IVANKA SKOF

Story

After 1922, Fascism in Italy gradually grew to the point where Slovenians were ordered to change their names and speak Italian in public. Most Slovenians were content to be a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for eight hundred years, but Italian fascism was a different matter. My father left his job as a warehouse foreman in Trieste, and went back to build up the derelict family farm in Artvize, 24 kilometres away. He had already married Karolina Vartovec, and the couple had eight children. My father was the midwife for us all. We children had a happy childhood growing up in one of the most picturesque places on earth. From our garden we could see Triglav, the highest snow covered mountain in Slovenia. In the other direction we could see the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. We were poor, but the food we grew was good, and we were snug in our stone house when the cold and snow came. Eventually, our idyllic childhood was rudely interrupted. Italians came to our village by government order and began to take over. We had to Italianise our names; we were educated in Italian; and we were not permitted to speak Slovenian at school. If we disobeyed there was a bottle of petrol ready to rinse the mother tongue from our mouths. Our region soon became a breeding ground for partisan revolt. When WW2 broke out our small village became a battleground. Young men were sent off to the Italian army and the girls sent to slave labour camps in other countries. Many chose to join the partisans and lived where they could in the open air. Skirmishes between the partisans and the fascists often took place around us. Finally, in 1943, after hours of bombardment, Italian and German soldiers burst in to our house and marched our family outside to be shot. We watched, petrified, as the smoke came from the roof of our beloved home that was already ablaze. Suddenly, a lone Croatian partisan stood up shooting in our bean patch. The family escaped to the woods in the chaos. She was not so lucky. They hacked off her breasts, and cut a star on her forehead before they shot her, poor girl. We could not rebuild our farm during the war, and spent years living in barns, working for local farmers to earn our keep. Once, we were caught up in crossfire as we dug potatoes. Eventually the war finished, and we got on with our lives. By 1965, President Tito had fused together a set of contrasting lands into a successful state called Yugoslavia. I was married to Anton Skof and had a twelve-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. I was a teacher and my husband, Tony, was a foreman in Mehanotehnika, a company that made meccano sets. We lived in the picturesque coastal resort town of Izola that was totally refurbished and expanded after WW2. The sixties were good for us. We had a lovely flat, and we were both successful. Yet my brother, Joe, was living in Melbourne and kept on writing to us about how good it was there, and how we would be better off if we came, too. So we decided to give it a go, and come for a couple of years. Joe sponsored us, and said that we could live with his family in Altona for a while. In 1966 we paid full fare to come to Australia by ship, and were surprised to find that people with assisted passage from the church got better treatment and quarters than us. Quite a few of these folk were pretty trashy types who stole things from other passengers. The culture shock on arrival was immense. Melbourne was an empty and alien city for us. We were fully literate in three languages — but English was not one of them. I worked as a cleaner and other menial jobs until I learned enough English to get better work. I went on to teach at kindergarten, and then worked as a translator in a big hospital. I finished my working life as a librarian cataloguing books by computer in four languages. My husband contracted cancer and died young. I managed to pay off our house by myself despite the problems. This is something that I could not have done had I stayed in Slovenia. (I am nearly eighty now and still have my own home). There was a cultural coming together among Yugoslavs in Australia. With the help of the Australian Literature Board, we wrote a collection of poems and short stories in five languages under the title ‘Our Paths\’. Yet even as the book went to print in 1986, the hatred between the various ethnic groups at home was happening in our literary group. Thankfully, Australia would not tolerate any nonsense, and the Yugoslav war was confined to Europe. Our family did well in Australia — as most Slovenians do. But, like many ethnic groups, the adult migrants felt that mainstream Australian life lacked something. So we built clubs for amusement and our own cultural activities. We could speak Slovenian and continue our customs at the clubs.

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