Nase Novine, September 23, 1981

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1-6- NASE NOVINE, June 24, 1981
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RETIRED AMERICAN CONGRESSMAN HON. JOHN A. BLATNIK'S
REMINISCENCES OF LOUIS ADAMIC
(Nastavak sa st. 15)
no xerox copiers. " He would type a
letter not to anyone in particular
and then forward it to a friend,
usually to John Rogel in Cleveland.
His daughter is now a professor at
Ohio State University. He and John
became very close friends. Louis
Adamic and I had many friends in
Cleveland. He spent much time
there. Rogel went back to Yugo-slavia
and passed away a few years
ago. He would send eight letters in
carbon copies of the same letter to
us and write about his thinking and
his travels. I have the misfortune of
not being able to locate those
letters in my moving back and forth
from Washington to Minnesota I
think that Rogel's daughter, the
professor Ruth has some of them,
maybe most od them. We can find
out when we see her at the Adamic
symposium on the 28th of Mayt
1981 at the University of Min-nesota.
You will be participants
with me at this occasion.
Adamic was a great influence in
getting us to understand America
itself. He was proud to be an
American and served in World War
I in the army. He was proud of the
mosaic of nationalities that made
America a great pluralistic society
— how the different and diverse
cultures were woven into a mosaic
thread of a common purpose of
democracy. It was a fertile ground
to plant the seeds which made this
democracy flourish and became a
beacon or a shining light through-out
the world. He was really an
inspirational man. Nick, you
helped me very much on the
cultural matters now. I had learned
quite a bit when I was over in
Yugoslavia dur_ ing World War II
and then many trips after the War. I
learned about the history, about
the great writers; about their great
literary people; they love poetry
and music. I noticed that the
Slovenes, I only mention Slovene
because Louis was a Slovene,
never had a general in all of their
history.
NICHOLAS KOSANOVICH:
The literature of the Slovenian
people interests me because at a
mature age, while learning the
language of my parents, I found it
to be very rich, phonetically
perfect — no spelling of orthograp-hy
is required with a Greco-Lati- n
base like all of the Indo-Europe- an
family of languages. It was
codified by Vuk Karadtid, who gave
it a practical grammar with the
help of a great Slovenian philolog-ist
Jernej Kopitar. This Slovenian
grammarian corrected the con-jugation
and declension of nouns
and adjectives of the Serbo-Cro- at
language. He was a leader of the
lllyrian movement of the time along
with Ljudevit Gaj, the Croatian
writer. The name of the movement
received its name from the
Napoleonic invasion and oc-cupation
of Slovenia, Lika and
Dalmatia. Napoleon called them
the lllyrian provinces. They were
named after the original settlers of
these areas, even before the
Romans. With the Napoleonic
occupations came the Napoleonic
Code and the encyclopaedic
mentality of the democratic tradit-ions
of France which helped to
enrich the literature and civil code
of this part of the world. John did
you every hear any mention of
Jernej Kopitar?
JOHN ABLATNIK:
Yes, I did hear of him. That was
during the war years in which we
would have time at night to talk
about philosophy. I always wanted
to know where did the Slovenians
come from, and also the lllyrians,
the whole historical movement of
peoples, tribes, the tribal system
and all of that. I realize that these
people prized the spoken and
written word highly, even in their
early history. They would make
words sing; they would make them
sing through poetic rhyem and
through the song itself. Yes, they
had their fun sungs with the wine
and accordians and all that; but,
they prized their serious literature
and their culture immensely. They
would put words into epic poems. I
learned about France Presern and
Cankar and political writers. I read
the history of the peasant revolt in
feudal times when they fought with
pitch-fork- s and sickles. They were
a people who desired freedom very
much. They were defending their
freedom — no matter how many
invaders traversed their lands. I
don't know how far back historical-lv- ,
but as an amateur historian, I
read way back when the Goths and
the Visigoths, the Huns and then
much later the crusaders on their
way across the land bridge of the
Balkan peninsula crossed this land
and pillaged and plundered. It
seemed that everyone walked over
Yugoslavia. The Turks came from
the south and to the very gates of
Vienna up north. The struggle of
the religions and cultures in wars
that ebbed and flowed back and
forth. You mention the Napoleonic
conquest. That was recent history
for these people. In fact, Napoleon
went all the way to Dubrovnik in his
conquest of the European land
mass. There were cannonball
marks in Dalmatia all the way down
the coast. There are cannonball
marks still in some of the build-ings.
Here were the armies that
crossed and re-cross- ed this land
for centuries. The Turks on the one
hand with violent men from the
east invading this land. These
people maintained their ethnic
identity and integrity and their
language and literature. They
surveved through all of these trials
and tribulations.
DR. V.TOMOVIC:
Well, Mr. Blatnik, I am very much
impressed with your knowledge of
the history and culture of the
Slovenian people. I associate your
knowledge of historical necessity
of Canada to venture into a formal
proclamation of the multicultural
state, because Canadian politici-ans
have realized that the melting
pot type of assimilation cannot
meaningfully take place with
constant influx of mewcomers to
the new world. This richness of
Slovenian culture had a tremend-ous
impact on Louis Adamid,
because in My Native Land and the
Native's Return, he definitely tries
to revive the meaning of the old
culture and tries to bridge the old
Slovenian culture with the new
culture with pride. Your own
reminiscence on Adamic's love for
the new country and the constant
emphasis of the culture from whcih
he came at age 14, not even 14, will
be of interest to our readers, if I
may ask you this?
JOHN ABLATNIK:
Well, as I said, Louis Adamic
I never forgot from whence he had
I come; and he never forgot the
peasants who were back there in
the cultural milieu which is his
cultural heritage. To those of our
parents who were trying to sort of
"Americanize", which meant to
become Anglo-Saxo- n and shed
your language, your native songs,
native food, native traditions of the
holidays — be it Christmas or
Easter or New Year's day or a
baptism or marriage, Adamic
disagreed. He said that that should
be kept alive, whether it is a Pole,
Swede, Norwegian or Finn; keep
the customs and the whole
indigenous culture alive. Adamic
said that therein lies the strength
of America. As I look back now,
Adamic wanted to reconstruct and
rebuild and to retain the sources of
the rich European Yugoslav
heritage. He was, at the same time,
enormously impressed with the
land of opoortunity, yet a' land of
contraditions; a land of peace and
generosity and good-wil- l, and yet a
land of brutality and selfishness
and greed and very violent strug-gles.
It was just a tremendous
struggle just to earn or make out a
living, let alone trying to educate
one's children; any child who may
flower into a very famous or useful
citizen to enrich the quality of life
in the U.S.
He was particularly impressed
with the enormous contribution of
the sons of these immigrants
durino World Was II. Not only in
Minnesota, a high percentage of
the sons and daughters of the
foreign born volunteered for
combat duty. I volunteered and I
couldn't even be drafted because I
was a member of the Minnesota
Senate; and yet volunteered for
combat duty and became eventual-ly
a paratrooper for a few years and
was sent to Yugoslavia because of
my knowledge of the country when
I had been there as a boy. I knew
and still know the Slovenian
language fluently and it didn't take
me long to learn colloquial Serbo--Cro- at
and the songs and the
kolos, plus their history.
I had been the State President of
what was known as the American--Yugosla- v
Association of Min-nesota
which was a society to
perpetuate the cultural traditions
through various programs.
Because of my familiarity with the
people in Yuoslavia and interes-tingly
enough, because of my love
for the outdoors, I was a good
candidate for behind the lines
assignment. I also could survive in
the cold weather, knew how to ski.
I learned that from the Norwegians
and learned how to play hockey.
This served me in good stead. I
learned how to play hockey from
your Canadians, Dr. Tomovid. A
man came down from Fort Francis
to teach us how to play years ago.
We learned how to live in the
woods and hunt for food, I used to
canoe in the summer when I was 17
years old at a Foresi where we were
stationed in the C.C.C. This was
on the Canadian border. So, I had
the best training possible to
survive with the Yugoslav Parti-sans.
I felt that in this way, I would
be of service to our government,
the armed forces. We wouldn't be
able to survive in the German
occupied area without the support
of the people, the students, the
workers and the poor peasants.
Our mission was to relay infor-mation
to headquarters and to find
Americans who had parachuted to
safety from their downed planes.
We had picked up 380 Americans
and led them to safety. Many
others were picked up further
south in Serbia by the Partisans
and Canadian and British soldiers
doing similar work as we. The air
fields where we would get supplies
were cow pastures or a corn
meadow. We would light brush
fires so that they could land at
night. We would get supplies and
fly out American airmen, some
English, Canadian. We had even
Australians, New Zealanders,
South Africans and others. We
were all taught at a British
Parachute School. We had also
fown out many wounded Partisans.
The greatest source of esprit-de--cor- ps
was not the material we had
flown in, but our presence there.
The amount that was dropped was
minimal. How much can be flown
in a few planes? They had to go
into the enemy camps and raid the
garrison and kill the guards by
hand with a knife at night That is
how they were able to supply
themselves with warm boots and a
woolen coat to survive the riggors
of a cold winter that lay ahead.
They had to do it to survive. This
resistance was built up into one of
the greatest resistance move-ments,
I think, of all time. I don't
know of any other place where so
many people engaged in behind
the lines resistance as in Yugosla-via
during World War II.
i
After that, we came back and '
, ._ ,, . , i ucycm iu num сши icyiuufj uuin a
war-tim- e economy to a peace-tim- e
economy. There were dislocations
as a result. Millions perished. The
Yugoslavs lost 10% of their
population — men, women,
children and soldiers. We were
fortunate in America. We had
140,000 dead. Thank God that it
was low. The Russians lost 20
million, the Germans 10 million
and millions in France, Holland,
Belgium and Great Britain.
Then the awesome thing hap-pened,
the explosion of the Atomic
bomb; we thought that it was the
end of the world. I think that this
single event had a traumatic effect
on Louis Adamic. I can't say that it
was the sole thing, but, I feel it
might have been decisive in losing
his positive perspective and
concepts of humanity. His faith in
man's humanity was shattered and
eroded with the advent of the
atomic bomb. He seemed to think
that this was the end of the world.
He had told me so. He said, "John,
man is hell bent down the road to
self-destructio- n". I was really ap-palled
and saddened by the
enormity of the negative effect this
had on Adamic's thinking. He
became more and more depressed
and more and more discouraged.
His faith in mankind was at a low
ebb at this point in time. I did not
hear this type of talk from him in
the thirties and forties. He was so
positive and inspired by the pro-gress
of mankind: This was only
the atomic bomb; the hydrogen
bomb had not been produced yet!
WPfflfff
He went to California for a few
months and finally came back to
Milford. New Jersey. I had never
visited him there, even though he
had invited me. He would still keep
sending these carbon copies of
letters to Rogel and me and to
about six or eight of his friends. He
telephoned me once from Cleve-land
to meet him there and spend
the Labor Day weekend with him.
This was about two or three weeks
prior to Labor Day. He lived alone
at this time in a lovely wooded area
in New Jersey on the Pennsylvania
border. I couldn't make it; I
remember it well. I had to go home
to Minnesota to go on a three day
speaking tour with Hubert Humph-rey.
We had done this every Labor
Day. This was in 1951. Adamic was
found dead on September 4th;
what an omen; he died; a man who
worked for the working people
would, die on their Holiday. I
received a phone call about 3:00 or
4:00 in the morning. I believe it was
Stella, his wife, I'm sure it was
Stella. We were good friends, we
got along very well. She had a lot
trust and confidence in me, I don't
know why? She told me the news
that Louis had died and the whole
farm had burned to the ground.
She asked me to come up. I got in
my car immediately. It was about
4:00 or 5:00 in the morning and
drove north to his home. I recall
that it took about three and a half
hours and arrived at 10:00 a.m.
John Rogel was already there. I
wish John were alive to tell this
story. Rogel was crying like a baby
and the sight was awesome.
(Nastavide se
u idu6em broju)