Prof. John Tschinkel
The Bells Ring No More - an autobiographical history, 2010
 |
 |
| No. | Chapter |
| 21. | Twilight by the River |
It is shortly before the hour on the evening of February 2, 1943 and our dimly lit ‘big’ room is again half filled with neighbors who, as usual, have come to hear the nightly news. Some are huddled around the primitive radio, its exposed vacuum tubes powered with an array of lead acid and dry cell batteries, the glow of the filaments showing the tension on their faces. Others are sitting on the benches around the corner oven, their backs up against the warm tiles. The radio sound is kept at a minimum to save power since a recharge or replacement of the precious batteries is nearly impossible.
- - - -
For months we had been following with rising anxiety the news from the Russian front and the great battle of Stalingrad in particular. On November 21, 1942, the Soviets had encircled the German Sixth Army under General Friedrich von Paulus, trapping 250,000 German soldiers in the city. Hermann Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe declared: “we will supply the army by air until the ring is broken and the Soviet army defeated”.
But for weeks nothing positive on Stalingrad was heard in the news. Lacking encouraging reports, everyone realized that the trapped Germans must be running out of ammunition, heating fuel and medical supplies. And without winter clothing, the situation must surely be desperate. According to Josef Michitsch, our Masern sexton who had been a POW in Russia during WWI, winter temperatures there can reach sub-zero Fahrenheit and night temperatures of -40F are not uncommon.
We all knew of the successes which immediately followed the invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941 when Germany and the Axis powers quickly advanced deep into Soviet territory. The Gottscheer Zeitung had been printing glowing reports on these battle victories while we were still in the enclave.
But later that fall, the successes slowed and the predictions of early victory over the Soviets did not come to pass. According to the plan for Operation Barbarossa, Leningrad was to have been captured by the end of July 1941 and Moscow long before the start of the brutal Russian winter. Barbarossa was based on the belief that the entire Red Army would collapse within five weeks. In this plan, the seizure of Moscow was considered the key to ultimate victory over the Communists.
Now, 19 months after the invasion, Leningrad was surrounded but still not captured, all attacks to destroy the city having failed. And when the Germans finally got to within 18 miles of Moscow's center on December 5, 1941, the Soviets started an offensive the following day which defeated the Wehrmacht and pushed it back one hundred miles, denying the Germans their victory. And now the situation in Stalingrad was very discouraging. Promptly at seven o’clock, the somber music stops and the announcer read the news:
“Hier ist der Reichsdeutsche Rundfunk; wir bringen die Nachrichten”. (Here is the Radio Network of the German Reich; we are bringing the news). Then after a pause and without any other preliminary comment, the voice slowly and solemnly announces: Stalingrad has fallen.”
Father turned off the radio. Some women started to cry. After this defeat, many in the room had their lingering doubts about a German victory reinforced. All knew that if Germany lost the war, we were doomed. We could not stay on properties stolen from others and as citizens of the Third Reich would not be allowed to return to Gottschee, an integral part of a liberated Slovenia in which we would not be permitted to stay.
I, who was sure of ultimate victory, had no such doubts. But I knew that Father did.
A few days later, the batteries die and now the news is by word of mouth only. We hear that von Paulus, the valiant General in charge of the surrounded Sixth Army Corps, who during the battle was promoted by Hitler to Field Marshal has surrendered and with his surviving troops, is on the way to Siberia.
For months Father had been saying that von Paulus was the Reich’s greatest General, a term Hitler himself had used when he announced the promotion only a few days ago. The fact that after his surrender, Hitler called von Paulus a traitor and coward did not get to us until much later but got me into trouble in the meanwhile.
On March 18, 1943, our school is visited by Uiberreither, the Gauleiter of Styria. We are all lined up in front of the school in Cerklje under the nervous supervision and the fussing of Pfeifer our teacher. I am the first in line; a privilege granted me since I am one of his best students. The big cars come and the uniformed Gauleiter approaches, trailed by his uniformed staff, all wearing highly polished boots.
He comes straight at me and asks: "who is the greatest general on the eastern front?" Without hesitation I roar out, Feldmarschall von Paulus.
He stares at me a while as if to make up his mind what to do with me, then looks at the paling teacher. After another look at me he goes down the line asking no more questions.
From that time on I am never again the first in line. Of course my father got a serious reprimand from Jacklitsch, but Father has the right answer: “I didn’t know; our batteries went dead ”.
- - - -
The battle of Stalingrad began with heavy bombing by the Luftwaffe on August 23, 1942 causing a fire storm, killing thousands. The sprawling metropolis became a graveyard. In early September, the German Army advanced into the city and Hitler declared in a public speech on September 30, that the German army would never leave it. On November 21, the Red Army surrounded the city trapping 250,000 German soldiers of Sixth Army in the pocket.
Hitler promoted Friedrich von Paulus to Generalfeldmarschall on January 30, 1943. Already on November 30, 1942, Hitler had publicly commanded that the city be held at all cost. He took it for granted that von Paulus would obey his order to fight to the last man and take his own life since no German Field Marshal had ever surrendered.
Paulus disobeyed Hitler after being promoted, saying that as a Christian he could not, in good faith, kill himself. When Soviet forces closed in on Paulus' headquarters on January 31, Paulus surrendered. Hitler was furious and openly lambasted Paulus for being the only Field Marshal in German history to surrender alive. The remnants of the Germans surrendered on February 2, 1943.
The battle of Stalingrad had raged for 199 days and was the turning point in the war. It bled the German army dry and after this defeat, the Wehrmacht was in full retreat.
But already one year ago, after only six months from the start of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, the strategic position of Germany in Russia had become dangerously precarious. This had been predicted by German supply units even before the operation, should the war be prolonged into the Russian winter, but their warnings were disregarded. Hitler had stated that since the war would be over in five weeks only a few mobile units would be needed to occupy the defeated state. Now, nineteen months later, the Germans were being driven back, not only in Russia but on the other fronts as well. And on December 11, 1941, Germany had declared war against the United States, bringing a new powerful adversary into the battle.
- - - -
The first time I heard that Germany might lose the war was in the early fall of 1942, at about the time the German Army was taking Stalingrad. I overheard this during a conversation Father was having with a soldier of the German border patrol who in pairs patrolled their part of the river border, a stretch half way between Cerklje and Brod. Brod was a small village of a few empty houses 2 km beyond Veliko Mraševo, a short distance off the Kostanjevica road, its houses nestled around either side of the dirt road leading to the bridge across the Krka river.
The guards lived in a house near the narrow wooden bridge, machine guns mounted in the fortified windows. Bisecting the bridge was a barbed wire barrier that prevented any crossing. There were no corresponding guards on the Italian side. I sometimes stopped at the bridge and watched the off duty guards angling on their side of the bridge with a simple hook tied to a string off a stick, but the fish were too smart for them.
The guards often stopped at our house for a short rest and something to eat and drink. Father was happy to talk to them and hear from them news items not heard on the radio. For them, talking to villagers interrupted the boredom of their posting and the uneventful patrols along the river where nothing ever happened. At least not until then, but this was to change soon enough.
This lone guard was off duty and had come to visit Father whom he had befriended during the past summer on his frequent stops. He was an older Austrian from Vienna who like Father had been a soldier in WWI. The soldier was bemoaning the fact that the Soviet Army had not collapsed in five weeks as Hitler had predicted, that the conquest of Russia was way behind schedule and the unprepared Wehrmacht was now heading into the bitter Russian winter that had defeated Napoleon. He claimed that the strategic position of Germany had become bad because neither the Wehrmacht nor the German military industry was prepared for a long winter war in Russia.
But what upset the Austrian even more was the fact that Hitler had declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. He believed this had been a bad mistake without first conquering the British Isles which now would offer a secure invasion base for the Americans. A two front war is not winnable, he claimed.
(The soldier would have been even more upset had he known that Hitler had postponed Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, by five weeks to June 22, to subdue a rebellious Yugoslavia. He did this against the advice of his generals who feared that the delay might jeopardize the war.)
I expected Father to counter with a forceful denial, but he maintained a downcast, thoughtful silence which encouraged the doubting soldier even more in his treasonable talk. The man, who knew of our status, told Father to get out of Slovenia in time should his fears come to pass and Germany begin to lose the war.
Afterwards, Father made me promise not to mention to anyone what I had heard; “the soldier did not know what he was talking about and yes, definitely, Germany will win the war”. I was, of course assured but did not forget what I had heard.
- - - -
News of the world, the war or even local news reached us via word of mouth only, and then already days if not weeks old and obsolete. After Stalingrad, our radio was dead due to lack of charged batteries and if there were newspapers they did not reach our village. The Gottscheer Zeitung was no longer published; it had died together with the concept of the Gottscheer as an ethnic group. The last issue had been printed in Gottschee City on December 3, 1941.
Sometimes Father got a news update from Franz Jacklitsch, who had a working radio, when he stopped at his inn in Cerklje on the way home. And on some Sunday afternoons Yiorgo brought Father and me to the movie house in Krško where a newscast was shown prior to the feature film. Usually it showed the Führer, Göring, Goebbels and other Reich dignitaries, either alone or in various combinations visiting the front or giving a victory speech. Most impressive, however, were the victorious battle scenes in Russia describing the advances deep into the country. After Stalingrad and later in 1943 and ‘44, “repositioning the army” was used to describe retreats, claiming that battling the enemy closer to home was strategically more effective toward victory. And soon after that, newscasts were no longer shown.
For us the war was far away and had only a minimal effect on our daily lives. But on July 7, 1943 it also came to us in the Save/Sotla area in the form of a massive partisan raid across the river.
We were awakened late at night by Mother who silenced our protests by telling us to be quiet as she was commanding all three of us in a whisper to crawl under their bed. While doing this, I noticed Father standing at the window, staring intently into the still dark outside. Then there were voices in Slovene; distant at first but getting nearer and approaching our house. And after some exchange on the street just outside the fence to our property, the voices receded and disappeared altogether. After quite a while other voices returned but now they were in our familiar Gottscheer dialect, those of our neighbors from across the street. This is when Mother said we could come out from under the bed and all of us went outside. It was getting light. By now all the residents along the street toward the river had come out and were telling their version of what had happened.
The Partisan raid had started with houses nearest the river and worked its way toward the center of the village. There was no resistance since the patrolling of the border at that time was minimal and the border guards at the bridge in Brod were kept indoors by raiders who had surrounded their post. The partisans knocked at each door with rifle butts and told the person that appeared to stay indoors or be shot. Then they went to the stable and led off the livestock toward the river. In most cases they left behind one cow. It seemed they were only recovering what they believed was rightly theirs; we and all other settlers having been given livestock taken from the Slovene deported in 1941. The animals were crossed to the other side of the river at the shallow part downstream from the beach.
They were about to enter our house but were stopped by their commander only because they were running late. This and much more was explained to me by the Slovene Karel Žibert, the owner of number 38, when I visited the village many years later.
The raid left half the village with empty stables. But it also took the life of Maria Mams, the 56 year old mother of the 30 year old Hans. Maria lived alone in the second of two houses which Hans, as the heir to his father’s estate, had accepted as his allocation. Her house was next to that of Katharina, the fourth from ours in the direction of the river. She had moved there after Hans married earlier that year and his new wife took over the household.
Maria, who slept in a ground level bedroom, was awakened by the unusual commotion on the street. At the open window, she heard a noise outside and, apparently yelled “who is there”?
Unfortunately, on the other side of the wall, just beside the window was one of the raiders, a young man, standing guard. Startled by the unsuspected voice, he turned and fired, point blank at the shadow in the window, killing her instantly.
We heard other shots, but from a distance. They came from Brod where some partisans were keeping the border guards in their bunker. They also came from the solitary house at the intersection of the Kostanjevica road and the one leading to the Brod bridge. It was the house of Ferdinand Kren, the 24 year old son of our former butcher and inn keeper at the cemetery end of Masern village. The elder Kren had died in 1941 and his son Ferdinand as heir was allocated the house and inn at the Brod intersection.
The raiders were on the way to Malo Mraševo, a village one third the size of ours, the settling place for the people of Grčarske ravne (Masereben), the Masern annex. When they banged on his door Ferdinand did not open but instead started firing at the raiders through windows while his mother was reloading his guns. His continuous firing kept the raiders away from the house.
The confrontation at the Kren house was a nuisance to the raiders since the road from Brod led past the Kren house toward to Malo Mraševo only a short distance away, hampering their main objective. Their purpose was not a confrontation or a firefight, but only to reclaim Slovene livestock now in the stables of the settlers, to feed the partisans in the hills and forests across the river.
But while a few raiders kept Ferdinand busy firing out of the basement windows toward the road, others led the livestock around the back side of the house. When the raid ended, the partisans withdrew from the house without casualties and the firing stopped. Both Ferdinand and his mother survived.
The raid of July 7, 1943 was the first and biggest of a number of raids across the border both from Italian occupied Slovenia and the puppet state of Croatia. It brought great anxiety to the settlers and caused the German occupiers to fortify the border. But this produced only marginal success; a full commitment to secure the border and deal with the increasing frequency and violence of the raids was not possible since the available resources of manpower and materiel were more urgently needed at the now faltering fronts. And after their defeat at Stalingrad, the Germans continued to lose ground not only in Russia but in major setbacks elsewhere as well.
| May 13, | 1943 | - German and Italian troops surrender in North Africa. |
| July 26, | 1943 | - Italian fascist Government falls; Mussolini arrested. |
| Aug. 17, | 1943 | - Germans evacuate Sicily. |
| Sept. 3, | 1943 | - Allies land on Italian mainland. |
| Jan. 6, | 1944 | - Soviet troops advance into Poland. |
| Jan. 27, | 1944 | - German 900 day siege of Leningrad broken by Soviet troops. |
| June 6, | 1944 | - Allies land in Normandy. |
| July 20, | 1944 | - Hitler survives assassination attempt by group of his generals who wish to end the losing war. |
Not only were the Germans forced to give up their many conquests, but they were also unable to stop or even control the increasing guerilla activity within the territory they still occupied. Yugoslavia and the annexed parts of Slovenia are prime examples. Even here, the attempts of the Germans to fully suppress the resistance are not only unsuccessful; they are also unable to prevent the resistance from spreading and causing havoc with their movements and supply lines.
Guerrilla activity was also causing problems to the Italians occupying Slovenia. Here, however, the common objective of the factions resisting the occupier was fractured by irreconcilable differences between the communist Partisans and two of their ideological opposites, the anti-communists.
One of these was the “Plava Garda”, the Slovene branch of the Serbian Royalist Cetniks. Initially anti-fascist, it was forced, in the absence of any other help, to turn to the Italians for support in battling the communist Partisans, their ideologically common enemy. The Plava Garda’s last stand against the far more powerful and better organized Partisans was in Grčarice (Masern) where, on September 10 1943, they were overwhelmed and destroyed by the Partisans now heavily armed with weapons the dissolving Italian army had left behind.
Similarly supported by the Italians in their fight against the communist Partisans was the “Bela Garda”, the strongly pro-Catholic Slovene defense force founded in 1941. One of its local founders and leaders in the Kočevje area was the Reverend Karel Škulj, the priest of the parish of Dolenja Vas. On September 11, 1942 he reported to the leadership of the Bela Garda in Ljubljana on the success of the Italians:
“On August 13 [Italian] grenadiers arrived in Dolenja Vas and cleaned it out well. They arrested 32 suspected [communist sympathizer] persons. Of these they released two, they took away twenty-six and four of them were shot immediately. People say - all the right ones - .”
The report continues:
“We have already submitted, three times, a request for arming the village guard, but until now without results. On Saturday came a [Italian] Colonel from Ribnica who promised that the matter will be settled soon. The request has been pending since August 14.”
And on pg 563 of “Belogardizem” under “Nastop Oboroženih Oddelkov” France Saje writes:
“At Skulj’s urging, the Italians finally armed the Bela Garda of Dolenja Vas”.
Shortly after the capitulation of Italy most of the Bela Garda was destroyed by the Slovene communist Partisans in the battle of Turjak on September 19, 1943.
With an ideological orientation that prevented any reconciliation with the Communists, the remnants of both Bela Garda and the Plava Garda joined the Slovene Home Guard, the Domobranci. They were under the command of General Leon Rupnik, the leading Slovene collaborator with the forces of occupation. This collaborationist militia was formed on Sept 24, 1943 by order of SS General Rösener, the head of anti Partisan warfare in Slovenia. The Domobranci swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler twice, both times in the central stadium of Ljubljana.
The first time was on April 20, 1944 in the presence of Leon Rupnik and SS-General Erwin Rösener. They swore allegiance to Hitler again on January 30, 1945, but present this time was also the bishop of Ljubljana Gregorij Rožman, who stood between Rupnik and Rösener on the reviewing stand.
Rožman was passionately anti-communist and was also a collaborator with the Italians and, after September 1943, with the German occupier. He was friendly with SS General Rösener, who ordered mass executions of civilians, hostages and prisoners of war in line with Himmler’s decree of June 25, 1942 throughout Slovenia. Quotes and photos exist that attest to the above.
After the war, General Rupnik was tried by the State for treason, convicted to death and executed. Uncle Jože Ilc was the defending attorney appointed by the Yugoslav State. Bishop Rožman fled to the British zone of Austria but was put on trial in absentia by a military court for treason and other crimes. He was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 18 years imprisonment, forced labor and lifelong loss of citizenship.
- - - -
After September 3, 1943, the part of Slovenia until then occupied by Italy was taken over by the Germans. The Partisans, re-supplied with the weaponry left behind by the dissolved Italian army, became a major guerilla force throughout this part of Slovenia which the Germans, due to their critical shortage of forces, were unable to suppress. In this newly occupied territory, as was the case already in the de-facto annexed part of Slovenia, SS General Rösener, the head of security in Slovenia, rigidly enforced Himmler’s edict of June 25, 1942 on how to deal with Partisan collaborators.
This was demonstrated in Mother’s village of Dolenja Vas and witness accounts written in 1945 are in the Slovene National Archives under AS 1827, KU 20P, šk 3.
“After September 8, 1943, the Partisans were in the village [Dolenja Vas] for six weeks. And with the German offensive later in the fall of 1943 came merciless terror and oppression of sympathizers [of the partisans]. In the village they hanged two captured Partisans, took away all sympathizers of the O.F. [Osvobodilna Fronta - Liberation Front] who had been identified by a local informer. On January 6, 1944, they burned down the schoolhouse and the parsonage on the hill where some of the Partisans had been quartered. On January 10, they set fire to seven farm buildings where, according to the informer, Partisans had taken refuge”.
Details on this were related to me in one of my visits to Dolenja Vas in the 1970's:
In the fall of 1943 the Partisans, temporarily quartered in Dolenja Vas, are barely escaping at one end while the Germans are entering at the other. The Germans park their tanks and trucks and set up quarters in houses and courtyards including that of Grandma Ilc. The commandant takes over part of the Pahulje house as his headquarters because it is central, convenient and large. While his wife Angela serves refreshments, the commandant talks to Janez Pahulje who speaks German.
After the commandant settles in, an informer arrives and presents the officer with a list of partisan collaborators in the village. The commandant gives the order to round up the men on the list and then leaves the house. Shortly thereafter, German soldiers come and arrest Pahulje who, with the others on the list, is detained in the large room of the village municipal hall.
Later in the afternoon, the commandant arrives in the hall, surveys the arrested men and notices Pahulje among them. He turns to a subordinate; points to Pahulje and gives the order, ‘release that one and keep the others. Shoot them if they try to escape’.
Next morning two of the captives are hanged in full view of the villagers. The others were loaded on trucks and driven away. Among them was uncle Janez, the 38 year old son of Grandma Ilc, Pahulje’s brother-in-law. The village believes all were to be executed.
According to Himmler’s edict, the commandant could have executed all those rounded up and burned the entire village. But instead, he had apparently reported to his higher ups who ordered him to hang only two of the suspected collaborators and to hold the others for pick up by the security police.
After they were taken away, the village gave them up as dead. They believed this until the spring of 1944 when Janez and some of the others returned home on a temporary leave from a labor camp in Austria. It seems that Himmler’s orders were no longer rigidly enforced and forced laborers were more useful to the Germans than dead suspects.
After a few days, uncle Janez returned to his labor camp, but on his way there he took a detour to Veliko Mraševo, much to our surprise. After the end of the war in May 1945, he and the others returned, if emaciated, to their homes in Dolenja Vas.
At the other end of their destiny was Franc Pogorelec, the father of Jacob, husband of Mira, the oldest daughter of uncle Janez. Franc who was associated with the Bela Garda had become a member of the Domobranci. At war’s end he was captured by the liberating Partisans and was not heard of again.
- - - -
In our part of the settlement area, the dividing line between the annexed and the occupied Slovenia remained the Krka and Sotla River, our side now de-facto annexed to the Reich. And since the other side of this divide was now virtual no-man’s land, the raids of the Partisans into the settlement area became more frequent and more daring, forcing the Germans to fortify the border.
In the fall of 1943, soon after the collapse of Italy, the Germans erected a barbed wire fence all along our side of the river and mined a five meter wide space on the river side of the fence. Between the mined space and the river bank they left a strip of land free of mines to allow access to the water all along the embankment. The start of the mined area was well marked to keep us wandering into it and accidentally tripping a mine.
The fence was a dense, impenetrable barrier the height of a man and at least five meters wide. It crossed the road leading to the river, but two gates allowed access to the beach. The gates were closed every evening by either the border guard or the villagers. A small concrete bunker with firing slits was constructed a short distance from the gate and guarded at night by soldiers from the border post at Brod.
There was one more attempt at a raid from across the river later in the fall of 1943 as if to test the defenses in the bunker. The two guards started firing when they heard the raiders opening the gate. The raid was abandoned but one of the raiders, a bearded man in his 50’s, was killed by a bullet from the bunker. The following morning all of Veliko Mraševo came to see the body lying dead in the road leading to the gate. By noon, the blood that had run from his body into a puddle on the dirt road had turned brown and was attracting flies.
Later that day, men from across the river came to claim the body lying in the road. They had appealed to the guards at the bridge in Brod to let them cross and bring the dead man back to his village for burial, a request that was granted by the commandant. Accompanied by border guards, four grim men arrived and loaded the body on the stretcher they had brought with them, all to the hostile stares and murmurs from those standing around and watching, without ever meeting the eyes of their adversaries from the other side.
- - - -
During the winter of 43/44, the gate was permanently closed and mined. This, the earlier fatality and the establishment of a branch of the Brod station in an empty house in the center of the village may have discouraged further raids; the raiders perhaps reasoning that the risk was too high.
The gate was reopened in the spring of ’44 to give farmers, who had arable land within the deep bulge of the river bypassed by the fence, access to their parcels for cultivation. It allowed the farmers to again bring their thirsty, if now considerably fewer, cattle for watering at the river.
It also opened the way for the team of Yiorgo and Shargo to get a drink at the river after again tearing themselves free of my hands and galloping through the village. This time, I and others running after them expected to hear a giant explosion caused by them wandering into the minefield. But water was the only attraction for them and they were led away from the river passive and unharmed.
The opened gate also gave school children and adults again the long awaited access to the welcoming beach of whose treacherous waters the drowning of Franz had made us so tragically aware.
- - - -
While the mined field and mined gate may have been too risky for the Partisans on the other side of the river to attempt another raid, the mines were a magnet for their teenagers who turned mine retrieval into a sport. In the summer of ’44, they swam across the river at a narrower point upstream to disarm a buried mine and take it back to their side. The border guards were aware of this but were unable to prevent it since their patrols were monitored by lookouts posted up and down on the other side of the river when this was being done.
On such a foray by one of the boys, a trip wire, hidden in the grass, was pulled by his foot, setting off a mine. The explosion lifted the body into the air and dropped it, at a forty five degree angle, head down and face up into the middle of the barbed wire web.
The sound of the explosion brought people to the site on both sides of the river. Mitzi and I were among the first to get there, but nothing could be done except watch the teenage boy, suspended in the spikes of the barbed wire maze, die an agonizing death. This included the border patrol that arrived soon and was a discouragement to anyone on either side from attempting a rescue. I remember the boy moaning as he slowly died with blood from wounds running down his face and seeing his own right leg below the knee stripped to the bone, the foot part torn away. After he died, soldiers from the Brod station arrived and with big cutters made their way to the body to free him. As before with the dead raider, the border station allowed members of his family to come across the bridge to claim the body.
During the remainder of our time in Veliko Mraševo, there were no other raids into our village.
- - - -
But the farmer R.K. in his memoir reports that there were many other such raids elsewhere in the settlement area:
“In 1943 the Partisans were widespread and performed predatory raids. My village was less threatened and had no such visits. To protect against the raids, we were consolidated into a home-guard unit under the leadership of the Gendarmerie. At times of imminent danger we were, group wise, assigned to the border guards as reinforcement for the night watch. At a very vulnerable defense point in the village of Globočice, strong resistance caused the raiders to withdraw from their initial forays with only limited plunder. After that, the population withdrew every evening to less threatened villages nearby and returned in the morning. The home-guard looked after their possessions and properties during the night.
“In the middle of the night some months later there came a larger group of Partisans of several hundred well armed men. The guard discovered the raiders when they were surrounding the village but concluded that any resistance was futile. The guard of twelve men immediately sought hiding places wherever possible. Two men even crept into a pig sty.
“The Partisans now felt secure and no longer concerned themselves with the guards. They loaded the plunder on to the wagons they brought along and took with them all the livestock, horses and pigs when they left in the direction of the Croatian border. The guards survived with only a scare. (That night I was not with them; my turn had been on the night before).
“After that, the re-settlers gave up their farms and moved into safer villages. Some villages even ceased to be inhabited and the surrounding soil was no longer cultivated. The Partisans proved themselves harmless toward the population providing it did not resist. There were however instances where some of ours were abducted by the raiders and did not return. Their names I no longer remember. And in 1944 we all already had the view we were progressing toward a bad future”.
The Reverend Alois Krisch echoes the farmer:
“An especially bad chapter was the lack of security of our people near the border; the danger there being theft, plunder, murder and abduction. The officials tried to convince our farmers that it is an honor to be a ‘border guard farmer’ at the ‘estate fence’ of the Reich.
“These were wretched farmers who had nothing with which to defend themselves! It was said that they should defend themselves with axes and dung forks (this was told them verbally), while the robbers had rifles, automatic guns, pistols and hand grenades. ‘For this honor I should let myself be killed? No thank you, I reject this!’ was heard as the reply to this affront.
“Later, our defenders received some rifles. Also [home] guards were ordered for one or two villages consisting of two men, while knowing that the others [raiders] always arrived in large bands. At times a guard unit of three to ten men (for a larger area) was organized. Even such bigger units could not have resisted an overwhelming group of bandits. At best they could have alerted the villagers.
“The bandits often made their plunder raids. On one side they came from across the border, on the other side from the Slovene populated hill areas of the north”.
The Reverend then provides a detailed list of these raids including the one into Veliko Mraševo. Contrary to the farmer, he speaks of many killings and repeatedly bemoans the suffering and material losses of the settlers. But while the farmer is capable of some introspection about the motives of the raiders, the Reverend keeps calling them bandits and thieves, “making miserable the lives of the settlers”. His lingering political orientation, even years after the end of the war, prevented him from acknowledging the fact that the settlers, as part of the occupier, had taken the property of Slovene and were sitting on their land.
He also describes the reinforcement of the border with barbed wire fences and confirms the establishment of the auxiliary border defense force, a group he deems as “… totally incapable of dealing with the well armed and organized raiders”. He claims this is the case because this border defense force, in addition to untrained and under armed men, also included unreliable ‘Windische Slovene’, whose loyalty and determination was no longer certain.
- - - -
The recollections of both the Farmer and the Reverend refer mostly to the especially vulnerable Sotla river settlement region bordering on one side the Croatian State and on the other side the mountainous area where the resident Slovene had been allowed to stay. Here Partisan activity was considerably more active than in the Cerklje area including the out of the way Veliko Mraševo and other nearby villages. Confirming and expanding on their observation is the report titled “Security Situation in Lower Styria”, sent to Himmler by Ulrich Greifeld, SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Police. The report, marked “Secret”, was written on September 21, 1944 and is a comprehensive listing of various security related events since the beginning of 1944. 143
The essentials of the lengthy Greifeld letter are repeated below to consolidate and validate with recorded documentation, the recollections of the Farmer, the Reverend and my own memories and thereby provide the broader background of the conditions the settlers were exposed to in these final days of the Third Reich.
- - - -
Greifeld states that at the beginning of 1944, he had discussed the unrest of the settlers with Gauleiter Uiberreither and he subsequently reported to Himmler, in a letter dated January 15, 1944, the “Readiness of the settlers to leave Lower Styria”.
Distress over Partisan activity in the “Settlement A” region of Lower Styria was being voiced by representatives of re-settlers who came from Bessarabia and South Tirol (Gottscheer not mentioned).
Himmler replied on January 28, ‘44 that: “A division of the Waffen-SS will shortly be transferred into this region and a substantial calming of the situation is expected soon thereafter. The South Tirol resettlers must be allowed to return to their homeland; but only in special cases and with permission granted”.
The unrest of the settlers was especially high due to the raiding expeditions throughout the region by the 14th Division of the O.F. (Osvobodilna Fronta; Liberation Front) in the first part of February ‘44. Greifeld met with settler representatives and with the concurrence of the Gauleiter ordered that:
“a. The endangered areas be evacuated,
“b. The properties of the evacuated be moved to secure areas,
“c. The families of the evacuated be given shelter by other settlers
in secure areas,
“d. The evacuated properties be cared for by communal effort in
which the DAG will participate actively.” 144
The SS Division did not do major battle with the Partisans who withdrew deep into the hills without seeking direct confrontation, as was their mode of fighting. But the SS mercilessly dealt with the supporters of the Partisans in line with Himmler’s edict of June 25, 1942, on how to deal with those who for “some duration supported the bandits with manpower, provisions, weapons and shelter”. 145 This edict was reinforced with Special Orders for specific cases:
“... the male population over 15 shall be executed on the spot, their bodies thrown into flames. The villages shall be destroyed by fire. The rest of the population shall be deported …” 146
A follow up report on the suppression of Partisan activity is provided to Greifeld by SS-General of the Police Rösener on April 26, ’44:
“In the German/Croatian border area on the German side there are now virtually no bandit gangs. The whole area is adequately secured by the Police and Gendarmerie as well as units of the 18th SS-Panzer Division Horst Wessel. The evacuation of the Gottscheer from this area can not even be considered since they are, under nearly peaceful conditions, able to perform their [farming] activities.”
Greifeld continues:
“As expected, the arrival of parts of the 18th SS-Panzer Division produced a reduction of bandit activity and a calming of the resettlers has occurred.
“End of May 1944, parts of the 18th SS-Panzer Division stationed in A settlement region have been withdrawn without replacement by other Waffen SS-Units. Since then, the bandit gang activity in Lower Styria has increased. In the night of June 2/3, a bandit group of 1000 to 1200 men from the province of Ljubljana forced itself into the area of Billichberg/Polšnik where they plundered three supply bases of the DAG and killed three settlers….. [This was the 15th Division of the O.F. (Osvobodilna Fronta; Liberation Front). It was its second large assault into the settlement area. The first was in the middle of October 1943].
“In August and September of this year the security situation in the Settlement Area A has further sharpened. Especially vulnerable is the Brežice (Rann) area due to a strong bandit group operating in the Wachberg/Bohor region further north. [The Partisan Group ‘Kozjanski Battalion,’ which had been operating there since February 1944, and in the time from June and September ‘44 completely controlled the area between the Sava, Savinja and the Croatian border]. The village of Bistrica (Kőnigsberg), settled with people from Dobrudscha and Bessarabia, is totally cut off and the road from Brežice/Rann toward Ptuj and Maribor is effectively closed.
“Similarly, the Brežice (Rann) area is again threatened from the south. In view of these conditions, the settlers in the A settling region are very distressed and some are starting to leave the area with their possessions”.
Greifeld refers also to a report of the Gauleiter who is responsible for the DAG:
“The DAG can not, prior to the establishment of security, perform an orderly cultivation of the region. The supply bases of the DAG and the farms of the settlers are continuously exposed to threats from the bandits. The situation burns under my fingernails, but I can do no more than keep asking every few days for help from higher-up SS- and Police leaders.”
In the same September 21, 1944 letter to Himmler, Greifeld quotes a report received on August 31, 1944 from the mayor of Bizeljsko in the Sotla area, himself a settler from Bessarabia:
“The stronger the bandits become, the stronger is their support from the local Slovene, not only in the surrounding areas but also in the settlement area itself where they [Slovene] again oppose us as the majority while we, the settlers are in the minority”.
The mayor of Bizeljsko, representing the settlers in the Sotla area requests, among other items, the arming and organizing of all able men aged 16-60 into village units, that these men receive military training from the SS, the women and children be removed from endangered villages and settlers from South Tirol be allowed to return home.
“The cause of distressed settlers and the reason for their request to be allowed to move out of the area is the activity of 14th Division of the O.F.”.
Greifeld, with full concurrence of the Gauleiter, ends his letter to Himmler with a plea to negate the call up of 200 men from the Brežice (Rann) area. “If, in spite of the tense reserves situation, it were possible to leave these men in the area and after adequate arming, use them to protect the exposed villages, a certain reduction of tension would occur”.
- - - -
While, after the attempt in the fall of 1943, we had no further raids from across the river, the worsening situation elsewhere in 1944 also came to us and affected our lives there in one way or another.
In line with the request of the mayor of Bizeljsko, the border guard organized, in the spring of ‘44, the remaining village men, (i.e., those who had not yet been called up), into a village defense force to complement the official border patrol at Brod. Their base post was an empty farm house on the road from our house to the river.
Units of two fully armed men now patrolled the village during the night. Normally there were two sets of such units out on duty, each patrolling the village street while circulating in opposing directions. They would meet somewhere along the way and after exchanging passwords and status, continue their round. After an agreed interval they met at the station where they were relieved by another set of two units. In the morning they all returned home, leaving behind their weapons in the station house, the ammunition and hand grenades locked away in a closet.
The otherwise unlocked house became a stopover resting place for the guards from Brod patrolling the border. They also passed there in the evening to announce to the home guard the nightly password and during the night stopped there to rest. And when the cold winter of 1944 brought them into the house also during the day, they first stopped in the entry space to stomp the snow off their boots before they entered the warm guard room, bringing with them the clinging cold. After hanging up their hats, rifles, belts and heavy greatcoats on hooks, they stood with backs close to the tiled oven and sped their warming up with a few shots of our schnapps.
The unlocked station house was normally off limits to all except the village home guards which included all males from 16-60 as suggested by the mayor of Bizeljsko. But some of our former school friends, now sixteen years old guards, would let us enter and allow us to fondle the unloaded weapons, the most fascinating of which was a light machine gun, but only until an older guard chased us out while reprimanding those who let us in.
Access by the young border guards became limited and was totally forbidden to their even younger friends after a serious security breach at the river in the summer of 1944.
I remember the day as a warm Sunday afternoon with boys and girls frolicking at the beach (there were no adults present) and exchanging taunts with the Slovene kids on the opposite side of the river. The epithets on both sides became increasingly more vocal and reached a pitch that was too much for one of the older boys on our side, at sixteen now one of the home guards. He went to get the light machine gun from the guard house which he set up on its tripod at the raised embankment next to the beach and pulled the trigger. He aimed over the heads of the kids on the other side and no one was hurt as our tormentors across the river dropped to the ground or ran for cover followed by our cheers.
The firing quickly brought the official uniformed guard and men from the village to the site. The offending young guard was taken to the guardhouse in Brod where he was kept for a few days.
Soon thereafter an officer from the Brod station gave the villagers, including the very young, a lecture on the seriousness of what had happened at the border and of more severe consequences to all should similar breaches of security happen again. After that, all of us under sixteen could enter the guard house only when older home guards or “responsible adults” were present.
- - - -
The guard house, in the absence of a Jaklitsch type saloon, soon became the village clubhouse. Not so much to the joy of Father who, while now able to work in his shop undisturbed, began to miss the gossip of the men hanging about, passing idle time and wondering about our progressively bleaker future.
At times I would accompany him to the “Wachstube” or guard room, the large main room of our station house, where he would join the others in discussions to do mostly with latest reports from the fronts. Often, especially later in the fall and winter of 1944 when it got cold outside, a bottle of homebrewed schnapps was passed around which helped to increase the decibels in the room now densely filled with the pungent smoke of homegrown tobacco. The men lingered on until their women arrived with reminders to return home and tend to their manly chores.
But the room became silent when the uniformed men from the “Grenzschutz”, the Reich’s border guard on their routine patrol, walked in for a short rest. It became silent, mainly because all in the room were eager to hear the latest from these soldiers, they now being the main source of news from the outside world.
But contrary to the soldier, who in the fall of 1942 intimated to Father that Germany might lose the war if the Americans were to land on the continent, these guards always dutifully presented the official “Germany will win” line. The line claimed that we were withdrawing to the homeland only to bring the enemy nearer where he could be defeated more easily. Later on another explanation was added. “As soon as the enemy is close enough, we will use our secret weapons with great vengeance. The enemy will be destroyed and there will be German victory”. But Veliko Mraševo was not our homeland and this explanation had little credibility. There were few, if any, in the room who believed it, especially now that the Americans had landed and were deep into France, in Italy half way up the peninsula and in the east, the Soviets near the heartland of Germany.
- - - -
A frequent visitor was Karl Schaffer, the former fire chief. Now 65 and still in good health, the “Wachstube” was nearer than the Weinstube at the Jaklitsch Gasthaus in Cerklje and a place where he did not have to pay. And in the “Wachstube” he rubbed elbows with his former firemen who still treated him with some of the respect he used to command. Even though here, as in Masern, he often got drunk and Karl, the younger of his two sons, or someone else had to escort him home.
His older son Hubert 36, had last winter had been taken into the “SS-Sonderstandarte Untersteiermark”, (SS-Special Group), a type of militia consisting of fifteen separate units formed in the fall of 1943 mainly from men of the former Gottscheer Sturm units. The men of these units were trained by SS officers and afterwards used to reinforce the now meager German forces fighting the Partisans in the Settlement Area “A”, the Save/Sotla part of Lower Styria.
With Hubert Schaffer was Josef Primosch, the older son of our neighbor across the street. Both were among the twenty three men from the “Alarm-Kompanie Gurkfeld”, one of the fifteen companies of this “SS-Sonderstandarte” that became surrounded by Partisans of the Kozjanski Battalion in a fortification at Kozje (Drachenburg) in Lower Styria, but for a long time did not surrender. After finally forced to give up, all twenty-three were court-martialed and executed on the spot by the Partisans on September 12, 1944. 147
Another company, called “Alarm-Kompanie Rann”, consisted of former Gottscheer now living in the Brežice region. One of its four squad leaders was a “Tschinkel”, possibly Father’s cousin Franz who formerly was the Sturmführer of Sturm 1, the Sturm of Gottschee city and its surroundings. At the end of the war Franz mingled with the civilians on the road and attempted to escape to Austria. He had switched out of his uniform but was, nevertheless, recognized by the Partisans and was kept in Yugoslavia as a POW until 1951. 148
- - - -
Ferdinand Primosch, the younger brother of Josef had been drafted earlier that year when he became eighteen in January 1944. After training he returned home for a short furlough and after that was sent to the Russian front. He also was never heard of again. While our neighbors Josef and Rosalia had lost both their sons, Karl Schaffer still had his second son Karl to help him and his wife Maria, work the land. The Schaffer farm, like Father’s and most others, also had Slovene forced labor as help, but by the fall of 1944, they all disappeared. Young Karl, at 33, was hard of hearing which disqualified him from becoming a soldier.
A saddler by trade, his shop in Masern was in his father’s attic where I visited him often and watch him making harnesses and other leather goods as well as horse hair mattresses for our villagers and others in the area. He welcomed my presence partly because I added to his otherwise solitary day and partly because I helped him with some tasks for which another pair of hands was needed.
In Masern some of his visitors were former village schoolmates, now unmarried young men, all lusting after Ivanka, the young Slovene who was the keeper of Riegler’s dry goods store directly across the square. The store was a branch of the Riegler store in Dolenja Vas and was open only on weekdays with Ivanka arriving from there on Monday morning and leaving late on Friday afternoon. During their visits to Karl, Ivanka was a much discussed topic which became especially animated when she appeared outside the store, the large attic window providing an excellent view. But Ivanka was immune not only to their approaches but also to those of other men in the village and none could do more than fantasize about her shapely figure.
This included Rudi Tschinkel, her next door bachelor neighbor and owner of both the Tschinkel tavern and half owner of the village saw mill, surely a good catch for any single young woman. But Rudi’s mother was vehemently against her son’s intentions and decided to drive Ivanka and her store out of his life and the village. She appealed to Riegler in Dolenja Vas and when unsuccessful, became determined to drive her out of Masern by making the young woman’s life miserable. Among her doings was to coat the sill of the front door to the store with human excrement to keep customers away. Rudi had to send two of his sawmill employees with buckets, soap and disinfectant to wash and scrub clean the sill with masses of water. All this made Ivanka only more adamant in her rejection of Rudi and gained much admiration from other women for her determination to remain in the village.
But it was Jaklitsch who succeeded in shutting down the Riegler store, his only competitor in the village. He not only expanded to carry more of the goods sold by Ivanka but also lowered his prices. And after Yugoslavia collapsed in April 1941, he was able to convince the villagers that it was anti-German to buy goods in the store owned by a Slovene. The Riegler store shut down due to lack of business and Ivanka never again appeared in Masern. The house was totally destroyed during the battle of 1943.
Over time Karl Schaffer Jr. and I became close friends, a friendship that continued into Veliko Mraševo where he, even while hard of hearing, was seen fit enough to become a village guard in the fall of 1944.
- - - -
One evening just before Christmas of 1944, Karl and his companion left the station house on their patrol starting in the direction of the river. The second unit of two men left, at the same time, in the other direction with Ernst Sbaschnig in charge. Ernst, now thirty three, was the son of Franz Sbaschnig, the roof maker of Masereben and who like Karl had, for some unknown reason, also not been called up but was judged fit to be a village guard.
It was a dark midnight shift, dark because the moon was still obscured by lingering clouds that had delivered fresh snow during the day. And instead of the patrols meeting on the road somewhere in the village, Ernst heard a noise in the back of the courtyard of a farm. Peering into the darkness he saw a man, but after calling out the password more than once, there was no reply. So he kneeled down, aimed and fired, hitting Karl who fell on the spot.
Karl’s companion who was even further back in the courtyard where both had gone to investigate, heard the shot and yelled out the password. And when all three ran and got to Karl, he was already dead.
Next morning I went to the site where he was shot. The snow was now trampled and the only traces of his killing were the red spots from the blood where he fell.
The body of Karl, dressed in his Masern Sturm 13 uniform, was laid on a bier in the spare room of the station house where it was guarded around the clock by his fellow guards and the constant presence of visitors. According to Masern custom he should have been laid out in his home, but neither his father nor his failing mother were up to the strain, now having lost both their sons. Both insisted that the body be displayed for viewing in the station house and that he be given a military funeral. The coffin was not made by Father but provided by the border guard headquarters in Rann.
Both the border guard and gendarmerie officials from Brežice (Rann) investigated and concluded that the shooting was an accident due to Karl’s poor hearing. But rumor had it that Ernst overreacted and shot without first yelling out the password, something that both he and his companion vehemently denied. The rumors persisted and were supported by Karl’s partner who claimed that he, having perfect hearing, also did not hear the password from Ernst.
Karl was buried in the Cerklje cemetery with full military honors. And since the now virtually leaderless Hitler Youth was required to attend in their uniforms, Father had to allow me to attend. (He had not allowed me to attend the burial of my other friend Franz which I bitterly resented.)
Karl received a 21 gun salute from fellow village guards and a drummer led us in singing “Ich hatt’ Einen Kameraden, einen bessern findst du nit ….” (I had a comrade, a better one you will not find ….)
I had a very difficult time at that funeral. This was the third time in less than three years I had lost a best friend; “…better comrades I would not find … “.
- - - -
The Reverend Alois Krisch writes:
“On Maundy Thursday April 6, 1944, around four in the afternoon came the first bombs. Until then we only watched them fly over us to the big targets in the north, counting at times 200 to 300 of them. On their return they flew dispersed, no longer in closed formation and sometimes were challenged [by fighter planes stationed at the field in Cerklje]. On St. Josef day 1944 we saw an air fight and watched the burning enemy plane plunge downward after being hit. We had fear since until then nothing had ever happened”.
The air fight was on April 2, 1944 and I remember it well.
On that cloudless Sunday I had cycled to Krško city to see the two o’clock movie at the cinema. Already on the way there, the bombers were returning from their mission up north. It was only when I got to Krško that German fighters appeared and attacked the enemy planes. I and most of population watched one of the bombers being hit by a Messerschmitt to the cheers of the crowd. And as the plane began to dive, two parachutes appeared in the clear blue sky. We were still cheering when the Wehrmacht soldiers revved up their motorcycles and sped away toward the airmen descending into the nearby hills. But the Partisans in the woods who were also watching found one of the survivors first and helped him to get back to his base in Italy.
It is highly likely that the hit bomber we saw was one of the two described Ray E. Zinck in his book titled “The Final Flight of Maggie’s Drawers” published in 1998. In this book, Ray Zink describes the story of Joe Maloney the tail gunner of the B-24 who, after his life saving parachute jump, was rescued by Tito’s partisans who then helped him and others get back to his base in Lecce, Italy. Ray’s story of Joe’s mission, the demise of his flight and the Odyssey of the return to his base in Italy is also described in part on his website, www.josephmaloney.com.
- - - -
To the unsettling insecurity of the settlers due to ever increasing Partisan activity was now added the daily threat from the attack planes - not only along the Sotla border to Croatia, but also throughout the rest of the settlement region, especially Cerklje with its Luftwaffe airbase, a prime military target in the area. This airbase had already been visited by the Partisans during the big raid of July 7, 1943 when ground units of the OF attacked and destroyed several planes there.
The ever more frequent air raids started in 1944 when bases in liberated parts of Italy allowed low flying attack planes to reach into Lower Styria and its settlement area. Their major targets, in addition to the airfields, were trains on the major rail lines, their rail stations and convoys on the major arteries.
The planes that were doing this were the feared double fuselage P-38 Lockheed Lightnings, which the Germans called the “Gabelschwanz Teufel” (Fork Tailed Devil). With a range of over 900 miles they were able to reach our area from bases as far south as Foggia in the Italy liberated by American forces that had already taken Rome even further north on April 6, 1944. And the further the Allies moved up the peninsula, the more frequent were their air raids in our area, often twice a day or more, as stated by the Reverend.
A major air raid on the Cerklje airfield was on May 25, 1944, the day the German Luftwaffe was celebrating Armed Forces Day. The day had been declared a holiday and the base was opened to the surrounding local population. Mitzi, Paul and I got there early while our parents stayed at home. The friendly airmen served sweet drinks in the canteen and allowed some of the visitors to peek into the planes.
But even before the sirens reached full pitch, there was machine gun fire from two Lightnings that appeared from over the hills just beyond the Krka. They had hugged the terrain and took the defenders of the base by total surprise, causing mass confusion and panic.
Mitzi, who had temporarily put me in charge of six year old Paul, had left us for a few moments. Fortunately Paul and I were not near the German planes nor the hangars, both the main objective of the raiders. I attempted to drag Paul with me under a nearby farm wagon and covered my head with my arms as we had been taught. There was a lot of rapid gunfire both from the planes and from the ground and the sound of flying and impacting bullets was heard all around. Then there were explosions as some of the hit planes caught fire.
But was it over equally fast; the planes flew away and did not return. The sirens were still howling when I looked up, seeing that some of our planes were burning while the airmen were attempting to control the civilians running about. But Paul, the brother who had been placed in my charge, had disappeared.
Joining the others running out of the airbase and through flowing tears, I kept yelling out his name. Finally somebody said that he was seen running with Mitzi on the road away from the base toward Zirkle. I found them both unhurt in front of the Jaklitsch inn, waiting for me. Mitzi explained that she had just returned when I was crawling under the wagon. She grabbed Paul and together they ran out of the airport with bullets hitting the ground all around them.
We were half way home when the small carriage, pulled by a galloping Yiorgo, was brought to a halt by Father. Both parents were as happy to see us as we were to see them.
Fortunately there were no civilian casualties, but several airmen were wounded and a number of planes were destroyed. In addition to damaging the military, bringing unrest and fear to the settlers had resulted in a successful mission for the enemy.
There was one more major surprise attack on the Cerklje airfield on October 3, 1944, but by then most of the German planes had been sent elsewhere. And the remaining German fighter planes were no match for the Fork Tailed Devils that came in low and fast and did damage before their opponents were able to respond.
- - - -
During the summer and later in the year, the “Devils” concentrated mostly on rail and road military traffic to and from Croatia which they effectively brought to a standstill, at least during the day. But the attacks on this traffic continued at night by the Partisans in the hills, who from vantage points along the way were equally effective.
As the Reverend writes, another objective of the Devils was to terrorize the settler population:
“The danger from the planes strained the nerves of many people. Twice I was forced to seek refuge in the street ditch to escape the low lying attack planes. At one time, fragments of exploding projectiles from the defending guns whistled overhead, making me think that these [projectiles] are just as unhealthy as those from the attackers. In places where no bombs had fallen people had no fear, but those who had seen the dead, the wounded and the blood, fled day or night when the siren sounded the alarm”.
I have a similar story. I had been to see a film in Krško on a Sunday afternoon and had just started to cycle home when the air raid siren revved up. I got off the bike and walked toward a solitary house along the road when I spotted a Devil flying in my direction. I dropped the bike and ran around the corner of the house barely escaping the bullets that were hitting the ground. But then he turned and came back at me again as I was rounding another corner of the same house and again escaped the bullets. He did not come back and soon the all clear was heard.
People appeared, took me inside the house and calmed me down. They also convinced me to stay at least until dusk which was very hard to do. But after that, I never went to the movies again.
The Reverend continues:
“From the day on when the first bombs fell on April 6, it was different. They were the smallest of bombs, but there were hundreds of them. Fortunately most of them hit nothing since many fell into fields and the forest behind us. Nevertheless, they caused much damage, many injuries and many deaths. On Easter Sunday, seventeen victims were buried in a mass grave (according to party rules, I could administer Church benediction only afterwards). Soon thereafter, ten more victims were buried having died from wounds [inflicted by the cluster bombs].
“Later the planes came more frequently; the low flying light bombers twice daily. Most of the attacks were on Dobova [just east of Brežice] which also received heavy bombs causing much suffering and many deaths.”
- - - -
Terror to the settlers came in many forms and from many directions. In the summer of 1944 and thereafter, it also came to Veliko Mraševo from snipers in the hills across the river firing in the direction of people in the fields and traffic on the roads.
When the sniping initially started, we all dropped to the ground and crawled behind some protecting object for safety. No one was ever hurt since the purpose of the sniping seemed to be only to disrupt the working farmers and instill fear, not to hit anyone. The snipers knew that the harvest being reaped by the settlers was to be theirs very soon, so it was not in their interest to prevent it.
And when it was sensed that the sniping was not intended to kill anyone, the work in the fields continued in spite of the sounds of rifle fire and bullets whizzing by. But occasionally the sniper aimed nearer to renew our fear of being hit, causing all to fall to the ground and seek cover. At least until the firing stopped.
There was one particularly annoying sniper in the small white house on the steep hill opposite, high above the river between our village and Brod. From there, the sniper had a commanding view of our valley and the Kostanjevica road but his fire was directed mainly at the military traffic on it. In the absence of such, he did not hesitate to instill fear also into the driver of a lone farm wagon or workers in the fields.
Some of us young fools made a game out of it. Get on a bike and speedily cycle from our village to the intersection at Kren’s house and back to draw fire from the sniper. Sometimes he obliged with a few bullets but he soon realized it was better to save the ammunition for the military rather than play games with bravado kids. Of course he could have stopped it altogether with a direct kill, but fortunately never did.
But the military soon got fed up being fired at when driving by with their trucks. A company of Waffen SS and two companies of police had been stationed in Rann in September 1944 to provide some relief to the settlers. 149 They drew fire from many rifles. Watching from the edge of the village, we could see the flashes from their guns before we heard the crack of the shot.
After one such event, two SS trucks roared into the village and stopped at the triangle near our house. Very young SS men jumped out and demanded that a layer of straw to be spread on the ground in the center of the triangle. This done, they lifted from one truck the bodies of two of their dead comrades, placed them on the straw bed and drove off, angrily demanding that we guard the bodies and bellowing that they would be back very soon.
The two dead SS men on the straw, as young as their comrades, had been killed by snipers in the white house as the small unsuspecting convoy was rolling by. Soon the dead were surrounded by the villagers, all talking in hushed voices and waiting for the trucks to return.
They roared back soon, trailing dust, as they had when they left. Without words, neither from the soldiers nor the villagers, they put their dead comrades back into the truck and sped off. The straw, red from the still bleeding bodies, was gathered up and thrown on to the dung heap of our neighbor Primosch, the now sonless couple across the road.
This was not the end of it, however. Sniping all along the Krka border had not only been a nuisance to the military; it had now resulted in casualties and the SS reacted by first sending out a tank to survey the territory.
I was on my bike on the safe stretch of the Kostanjevica road when there was a deep rumble preceding a gigantic tank, it being either a Tiger or the newer Leopard. From the ditch, I watched it roar by toward Brod, expecting it to start a barrage from the white house on the hill. But nothing happened; the snipers were wisely not tempted to draw lethal fire from the long and accurate 88 cannon of the tank.
But later that day, there arrived a short line of armored cars drawing howitzer cannons. Foolishly, the snipers fired at them as they were rolling toward Brod. At the intersection, the small SS convoy stopped behind the Kren house, where they bivouacked for the night and told us youngsters to stay away the following morning.
In the morning they again drew fire from the snipers. By then they had their howitzers ready and responded while we watched from the edge of our village. We saw the flashes from both the howitzer and the exploding projectile at its target at the same time, while the boom from each reached us a bit later. After only a few shots, the house took a direct hit and blew up to the jubilant outcry of all of us watching.
- - - -
The terror predicted in the second part of the pamphlet distributed in the enclave by the Slovene in July 1941, had become reality and was now nearing its end phase.
“…. And when the German imperialism is crushed, the rightful owners of the land on which they want you to settle will drive you out. Others will have settled in Gottschee and you will be empty handed, without land, without money, without homes. Toward such a destiny the agents of Hitler [the Gottscheer leaders] lead you …..”.
- - - -
In addition to the three major battle fronts, already in Germany proper or very near it in September 1944, a fourth one was anticipated to come from the south east through our region. To prepare for this, Hitler ordered the construction of the “South-East Wall” in July 1944. 150
The Reverend also writes about this:
“It was projected that a war front would also come to our region from Serbia and Croatia. Therefore the construction of a “Stellungsbau” (fortifications) was ordered. All had to join in the effort; the digging of tank traps, troop trenches, ditches and barriers of all sorts were prepared, bridges and streets were readied for blasting. Often, low flying aircraft fired into these groups of workers (many female). It was a wild time and it became more so day after day. One felt the nearness of the front – and still the people were forbidden to leave”.
Mitzi and many other young women of our village were required to take part in this effort; there were no more able men in our village to take part. Mother prepared lunch for her daughter which I had to take to her on my bicycle, promising to dive into the road ditch as soon as the sound of a plane was heard.
But before all this was underway, we had already dug our bunker behind the barn. Likewise, trenches were already in place in the back yard of the Cerklje school which we had dug on our ever less frequent days in Tscherne’s class.
As written by the Reverend, “we all felt the nearness of the front”.
- - - -
All the while, Veliko Mraševo was a stopover place for Axis troops on their way out of the Balkans. By now these units were a mix of nationalities, either still loyal to their controlling German officers or merely waiting for an opportune moment to escape, for which they would have been shot as deserters. Two of such units I remember in particular.
The first unit, a mix of German and Italian soldiers stayed for nearly two weeks, in part to rest but also to protect the ever more vulnerable settlers. The unit had a mobile workshop that was parked on the grass behind our second house. The workshop was an enclosed truck outfitted with an assembly of tools most of which I had never seen. It included a small lathe and best of all, two tanks of compressed gas used for welding. In charge of the shop was Claudio, a young Italian from Rome.
We quickly became friends; he at first undoubtedly seeing in me a conduit for edible farm products which I could help him to obtain. This soon became the case, in spite of Mother urging me to stay clear of him, remembering as had her mother that he, like the killer of her brother, was an Italian. But she succumbed to his charming ways as had the rest of us and soon he was cooking on her stove in the kitchen.
He also urged me to let it be known that he could perform repairs for the villagers in his shop, providing it would not be too obvious to his superiors who were turning a blind eye. And the officers could also not resist his chicken cacciatore.
Soon he was overwhelmed with requests from women who wished the holes in their pots plugged up, something Father could no longer do because solder was no longer available. Claudio charged four eggs for every hole welded up, a method far preferable to soldering which would melt from the heat of the stove.
It was a nearly tearful good-bye when they left. His emotional hug and a kiss on each cheek, unheard of and in full view of other teenagers, was an embarrassment as was the stammered promise that “Yes”, I would look him up when, in the future, I was visiting Roma.
The second unit was a large group of almost purely Italian troops who stayed only for two days, most of them camping in tents in farm house yards, some behind our house. The old village men, the only men still around sneered and remembering the days at the Isonzo grumbled: “With so many Italians, no wonder we are losing the war.”
But they were a friendly, if hungry lot who virtually begged for food. Mother obliged freely, now knowing that all would stay behind anyway when we left. They all loved the tasty potatoes cooked in the large steamer normally used to quick-steam vegetables for the pigs. And after getting their fill, they sat around their tents, gratefully smoking Father’s home grown tobacco and chanting their ever so melancholy Italian songs.
They left in the morning and there was a noisy bustle to get ready. While doing so they were not very careful with their rifles, leaning them against the wall of our buildings. They were shorter and more compact than the much heavier German equivalent and had a fold-away bayonet permanently attached to the barrel. I desperately wanted to have one and when none of the Italians was watching I took the nearest and hid it behind the cellar door.
But when neither the owner nor his buddies could later find it, he reported to his officer who accused Father of having taken it. He of course denied it and the officer threatened to shoot him unless the rifle was produced. The soldiers continued searching, including in the cellar but never looked behind the door. Finally they had to leave, without first shooting Father dead. Somehow he never believed that he would be shot and later, when they were all gone and I produced the rifle, he said “did you also get ammunition?”
- - - -
Other German units passed through the village and were always surprised to find friendly German-speaking villagers in the middle of Slovenia after making their way through hostile territory further south-east. After they parked their trucks in our courtyard, they would strike up conversation and inevitably asked Father why we were here amidst this hostile enemy population.
Equally inevitable was their suggestion to leave with them on their trucks to Austria. This came after Father explained how we got here to begin with. “Leave everything, come with us to safety. The war is over. Tito’s troops will be here soon and when the Slovene come back and find you here, it is going to be bad for you”.
“We are not allowed to leave, by command of the Gauleiter” was the reply.
When they left, usually the following morning, they were shaking their heads while wishing us luck and waving goodbye.
* * * *
| 143 | The report, including relevant footnotes, is reproduced in Quellen doc. 321. |
| 144 | Quellen, doc 321 and its footnote 7 on pg 644. |
| 145 | Micro film in National Archives Washington, T-175, R-140, Ref. 2668306-; Bundesarchiv Koblenz, NO-681. |
| 146 | Quellen, doc 238: |
| 147 | Quellen, doc. 321, 322. |
| 148 | Axis History Forum, SS-Sonderstandarte Untersteiermark. |
| 149 | Quellen, doc 322. |
| 150 | Quellen, doc 322. |
www.gottschee.de
Chapter
Content