crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
According to the above data, which are still only provisional, a total of 14,274 persons were killed
without a trial in Slovenia after the war. If we take into account that this research is still underway, the
above numbers will certainly be much higher upon completion of the project. The great loss that these
14,274 victims represented for the Slovenian nation may be ascertained more accurately if the number
of persons killed without a court trial in Slovenia is compared to the number of those that were killed
without a trial in France in the post-war period. In France, the killings of “collaborators” without a court
trial after the war were the most massive in all of Western Europe and their number amounted to around
10,000 persons. It should be taken into account, however, that France then had 42 million inhabitants
and Slovenia not even a million and a half.
4. Establishing concentration and labour camps 6
4.1. Concentration camps
The Communist regime began to set up concentration camps in Slovenia immediately after the war
ended in May 1945. Some were even established in the same locations where the German occupying
forces had set them up for Slovenians during the war. The first concentration camps were intended
for interning members of the German and partly also Hungarian national minorities. The largest such
camp was in Strnišče pri Ptuju (now Kidričevo), where there had already been a German concentration
and labour camp during the war. Around 10,000 persons were interned there, mostly members of the
German minority from all over Slovenia, who were then supposed to be deported to Austria. In addition
to members of the German national minority, the camp was also filled with members of the Hungarian
national minority from Prekmurje and Slovenians who had been arrested for alleged collaboration with
the occupying forces during the war. Concentration camps for the German national minority in Slovenia
were also established in Hrastovec pri Sv. Lenartu, Slovenske Gorice, Brestrnica pri Mariboru, Studenci
pri Mariboru and Teharje pri Celju.
When the British military forces returned in the second half of May 1945, the captured Slovenian
home guards and members of military formations from other parts of Yugoslavia and civilian refugees
to Slovenia, the Slovenian authorities interned them in concentration camps in Teharje, Št. Vid nad
Ljubljano, Škofja Loka and Kranj. Because mainly war prisoners were imprisoned in these camps,
these camps should in fact have the status of prison camps. However, the Slovenian military authorities
did not acknowledge these people the status of prisoner of war and did not treat them in accordance with
the Geneva Convention. In these camps, war prisoners and civilians were exposed to hunger, thirst and
torture, and finally the majority were killed without a court trial. Apart from the prisoners of war, these
camps were also filled with numerous civilians, mainly women, children and older people. The great
majority of these people suffered the same destiny as the prisoners of war.
The Communist authorities abolished concentration camps in Slovenia in autumn 1945, mainly
because of the approaching elections to the constitutional assembly of the Democratic Federative
Yugoslavia. The majority of concentration camps were transformed into penal camps for forced
labour.
4.2. Labour camps
In Slovenia, around 20 labour camps existed in the period 1945–51. First the Communist regime
set up penal camps for persons whom the military courts had sentenced to deprivation of liberty with
forced labour. The first such camp was established in Kočevje immediately after the war, and later such
camps were also set up in Teharje, Brestrnica and Studenci. In these penal camps, more than 6,500
convicted persons served the sentence of forced labour. Under the name “penal camp”, these labour
camps existed until January 1946, when they were renamed “institutions for forced labour”. They were
abolished by October 1946 and those persons sentenced to forced labour were then sent to “penalcorrectional
institutions (KPD)”.
6
The post-war concentration and labour camps established in Slovenia are more extensively dealt with in the author’s paper published in
this collection.
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