Slovenia 1945, Memories of Death and Survival after World War II by
John Corsellis and Marcus Ferrar, I.B. Tauris, London 2005. A
Slovenian edition has been published by Svobodna Slovenia in Buenos
Aires. Reviewed by Vlado Bevc. The South Slav Journal, v. 27, No.3-4
(105=E2=80=94106), pp.85=E2=80=9489, London, Autumn=E2=80=94Winter 2006.
This book is about Slovenia=E2=80=99s holocaust and the events following
it.
The holocaust began when the war in Europe ended and for which Great
Britain, unlike Germany, has never been called to account.
The scope of the book is defined by the list of main characters:
Aloysius. Ambro=C5=BEi=C4=8D, Andrej Bajuk, Marko Bajuk, Paul Barre,
Jo=C5=
=BEe
Jan=C4=8Dar, Valentin Mer=C5=A1ol, France Perni=C5=A1ek and Franc Rode. In
=
1945 Bajuk
was a baby and Ambro=C5=BEi=C4=8D a boy of fifteen. They could hardly be
protagonists of the plot. The writers probably meant to show what
illustrious careers could have been destroyed in the Slovenian
holocaust.
Although the book is mainly anecdotal as opposed to the research based
do***entaries of Nikolai Tolstoy[1] or Nicholas Bethel [2] it is
im****tant because it focuses on the ghastly events of May 1945 and
their aftermath in which the surviving Slovenians rebuilt their lives
and successfully integrated into those societies of the free world
that were willing to accept them..
>From the introductory remarks the reader might get the impression that
the Slovenian holocaust was the outcome of a civil war between the
Catholics and the communists. This main deficiency of the book is due
to the limited horizon of the publisher and its editors. Although the
authors carried out hundreds of interviews they never got to realize
that what happened to Slovenians was only part of the bigger picture
of Yugoslavia and its second Kosovo =E2=80=93 the Yalta catastrophe. In
Yugoslavia, as well as in Slovenia other players in addition to
Catholics fought against communism united under the command of General
Dragoljub Mihajlovi=C4=87. In fact, the National Guard (domobranci) had by
the time they retreated to Carinthia sworn allegiance to King Peter II
of Yugoslavia and thus became part of the Yugoslav Army in the
Homeland, a fact of which the authors are oblivious. Indeed the
authors are totally unaware that the Slovenian leader****p which led
the refugees to Carinthia in their futile quest for freedom consisted
of the Slovenian National Committee constituted of the leading
politicians of the liberals, catholics and socialists under the
presidency of Jo=C5=BEe Basaj, rather than Franc Krem=C5=BEar who had been
President of the short lived Slovenian parliament that on May 3
declared a United Slovenia.
The narrative begins with the description of the retreat of anti-
communists over the mountains, their status as pawns in the diplomatic
effort to keep Yugoslav communists out of Austria resulting in a base
betrayal of their trust of the so-called Western Allies and the death
marches and massacres of the refugees upon their forcible return to
Yugoslavia. Following that is description of the life of surviving
refugees as displaced persons confronted with the unsympathetic
Western Europe and overseas countries which, with the exception of
Argentina, closed their doors to the new prospective immigrants. The
vitality and industriousness of the refugees is attested to by the
schools and even some commercial activities they organized in Austria,
although similar activities in Italy are ignored. Description of the
pressures the British exerted on the refugees to return voluntarily to
Yugoslavia, systematic denial of UNRRA and other so-called
humanitarian organizations is im****tant to note and remember.
Generosity of Argentina=E2=80=99s president Juan Peron and his
understanding
of the Slovenian refugees stand out in stark contrast to the socialist
dominated democracies whose only objection to national socialism was
that the Nazis in the end attacked their beloved Stalin.
The British, who unfortunately were put in charge of the refugees,
always considered their charges an en***brance spoiling their
relation****ps with Tito whom they admired. After all, they were
prepared to fight Germany to the last Yugoslav, Frenchman, Dutch,
Norwegian, Belgian and Dane and Tito was saying he was fighting the
Germans regardless of the cost in Yugoslav lives. Thus British
officers who had been to Yugoslavia were regularly exhorting the
refugees to return to Yugoslavia where, they prattled, everyone could
go freely about his business without any interference from the
government =E2=80=93 at least in so far as those officers could see.
Although Slovenians in Dias****a have by and large successfully
integrated themselves into the economic and political life of the
countries to which they emigrated which attests to the vitality of
their character and their upbringing some were nevertheless caught in
the economic disaster that overcame Argentina in 2001. The situation
there was so bad that some =C3=A9migr=C3=A9s were thinking of returning to
Slovenia. Slovenia, which is eagerly xtending invitations to Africans
from Darfur, however, gave a cold shoulder to their anti-communist
compatriots. These soon found out that Slovenia they carried in their
imagination was no more. The mentality of the people in the old
country has changed during the 50 years of communism. Although the
communist claims on how they would create a new man used to meet with
ridicule, the communists have succeeded and the new Slovenian
=E2=80=9Cman=
=E2=80=9D of
today is as alien to what the Slovenians used to be us as are the
Muslims who flock to that country eventually to submerge the indigent
population.
Nothing is said about the Slovenian political emigration and what the
Slovenian National Committee under the presidency of Miha Krek was
trying to do for the liberation of Yugoslavia. Possibly under the
influence of exclusively catholic sources the authors never learned
that Krek had, in association with Vlatko Ma=C4=8Dek and Milan
Gavrilovi=C4=
=87,
tried to set up a Yugoslav National Committee that would work within
the scope of Free Europe for the liberation of Yugoslavia. Krek is
probably given the silent treatment because of his commitment to
Yugoslavia and rejection of any separatist tendencies. It was only in
the early nineties that the Slovenian National Committee realized that
Yugoslavia as they knew it was no longer a viable political union and
gave its sup****t to the movement for an independent Slovenia. The
authors make an oblique reference to Franc Krem=C5=BEar who presided at
the
Slovenian Parliament that on May 3 declared a united and free Slovenia
but apparently it does not dawn to them that if there was a parliament
there must have been different political parties, not only a 100
percent =E2=80=9Ccatholic=E2=80=9D anticommunist population.
The disintegration of Yugoslavia which resulted in an independed, but
still communist, Slovenian Republic is presented as an act of
liberating the Slovenian nation or the effete residue of what once was
a proud small nation. The Slovenians can now take stock of what
communism brought them. In addition to rumination on the physical
annihilation of everyone who was only suspected of disliking communism
they may well reflect on what the =E2=80=9Cindependence=E2=80=9D in the
emb=
race of the
faceless bureaucracies of Brussels and Strasbourg will do for
them.Trieste and most of the Slovenian littoral has been lost forever
and once Slovenian Carinthia, now thoroughly Germanized, was left in
Austria. Slovenians lost one-third of their national territory and it
appears that they will soon lose the rest to the islamic migrants from
the Middle East and Asia. This situation is not mentioned at all.
In one of the closing chapters the authors deal with the chimera of
reconciliation of the exiled Slovenians with the communists still in
power in Slovenia. The concept of reconciliation apparently held by
the authors is this: the communists get to keep all their political
offices, all their positions in Slovenia=E2=80=99s judiciary and certainly
=
all
the property they had looted. No one is to be held accountable for the
200 plus mass graves scattered around Slovenia and the Parliament will
never ever condemn the depredations of communism, much less decree a
lustration to at least symbolically repudiate the heritage of
communism. On the contrary, communist heritage is still cherished in
all walks of life in Slovenia by the young generations as well as the
withering old. Slovenians living abroad, although citizens by birth
cannot vote in Slovenia=E2=80=99s elections. Victims of communism are to
get
no restitution of their confiscated properties and those that were
convicted as class enemies are not to be rehabilitated. With a
Slovenia like this none of those who are free will seek
reconciliation.
Interesting is the chapter on uneasy conscience, presumably that of
the Britons. Britain, has traditionally made it clear that it has
neither friends, nor enemies, but only interests. As such it can have
no conscience either. Interests may have dictated to make a
perfunctory apology to the Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks but the
Slovenians were too small a group to bother with. No one has ever been
held accountable for the mass murder of those forcibly returned.
Indeed, the authors quote the official position of the Foreign Office
to be that =E2=80=9Conly=E2=80=9D 600 Slovenians, German collaborators all
=
in its
view, were sent to Tito.This, of course, after the old boy network
cleaned up its files to assist Lord Aldington alias Toby Low in his
suit against Nicholas Tolstoy. The British hasten to point out that it
was not they who were pulling the executioners=E2=80=99 trigger. True
enough
-- that was the genius of the British Empire: to make others pull the
trigger on its behalf so that it could become the formidable power it
once was. A poignant episode of Field Marshal Alexander, the officer
who bears the ultimate responsibility for the betrayal and death of
the refugees, affably visiting refugee children while strutting about
England presents a striking contrast with the fate of General
Yama****a hanged by the Americans for the atrocities his troops
committed in the Philippines. It does indeed make a difference who
wins the war. Accountability and damages imposed on a nation that
commits atrocities are not merely acts of retribution; they serve as a
deterrent to the recurrence of such abuses in the future. It is
therefore appropriate and indeed imperative to seek reparations as did
the Jews in case of Germany. Such reparations should go beyond a
perfunctory apology and constitute a serious financial burden to the
culprit. This issue is not addressed by the authors and, indeed, it is
hardly ever addressed in connection with the misdeeds of the
communists.
The last chapter belabors what is to a large extent an academic
question: Whether collaboration with the occupying Axis powers in
combating the communists was grounds enough to condemn those who
offered armed resistance to the communists and send them to their
death. It is im****tant here, from the standpoint of Yugoslavia, to
bear in mind that the Yugoslavs owed loyalty to their own country and
not to the alliance of the British, Soviets and Americans. What they
did was in defense of their liberty and in opposition to the greatest
scourge that ever visited the humanity =E2=80=93 communism. If in their
struggle against communism they acted against the interests of the
Allies that may have been unfortunate but no Yugoslav ever owed any
foreign power anything and none can be blamed for having acted in the
interest of their own country. In retrospect it is clear that the so-
called allies proved unworthy of the Yugoslav sacrifice.
The book is an interesting reflection of the contem****ary Slovenian
and British views of Slovenia but for reasons given above we think
that it leaves a great deal to be desired.
[1] The Klagenfurt Conspiracy, Encounter; The Minister and the
Massacres, Century Hutchinson, Ltd., London, 1986 (The book is banned
in England, of course; it is available in university libraries and in
second hand bookstores in the United States and elsewhere where the
British writ does not run.
[2] Nicholas Bethel: The Last Secret, Basic Books, New York 1974.
|
