Life's Journey of a Refugee

About the Book

Life's Journey of a Refugee is a unique voyage from the cauldron of early 20th-century ethnic cleansing to the melting-pot of the mid-century American Dream, from the wrong side of World War II through the gang wars of 1950's Brooklyn and the triumph and tragedies of postwar America.

For six hundred years the Catholic Land of Gottschee has endured as a remote outpost of the House of Austria, the outermost point of the Holy Roman Empire, a "linguistic Island" of medieval German in present-day Slovenia. It has withstood the Bosnian Warlord and Napoleon, but German catastrophe in World War I brings tension with the local Slavs to a simmer, hastening the exodus of educated Gottscheers.

Edwin Stalzer, the author, is born at the boiling point, the moment of Gottschee's final tragedy. Life's Journey of a Refugee takes you through his life in an Austrian refugee camp from 1945 to 1952, his escape to America, and his triumphant battle for the "American Dream".

About the Author

A survivor of World War II, seven grueling years in Austrian refugee camps, and the gang wars of Brooklyn?s 1950?s, Edwin Stalzer and his wife Carol now live the American Dream in Charlottesville, Virginia, the home of Thomas Jefferson.

Since publishing this book, they have traveled back to Slovenia and Austria, and Edwin retraced his entire journey, this time as an adult. He discovered his birthplace, and the graves of his Great Grandparents and Grandparents. He stood at the very altar where he was babtized and visited the old sites of of the refugee camps in Austria. He found the farm that his family was relocated to in 1945 and was able to share his story with the present owner. On one of these trips he met a family that had shared their experience in Camp # 5. They are now friends for life and visit each other whenever possible.