crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
Unburdened by the bloody maelstrom of the most recent Balkan wars, Slovenians were able to pay
more attention to the traumatic burdens of the Second World War and the Stalinist revolution. The first
of the issues, always present in the establishment of the Titoist taboo and its dissolution, was the issue
of concealed burial sites, and the victims and their killers.
There also exists an intensive reconciliatory friction on a personal, familial or communal level.
We should especially stress the experiences of the relatives of the concealed and denigrated victims of
Titoism, who through forgiveness and reconciliatory love, transcended hate and violence. The relatives
of victims and others, who did not allow themselves to be abused by the Titoist absence of conscience,
are great examples of anti-totalitarian resistance. Many of the hurt, who did not let themselves break
under the pressure of the crimes, robberies or lies, have desire for reconciliation, for forgiveness.
The discussions between the defenders of Titoism and their critics have greatly impacted the
transitional years in Slovenia.
The most ambitious attempt to systemise the crimes, systematic violations of human rights and
the characteristics of Titoist totalitarianism was the project Temna stran meseca – “Dark Side of the
Moon.” 23 The cultural-political projects of confrontation with the totalitarian heritage were developed
mostly by Jože Pučnik and Lovro Šturm.
A lot of Slovenian and international attention was paid to the project of the cross-border
confrontation of the views on National Socialism and Titoism from the Austrian or Carinthian side and
the Slovenian side, Under the Swastika and the Red Star, led by Alfred Elste and Jože Dežman.
The international space was again entered by the translations into German by Tamara Griesser
Pečar and Dieter Blumenwitz, with the financial help from the Bernik family, dealing with the state of
Slovenia.
The online collection of articles about contemporary Slovenian history, published after 1990, will
include more than 20,000 units. We should especially mention the continuity and quality of writings by
Ivo Žajdela and the group of writers for the magazine Zaveza – let us especially mention the editor and
the author of astute editorials, Justin Stanovnik, the writers of life’s tales Vanja Kržan, Janko Maček
and Tine Velikonja. A special voice of the public, when public opinion towards the totalitarian past
was formed and when a suitable cause-effect understanding was sought for complex processes, was
Alenka Puhar in her journalistic and book publications. We cannot individually mention the numerous
people who publicly demanded to resolve the many issues and exposed them to the masses, nor can
we list all books and other publications that transformed public memory and consciousness and moved
epistemological and ethical borders (e.g. Assumption of Government by Jera Vodušek Starič, and to
mention a few authors of documentary movies: Filip A. Dobrina, Marko Čadež, Jože Možina, Miran
Zupanič). There were also numerous books published that treat individual villages, parishes and
municipalities. Among the localities, Šentjošt should be mentioned, as it preserves the tradition of the
initial anti-communist armed resistance.
The numerous testimonies are very valuable as well. The archive of the Committee for the Execution
of the Law on Restitution of Injustices can show us the breadth of the history of systematic violence and
violations of human rights, which was never recorded in Titoist archives. This is the unwritten history,
the intangible heritage, which has to be recorded and written down so we can understand the struggle of
our ancestors and their power to survive. A great project to present this heritage is the show “My Story”
on Radio Ognjišče, which has been broadcast every week for a couple of years.
There were numerous important translations published in Slovenia, mostly edited by Aleksander
Zorn.
We could also list a series of literary and artistic works that try to work through the burden of
totalitarian history. Pater Marko Ivan Rupnik, who is the author of the mosaics in the Redemptoris Mater
Chapel in the Vatican, included three stones from the graves of three girls murdered by the partisans
in the mosaic. He created reconciliatory mosaics in the chapels Pod Krenom and in the Institute of St.
Stanislav.
Slovenian politics has not yet concluded discussions on the heritage of Titoism. According
to the decision by the Constitutional Court, the parliament has to adopt changes in the Law on the
Victims of War Violence, and there are changes necessary in the Law on War Burial Sites. Even though
23
Drago Jančar (ed.), Temna stran meseca (Dark Side of the Moon. A Short History of Totalitarianism in Slovenia 1945–1990), Ljubljana
1998.
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