In many aspects, the story of Ivan Ranzinger is a story of the »repressive«20th century. He was born in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, grew up and maturedin terms of his ideas and views in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/ Yugoslavia, and witnessed the German occupation, the establishmentand evolution of the Socialist Yugoslavia until its very end, and finally also theindependence of the Republic of Slovenia. During two socio-political systemsand a system of occupation he experienced the characteristics of state repressioneach time. He spent the majority of his life branded as a political opponent,supervised, subject to numerous house searches and arrests by the gendarmerie,the Gestapo, and members of the State Security Administration. He survivedinterrogations, torture, humiliation, was tried many times, and experienced lifebehind bars of many prisons and camps. Ivan Ranzinger was born into the family of glassworkers on 9 September 1909 in Vienna. His large family moved often in search of a better life, finally settling in Zagorje when World War I broke out. Since his early years he has experienced the hardships of working-class families. Already as an eight-year-old child he started working as a glassworker, thus experiencing the situation of the exploited working class first hand. The experience had an influence on him. As he came of age, he enrolled into the Young Communist League of Yugoslavia (SKOJ), and in the year when King Alexander’s Dictatorship was introduced (1929) he already became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. He took part in many actions aimed at improving the situation of the working class (disseminating leaflets, organising their printing, organising strikes). Among other things he was also a trade union official in the glassworkers’ union and a member of the district committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Inthe period when the communists were persecuted most severely, he soon experienced the repressive apparatus of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In January andMay 1929 he was arrested due to the suspicion of spreading communist leaflets,and in June 1930 he was arrested as a financial supporter of the communistmovement. In February 1933 he was charged for the first time, tried at a judicialproceeding at the District Court of Celje, and sentenced to two years and a halfin prison. The sentence was extended to five years because of his participationin the demonstration of the prisoners in Sremska Mitrovica. His time in prison and the »education« he received at the »prison universities« only strengthened his convictions, political orientation and life views, which was, however, poor baggage in the interwar circumstances of the German occupation. As soon as on 17 April 1941 he was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz in December 1941, and to Buchenwald in March 1943. There he became politically active as a member of the international committee and organiser of the illegal Yugoslav committee of the Communist Party. He returned to his homeland on 6 July 1945. As the new socialist Yugoslavia was being developed enthusiastically in the post-war period, the intense post-war judicial retaliation against certain suspected and actual political opponents was also taking place. Due to various reasons certain former concentration camp internees also ended up among these people, including Ivan Ranzinger. He was arrested on 3 September 1948. Once again he feared for his life at the so-called Eighth Dachau Trial, or, more precisely, the Buchenwald Trial. Hewas accused of cooperating with Gestapo and sentenced to eighteen years inprison on 29 June 1949. He was pardoned on 17 April 1953 and released onparole. However, it took as long as 17 years until his sentence was annulled on9 January 1971. Perhaps all these pressures and disappointments manifestedthemselves in the heart attack he suffered in 1963. Nevertheless, with a strongwill he persisted for another 24 years. He died three years before the turn of the20th century – a century hardly comparable to any other period in history withregard to the quality and quantity of anguish caused and suffered by humankind.