In memoriam Danilo Šajn (1926-2018)

The Slovenian Community in Sydney has lost another well known and respected member. Danilo Šajn passed away on Monday, September 24th 2018, aged 92. He is survived by his wife Zofija, son Jožko and daughter Danica, who, along with the wider Slovenian community, mourn the sad passing of a tireless worker within the Slovenian Community in Sydney. Danilo is a founding member of Triglav Club who also laid the building foundations for its club premises at St John's Park in Sydney's west. Danilo was a very proud and patriotic Slovenian, who was greatly loved and respected by everyone who had the honor of knowing him. The Šajn Family is also very respected and well known within the wider Slovenian Community. His funeral, held at the Saint Rafael's Slovenian Church in Merrylands on Thursday, September 20th 2018 was attended by a large number of mourners. May he rest in God's peace! Danica Šajn is well known and active within the Slovenian Community in Sydney. She paid a special tribute in memory of her father at his funeral with the following words: Danilo Šajn was born on 6 September 1926 at home in the little Slovenian village of Podstensek in the Primorska region of Slovenia. Dad was the fifth child born to Marija and Jožef Šajn. Seven more children followed, and their lives were full. An established farm, a small country pub, a mill with much arable land. If it were not for the two world recessions and the Italian occupation of their region after the fallout of WWI, you could say their lives were almost idyllic. Yet the Italian regime brought them schooling and a new language, in which my father due to his sharp intellect, was grammatically perfect. These skills would help him to establish a new life and then a small business in Australia in 1958. The family’s world was shattered, as were the lives of millions, with the advent of WWII. How enthralled I was listening to the stories of these times. Fortunately, they always involved lucky escapes by my father – and there were many such escapes. Being bound and sent to prison, to fight for the enemy. He escaped. Being dressed in a scarf and apron on a train by a compassionate matron while it was being searched by soldiers and escaping their clutches. This was in 1943 after the fall of the Italian regime. Being shot at from the air and wounded. However luckily his wound was superficial but did however leave a scar on his stomach which fascinated me for years. Being bombed from the air, countless times. The shattered life of this family was sealed by the razing of their small village by Italian soldiers on the 4th of June 1942. On the same day seven other villages were also razed. Forty able bodied men were executed in retribution for the killing of two Italian soldiers the night before by the freedom fighting Partizans. A disastrous and tragic day for the town. My father’s family was split up. His invalid father was sent to relatives. A brother and sister escaped, being not home at the time of the razing. The remainder of the family including my father, his mother and most of the children were eventually interned in northern Italy, where they laboured for a farmer for two years until the end of the war. The burning and looting of his beloved home was one memory my father could never forget. The family in tears watched helplessly as their historic homestead burned in front of their eyes; as they were herded to their unknown fate by the soldiers and with the older children doing their best to protect the younger. My father carried his youngest brother Albin aged 3 years, on his shoulders, everybody crying tears of despair. Their livelihood and happy home were gone. After the war the family was assisted to build another home nearby and my father played a huge part in its construction as did other brothers and sisters. I’ve seen this house many times and gazed up at the high walls and imagined my father toiling as he rendered the entire large double storey house. He’d then tell me of stories of how the young men after work, devised games of strength and agility. “We’d throw a rope over a wall, climb up it on one side, and then climb down it on the other side, head first!” he told me, an incredulous look on his face as if to say – how crazy were we! Yes, dad but amazingly fit and healthy too; God bless you. After the end of WWII Danilo still faced two years of military service for Marshall Tito. “The Bulgarian border”, he told me, “it was freezing cold, and I got frost bite”, he’d say as he showed me one of his pinky fingers frozen permanently into a right angle from holding his gun while on guard duty. Due to the post war economic depression dad felt he had no choice but to seek a better life elsewhere, and after two attempts and a stint in jail for trying, he made it to Italy where he spent almost a year in a refugee camp, finally arriving in Melbourne on 6 September 1957. In 1961 he married my mother, Sofia, the light and love of his life. As a child I quickly learned how gentle, kind and hard-working he was. When living in Blacktown in the 60s I wondered if all fathers worked 7 days a week? When living in Prestons, I vividly recall how morning after morning, year after year, his truck would rumble past my window at 7am, 6 days a week then eventually 5. Unless it was pouring with rain, my father went to work. Sick days in bed for him were unheard of – they just didn’t happen. Given such a history you can imagine our family’s shock at the eventual realisation that from one bed he may now never rise. My father was a story teller and there was hardly a newish suburb in Sydney that he hadn’t worked in as a concretor. And everywhere we went, he’d tell us and remind us. From Newport to Nowra to Katoomba. He even had a story about the day man landed on the moon, and how that affected the drying of his concrete. My mother and I discovered new stories as recently as last year. How at the age of 4 he was sent to live with elderly but close relatives who had no children of their own.. However, he’d often visit and knew where his actual family lived. At the age of 8 he devised a way to run away back to home. “I missed my brothers and sisters”, he told me. “They were having a lot more fun than me”. So, what is my father’s legacy I ask myself? How would he have liked to have been remembered? My father was one of the kindest, most gentle and generous human being I have ever known. These qualities are even more remarkable in that alongside them he not only had physical power, but also strength of character and of spirit. Looking at us all gathered here today I hope and trust that his legacy to us is to treat each other with kindness, as he did to all. My father was kind to family, his friends, his community. He is a believer in God. He was kind to the countless farm animals he tended to, to our family pets, to strangers. He was even kind to the staff at the hospital he was at, even if they weren’t kind to him. My father didn’t know how to hold grudges, and he was a very, very wise man. My dearest beloved father, Danilo. I always knew this day would surely come, however I had always hoped and prayed that it would not be quite like this. I know you didn’t leave this world angry, however I believe you left it disappointed. May you find solace with the angels and your family in heaven, where you surely belong. On behalf of my mother and brother I would like to thank you for being here today and for sharing our last journey in this life with our deeply beloved Danilo. Thank you to all and God bless. (Danica Šajn)

Source: Martha Magajna, SBS Slovenian