crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
3. Nazism
In opposition to democratic systems, which are based on the legal equality of all citizens, National
Socialism was based upon inequality. Its foundation was subordination. The Third Reich was established
on racially organized and legitimized society, where the “perfect” Germans should be united in the
people’s community and where legislative implementation against “inferior” nations would be justified.
Therefore, the foundation of National Socialism was racism. The laws which regulating this were the
so-called “Nuremberg Laws”, which deprived Jews and Roma/Sinti of German citizenship. During
the war they were exterminated in massive numbers. Other nations, particularly the Slavs, were also
considered inferior people. After the occupation in April 1941, these laws also affected the Slovenes
of Lower Styria, Gorenjska and the Yugoslav part of Carinthia (Mežiška dolina), and members of the
Slovene minority in Austria Carinthia after the “Anschluss”, i.e., from March 1935. When Germany
attacked Yugoslavia, all the ideological and practical arrangements for the execution of further policies
in the regions occupied by Germany were in place.
3.1. The Carinthian Slovenes under Nazism (1938–45)
The forming operation of the national changes in Carinthia was aggravated from the middle of 19th
century onwards and greatly exacerbated after the referendum in 1920, when the Carinthian Slovenes finally
became a national minority in Austria. This country as the next two ones (from 1934, an authoritarian
professional country, and from 1938 under the “Anschluss” within an expanded Nazi Germany), counted
itself as German. All three tried to enforce national principles. Even before the “Anschluss” there existed the
fundamental political consent that it is essential to solve minority problems by assimilation. The Vindišar
theory, which was the constituent part of this tactic in the time of Nazism experienced great development and
was used as the violence of denationalization against Slovenes in 1938–45. First, National Socialism allowed
for the Germanization of related people – this of course stands only for those who did not cooperated in the
Slovene organisations – on the other hand the Nazi authorities after the “Anschluss” prepared plans for “ethnic
cleansing” of the South-Carinthia region. Thus the aim of the Nazis was the disappearance of the Slovenes
as an autonomous ethnic group. The provisions of economic assimilation influenced on the assimilation as
well. They immediately started with the education system, and abolished the remaining bilingual schools and
Slovene textbooks. From the very beginning the Nazi regime also persecuted leading Slovenes in Slovene
cultural, economic and political organisations, particularly Slovene priests.
In Carinthia, the Nazis deported, imprisoned or sent to concentration camps some 60 Slovene
priests. Under pressure from the Nazi authorities the ordinary’s office of the diocese in Krško forbade
the use of the Slovene language in the South-Carinthian region, which also belonged to the part of the
diocese in Ljubljana, which was under German occupation.
In the middle of April 1942 the Nazi authorities entirely unexpectedly – they had only one hour
to pack – deported 178 Slovene families, or 917 people, to an assembly camp in Žrelec near Gradec, to
camps in the Brandenburg region and Franken region (Wassertrüdingen, Hagenbüchbach, Markt-Bibart,
Glasow in Frauenaurach), from all nationally mixed regions of Carinthia. They were first registered,
photographed, and given cards and metal plates with engraved numbers. Each family was given a
special number. Thereafter, they were not known by their names, but only by corresponding numbers.
They took their identities with such measures. They had to state the extent of their property, number of
cattle, stores, equipment and agricultural tools and machines, and then with their signatures confirmed
confiscation of their property to representatives of the German Office for colonization. Farms were
divided directly between immigrants from the Kanal Valley for cultivation or were leased for national
citizens and for members of different parties.
In this, as in other Nazi actions, local representatives of the Nazi party participated. Among them
were a great many people who had mastered Slovene dialects, but for different reasons they identified
themselves with the power of principles, with the dominating feature of German-national or Nazi
group. However, some local representatives and people expressed their doubts at the suitability of this
persecution, because they thought that assimilation was only a matter of time, and that violence was
merely anti productive. The Carinthian Slovenes resisted both passively and actively in different ways,
finally even taking an active role in the Liberation Front (OF) and support for the partisans.
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