crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
by the expulsion of the Hungarian population from the territory of Lendava district. According to
indications by OZNA representatives for the county of Lendava, the district OZNA Maribor deported
225 Hungarian families 12 from 18 villages to the concentration camps Hrastovec and Strnišče near
Ptuj with the assistance of KNOJ members on 9 July 1945. The document referring to the expulsion of
the Hungarian population, dated 15 July 1945, indicates that a total number of 558 Hungarians 13 were
expelled from the individual mixed-nationality villages in the area of Lendava county. Of those 558
interned Hungarians, 35 % were children (all younger than 15 years), 44 % women and 21 % men. 14
The treatment of the members of the Hungarian national minority in these concentration camps was not
considerably different from treatment of the German national minority.
2.3. Concentration camps for the Slovenian Home-guard and civilians
A special group among the concentration camps in Slovenia were camps which interned members
of the Slovenian Home-guard and civilians who were turned over to the Yugoslav military authorities
by British forces occupying Austria at the end of May 1945. According to some data, the British handed
over to Yugoslav military authorities over 11,000 captured and disarmed members of the Slovenian
Home-guard and around 600 civilians 15 in Austrian Carinthia in the period between 27–30 May 1945.
Because the Slovenian Communist authorities did not acknowledge the status of war prisoners to the
captured Home-guards, they were treated in an extremely cruel manner and against all the existing
international conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. The camps where they were held were not
prisoner camps but concentration camps. The two largest concentration camps were for the Slovenian
Home-guard members, and for members of other military formations in the territory of Yugoslavia
who fought against the partisans during the war: Teharje and Škofovi zavodi in Št. Vid nad Ljubljano.
The third but much smaller concentration camp of this kind was also in the castle of Škofja Loka. As
stated above, all these camps were “death camps or destruction camps”, because the great majority of
war prisoners and civilians interned in them were deported to their places of execution without any
preliminary trial. According to the most recent findings, around 14,000 Slovenians were killed after the
war. However, if members of different military formations and civilians from other Yugoslav regions
are added to the number of Slovenians killed, the number of people who were killed in the territory of
Slovenia after World War Two is probably more than 100,000. That figure also includes all those who
were killed without being first placed in a concentration camp, the majority of which were Croatian
Ustashe (“ustaši”) and Croatian Home-guards (“domobrani”) who surrendered to the Yugoslav army in
Austrian Carinthia and in Slovenia. They were shot and buried in anti-tank trenches in the vicinity of
Maribor and Celje without any trial.
The extent of the killings of captured members of different military formations and of the civilian
population in Slovenia after the end of the war in 1945 is demonstrated by the fact that, up to now,
around 600 hidden mass graves have been recorded in the territory of Slovenia. Killings were the
most massive at the end of May and beginning of June, 1945. Internees from the concentration camp
in Št. Vid nad Ljubljano were taken by train and cattle wagons to Kočevje and from there by trucks
to selected hidden locations in the forests of Kočevski Rog. Larger Karst abysses were chosen as the
places of execution. A certain number of internees from the concentration camp Teharje were killed in
its immediate vicinity, but the majority was killed in the neighbourhood of Stari Hrastnik, Trbovlje and
Laško. Many were killed there and thrown into caves produced by mining, while some were thrown into
deserted mining shafts. Of several thousands of internees in the concentration camps Teharje, Št. Vid
nad Ljubljano and Škofja Loka, only a smaller number of civilians and juvenile Home-guards survived.
These were released after the amnesty that was declared on 3 August 1945.
12
Tone Ferenc, op. cit., p. 134.
13
The original document is kept by József Biró and its facsimile is published in the publication: Milko Mikola (ed.), Documents and
Testimonies on Post-war Concentration Camps in Slovenia, Ljubljana 2007.
14
The data is indicated by a former internee of the concentration camp Hrastovec, József Biró, in his testimony, published in the publication
Lendavski zvezki lendvai füzetek 16., Miért ? Zakaj?, Lendva/Lendava 1998, p. 30.
15
Boris Mlakar, Slovenian Home-guard 1943–1945, Establishment, organisation, conceptual background, Slovenska Matica, Ljubljana
2003, p. 511.
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