Franja Resistant Hospital | poster

Then the storm that swept through Lower Friuli last Thursday continued its course in Slovenia causing severe damage to the Franja Partisan Hospital in the Idrija region, about fifty kilometers from Gorizia. An extraordinary symbol and representation of humanity and the values ​​and dreams of partisan struggle.

The resistance was born in Yugoslavia in 1941 in response to the occupation and division of the territories between the Italians and the Germans. There was a need to treat wounded partisans and in Slovenia, in the village of Cerkno, this was done on a farm. The situation had become very dangerous due to the constant arrests, and as we know, the Nazi fascists had no qualms about killing anyone, be it women, children, the elderly or the sick. It was a farmer who brought Dr. Viktor Voljak in the Pasice Gorge, very hidden and far from any path and any presence: an uphill walk in the thick wood up to the rocks that emerge from the stream and form little platforms between jumps and waterfalls and then the vertical walls so high they filter only a ribbon of light.

Partisan hospital It was born as such, through the work of the revolutionaries and the local population. Much of what was needed came from the villages, but after September 8, 1943, he robbed a fortune of barracks abandoned by the Italians, even complete X-ray equipment. Supplies of food and medicine were ensured by the impressive capacity of the organization of the Liberation Committee which was able to continuously supply 120 Partisan hospitals in Slovenia alone. In the Basis Strait they never stopped repairing, modifying, building new barracks, and improving solutions to remain invisible even though they had to purify water, sterilize tools and linen, cook and heat. Invisible and impregnable: mined areas, sentry posts, periodic shifts, underground bunkers, a series of bunkers above ground, nearly 900 meters high, hewn into the rock overhang which, in times of danger, housed three partisans and a machine gun . The gorge was attacked twice, by German bombs from the air, but Vranga was not discovered.

The hospital has been taken It was immediately named after Dr. Franja Bojc Bidovec who directed it and who, in addition to caring for patients, organized training courses for nurses so that they could also use volunteers who came from a wide variety of professions. Frangies were treated, operated on, and immobilized broken limbs, and if the surgery was particularly complex, Dr. Derganc of the IX Corpus Flying Surgical Team. doctor. Derganc! And so a person who worked in France could leave the young Frenchman Jean Chevalier amazed and delighted that, having awakened from anesthesia, he heard himself greeted in his own language. Maintaining morale also counted, so we read letters of encouragement sent from the most diverse places, we sang often, and even printed a newspaper with hand-drawn drawings. There was a political commissar who, together with nurse Pavla Lebanon, organized readings, small performances and joyful moments with performances and music.

Franja’s employees exceeded 100, mostly Slovenes but also Italians. There was the Piedmontese physician Antonio Ciccarelli, who worked throughout 1944 and then Director of the Sanitary Service of the Garibaldi Department of Natesoni. There were doctors from Gorizia and Monfalcone, nurses, couriers, guards, and Friulian Adelina Zanetti who took care of the kitchen. Also from Sicily, the nurse Giuseppe Costanzo is from Tortorichi. Among the many in this kind of Babel where many different languages ​​intersected was the Austrian shoemaker Alois Trommel, formerly of the Wermacht, who made the shoes in the workshop.

Then there are the wounded and sick who are cared for regardless of nationality or affiliation: partisans, civilians, Axis soldiers. Above all the Partisans of course, many were Italians such as Rino Blasi from Marano-Lagonari (UD) who died on April 23, 1945, one step away from victory, and was buried in the small cemetery next door, like the 86 others who could not. They saved themselves, a small bottle containing a strip of paper with its data and date. But the majority returned to fight, and recovered, like Guido Knez of Trieste and hundreds of others. So many stories of bravery and solidarity, think of American Lieutenant Harold Adams—one of the three hundred American airmen rescued in Yugoslavia—carrying him over the shoulder to Vranja in 14 hours of walking in the woods.

France always has suffered from the ravages of the climate. Affectionately cared for with constant maintenance, it managed to overcome even the tragedy of September 2007 when a violent storm and the furious flood of the Cerinšcica stream swept away eleven of the fourteen cottages: “Franja is no more,” people exclaimed, but after two years of work it is back to what it was. . Hundreds of things, tools, documents, and a little “new” without the obvious patina of the past have been lost, but Franja hasn’t stopped being there.

The day after the storm from last Thursday? The path cutting through the wood down to the removable bridge marking the entrance to the hospital was destroyed, the power station, kitchen and X-ray cabin destroyed and many damages to an undetermined number of windows, furniture, rooms, and stairwells. But Franja will reopen, once again the ‘hidden gem in the heart of Europe’ will once again reveal itself. On Friday morning, the inspection was completed by the staff of the Idrija Museum – which he runs – with the fire brigade and representatives of the Ministry of Culture, and in the afternoon they have already begun to clear the site of debris. Because Vranja is a national monument, it bears the European Heritage label, but it is, as the museum’s website writes, a “humanitarian monument.”