Apače, Lesjak Ivan - Petja

»In the Black Mountain, Petja's courier was waiting for me - with the real name Ivan Lesjak, from Črna na Koroškem. His 78-year-old mother still lives there, a miner's widow. His older brother is also living there somewhere nearby. Petja, however, has been living far away at the other end for all the war years. For some time he was in Gornji Radgoni, and now he is in Apače. […]

Let's start with the event of how Petja joined the partisans.
'For the first time I met the partisans in Javor in September 1942.

• You will go with us, we will collect those who should have gone to the German army, they said.
  I went. In the evening, actually late at night, a farmer lent me a lantern so that I could get home.
  I fell asleep like a bear, and someone shook me. I looked: in front of me was my father, behind him the police.
• You were with the partisans yesterday, yet you didn't report anything! We will kill you.
  In the first moment I didn't understand anything, but then I replied: - I would have reported, but it seemed too harsh to wake you up in the middle of the night. Now I thought I would come.
  As the excuse was foolish, it somehow stuck. They did not take me away. From that moment on, I worked together with Delalut for the partisans. He was later shot as a traitor - at that time when I was already among the partisans.'«

Neža Maurer, Zveza mora ostati, Ljubljana: Zavod Borec v Ljubljani, 1967, p. 283, 322.

Photograph: Lesjak Ivan - Petja, Geneanet, Pokopališče Apače, p. 33.