crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
the form of minor purging actions as well as abrupt invasions of smaller units in the Partisan rear area. This
fighting was conducted by the operative staff for the destruction of bands located in Trieste and Ljubljana
and headed by SS Generals Erwin Rösener and Odilo Globocnik. This brought great suffering to the civilian
population, and thus Slovenians from the Littoral region often experienced disproportionate or extreme
violence at the hands of German police and SS units. The most heinous cases were the burning of the village
of Strmec and the slaughter of its male inhabitants in the autumn of 1943, and the burning of the villages
Komen and Rihemberk and the deportation of all their inhabitants to Germany in the winter of 1944. 23
In Trieste, a special SS unit, headed by General Globocnik and earlier involved in the destruction
of Jews in Poland, organised the only extermination concentration camp in this part of Europe, situated
in the so-called “Rice Factory” (Risiera di San Sabba). Murdered and cremated in it were several
thousand Slovenian, Italian and Croatian antifascists as well as many Italian Jews. 24 Regarding the
latter, it has to be stressed that their pursuit by the Nazis began immediately after the occupation of
the Slovenian territory. They were rather sparse in this region (Lower Styria and Upper Carniola),
especially as wealthy individuals; a bigger population lived only in Prekmurje, precisely in Lendava,
and therefore in the territory occupied by Hungarians and integrated into Hungary in 1941. Insofar as
they did not manage to withdraw abroad or to the Ljubljana region occupied by Italians, they were
arrested and taken to concentration camps, all their property confiscated. After the subversion in 1944,
when Hungary was occupied by the German forces, the same destiny befell the Prekmurje Jews. A
similar thing happened to most Jews in Ljubljana after the city was occupied by Germans in September
1943. In total, Nazis killed 550 Slovenian Jews during the war, almost 400 of whom lost their lives in
Auschwitz. 25
5.
The toll of the few years of Nazi rule taken on the Slovenian nation was more than tragic, although
it is clear that the majority of the most brutal violence was carried out as part of the Nazi efforts to limit
or stop the population from supporting the resistance movement. If we ignore the great material damage
caused by the Nazi authorities by exploiting Slovenian industrial capacities, by confiscating property, by
burning down dozens of Slovenian villages and the general plundering during war operations, let us at
least mention the most painful aspect, the human victims of Nazi violence among Slovenians. As a part
of reprisals for partisan activities, German units burnt down entire villages, in some cases killed the entire
male population in the process and sent the rest to concentration camps. We have mentioned a few of such
cases, but the event which resounded most in the Slovenian space was the first of its kind, the destruction
of the village of Dražgoše in Upper Carniola, which the occupiers razed after the end of the operations in
January 1942. In “purging” the territory, some units, usually SS units, committed particularly despicable
acts of war, such as decapitation or extraction of the eyes of prisoners of war. 26
Throughout this time the repressive Nazi authorities shot around 3,500 hostages, military and police
units killed about 7,500 people during purges and reprisals, around 2,000 died in exile, and over 8,000
in concentration camps (mostly in Auschwitz, Dachau and Mauthausen). If we add more than 9,000
Partisans killed in combat with German units and fully neglect other war situations in which Slovenian
people died, the Nazis, in the period 1941–1945, directly claimed at least 32,000 lives in the territory of
today’s Slovenia, which constitutes more than 2 % of the then population. If we, however, speak about the
victims of the entire Slovenian nation, we must add to the above number many victims among Slovenians
nowadays constituting the minority in Austrian Carinthia and in the hinterland of Trieste and Gorizia in
Italy. Furthermore, the victims of the German occupation should include those Slovenians who were,
23
Dorica Makuc, In gnojili boste nemško zemljo (And You Will Fertilise the German Soil), Gorizia 1990; Tone Ferenc, “Okupatorjev požig
vasi Strmec” (“Burning of the Village of Strmec by the Occupiers”), Borec (The Combatant), 23/11 (1971), pp. 677–683.
24
Joseph Poprzeczny, Odilo Globocnik, Hitler’s Man in the East, Jefferson, London 2004, pp. 335–351.
25
Damjan Hančič, Renato Podbersič, “Nacionalsocialistično in komunistično preganjanje Judov na Slovenskem” (“National Socialist
and Communist Presecution of Jews in Slovenia”), in: Hitlerjeva dolga senca. Nacionalsocialistično državnoteroristično in rasistično
preganjanje prebivalcev Slovenije in njegove posledice v Titovi Jugoslaviji (Hitler’s Long Shadow. National Socialist and State Terrorist
Persecution of the Inhabitants of Slovenia, and its Consequences in Tito’s Yugoslavia), Klagenfurt 2007, pp. 175–188.
26
Tone Ferenc, “Dva od njih so obglavili s sekiro: okupatorjev zločin v Idrijskih Krnicah” (“Two of Them Were Decapitated with an Axe:
the Crime of the Occupiers in Idrijske Krnice”), Borec, 29/10 (1977), pp. 517–550.
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