Our days that will -- "... live in infamy"

[John Tschinkel]

On December 7, 1941, the day that was to “live in infamy”, I, aged ten, my family and one third of the village of Grčarice/Masern were on a train from Slovenia to Hitler’s Third Reich.

The SS train had left the station of Stara Cerkev/Mitterdorf in Kočevje/Gottschee, Slovenia at 3.00 PM. Two additional trains were to transport the rest of the village on the following two days.

The destination was inner Germany, a place where “milk and honey freely flowed”. So we were told by our Gottscheer Nazi leadership that had been appointed and assigned by Hitler to coerce the entire population of the Gottschee-Germans to resettle from Slovenia into the Reich. A place where their ancestors came from over 600 years ago. During the months of November/December 1941, nearly 20,000 of us were resettled.

The destination was a lie. Instead of inner Germany, the destination was a part of Nazi occupied and annexed Slovenia, less than one hundred miles away. An ethnically cleansed place from which the resident Slovene population was forcefully taken to labor camps in Germany proper. All this was kept from the re-settlers who were not told their actual destination.

Hitler’s plan was to resettle the occupied lands with Ethnic Germans from other parts of Europe and thereby enlarge his Third Reich. However, the Reich that was to last a thousand years, collapsed in May 1945, and with that we became victims of Hitler’s Ingathering Policy for which we had, under coersion, opted three and a half years ago. The Yugoslav liberators identified us as part of the occupier (in 1941, we had accepted citizenship of the Reich) and expelled us from Slovenia in 1945.

The real perpetrators, however, were the Young Gottscheer Nazis who indoctrinated and coerced their people to accept Nazi ideology. And to serve Hitler’s cause, they lied to their people about the resettlement. They continued their lies and self-justification even after they re-established their former leadership positions in the Diaspora.

They ruled their gullible people through forced indoctrination and coercion from 1939 to 1942. For us, the Gottschee-Germans, this period can justly be called our days that will -- “live in infamy”.

PS., On December 11, 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States of America.

PS:, A Gottscheer named Erich Petschauer was an SS-Officer responsible for re-settling the South Tirol-Germans into the inner Reich. There they waited years in camps to be settled in ethnically cleansed Poland. Unlike the Gottscheer who were moved immediately into Slovene homes from which they were expelled in 1945. On the other hand, the South Tirolean's could return after the war to their properties since they were not the cause for anyone's expulsion.

PS: Former SS-Officer Erich Petschauer was commissioned by Viktor Michitsch, Chairman of the Gottscheer Landsmannschaft in Klagenfurt and Chairman of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft (AG) of all Gottscheer associations world-wide, including the GHGA, to write the "Jahrhundertbuch", a history of the Gottschee-Germans. No wonder it is so incredibly one-sided. (See the book "Der Vater und die SS", written by Erich's son Peter, a Professor retired from the Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina).

PS:, SS-Officer (Major) Wilhelm Lampeter was the responsible Gottscheer Nazi equivalent of Petschauer. The Gottscheer Arbeitsgemeinschaft under Viktor Michitsch elected both Lampeter and Petschauer to "Honored Members" in the AG Association.