10 October

10 October: As a child, this date meant above all one thing: painting a flag. You always had to remember carefully where the red stripe went, where the yellow went, where the white went. It was important. And then we sang the Carinthian anthem. The fourth verse, I admit, always troubled me a little and I would have preferred not to sing it. But we did it all the same. And in the evening, the torchlight procession. Lights on the mountains, fires marking the border. And then there were Uncle Hermann’s stories. He was 17 when he took part in the defence of Carinthia. He was a defender of Carinthia, an Abwehrkämpfer. As a child I misunderstood that word: I thought it meant something like “a fighter who goes downwards” … and I really did not understand what it meant. Going with him to the Karawanks was always something special. He spoke not only about the time when, at 17, he was defending Carinthia in these mountains. Above all, he spoke about the years afterwards: of when he became a customs officer and of his relationship with the Slovenian border guards, then Yugoslav. They got on well together. They understood one another. It is something we should reflect upon, especially thinking of 8 May, the Day of Remembrance. Because on 10 October it was many Slovenian citizens who helped ensure that Carinthia remained part of Austria. And yet, on 8 May, Yugoslav troops once again occupied southern Carinthia. In the preceding years, the Slovenian minority had not been treated fairly. It is not easy to talk about it. In the days surrounding 8 May, Tito’s partisans arrived in Bad Eisenkappel. My mother was seven years old. She was taken to safety, together with my grandmother, in northern Carinthia. Everyone was frightened. It was a German family. My grandmother, a cheerful woman full of life, was worried about her mother. So, she decided to return to Eisenkappel. The next day, she was deported, together with other women of the family, to Yugoslavia. For a long time, nothing was known of their fate. Today, we know where they are buried. My mother, also a strong and joyful woman, has found peace. And today she manages to reach out to our Slovenian fellow citizens. And I am very proud of her.