For hundreds of years Austria was a multi-ethnic state. After World War I, Gottschee was placed under Yugoslavia. Gottschee became an ethnic island in Slovenia. As I remember it, we lived in harmony with the Slovenians. We could maintain our German language, but we also became fluent in the Slovenian language, much as the Slovenians learned the German language. The Gottschee I grew up in was a bi-lingual society living in relative peace and harmony. When I was born, the leader of my homeland was the Yugoslavian King Alexander; he was assassinated in France in 1934. His 17 year old son Peter succeeded him and was the leader I remember.

The idyllic period of my Gottschee came to an end when ugly nationalism inspired by the Hitler movement reared its ugly head. By 1942 99% of the Ethnic-German Gottscheers were relocated, most of them into the northern part of Slovenia. I recall the slogan "Heim ins Reich" being bandied about by many radical Gottscheers. Hitler had given the Gottscheer area to Italy. The consensus among many Gottscheers was to be part of the "Glorious Third Reich" and to go "Heim ins Reich". The Nazis were more than happy to accommodate these wishes, but under their own terms. Hitler did not move them to Germany or even to Austria, but instead dispersed them in northern Slovenia to be used a seeds which he hoped would act as a catalyst to Germanize the resisting Slovenians. People were told that the relocation would involve an even exchange of properties; i.e. people from the North would come down and get our properties in exchange for theirs. Nothing could have been further from the truth. People up North were sent to camps and/or exterminated and the Gottscheers were put into the places vacated by the persecuted Slovenians. My own father learned of this situation before we had to leave; this, among other reasons resulted in his death by his own hand. My father never left Gottschee.

Much of what happened during and after the war was the result of ethnic pride carried to extremes!

Most of us were out of Gottschee when combat action between the German army and Tito's partisans did damage to my one-time Gottschee. The following background information comes courtesy Urban Schrott:

Kocevje (Gottschee), December 9 and 10, 1943.

Kocevje was a small mining town of certain strategical value for the German command. Capturing it would allow Slovenian
partisans to hold a substantial liberated territory, since they had already taken a strategically important village
Velike Lasce. The town had adequate industrial facilities to allow production of war materiel badly needed by the
partisans, since the Allied airdrops and captured weapons were insufficient for equipping their growing army.

The town was defended by a garrison of German police, Wehrmacht and Landeswehr (i.e.'Home-guards'; Local men recruited to fight against partisans). At first the attack went well, since the mine was damaged and most of the town fell. However the old town castle with its thick walls gave excellent shelter to the defenders. Partisans were unable to dislodge them even after a day of fighting, even though they already set fire to the castle and some walls were blown up with
explosives.

The German command in Ljubljana (Laibach) did not merely observe the attack, instead it organized a relief force and
dispatched it immediately. In a day that force reached Kocevje, scattered a small partisan rear-guard force and broke up
the siege. Partisans retreated into the forests and a chance to win a strategic victory was lost. The blame was mostly
put on insufficient roadblocks, the absence of which allowed Germans to advance towards Kocevje so quickly.

After the battle was over each side counted some 150 casualties.

The following pictures show what it looked like after and during the battle in Gottschee.

This is the same bridge which I showed you with my two aunts and grandmother. My uncle's store is in the back.

The destroyed building was a home for the blind. The second house from your left with the tree in front is my grandmother's house, my birthplace.

Here is the street along which I walked to church with my grandmother Ana Marek. See the castle in the back.

I don't know how long the castle stood in Gottschee. Here it is in the final stages of its demise.

Can we learn a lesson from this? First and foremost we are all members of the human race. Ethnicity, religion, and race are secondary. War is a stupid game played by grownups. There are no winners in war.

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