“They Have Accepted Us as Their Own”: Children of Slovenian Prisoners at the Sárvár Labor Camp in Foster Care with Farming Families in Vojvodina during the Second World War

Abstract

Članek obravnava posebno poglavje v usodi primorskih kolonistov, ki so se po koncu 1. svetovne vojne naselili v kolonijah ob madžarsko-jugoslovanski (zdaj slovenski) meji v Prekmurju in ki jih je madžarska okupacijska oblast leta 1942 odgnala v internacijsko taborišče Sarvar na Madžarsko. Otroke je iz taborišča rešila Pravoslavna cerkev iz Novega Sada, ki je zanje organizirala rejništvo pri kmečkih družinah v Bački v Vojvodini. Članek temelji na gradivu, zbranem pri primorskih kolonistih v Prekmurju, in na podatkih iz literature, predvsem pa na pričevanju Jožeta Vidiča, ki je bil kot otrok pri rejnikih v vasi Sivac. V članku so predstavljeni rešitev otrok iz taborišč in njihova nastanitev v Bački, njihovo življenje in delo pri rejniških družinah, odnosi z družinskimi člani in vaščani. Tesne prijateljske vezi, podobne družinskim, se po vrnitvi otrok domov po koncu vojne niso prekinile.

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The article focuses on a specific period in the lives of refugees from Primorska who, after the Firts World War, had established colonies in Prekmurje, then a part of Yugoslavia (now Slovenia) along the Hungarian-Yugoslav border. In 1942 the Hungarian occupational authorities moved them to the Sarvar Labor Camp in Hungary. Evacuated from there by the Orthodox Church of Novi Sad, many of their children were placed in foster care with farming families in Bačka in the province of Vojvodina. The article is based on data provided by the settlers who had returned to Prekmurje after the war, on literature, and particularly on eyewitness accounts by Jože Vidič. Vidič, himself a foster child reared in the Bačka village of Sivac. The article primarily examines the children’s rescue from the labor camp and their placing in Bačka; their life with foster families; and their relations with family members and villagers. Their mutual ties of friendship, not unlike those within the children’s primary families, were not severed after they had been returned to their original homes.