crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
The second group of secret mass graves consists of mineshafts and shelters. 15 have been recorded. The
most well known and infamous is the shaft Sveta Barbara near Laško, while the most victims lie in mining
crevices of Stari Hrastnik, harbouring Bosnian and Montenegrin Chetniks and Slovene Home guards.
The third group consists of anti-tank and other previously excavated shafts. 16 have been recorded
but despite being often mentioned, only two have been partially investigated – at Tezno near Maribor
and near Celje. Other shafts are also known between Brežice and Dobova, near Mislinja and Slovenj
Gradec, in Bistrica ob Sotli, etc.
The last group of secret mass graves are karst abysses. Speleologists have recorded human
posthumous remains in different conditions in close to 100 abysses. 22 23
Some of the abysses are fully
uncovered so that anybody descending into the abysses would step on human bones, while others were
mined in order to conceal traces. Unfortunately there are also those that have been filled with garbage
now covering the posthumous remains. Those same remains were partially or entirely taken out of
about 10 abysses. In 2007, systematic probing of karst abysses/mass graves started and in September
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2006, the first systematic investigation of a mined karst abyss (Brezno pri Konfinu 1), as well as the
extraction and analysis of 88 victims’ remains, were carried out.
Research has so far shown that, in Slovenia, military secret mass graves prevail in number. It
is only true for Slovene victims that the number of civilian grave sites are more numerous whereas
military mass grave sites hold more victims. The most numerous, where estimations legitimately reach
one thousand or multiple thousand victims, are both abysses in Kočevski Rog: Jama pod Macesnovo
Gorico with predominantly Slovene victims and Jama pod Krenom where seemingly, persons of other
nationalities besides Croats and Serbs are located. 24 25
The following are also counted among the more
numerous: Stari Hrastnik with Chetniks and Slovene Home guards, the mineshaft Sveta Barbara in the
cave Huda Jama, mass graves in Bistrica ob Sotli, in Krakovski gozd and all anti-tank shafts in which
mostly Croats are buried. In the abysses of plain Trnovska planota mostly Italians but also Slovenes
from the area surrounding Gorica have been executed. Some were even transported to the karst caves
from the areas of Trst and Koper. The karst abysses, especially the ones that were mined and the ones
that we did not yet manage to discover are still shrouded in mystery regarding the number of victims,
e.g.: cave Ušiva jama in Kočevski Rog. With the help of a recently rediscovered list of mass graves,
we now know that more than 1,300 German soldiers lie buried in 120 locations in Ilirska Bistrica and
its surroundings. 25 26
The largest and most numerous mass grave in Slovenia is Tezno near Maribor with
victims of mostly Croatian nationality. Part of the shaft was systematically investigated during highway
construction works in 1999. Over only 70 meters, there were more than 1,100 corpses or 18 corpses per
meter. In August 2007, test-drilling of the shaft showed that over 900 additional meters of the shaft
2627
contain corpses which could amount to around 15,000 victims. 2728
The secret graves are only with difficulty receiving the first modest markings. 60 years after World
War Two, it is agreed that all persons who lost their lives in the war, or because of it, have the right to
a name and a grave, and that settlement of the mass graves question would mean a return of civilised
norms to Slovene society. The question of searching for, researching and managing secret mass graves
often intertwines with questions of guilt and sin; namely, with questions of who committed these crimes,
who will be held responsible for them, who is guilty of the killings, etc. We can understand that even
nowadays, these questions cause political strife and conflicting views of past events, but the question
of managing secret mass graves should be clearly separated from all other topics. The right to a decent
grave is a matter of humanity and civilisation, and should not be connected to the question of who
won and who was defeated. If we continue to deal with the disorder of secret mass graves as we have
up to now, the question of the winners and the defeated will easily be overturned by the judgment of
our posterity, that all of us were defeated. That could only happen because, even 63 years after World
22
Speleological Association of Slovenia, Cadastre of Caves.
23
Andrej Mihevc, Report on Assessment of Existence and Extent of Secret Wartime Graves in Karst Caves, September–November 2007,
elaborate.
24
Mitja Ferenc, “A Bow to Slovene Victims at a Wrong Memorial Place”, in: Mythical and Stereotypical in Slovene Perspectives of History,
pp. 153–164.
25
Mitja Ferenc, “… Graves are razed and overgrown. (List of graves of enemy soldiers, fallen in the time of NOV in the area of Ilirska
Bistrica)”, Contributions to recent history, 1 (2004), pp. 160–168.
26
Police Administration Maribor, Report of the District Attorney on Excavations, 12. 7. 1999; Institute of Forensic Medicine, Expertise.
27
Mitja Ferenc, “Secret mass grave at Tezenski gozd”, Uncut, RTV Slovenia, 10. 10. 2007.
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