Saturday, May 14, 2005
Bleiburg Anniversary today.
http://www.serendipity.li/hr/bleiburg_massacres.htm
http://www.studiacroatica.com/libros/tragedia/tb080401.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/bleiburg-massacre
When I was around 9 years old, my family were liveing in Los Angeles. My mother was doing a lot of writeing then, but also research into many things, She also began to talk to me fairly seriously about historical matters.
Sometimes she told me stories of these things. Sometimes she was a little vague about exact places. I think the reason she did this was sometimes she wanted me to understand the basic issues, but not to 'know too much'.
You have to understand that people who have Slavic heritage had to be kind of careful in the Cold War era. Everything was a source of political peril, and she really ddin't want trouble.
When she told this story, it was around this time in 1964. I was a girl of about 9 and had been kept home from school because I was feeling ill.
She told me how the women and the children tried to get to Austria, without anything like enough food, or warm clothes, and how they didn't even have shoes in many cases. The children grew calluses on their feet an inch thick.
She did not tell me who the people were, but did tell me they were trying to get into Austria and that the British betrayed them.
Reading years later about Bleiburg, I realized 'Damn! she was telling me about Bleiburg and didn't want to name too many names because it was too hot a story to have shared too fully.'
The details she gave certainly matched this, and the timeing was right, she told me 'This day is the anniversary of a very great wrong committed by people who should really have known better and done better.'
I have always wondered if my mother realized that our family had Eastern European heritage other than Polish and Russian. The evidence was right in her library that we do. She was a relentless and keen researcher.
Anyway sometimes I think she didn't know, and sometimes I think she had to have known.
Parents always leave behind mysteries to solve.
***********************************************************************************
http://www.studiacroatica.com/libros/tragedia/tb080401.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/bleiburg-massacre
When I was around 9 years old, my family were liveing in Los Angeles. My mother was doing a lot of writeing then, but also research into many things, She also began to talk to me fairly seriously about historical matters.
Sometimes she told me stories of these things. Sometimes she was a little vague about exact places. I think the reason she did this was sometimes she wanted me to understand the basic issues, but not to 'know too much'.
You have to understand that people who have Slavic heritage had to be kind of careful in the Cold War era. Everything was a source of political peril, and she really ddin't want trouble.
When she told this story, it was around this time in 1964. I was a girl of about 9 and had been kept home from school because I was feeling ill.
She told me how the women and the children tried to get to Austria, without anything like enough food, or warm clothes, and how they didn't even have shoes in many cases. The children grew calluses on their feet an inch thick.
She did not tell me who the people were, but did tell me they were trying to get into Austria and that the British betrayed them.
Reading years later about Bleiburg, I realized 'Damn! she was telling me about Bleiburg and didn't want to name too many names because it was too hot a story to have shared too fully.'
The details she gave certainly matched this, and the timeing was right, she told me 'This day is the anniversary of a very great wrong committed by people who should really have known better and done better.'
I have always wondered if my mother realized that our family had Eastern European heritage other than Polish and Russian. The evidence was right in her library that we do. She was a relentless and keen researcher.
Anyway sometimes I think she didn't know, and sometimes I think she had to have known.
Parents always leave behind mysteries to solve.
***********************************************************************************
# posted by Katja R. @ 12:56 PM 
