Zora Skorich

Story

My mother Zora was a prisoner of war, her story began in the Village of Mladenovac in Serbia in Yugoslavia. Her village was occupied by the Germans during the second World War. Unfortunately a German soldier was killed by the partisans and retribution for this death was exacted on the population of this village.

They were all turned out and lined up in the street, every tenth person in the line was executed, my mother was ninth and her elder brother was tenth, he was shot standing next to her. This continued all the way down the line. Those who were not shot were bundled into freight trains and transported to Germany as slave labour.

At this point my mother who was only about 20yrs old and at the time was separated from my father. She arrived in Dortmund, Germany where she spent the next number of years painting bridges and existing on starvation diets of mouldy potatoes etc.

My father who was in the Royal Yugoslav Airforce was shot down and he ended up in the same prisoner of war camp though unbeknown to each other for some 9 months. When the war was nearing its end and the Germans realised that the war was lost to them they took all the prisoners and started marching them off to the extermination camp. Fortunately for them the camp commandant was a reasonable man and was aware that the allies were close at hand and so left them to wander around in the forest until the allies arrived.

Once they were liberated my father and mother lived in Kassel for a period of 3 years my father working for the Americans in their motor pool. It was during this period that I was born. In 1949 my parents were convinced by the Australian Government that Australia was a good place to migrate to and as my father was a aeroengineer he was given a contract for employment in Australia in Perth.

They left Europe from Italy having spent some time in the refugee camp in Taranto and arrived in Australia in Jun/Jul of 1949, with one small suitcase mostly full of clothes for me and 10 pounds in cash to start a new life in a country that they had no knowledge of, whose language they could not speak and whose people were prejudiced against them. The ship on which they travelled was called the Amarapura and my mother spent the whole voyage sick in bed. There were times she said when wished she were dead.

They started with 10 pounds sterling and built a life for themselves against all adversity, learning the language as adults building a home and started a new life in this country that gave them refuge.

The first impressions of life here were mixed and I recall my mother saying, when she heard for the first time in her life a kookaburra that even the birds were laughing at them

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