Description
Various authors, incl. France ČERNE (1923 – 2012).
Razsvit – glasilo jugoslovanske antifašistične mladine
[Enlightenment – A Newspaper of the Yugoslav Antifascist Youth]
Dachau: June 2, 1945.
A small number of newspapers was printed by the prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp shortly after the liberation.
It should be noted that while the Americans went to great efforts to dramatically improve the conditions of Dachau’s residents, most of the former prisoners were obliged to remain in the camp for some weeks until being processed out. Not only did the Americans need to screen the rolls for people who were potential security risks to the Allies, but it was also considered unsafe, or very difficult, for many of the internees to return home. Moreover, there were issues of infectious diseases within the camp, and doctors mandated a quarantine period. Time was required for all the appropriate arrangements to be made, and so thousands remained in Dachau.
The Americans facilitated activities and diversions for the internees as they awaited their release. A small number of residents requested, and were given, the resources to publish newsletters and small visual works, which were mimeographed on relatively small sheets of cheap wartime paper, from stock that was probably left behind by the departed German staff.
The Slovenian prisoners produced the only daily newspaper in post liberation Dachau, Dahavski Poročevalec (The Dachau Reporter), which was produced in 31 numbered issues running from May 2 to June 5, 1945, numbered 1-18, 18a and 19-30. Amazingly, the first issue of the paper appeared less than 72 hours after Dachau was liberated from the Nazis by the U.S. Army, on April 29, 1945. The daily gives an valuable insight in the life inside camp during and after the war. It also explains the production of the newspapers inside the camp.
The Present Newspaper in Focus
One of the issues of Dahavski Poročevalec mentions a modern, hand-written magazine Razsvit (Enlightenment), which was made by young poets, writers and publicists during the war at the concentration camp and circulated among the inmates, encouraging them and presenting a better future. Three issues were made as manuscripts and the fourth one was printed shortly after the liberation of the camp, on May 6, 1945.
This is an exceedingly rare fifth and possibly last edition of the newspaper, published on June 2, 1945, on the eve of the release of the prisoners.
The authors are partly anonymous and are signed only with initials F., Z., S. and first names Slavko, France and Marjan. The introduction praises the liberation and the power of the youth, but the following stories and poems reveal the depressing reality of the young authors of this publication: a story of a young girl, shot by the Nazis, the last day of a young man, who is dying at the Dachau hospital after the liberation, an anti-Hitler essay, a poem on the suffering at the Dachau concentration camp and a poem on typhus. One of the authors was France Černe (1923 – 2012), later a prolific Yugoslav economist, who was imprisoned in Dachau in 1944, aged 21.
The last article is a farewell to the Dachau concentration camp and an encouraging beginning of a new life in freedom, written by an anonymous editor.
The Note on Rarity
Worldcat mentions one institutional example of this issue no. 5. (Narodna in študijska knjižnica, Trst – Slovene National and Study Library Trieste). We could also only trace one example of the no. 4 (Muzej novejše zgodovine Celje (NOB na Celjskem (ce-nob.si)). We owed one example of this issue of the magazine in 2017, which was sold to the trade. The newspaper Razsvit is not mentioned in the bibliography of partisan and underground printing of World War II (which lists Dahavski Poročevalec).
