World War II mass graves open a wound in Slovenia

[pzrmeyer2]

World War II mass graves open a wound in Slovenia

Reuters
Monday, October 22, 2007
LANCOVO, Slovenia: After digging for two hours in a chilly forest clearing, the workers had their evidence: bones and the soil-covered, blackened remnant of a shoe confirmed that this was a secret mass grave from World War II.

In the trees a short distance from where the diggers worked, an elderly man looked on. He would not give his name, but said he was at the same spot when he was 16, one morning in 1945, after he heard shouting in the night.

The Lancovo grave is one target of a Slovenian government program to help people come to terms with a hidden legacy of unprecedented slaughter during the war.

So far, 540 such sites have been registered across Slovenia. They are believed to hold up to 100,000 bodies.

"The killings that took place here have no comparison in Europe. In two months after the war, more people were killed here than in the four years of war," said Joze Dezman, a historian who heads the committee for registering hidden graves.

"Srebrenica is like an innocent case compared to that," he said, referring to the Bosnia Serb Army's killing in 1995 of about 8,000 displaced Muslim civilians in Bosnia, their corpses bulldozed into the earth.

Those killed in Slovenia were mostly soldiers who collaborated with the Nazis. Most were slain in the woods without trial. They were victims of a vengeful killing spree by partisans of the Yugoslav leader after British-led Allied troops turned them back from Austria and handed them over.

Slovenia, now a European Union country of two million people, declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, but the graves remained a public secret until excavations in recent years.

"These killings took place in Slovenia because this is where the war was ending: this is where the Iron Curtain was anticipated, this is where refugees found themselves at the end of the war," Dezman said.

The graves' existence has been quietly known for decades, but some elderly people are still too afraid of reprisals to speak about them. In Lancovo, the anonymous onlooker shared a distant memory of what he saw as a youth.

"There was blood and remnants of burnt clothes," he said. "Blood was flowing all over. They were not shot. They were beaten up."

Mitja Ferenc, chief historian in charge of grave research, said Yugoslavia's communist authorities persistently refused to acknowledge that the killings had taken place and refused to tell relatives where the bodies were buried.

For almost 50 years, people were not allowed to visit the graves. Many of them were destroyed by deliberate explosions or covered by waste. In some places, like Celje, about 60 kilometers, or 37 miles, east of Ljubljana, parts of towns were built on them.

However, local knowledge persisted: farmers did not allow their livestock to graze in their vicinity. Dezman said that only medical students sometimes visited the sites, when they needed skulls or bones for their studies.

"People who come to me are still afraid someone will see them talking to me. They have fear in their bones," Dezman said.

Although the graves were known to exist, their number was unknown.

"Only after we started researching the first graves did we realize how many secret graves there were, as people started to open up, calling us and telling us of locations they knew of," Ferenc said.

In August, Slovenian researchers confirmed there were at least 15,000 victims in a secret mass grave in Tezno, about 120 kilometers northeast of Ljubljana, where mostly Croat and Montenegrin soldiers were slain and buried.

Registrations of secret mass grave locations have grown from 40 in 2002.

"It is high time to acknowledge these graves - after all, more than 60 years have passed since the Second World War," said Lado Erzen, the local community's representative for secret graves at Lancovo.

Slovenians account for about a fifth of all victims but, so far none of the killers have been brought to trial.

[sniper1shot]

I doubt they ever will be either, unfortunately.

I imagine there are places like this all over Eastern Europe.

[Opa]

But what do we expect. The murderers were the "good guys"--remember, it was sold as a "good war" to the US populace--and the "good winners" write history.

FDR had no problems recognizing Stalin in 1933 (after he butchered the peasantry) and then made him his soul-bedmate during World War II.
There is no morals in all this $#@$%#$.

May the souls of all victims, from either side, rest in peace in a better place than this politically correct world.

[JägerMarty]

I wonder if they will be able to identify many of the victims?
probably not

[Jock]

Erik man, I'm your mate, but I have to ask...

Would you have posted this same article had the victims been that of the SS/W-SS?

Just wondering man, devils advocate and all that.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Opa,

No murderers are "good guys". Murder is, by very definition, bad.

No. The "good winners" aren't the only ones who write history. However, that is often a proposition advanced by those who can't reconcile themselves to the fact that there are sometimes bad losers.

No, Hitler made Stalin Roosevelt's "bedmate" by declaring war on the USA.

Cheers,

Sid

[pzrmeyer2]

Erik man, I'm your mate, but I have to ask...

Would you have posted this same article had the victims been that of the SS/W-SS?

Just wondering man, devils advocate and all that.

Probably not; SS atrocities and alleged atrocities are well publicised and recounted over and over. what is far less known and of far less concern to the professional "remembrance" types are those crimes perpetrated against Germans.

[Jock]

Fair answer man.

I do also think its stunning how little known Stalin's atrocities are. Much worse than the einsatzgruppen could ever manage.

Just playing devils advocate

[panzerschreck1]

The einsatzgruppen were just as bad as Stalins killing teams but comparing them is like comparing apples and pears i'm afraid.

[Jock]

Panzerschrek, Im aware of how bad both were, but after alot of research into Communist Russia, I can assure you Stalin was worse.

Im not defending the holocaust, Im just always surprised at how little people are still aware of regarding Stalin's time.

Much like comparing apples and oranges indeed, but Stalin's genocide far outdid the holocaust on many scales.

At least you knew what your "crime" was in Nazi Germany.

Hitler defined his enemies. Stalin invented them.

[sid guttridge]

Hi pzrmeyer,

I can live with that.

However, these crimes weren't against Germans, it would appear. They were by Yugoslavs on Yugoslavs. That is probably why they aren't very well known.

There is also the point that, apart from Katyn, no war crimes of this sort by either side on the Eastern Front are very well known in the West. For example, because of peripheral British involvement there are at least a couple of English language books that centre on circumstances that preceded these particular killings, but there isn't one dedicated to the deaths of at least a million Soviet POWs in German hands in the winter of 1941-42 or to the fate of the German prisoners at Stalingrad. Besides them anything committed bu either side in the West pales into insignificance.

Cheers,

Sid.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Jock,

The Einsatzgruppen played only a secondary role in German atrocities in WWII. To compare only their activities with Stalin's several decades of rule is to gloss over the vast majority of Nazi-induced deaths, the gas chambers in particular.

Stalin killed more over a longer period but ,if you were Jewish, Hitler was more implacable. Bastards both.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Jock]

Hi Sid,

Good to see you. Einsatzgruppen was just a metaphor for the Nazi regime.

Bastards indeed. But Stalin persecuted a far larger range of people, and for far less "plausible reasons".

Cheers,

[pzrmeyer2]

Hi Sid,

Good to see you. Einsatzgruppen was just a metaphor for the Nazi regime.

Bastards indeed. But Stalin persecuted a far larger range of people, and for far less "plausible reasons".

Cheers,

Im not defending the holocaust, Im just always surprised at how little people are still aware of regarding Stalin's time.

Much like comparing apples and oranges indeed, but Stalin's genocide far outdid the holocaust on many scales.

At least you knew what your "crime" was in Nazi Germany.

Hitler defined his enemies. Stalin invented them.

excellent points. Remember too that modern "education", awareness and knowledge is largely spread by a chosen few who have a stake in airing out the crimes where they were some of the main victims, yet conveniently ignore the larger genocides where they are among the main perpetrators.

[pzrmeyer2]

Hi pzrmeyer,

I can live with that.

However, these crimes weren't against Germans, it would appear. They were by Yugoslavs on Yugoslavs. That is probably why they aren't very well known.

Sid.

I'm glad for once we agree on something; of course another reason crimes like this are not publicized or well-known is because few in charge today wish us to extend any sympathies or any application of justice to any individuals, groups, or entire peoples that for whatever reason sided with Germany. No matter how innocent, rational, or honorable any of them may have been

Those killed in Slovenia were mostly soldiers who collaborated with the Nazis. Most were slain in the woods without trial. They were victims of a vengeful killing spree by partisans of the Yugoslav leader after British-led Allied troops turned them back from Austria and handed them over.