大象传媒

This is the story of my father's escape from a Pow camp in Wilden Austria during the Spring of 1940. The details are sketchy as he did not choose to tell his daughter too much about that exciting yet horrible time. The story that follows is drawn from my own research based upon fragments jotted down in an old battered notebook which I found amongst my father's possessions when he died five years ago.

I look at the photograph of the young man in uniform, my father and it is difficult to contemplate that the smiling face staring out at me from under his jaunty berret was only 21 when it all began. He and my mother had not even met and for a young lad adopted into a poor North London family with, so I am told, a bit of a mis-spent youth, I expect he was probably up for everything and anything life could throw at him.

Now, what did I know of all this before I found the book? Well I knew he had been captured in Sicily by the Italians and that he had found the POW experience under them very poor. In fact when the Germans took the prisoners over in the Italian camps, Dad said things improved no end.
Apparently the Italians were bad managers of large numbers of men and besides neglect and rough treatment they were also fond of stealing more than the odd one or two Red Cross Parcels. It was a relief then when he was transferred to an 'efficient' camp somewhere behind German lines. All I know from this time is that he learnt ingenious techniques for conserving and adapting things. All through my childhood I marvelled at the toys he made from cotton reels and match sticks, silver foil in fact anything at all! He also learnt to play chess with one of the guards who he said wasn't a bad bloke really and who had taught him some German. The German my Dad knew really was limited but he did know a song, a song which he sung to me as a child and which I was surprised to learn that I knew off by heart when I saw for the first time written in the notebook.

"Horst du mein heimliches rufen
Offen dein herzs cammlein
Hast du heute nacht
Auc lieb an mir gedacht
Dann dart ich im traum bei dir sein"

There is another verse and I will come to that and the story of how I found a translation later. First let me tell you how strange finding the book was for me, you see it was not the first time I had seen it. I knew of the book's existence when I was about 8 years old, too young to understand. I found a cupboard in my parents bedroom open and found a shiny black notebook, I remember there was a map in the back of the book in my Dad's hand and there were names and places which sounded mysterious and coded. I was never allowed to see the book again as I was repremanded for poking my nose into private things and when I tried the cupboard on subsequent occasions it was always locked. The book took on magical proportions and I'm sure I invented lots of the things I remember about it because when I saw it again although it was still fantastic, it did not quite have the Secret Service feel I had long imagined it to have.

My father was helped by the partisan movement known as BAZA 20 during WW2 in what was then Yugoslavia. He escaped from a German POW camp in Austria and after 2 escape and captures, finally made it up into the mountains where the partisan groups controlled a system of passes. He was captured by them at first, taken blindfolded and brought to a barn. Thrown to his knees at gunpoint, when the blindfold was taken off he was staring up at a woman with a bandellero of bullets around her pointing a rifle at his head. He was obviously in need of care and they took him to one of their hospitals in a small village close to Mitlika (now in present day Slovenia). Since his death 5 years ago I have been trying to piece together his journey and have managed to research quite a lot. For example he met up with two American Flyers who had been shot down over Linz who were also being helped by the partisans. He eventually went back with these men to their base in Bari Italy and from there managed to hitch a ride home on a ship bound for Scotland.

I have a great deal to tell and to discover still and hope to write my dad's story as I believe it is an exciting one. I am sure there are so many more brave and stirring stories but of course it is my dad and I want to find out more.

All he left behind was a small black notebook in which he recorded the odd name, date or place. A man of great modesty which I found infuriating as I wanted to know everything about his war.

Anyway, I would really love to communicate with other people who may have had similar stories or their relatives. I am particularly keen to talk to those helped by partisans, the same group as my dads if possible i.e. Yugoslavia.

Growing up as a daughter of someone deeply affected by what happened to him during the war, it has been difficult. My father never really seemed happy, he always seemed somewhere else. Maybe he was reliving his stay with BAZA 20 in the pine forests of Eastern Europe. I don't suppose I will ever know what really happened - we only have the odd anecdote from my mother now. As a small child I used to have recurring nightmares about escaping from the Nazis. A case of too little knowledge being a bad thing and of course my mind worked overtime, inventing all sorts of horrors. So for me it is a personal quest to lay some of my ghosts and piece together the real story of what my dad did in the war.

I have found a great website at the Dolenska Museum in Solvenia which has preserved a partisan camp deep in the forest. There is a virtual tour which takes you into the huts where BAZA 20 operated. I don't think it is the one my dad was at but it is the nearest I can get to feeling what it could have been like.

One day I want to visit the place where dad was helped in Slovenia. I know there have been some dreadful things done by partisans, even to their own people but for me they are heros and I probably would not be here today if it had not been for them.