On a Sunday evening, at the end of April, 1998, a group of us of Gottscheer background were chatting on the Internet, and two of us got into a discussion of opera. Before we said our good nights, I passed along my e-mail address to my fellow opera lover, who had identified himself as ‘Arnold’ and offered to continue our discussion on favorite operas via e-mail. It wasn’t long before I received an e-mail message from him and the rest, as we say, is history . . . our childhood history in this case.

My late father had often mentioned the name “Rom” when he told my siblings and me stories about his life in Gottschee, where Richard Rom was his lawyer and friend. He had the utmost respect for Richard Rom, and valued his advice and help in all his business dealings. He always referred to him as a man of great integrity and honor and unimpeachable character. When I read Arnold’s message and saw his full name, I sensed instantly that he would be the son of Richard Rom, and indeed he was. Arnold’s father had died in 1941, shortly before they, too, were scheduled to leave Gottschee. There had been no contact between our families since then and yet here we were, fifty-seven years later, discovering each other on the Internet!

What followed this chance encounter in cyberspace was an exchange of stories about our early lives, what each of us remembered about our childhood in Gottschee, and the traumatic years we spent following the resettlement of Gottscheers, as well as the years following WWII. Before too long, we had decided to share our memories with other Gottscheers, especially the descendants of our own generation, to give them a first-hand account of those times before we, too, pass into history. What follows is not a history of the Gottscheer people, but the story of our own two families.

Ridy Hoegler Skyrme                                                                             Arnold R. M. Rom