Stan is a man of great courage and determination with an amazing history and it was a privilege to have a conversation with him.
Our long conversation, a small part of which is featured below, is a story of hardship, emotion, courage and redemption.
Stan is 79. He was born in 1931 in the city of Ljubljana in the northern part of Yugoslavia in the region near the borders of Italy and Austria. He is the youngest of 12 children.
Stan's family had been living in Trieste in Northern Italy and had moved back to Yugoslavia shortly before Stan was born.
Stan vividly remembers that the start of the Second World War for him was at age 9, when on Easter Sunday, 1940, 24 German aircraft attacked the city of Ljubljana where he was living. During the war half the city was occupied by German forces and half by their allies the Italian forces. During the years of occupation there was a curfew under which the citizens could not leave their homes between 6pm and 6am.
Stan particularly remembers that hunger was a principal concern for the population. The occupying forces gave food coupons, but food was in short supply. Citizens were allowed to go into the country to buy food, since there were no facilities in the city to grow adequate amounts of food.
By the time he was 19, Stan had been imprisoned as a political prisoner on several occasions and had some remarkable escapes. The first was at age 12, in 1943, when he went with a 10 year old friend 60km into the country to buy food. They found themselves in an area where there were skirmishes between the resistance movement, the Italian army and Yugoslavian collaborators who supported the Italians. Stan and his friend were captured by the collaborators, accused of being spies and put into jail. A harrowing experience for a 10 and 12 year old who had actually done nothing wrong.
Stan described how he and his friend were scheduled to be sent to a major prison on an island, where they almost certainly would have died, but he was able to get them both freed. It illustrates how a simple circumstance can sometimes be the difference between life and death.
Stan returned to the theme of how significant hunger was during the war, particularly in winter.
Stan told me how members of his family joined the resistance movement and how his brother was wounded, captured and sent to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. There was a particular thought that kept his brother alive during his captivity.
In 1949 Stan and six friends decided to escape over the border into American controlled Italy and try to get to America to have a better life. They went by train, got off close to the border but were captured when trying to cross the border on foot. At that time Yugoslavia had a communist regime under Marshall Tito.
Stan's group was accused of being an anti-government element trying to cross the border to organise an army. They were sentenced to varying terms in prison with hard labour. Stan ended up in a prison where one of his friends was the cook for the police guards. This gave them an idea for escaping.
Their escape is an amazing story of courage and determination.
Stan finally got to a refugee camp in Trieste (Italy), after serving another prison sentence (6 weeks) for travelling without a permit, and was eventually transported to Australia. He had only just turned 20 when he arrived.
When I commented that Stan had been through a lot of very scary events at an early age, he simply said "yeah".
Stan met his wife in 1962 at the Trocadero in Sydney.
Stan told me about the enormous effect on him of being paid compensation by the government of Slovenia in 1991 after that country became independent.
In view of Stan's history, I was not surprised when he said that the most important thing in life is freedom. He said, "It is so important, that when I decided to run (escaping from prison in 1949), only a bullet would stop me".
Now, Stan feels that he can trust people, whereas when he was young he could not. He learned during his times as a political prisoner that the biggest enemy was other prisoners, because they were looking for opportunities to improve their situation.
These days Stan laments the lack of discipline and respect for others among many young people. When he was young children were brought up to be obedient, not to answer back and to respect their elders.
For Stan the most memorable event he has witnessed was the end of the Second World War. This meant the end of hunger and restrictions on movement. Hundreds of thousands of people died of hunger in his country during the war.
The event that most changed Stan's life was escaping and coming to Australia.
The most valuable thing he has acquired is married life and grandchildren.
(Conversation with Paul, a friend, 19 February 2011)