Book Review of Slovenia 1945 Memories of Death and Survival after World

Slovenia 1945 is a well-crafted blend of ad hominem memories, historiography,and eyewitness accounts. The result is moving narrative that avoids theturgidity and dryness historic studies may f wholly prey to, as well as the sonant emotionalism of some memoirs. The starting point for the volumewas the letters pen by John Corsellis, a conscientious objector workingin the Friends Ambulance Unit in Austrian Carinthia from 1945 to 1947.This material was fleshed out with several cardinal interviews, a diary bycamp survivor France Perni?ek, and the journalist Marcus Ferrar. AlthoughCorsellis is a central participant in the story, his presence in the book is clear-sighted and unobtrusive.Structurally, the book is attractive to both casual readers andserious researchers. In sum total to the main text, there ar fifteen photos,three maps, an outline of the headland characters, a four-page catalogue of otherpersons, a tightly packed six-page bibliography, and a five-page index ofpeople, su bjects, and places.A striking feature of the book is its impartiality?a goal that theauthors explicitly state in the prologue (p. 2). Negative sides of allparticipants are depicted Germans (slave labor, attacks on civilians, bookburning), Italians (the Rab concentration camp, the myth of kind and amatory soldiers), Partisans (theft, murder, rape), Catholics (the BlackHand death squads), the western Allies (shooting at civilians, looting), andthe village Guards (burning prisoners to death). However, the book is muchmore than a catalogue of crimes it also relates the humanity sides of allinvolved individual acts of kindness by combatants and civilians on allsides. The narrative is replete with religious imagery?priests, ... ...jana Modrian.Markovski, Venko. 1984. Goli Otok The Island of Death. Boulder Social skill Monographs.Mila?, Metod. 2002. Resistance, Imprisonment & Forced Labor. A SloveneStudent in World fight II = Studies in Modern European History47. New York beam of light Lang.Reindl, Donald F. 2001. Mass Graves from the Communist Past HauntSlovenia?s Present, RFE/RL Newsline 5.225 (29 November), on tap(predicate) at http//www.rferl.org/ newsline/2001/11/5-not/not-291101.aspSirc, Ljubo. 1989. Between Hitler and Tito Nazi Occupation andCommunist Oppression. capital of the United Kingdom Andre Deutsch.Tolstoy, Nikolai. 1986. The Minister and the Massacres. London CenturyHutchinson.John Corsellis & Marcus Ferrar. Slovenia 1945 Memories of Death andSurvival afterward World War II. London I. B. Tauris & Co., 2005. xi+ 276 pp., 24.50 ($47.97) (cloth). ISBN 1-85043-840-0.