crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
the Italian authorities decided to mobilize less reliable Slovenes (and also Istrian Croats) in so-called
“labour battalions” (battaglioni speciali).
The only remaining means of preserving Slovene identity in the Primorska region was through
Slovene priests, although the fascist denationalization did not spare the Catholic Church, either, because
after the scattering and exile of leaders and educated people, the clergy took over the role of Slovene
guidance in national awareness, according to their own tradition from the time of the Habsburgs. The
persecution affected the lower clergy directly, because it was carried out by attacks and police measures.
The church hierarchy in Trieste and Gorica were also under great pressure, because in the preceding
decades the upper clergy had earned a great reputation for their loyalty to Austria and affection for their
Slavic countrymen in Italian eyes. The key turning point in the subordination of the border Church, which
thanks to Fascism followed the new relations between the country and the Church, was the elimination
of Archbishop Frančiško Borgie Sedej from Gorica in 1931 and Bishop Luigi Fogar from Trieste in
1936. Their successors gave effect to the Vatican guidance on “Romanization” in the same manner as
in other Italian countries with “foreign” communities and also in Europe, where related phenomena
appeared. This guidance was intended to prevent interference of totalitarian and national governments
in church affairs, and to unite believers around Rome to protect Catholic principles together, because in
Holy See’s opinion, they were threatened by the new social phenomenon.
At the beginning of 1930s, the nationally minded Slovene clergy united in The Secret Christian-
Social organisation, which was established with the union of Slovene Christian Socialists and
professional organisations of the Slovene and Croat clergy – the so-called Christian-Social political
association “Edinost” (which fought for the rights of Slovenes and Croats under Italy from the end of
the First World War, and was dissolved in September 1928) and the Saint Paul Chamber of Priests. The
organisation aimed at secret national-defensive action with declarative irredentist goals, and acted with
a professional (paid) web of confidants school departments, libraries, a secret press and so on, all of
which was, based on precise annual budgets, financed directly from a secret fund of the Foreign Ministry
of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The secret Christian-Social Organisation sent budgets for approval to the
Governmental Commission and the Foreign Ministry in Belgrade, but they were particularly justified
by Dr Engelbert Besednjak personally.
In the Saint Paul Chamber of Priests in 1936, for example, there 276 Slovene and Croatian priests.
They played the most important role in the actions of the Secret Christian-Social Organisation (in a
practical sense), since its members they covered the whole region of Venezia Giulia.
The actions of the Slovene clergy in Venezia Giulia have a broader meaning, not merely local
between the two wars. On the basis of ideal-political concepts bound together Catholic right and
Fascism with rebellion. It stretches far in the European context, from relations between the radical right
(Fascism) to political Catholicism, which were then current in many European countries. And in the
Church, thirty years later, without doubt mention guidance, which was the object of discussion on the
Second Vatican Council and after it (question of natural law by usage of native language in Church,
enculturation etc.). The secret anti-fascist actions of the Slovene and Croatian clergy in Venezia Giulia
between the two wars are a unique phenomenon according to European criterion.
In 1933, this organisation took its own census of Venezia Giulia. Merely this census under
the fascist regime, carried out in Venezia Giulia by Slovenes and Croats alone and passed on to the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, shows a unique organisational and political phenomenon, which was at that
time represented by the Secret Christian-Social Organisation in the Slovene and the Croatian region
joined to Italy under the Treaty of Rapallo.
Among the earliest organizers of resistance against Fascism must be mentioned the illegal anti-fascist
organisation “TIGR” (Trieste, Istria, Gorica, Reka) established before the war and organized in regions under
Italy after the First World War. Between the wars, its members replied to fascist violence with arms. A
clash of arms between “TIGR” and Italian gendarmes on the 13 May 1941 on Mala Gora near Ribnica
claimed the first “TIGR” victim (Danilo Zelen). “TIGR”’s was the first armed rebellion against Fascism
in Europe. Militant organizations “Orjuna” and “Borba” were also active, but it was TIGR which achieved
the largest bloom in the region occupied Italy, until the partisan phenomenon appeared. Against the Slovene
nationalists who actively resisted Italian nationalistic politics, the fascist authorities held two trials organized
and conducted by the highest national political and juridical bodies. In the first trial in Trieste in September
1930, four Slovenes were sentenced to death by firing-squad and were put to death, and in the second trial in
Trieste in December 1941 a similar fate met another four nationalists and one communist.
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