crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
More than 80,000 Slovenians exiled from their homes by the Germans to the Balkans or to Germany or
who fled from them (around two thousand died) were not given war victim status in Titoism.
The totalitarian connection of National Socialism and Titoism is even more strongly reflected in
the fate of the Roma people. The first prisoners in the Gestapo prison in Begunje were the Roma from
Gorenjska (Upper Carniola), who were later exiled. Some of the Roma were killed by the National Socialists
in concentration camps. In Ljubljana, which belonged to the Italian occupational zone, the partisans assaulted
the Roma. From the 350–400 Roma living around Ljubljana, the partisans killed at least 160 in only 70 days,
between 10 May and 22 July, 1942. Among them were women (some pregnant) and children. 18
Tito’s Yugoslavia did keep a record of the war damages; but for many of them (whether caused
by the partisan opponents or partisans themselves); it did not even try to arrange for restitution. Among
them are mostly damages to property and especially those affecting social groups who were destined for
extinction, according to the Bolshevik class war logic. So many entrepreneurs and farmers could only
hope for restitution. Even today, the material war damages are a hot topic in the discussions among their
victims and the state.
3. Taboo and its dissolution or the Slovenian bases for transitional justice
Mystifying the crimes of the occupiers, Titoism covered its own crimes. The taboo to hide the
crimes of Titoism was meant to conceal the War-time and post-War murders of civilians and prisoners
of war without trials. Their graves were levelled and in Slovenia it was forbidden to talk about their
fate. Repressive organs controlled the burials sites and the living were strictly forbidden to mention the
victims or the graves.
The so-called system of preserving and developing revolutionary heritage was used by the
Communist Party to implement a monopoly on the Truth. In the name of brotherhood, unity and equality,
intolerant militarization and caste discrimination of the living and the dead reigned. The Bolshevik
‘gods’ divided the world of the dead into party heaven and party hell. 19 The acknowledged dead were
holy for the party cult of the dead and the graves of the ignored and their memory was erased.
As well as the dead, the living were divided. The partisan survivors and the relatives of the holy dead
were given commemorations and rents. The surviving partisan opponents and their relatives and children
of the despised dead were forced to remain silent, were denigrated and were without recourse to law.
The murders were followed by confiscations and additional taxation; the relatives of the murdered
were physically and mentally tortured and treated as second class citizens. The relatives of the taboo
dead were one of the many second class groups (middle classes, aristocracy, farmers, democrats, priests
and the faithful ...); in many cases they were treated as internal enemies and political emigration (secret
political police kept files on around 20,000 political emigrants) was treated as an external enemy. The racist
discrimination haunted especially the children of the murdered all the way until the dissolution of Titoism;
those consequences burden many of the survivors to this day. Suffering poverty, beatings and denigration,
they were not given help in school or given scholarships, and many were not allowed access to education;
they were usually given bad jobs with no chance of promotion. Because they were not allowed to mourn,
and most do not know where their close relatives lie buried; many suffer from grief disorders.
18
Jože Dežman, Hanzi Filipič (eds.), Hitlerjeva dolga senca (Hitler’s Long Shadow), Klagenfurt–Ljubljana–Vienna 2007.
19
Party heavens – victims Category Party hell – victims ignored
acknowledged by the party of victims /concealed by the party
>20,000 Partisans 2,000
>20,000 Civilians 8,000
Forcibly mobilized in the occupators’ armies 15,000
Slovenian anti-partisan units >15,000
Non-Slovenian inhabitants of Slovenian ethnic territory >3,000
>45,000 Total >40,000
201