Slovenia today
Slovenia today is a modern democratic country in the European Union. But it has a not-so-distant dark past. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were murdered by communists both during and after World War II.
Slovenia’s mass graves
After World War II was over in 1945, communist Partisans systematically murdered tens of thousands of non-communists and threw them into mass graves, caverns, and into this mine.
Communists forced over 1400 men, women and children into the Huda Jama Barbara Rov mine, some while still alive. Then they covered it up with eleven layers of concrete. During the communist years 1945-1990, it was prohibited by law to speak about it.
In 2009, miners removed the last concrete barrier and exposed the bodies and Slovenia’s crime to the world. Here is a link to an article about the work at the former mine called Huda Jama, in Slovenian:
Many people in Slovenia still claim that this genocide was justified. They argue that the Slovene Home Guards, who fought with the communist Partisans, “collaborated” with the German Army which had completely occupied Slovenia. However, the mountain of women’s hair found inside the mine (photo above left) belies their claim that only men were murdered. Communists routinely murdered entire families.
After the war was over in 1945 and the communists came to power, Slovene anti-communist families fled for their lives north to Austria, where they found the British and requested protection from the communists. Instead, the British military forced the men onto trains, told them they were going to Italy, and sent them back to Yugoslavia where they were murdered by the communist Partisans.
The mass grave site, one of the largest in Slovenia, was first publicly discussed in 1990, after the fall of communism in Yugoslavia. On October 25, 2017, the Slovenian government announced that the remains of 1,416 victims were exhumed from the site and reburied at the Dobrava memorial park in Maribor.
No one has ever been prosecuted for these crimes, despite the fact that the perpetrators were still alive after Slovenia achieved independence after 1990.
Huda Jama, near Celje
Kocevski Rog mass graves
Some of the most recent mass graves sites discovered are in the Kocevski Rog region of Slovenia. In the cave below Macesnova Gorica, right, work continues on the excavation of the victims of post-war killings. Direct preparatory work began a few years ago with the preparation and protection of the terrain and the installation of protective nets, the arrangement of the plateau, and the erection of scaffolding and excavation.
In Slovenia there are over 6,000 mass graves with unknown numbers of victims murdered by revolutionary/communist violence.
According to historian Dr. Mitja Ferenc, between 27 and 31 May 1945, the British army repatriated a huge number of anti-communist refugees, many of them the Slovenian Home Guards, and handed them over to the Yugoslav communists. From the camp in Šentvid above Ljubljana, Slovenians, Croats, Serbs and others were then taken by train in cattle cars to Kočevje, and from there by truck to Kočevski Rog, where they were murdered and thrown into the abyss. In addition to the cave under Macesnova Gorica, the most famous is the burial site Jama pod Krenom.
Macesnova Gorica mass grave
The cave at Macesnova (Macesnova Gorica), in Kocevski Rog, contains the remains of 3,450 Slovenian victims murdered by the communist Partisans in 1945 after the war. This video shows the archaelogical crime scene dig and ongoing investigation by the Slovenian Mass Graves Commission, headed by Joze Dezman.
No one has ever been prosecuted for any of these crimes.
Slovenia’s death camps, concentration camps, and forced labor camps for political prisoners
Slovenia is very picturesque and has a number of beautiful old castles. Tourists are given tours of castles such as the Rajhenburg old castle (today called Brestanica). If you visit this castle, the tour guide will regale you with tales from 300 years ago, and might mention that the Nazis used it during WWII as a detention center or concentration camp.
But the tour guide will not tell you that immediately after WWII, castles such as Rajenburg were used as detention and “re-education” centers for women who were not communists. Most of the women worked forced labor for several years, and helped to build what are now the major freeways going through Slovenia and Croatia.
The treatment of the women varied. Both my grandmothers and two aunts were imprisoned here. One of my aunts lived through it and today is 103 years old. But one grandmother, Mara Jordan Rus, was cruelly tortured, starved, held in solitary confinement for four years, and released as a madwoman. Her “crime” was that her niece was a high-level political commissar who held her prisoner in order to extract information from her son, who had escaped to Trieste.
Viktring today
On my way to Slovenia during my last trip I decided to go see Viktring Austria, where many of the refugees from Ljubljana fleeing Tito’s Partisans walked to. While the fields no longer look as they once did, the church and buildings are the same.
What struck me was the steep path up through the mountains after going through the Ljubelj tunnel. Five of my uncles and aunts made this long steep journey on foot without their parents; they were ages 4 to 16!