crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
to give up their Slovene books, which were then burned. In Murska Sobota, a whole scientific library
was set on fire. All Slovene associations were dissolved, Slovene teachers lost their job, and only a
few local (native) pedagogues were allowed to stay. Many patriotic Slovenes were arrested, especially
intellectuals and priests. Slovenes who were not native to Prekmurje were expelled, deported to other
regions, or put in camps within Hungary.
Bishop Jožef Grösz demanded from Slovene priests unquestioning loyalty toward the Hungarian
state and cooperation with authorities – and preaching the Gospel in a language that people understood
– in his opinion, that was not Slovene but “Wendish”. He moved several Hungarian chaplains to
Slovene parishes, although there were enough Slovene priests available and several Slovene priests
were transferred within Hungary because of national reasons. He prohibited the Slovene ritual-book.
The Hungarians did everything to alienate the dialect from standard Slovene. Nevertheless in Tišina,
Pertoči and Markovci, in District (Dekanija) Murska Sobota, they went on praying in dialect and in
other Slovene parishes; in all parishes of District Lendava, they prayed in Slovene.
Although there was such enormous pressure coming from church superiors, Slovene priests in
Prekmurje demanded the use of Slovene. On the occasion of the Bishop’s visit to Lendava on 13 July
1941, on the initiative of vicar-general Ivan Jerič, 31 Slovene priests signed the so-called “Resolution
of Lendava”. Later on 11 priests of District Murska Sobota joined them. They demanded respect of
the minority rights, which the Hungarian Royal Constitution granted all nationalities in 1919, and so
also use of mother tongue in school and church, free development of cultural organisations, libraries,
publishing of newspapers and books, and so on. In Hungary the use of Slovene was considered treason,
although there was no legal basis for that. Jerič found himself three times in court, once because of
treason – his trial was stopped in 1944.
2.4. The Communist revolution
A special problem in examining the Second World War years in Slovenia is that two levels of events
must be taken into consideration: on one side, a resistance by suppressed against their suppressors, but
also overlapping this, a fight within and among the suppressed about the right goal, about the right
path of liberation, about the state system and social system under which Slovenes should live after
the war. In other words, in Slovenia there was occupation and resistance, as well as revolution and
counter-revolution. The two levels cannot be separated. The communist party, rather weak in numbers
but experienced in underground work – having been a forbidden party in Yugoslavia since 1920 – saw
in the occupation, the only chance to gain power. For that reason, a sort of umbrella organisation
of resistance named the “Liberation Front“ was organized, through which communists were able to
win several leftist groups to their side. The “Liberation Front”, which at first could only develop in
the Italian occupation zone, monopolized the resistance against the enemy already by 16 September
1941, and declared everyone organized outside the “Liberation Front” to be a traitor – including those
who worked underground against the occupiers. And such traitors had to be sentenced to death –
after condemnation by an obscure secret court that actually never existed. In that way, many patriotic
Slovenes, also Church representatives, were “liquidated” by the “Security and Intelligence Service”
(called VOS). It was recruited solely out of members of the communist party and communist youth
organization SKOJ, and was directly and exclusively responsible only to the Central Committee of the
Communist party. The inhabitants of the Province of Ljubljana, especially the peasants, suffered not
only because of Italian attacks on their lives and property, but also because of the partisan’s attacks.
The two often alternated. One day the Italians burnt their houses down, drove their cattle away and sent
many to Italian concentration camps; the next day the partisans arrived and punished the same people
for collaborating with Italians occupiers. Among the victims of communist violence during the war,
there were 46 diocesan priests and 6 priests belonging to different religious orders. In comparison to
the red violence: the occupiers killed on the whole Slovene territory, including the Slovene Littoral, 24
diocesan priests and 10 priests of religious orders. 11
For Church representatives, the fact that the communist-dominated “Liberation Front” monopolized
the resistance (with its murderous sanctions against so-called traitors), raised a special dilemma. On one
side, the Church detested the violation of human rights and measures of repression as well as the brutal
11
France Martin Dolinar, “Duhovniki v primežu revolucije”, in: Janvit Golob et al. (ed.), Žrtve vojne in revolucije, Državni svet, Ljubljana
2005, pp. 65-66.
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