Now married with a child of her own Anna Slavec was alone in America. Her family had returned to Knezak, Slovania and her new husband spent his days working in the Colorado Coal Mines and conditions were not improving. The exact year of Victor, Anna, and Albino Slavec’s return to Knezak is unknown though it must be sometime in 1913 or 1914 as their next child was born in Italy in 1914. We also know that upon Victor’s return to Knezak that he was drafted to fight in World War 1. What we did not know was what was going on in Knezak that would cause the Slavec family to return to America once again.

Slovania was not the place to be during WWI. Bordered by Italy to the south west, Austria to the northwest, Hungry to the northeast, and Croatia to the southeast Slovania found itself in the middle of the action. During this time the country of Slovania had been absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire and it was here that World War I began when Serbians assasinated the Austrian dictator. The Slavs are native to this area of the world having inhabited it since 500 BC however they were looked down upon as barbaric. The Austro- Hungarian state saw the slavs as dispensable and forced a mass draft of Slavic men that included my great grandfather Victor.

The Slovenes suffered many casualties, especially on the western edge called the Soca Front. The very area of Slovania that the little town of Knezak is located. On the west side, those who were not drafted were resettled into Italian led refugee camps where, the Italians too, saw the Slovene as barbaric people and therefore treated them like the enemy. A memory my grandfather shared was as a little boy during the war he was standing in line with his mother waiting to get some bread. Anna stepped out of line and an Italian soldier on horseback snapped her with his whip. My grandfather, Albino, begged his mother to go back home but Anna refused as she needed the bread to feed her growing family. Albino stood quietly close to his mother and when he looked down he could see the blood running down her leg onto the side of her boot. This was a hard time for the Slavec Family. While Victor was off fighting the war, Anna was left to care for the boys, as my grandpa would say, she would end up pregnant whenever Victor would return for respite.

A Turning Point

For a number of years there had been a growing resentment toward Austrian rule among the Slovanian people. The Slovenes lost over 30,000 men during the war and enough was enough. Near the end a regiment consisting of mostly Slovene men staged a mutiny against the Austro-Hungarian military leadership. The men involved in the rebellion who were caught were executed or imprisoned after a military trial. Others disbanded and returned home. The Austro-Hungarian Empire disolved at the end of the war and eastern Slovania became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes while the west remained under Italian rule.

The battles over this Slovanian border have made for a confusing family history. While many generations were born in the same home, older generations were Austrian and the youngest children, Italian. Being under Italian rule did not improve the conditions for the Slavic people. There was forced Italianization by prohibiting the Slavic language to be spoken in public. In 1920 Mussolini said “When dealing with such a race as Slavic-inferior and barbaric-we must not pursue the carrot, but the the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 Slavs for 50,000 Italians.” He became the prime minister just a couple of years later. This forced Italinazation caused another big wave of emigration out of the area.

Back to America

I find Victor back in Delagua, Colorado in 1926 working once again as a miner. My grandfather, then 17, boards a boat out of Triest, Italy and arrives in New York Harbor on February 3, 1929 where he finds his way to Colorado and goes to work in the coal mines with his father in order to earn enough money to bring the rest of the family to America. Immigration laws at that time required you to have a certain amount of money in the bank and to sign a paper that you would not be a burden on the government. They did not have enough money so the Slovenian people pooled together their funds. They trusted one another with their nest eggs as first Tony’s family would put it into their bank account, then Joe would deposit it into his account, then the next family and so on until they brought all of their families to America.

Anna and her children (Frank, Vic, Jack, Joe, and Annie) immigrated through Ellis Island in 1930 where they rejoined Victor and Albino and came to settle in the area of Boulder, Colorado. In the heart of the depression the younger Slavec boys would work for the CCC to gain skills and help feed themselves. A close knit and strong family, they powered through those years of persecution and poverty and truly made new lives for themselves in America. Anna and her children proudly went on to gain U.S. citizenship. Anna saying that thankfully she no longer had to answer to Hitler or Mussolini. The four younger boys all fought in WWII and all came home. They owned homes, and businesses, and had families of their own, and immersed themselves fully into American culture.

When I was a child and would ask my grandfather about his time in Slovania or to speak the language to me, he would refuse saying “There is nothing good in that there country for me.” His childhood memories were of a hard life, leaving school in the 8th grade to work for the family, war, and famine. As my grandpa, he was a gentle man who appreciated the simple things in life. My favorite memories with him were of just the two of us taking a walk and him sharing his good memories with me. The ones he built here in America and that grew to include me. If we could take a walk today I wouldn’t ask about the old country, instead with no words my heart would be beaming with pride and gratefulness for the sacrifices he made to make my world a better place.

http://www.localhistories.org/sloveniahist.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20150904060246/http://www.minorityrights.org/1616/italy/slovenes.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=jbhJDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=1918+western+slovenia&source=bl&ot,,s=cmIXIEnrpu&sig=CDySMMEu0HSwfkurP9aGsKnyxHk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi31eD05rDbAhXBmq0KHe8ICWsQ6AEIlwEwCQ#v=onepage&q=1918%20western%20slovenia&f=false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenes
Map by DancingPhilosopher – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Austria-Hungary_%28ethnic%29.jpg and text description of traditional regions of Slovenia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21959202