting. The chloroform made me gag and struggle, but in spite of it, I managed to count to four.

I woke up in the children’s ward, on a white enameled tubular bed, very uncomfortable, unable to move.

The reason for this was a white post hanging by a rope from a pulley above the bed. The lower end of the white post disappeared in the sheets of my bed and when I tried to move I realized that the post was the plaster cast around my fractured leg.

The leg was kept under tension by a weight at the other end of the rope looped over pulleys high up on a bar attached to the center of the bed at each end.  I had to live with that torture mechanism for the next four weeks; the most difficult part was learning how to perform bodily functions without making a mess. The sheets needed to be changed often at first.
 
The ward was a large oblong room with beds at right angles to the wall and ample space down the center for the traffic of doctors, nurses and visitors. My visitors were Mother and Father both getting up from chairs and telling a nun-nurse that I was waking up. The nurse explained that the broken leg was under tension to prevent it from becoming shorter than the other one while it healed.  It would be under tension all the while I was in the hospital. “You do not want to have one leg shorter than the other, do you?”

Both parents soon left me, with Mother promising to come back later that day. When she did, she kept asking about the fall, apparently not pleased that I put the blame on the stockings. Months later she talked of her confrontation with Katharina who defended Albert by claiming that the chase was only normal activity of young boys. “And if you dressed him in long pants instead of girl’s stockings, this would not have happened”, she sneered.

Mother insisted that she was only following the tradition of her village where boys wore short pants and stockings until first communion. “Here boys wear long pants. Only girls wear stockings”, Katharina replied. This logic made Mother surrender tradition and from that time forward I wore long pants, at least when it got cold. And I had to break a leg for this!

- - - -

But even with long pants replacing stockings and garters, I kept falling if perhaps less so. There were still other parts of my dress that conspired against my agility and made me a subject of ridicule.  Shoes that were too big, pants too long, jackets oversized. All clothing Mother expected me to grow into and soon. But to her disappointment, and mine, I grew very slowly and all was usually worn out before it fit.

Particularly troublesome were the oversized underpants. Being too large and having buttons instead elastic to hold on to the waist, they slid past the virtually non-existing hips and settled on the crotch of the pants. Fortunately the pants, held up by strong suspenders, had an oversized waist so I could reach inside and down to bring the underpants back up again. And hold them there when running or being chased.

But after the incident on the Fire Chief’s driveway, Mother became more sensitive about my needs and appearance and began to dress me in better fitting clothing. And also more in line with what the others were wearing. This new found awareness was in part due to the broken leg, reinforced by Katharina’s comment which, due to its relevance Mother was forced to accept. But it was conveyed to her also by other women in the village with whom she had, during the five years there, established contact.
  
- - - -

But the bullying and persecution from the quartet did have, if in retrospect from a distant future, a positive side.

To escape, Mother frequently took Mitzi and me to stay with Grandma Ilc in Dolenja Vas. Grandma, very fit in her mid sixties still ran her gostilna and worked her fields. Living alone in the large house, Mitzi and I were always welcome and often we stayed for days. She loved our company and welcomed us always. But as my sister was in her early teens and was needed to help in our home and on the land, I began to walk the distance on my own.

And so Grandma Ilc became the first really formative influence on her impressionable grandson from across the divide. Stara Mati, as I addressed her in Slovene, knew why I kept coming and that she could give me what even my parents could not. But that is part of yet another story.
 
- - - -

The fourth trip on the train, ten weeks after the second, was due to the second fracture of the right leg, two inches above the first. While the first was a clean break across the bone, this was a compound fracture which kept me in the hospital twice as long as the first time. And after the hospital, the recovery at home was much longer than the first and for a few weeks I had to use a crutch to learn to walk again.

This fracture was due to an accident at home, when I upset the balance of the heavy wooden slaughtering trough, propped up against the wall inside the barn. While climbing up to its top surface I changed its equilibrium, causing it to tip away from the wall taking me with it. As we both crashed to the ground, one edge of the trough fell on the upper right leg shattering the bone. It could have been worse.

The watertight trough, about eight feet long and three feet wide and deep was made of sturdy two inch pine planks held together with wrought iron bands hammered hot into place by the village smith. The uppermost planks of the sides extended on either end as handles for carrying it into the freshly swept yard, frozen to a solid surface by the November frost, for the slaughter of pigs that was done every year at that time. Our butchering done, the trough made its rounds to other neighbors who borrowed ours, not having one of their own. And when finally it came back and not having any other purpose, it was propped up against a wall inside the barn where it gathered dust until next fall.
 
Except one spring when the melting snow had, once again, turned the cistern depression into a lake. With the waters already receding and the tadpoles around its edges starting to hatch from the string of frog’s eggs, the quartet and a few others decided to sail the lake in this trough. Over the protest of Mitzi, the parents being away, the trough was dragged from the barn along the road into the shallow edges of the lake.  Mitzi ran into the village to alert adults while the trough filled with boys. Not being allowed to come along, I had to help pushing the boat away from the shore into deeper waters.
  
It nearly ended in disaster, had it not been for Schaffer, the fire chief who came running, trailed by our next door neighbor Mattl, limping and hopping.
 
By now the trough was some distance from the edge and in deep water.  The occupants, standing in this highly unstable, perilously swaying, flat-bottomed substitute of a boat realized the danger, became frightened and started to call for help. None of them knew how to swim and neither did any of the grown ups now piling up at the shore. But Schaffer's thundering voice made the now frightened boys sit down and paddle with their hands to move the trough away from the deep. Some men and parents had come with long poles and ropes which they threw out. One was caught and the trough, with its now pale and subdued occupants, dragged to safety and deserved punishment.

Mitzi received much praise from those who came to Father’s shop after the event where they talked about the foolishness of the boys. But some also reminded Father of the carelessly positioned trough that had caused the broken leg and urged him to do a better job in securing it to the wall. As if he needed reminding.  Nevertheless, the trough was now kept in the deeper recesses of the barn, not only to prevent it from tipping, but also fastened to the wall with a locked chain.

- - - -

The fifth trip on the railroad was another trip to Ljubljana, this time to my confirmation by the bishop. Part of this event was the promise of an engraved pocket watch, the usual commemorative present given on such occasion. But I received a promise only; Janez Ilc, my sponsor and Mother’s brother, not being able to afford such a costly present. The promise was, however, fulfilled a few years later but there were few occasions when it could be worn in the pocket of a coat, the leather strap attached to the button hole of the jacket. And it was this strap which caught the eye of a young Partisan in Zidani Most. But more on that later.

- - - -

And finally the sixth trip which, as part of our “Exodus” took us from the station in Gottschee City to Brežice on the cold and starry night of December 7, 1941, with people in the warm carriage softly singing  Heimat deine Sterne…   among others.  Some cried. And when I was awakened by Mother, we were entering the station of our new “Heimat” in the Reich, a country that was to last a thousand years.



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