Cilka Žagar spoke about Slovenia at The Seven Day Adventist Church, Lightning Ridge. She emphasised the following:
I wish we would always pray together like we do tonight. I think that Jesus would be very happy and we would be happier because we enjoy each each others company.
During the WWII Yugoslav communists joined allies and so at the end of the war they were on the winning side. They knew that only a small minority of Slovenians would support them in any democratic elections after the war; their only option was to kill the opposition. By murdering thousands of anticommunist home guards and religious leaders, they scared the rest of the nation into compliance.
I started school in 1946. The teachers told us not to listen to our superstitious parents. We were to worship the heroes of the revolution. There was no God.
I remember the black scarfs going to mass on Sundays because mothers were silently mourning their lost children. To this day the children of communists rule the country.
The massacres without trial of young Slovenians after the war caused pain to most Slovenian families. Communism is still alive and well in Slovenia and the trauma is still felt by many.
Half to forget the wonderings and pain, half to remember the days that have gone by, and dream and dream that I am home again.
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, who never to himself has said: ‘This is my own, my native land! Whose heart has never within him burned as home his footsteps he hath turned from wandering on a foreign strand.’
Sir Walter Scott
