crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
schooling, employment, apartments, to numerous local and republic rents, decorations, free transport.
There was a special parallel health system in place for them. Between 1970 and 1980, apartments were
allocated to more than 16,000 fighters, around 2,000 received loans to build houses and almost 10,000
loans to adapt apartments or houses. The veterans also had priority in buying confiscated houses and
apartments.
After World War Two, the League of Veterans’ Associations was taking care of “12,228 children
under the age of 15, 7,769 were children of fallen soldiers and 4,533 victims of Fascist violence and
950 children without both parents.” They received help in schooling and other forms of social help; they
were helped in their jobs and careers. 16
The members of the new class also ensured numerous advantages for their children. Titoism
could not authentically criticise Fascism and National Socialism, as many of their victims later became
victims of Titoism. 17 Titoism eliminated many victims of Fascism and national Socialism from collective
memory and did not ensure that the victims would receive the restitution that belonged to them from
successor states.
The people mobilized into the occupation armies and paramilitary formations were most severely
deprived. More than 200,000 were mobilized and more than 15,000 died.
The illegal mobilization of the population of the occupied Slovenia was the biggest National
Socialist crime against the inhabitants of Slovenia - considering the number of the mobilized and the
number of the fatalities and of those disabled. Because the fatalities were mostly young men without
families, the demographic losses were very extensive as well. Slovenians were forcibly mobilized
only into the Wehrmacht. Most deserted or allowed themselves to be caught. Many of those on leave
deserted and joined the partisans in Slovenia, Many also joined the overseas brigades and Yugoslav
units established in the Soviet Union. They helped strengthen the partisan army and contributed to its
victory.
Titoism not only did not condemn National Socialism for this violation of international law, and
severe consequences, but it also discriminated against the victims. The government did not maintain the
graves of the dead; there was no room for them in collective memory; they were not recorded and were
not allowed to have memorials. Those mobilized were given the title ‘Nazi soldier’, national traitor. The
mobilized, or the relatives of the fallen or the disabled were not allowed to receive German rents.
An important part of the national history, the majestic epic with many tragedies and many great
rebellious acts, was repressed. For example, Stanislav Mikšič and Edvin Mekinda deserted and told the
Red Army about the German preparations before the Battle of Kursk. However, Yugoslavia demonstrated
no recognition of this act.
It is not yet known how many of the mobilized did not return home for fear of violence, choosing
instead to remain in the West.
The internees of the National Socialist concentration camps were, after the Second World War, accused
of being Gestapo or Western imperialistic agents, following the Stalinist model. Preparing for the so-called
Dachau trails, the secret political police operatively researched 7,380 Slovenians and 2,144 foreigners by
March, 1948. In the nine show trials before the court martial and the district court in Ljubljana, 34
former internees, members of camp committees in Dachau and Buchenwald, were convicted. The
accused were broken by severe torture, three died during the investigation, eleven were sentenced to
death and executed. The dates of death and the locations of the graves remain unknown to this day.
The dark shadow of the Dachau processes lay on the Slovenian internees until the end of the second
Yugoslavia. Those sentenced in these trials were politically rehabilitated by the 10 th Congress of the
League of Communists of Slovenia in April, 1986.
National Socialists murdered more than 550 Slovenian Jews. When the survivors returned to
Slovenia from the camps, some had their property confiscated through various pretences in the show
trials. Some emigrated to Israel.
16
50 let delovanja Zveze združenj borcev in udeležencev narodnoosvobodilnega boja Slovenije (50 years of existence of the League of
Veterans’ Associations and participants in the National Liberation Struggle of Slovenia), Ljublajana 1998.
17
Jože Dežman, “Hitlerjeva dolga senca” (“Hitler’s Long Shadow”), in: Jože Dežman, Hanzi Filipič (eds.), Hitlerjeva dolga senca –
nacionalsocialistično državnoteroristično in rasistično preganjanje prebivalcev Slovenije in njegove posledice v Titovi Jugoslaviji,
Klagenfurt– Ljubljana– Vienna 2007.
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