Trieste – Alessandria EMBARKED

Aleksandrinke“ (Alexandrines, women from Alexandria) is an expression used for Slovenian women (mostly from the coastal region and around Trieste, Gorizia, the Karst … ), who, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, left for Egypt to work there as wet nurses, governesses, house-maids, cooks, etc., in order to maintain themselves and their families at home. After the First World War and especially under the fascist rule, poverty in Primorska was so severe that many families went bankrupt, men had no work, taxes were devastating – but the women who went to Egypt, especially Alexandria, rich and blooming at that time, easily got work. »Les Goriciennes, les Slaves, les Slovènes«, as they called them, were known as the best labour force.