Hello to the list, My children and I have just returned from our trip to Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. Besides meeting relatives, we were on a mission to seek more information on our relatives that had emigrated from there to America. I am sharing what we found. Finding records in Croatia is much more feasible than we found in Slovenia. For one thing, Slovenia has not opened up their archives to the LDS Church for microfilming. At this point, I know of no on-line source for records. We tried to find records in the town of Kocevje. Here is what we found: Finding records in Croatia is much more feasible than we found in Slovenia. For one thing, Slovenia has not opened up their archives to the LDS Church for microfilming. At this point, I know of no on-line source for records. We tried to find records in the town of Kocevje. Here is what we found: 1. At the government office of records, their records date mainly from about 1900. You may examine the records looking for a specific individual PROVIDED you can document that you are related. The most common document requested was a birth certificate. If you stop and think about it and if you are now a couple or several generations removed from the relative you are looking for, you will need much more than birth certificates particularly if you are searching for a female relative. The office person was kind enough to scan herself the particular year looking for the particular person, but we had no success. 2. Kocevje is a small city located in a fertile valley with a number of smaller towns located in the surrounding area. Many of these smaller towns have their own church. We spoke to the priest in the main Catholic Church in Kocevje. He told us that when the Yugoslavia government wanted all birth and death records shipped to a governmental site, it was on a voluntary basis. In other words, a church could elect to comply or not comply. That is completely different information than what we found in Croatia where such records were required by the government without exception. This particular church did have a series of records and while the priest did try and assist us in finding the relatives we were searching for, nothing came of it. He asked whether we were sure that the church in Kocevje was the family church; could it have been in one of the neighboring towns? If so, you need the specific name of the town and it maybe worthwhile seeking out the church in that town. 3. Both the public office and the priest referred us to the central archives located in Ljubljana where there is apparently no birth certificate requirement. We did not have the time to check here. By comparison to Croatia and Italy, we were most discouraged by our attempts in Slovenia. Dick Puz