crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
3.2.4. Distribution of German citizenship
Although the Slovene occupied territory occupied was not formally joined to the German region,
except the Mežiška Valley, the Germans issued a “Regulation for the acquisition of citizenship in the
liberated region of Lower Styria, Carinthia and Carniola”. According to this decree, German citizenship
was granted to Yugoslav citizens of German nationality which on fourteenth April 1941 (the date of
regulation validity) had national rights in the territory. The regulation also introduced a second category
of citizenship, so-called “German citizenship on recall”. In this category were persons who had “blood
related to the German race”. In the last category were persons who did not have German citizenship
and were known as “defenders of the German Reich”. They lost their status if they moved out of the
country.
The decree was executed in spring 1942 in Styria and in Gorenjska in October 1941. This meant
that “citizen on recall” had the same rights and duties as the population of the German Reich. This
indicated that all citizens capable of work and fighting had to attend worker requisitions (Arbeitsdienst)
and serve in the army (Wehrdienst). Therefore, in the following few weeks, military recruitment was
carried out and many Slovene boys were sent to the fronts of the German Reich. This was a flagrant
violation of international law. In the German military and paramilitary formations and in German labour
service 150,000 men and women in Styria, Gorenjska and Carinthia were mobilised. And in 1942,
28,000 were mobilized from Lower Styria, and from Gorenjska, between 8,000 and 10,000 men. Many
of them were sent to the eastern front. More than 10,000 people lost their lives. Many Slovenes deserted
and joined illegal units – partisans and others.
Because of the occupatiers desire to destroy the Slovene nation and efforts to annex Slovene territory
to the German Reich, Slovenes resisted. There followed mass arrests of those whom the Nazis believed
were collaborators of the resistance movement. They called them communist criminals, although they
were merely collaborators with the Liberation Front or even members of Catholic resistance groups.
They imprisoned them in the judicial prison in Maribor, in prison Stari Pisker, in prisons Celje, Ptuj and
Brežice. Those arrested were interrogated and horribly tortured in prison and then shot as hostages or
sent to concentration camps. They released only those whose guilt could not be proven. 1,590 people
were killed, 1,508 men and 82 women. The number of those shot is even greater, because the Nazis did
not always release the names of those shot.
The Nazis were not satisfied with killing hostages, because according to theirs beliefs, the families of
hostages who were shot and partisans also had to suffer. In March 1942 they began arresting the relatives
of these people. Since the National Liberation movement had become stronger and was growing more
powerful, Himmler gave the order to eliminate the men and move the women to concentration camps,
and to separate children from their parents and send them to special children camps. The Nazis deported
the majority of Slovenes to the following camps: Dachau, Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, with
branches (for example, Ljubelj, where they built a tunnel), Buchenwald and Flossenbürg. Many died in
the camps – some 1,772 in Auschwitz, 1,340 in Dachau and 971 in Mauthausen.
Towards the end of the war the Nazis, beside the relatives of partisans and hostages, also persecuted
the relatives of deserters from the German army. German mobilization at the end of 1943 and especially
in 1944 was not successful any more, so the German occupying authorities on 15 March 1944 issued
a decree that the relatives of deserters must be persecuted regardless of whether they were partisans or
merely in hiding. Those capable of work were sent to the forced labour camp at Strnišče, which was
renamed a Camp for Penal-Labouring Workers – Strafsonderdienstpflichtlager Sterntal. Children and
the old were sent to Stegersbach in Hungary at the end of 1944, and at the beginning of 1945, to Kobenz
near Knittelfeld and Wetzelzdorf near Gradec. During these arrests children were often separated from
their mothers and were sent to different camps. Towards the end of the war, the Nazis arrested the
relatives of deserters from the German army throughout Slovene Styria. According to surviving data, the
majority were arrested and sent to the camps from the occupied region of Ptuj. During the persecutions,
the Germans also stole and destroyed properties. They burned down many houses. Entire villages were
burned down in Kozjansko.
In summer, 1941, 597 exhausted and mentally deficient persons from the Lower Styria were
“euthanized” by the Nazis in Austrian Hartheim.
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