crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
3.2.5. Conclusion
Between 1941 and 1945 the German occupatiers deported some 63,000 Slovenes from the
occupied territories (Styria, Gorenjska and the Mežiška Valley), the majority of 45,000 to German
banished camps, 10,000 to Croatia, and 7,500 to Serbia, while some 17,000 escaped from to the region
of Ljubljana and elsewhere. We must not forget the 15,000 the Nazis sent to concentration and other
camps (Dachau, Auschwitz, Mathausen, Buchenwald). More than 3,400 were shot as hostages.
In Gorenjska and Styria the Nazis consistently germanised all local names. They mostly took over
names from the time of Austrian imperium, but in places they introduced partially or completely new
names. And then just as later under communism, they often tried to leave out the word “Saint” or even
the Saint’s name from places named after Saints.
In May, 1944, (after the occupation of Prekmurje, which was part of the Hungarian sphere from
1941) at Auschwitz, the majority of the Jewish community (about 550 people) from the Slovene region
were murdered in the gas chambers.
The goal of Nazi politics in occupied Slovene territory was obvious: the ultimate elimination of the
Slovene language from the territory and the disappearance of Slovenes as an independent ethnic group.
4. Communism
4.1. The period of the take-over of the Communists during the occupation (1941–45)
Communism in Yugoslavia, particularly in Slovenia, in contrast to Communism in others eastern
countries, came to power by its own power, without the intervention of the Soviet army. This meant
some kind of uniqueness in European space, so it is important to detail the very beginning of the
Communists’ usurpation of authority within the framework of their organizing resistance.
4.1.1. Introduction
The communists took the initiative in organizing the resistance, at the end of April 1941
establishing the Anti-imperialist Front, renamed the Liberation Front after the attack on the Soviet
Union. Actually, they continued the tradition of the pre-war people’s front movement and Friends of
the Soviet Union Association. In the Liberation Front there were also Christian Socialists, part of the
Falcon Liberation Gymnastic Association, groups of persons connected with culture and some other
groups. The consequence was the establishment of partisan units and many acts of passive resistance.
After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Slovenes were called to armed revolt.
Because of the deep anti-occupation mood, the call met with a satisfying response. At the end of 1941,
the Liberation front formed a programme based on immediate armed revolt as a necessity of existence
and condition for national rebirth and irrecognition of dispensed Yugoslavia.
In the Italian occupied region a “liberated territory” was established in spring 1942, which
extended to the suburbs of Ljubljana. As early as August 1941 the Security Intelligence Service (VOS)
was established which was directly subordinate to the Communist Party and rather arbitrarily executed
collaborators, supposed collaborators and enemies of the Liberation Front and the Communism.
Revolutionary violence in the liberated territory against peasants and fear of revolutionary victory
led to the spontaneous formation of village guards and collaboration with the Italian occupatiers. All this
supported the establishment of Anti-Communist Units (Milizia Volontaria Anticomunista). The War of
Liberation, therefore, was interwoven with civil conflict, which fatally divided the Slovene nation. In
spring 1942, representatives of pre-war parties united in a Slovene alliance. The common basis of these
united parties with differing political principles was counter-revolution. At the end of 1941, a programme
was published, the so-called programme London Points, which talked about united Slovenia as a part of
Federal Yugoslavia, with the king at the head, and a democratic, socially more just political system as then
in the previous, decayed country. In relations with the occupiers they continued the politics of waiting for
the right moment for resistance. Because of their desires to thwart development of the revolution, they
decided on military/police collaboration with the Italians and later also the Germans.
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