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Pervasive Monuments: Slovenia Field Research

04/Jan/2011 at 16:24 / by

This is some of the documentation taken by Rolf Wiesemes and I 16 Dec 2010 on our field research in Slovenia.

  • <p>The thing with most most of the mass graves in Slovenia is that they`re everywhere, and yet you don`t really notice - or want to notice. At 20,273 km2, Slovenia is less than half the size of Ireland and is home to approximately 600 mass graves from after the end of WWII. This one I rode my cousin`s bike past at least 30 times or more and not known. Or paid attention.</p>
  • <p>Many sites are either not officially unmarked or unknown. Here was another one called Bavdle next to the Konfinu cave. Forest caretakers and hunters have been marking sites with crosses unofficially as they find grave sites.</p>
  • <p>Konfinu cave was the sites of a massacre of largely wounded Slovenian and Croatian Homeguard units who were brought down from Ljubljana in trucks to be liquidated.</p>
  • <p>The cave is quite accessible and has only been officially investigated in the last couple of years. There is another cave about 100 m beyond the main one that was just discovered has yet to be investigated.</p>
  • <p>Among other controversies concerning the mass graves situation in Slovenia, religion and Catholicism are also in the mix. The only recognition many of these sites had up until the last couple of years was done largely by the Catholic Church. There is also the matter of ownership of memory as many feel that crosses or religious memorials are only appropriate considering that most of the victims were largely anti-communist and religious.</p>
  • <p>One of the odder things about these columns is that they have not just the name of the place, number of victims (in this case 100-250), but the GPS coordinates, cast in bronze.</p>
  • <p>I heard the story of this cave site from my aunt. Apparently the wounded that were taken here had their throats cut by the dozens and two local men who participated in the killing walked out of the woods drunk covered in blood, washed their hands and simply went home.<br /> <br /> This sites is fascinating in that it is largely known the names of who was killed there. A nurse at the hospital in Ljubljana where the wounded prisoners were kept had stolen the registry of the prisoners who were taken away to be executed. She had kept it secret her whole life and before she had died had given it to some relatives to make known.</p>
  • <p>We had met with and interviewed a surviving Home Guard soldier who had managed to survive the Teharje concentration camp, being only one of four to survive out of at least 5,000 Home Guard that were executed in a month or so after the end of WWII.</p>
  • <p>This artificial lake sits on a valley where the concentration camp holding the those to be executed by Partisan liquidation forces and mass graves of thousands. There used to be the camp and a forest which was later cut down, then filled with 30 million tons of zinc sludge, then filled with water. This elevation is maybe 30 meters above where the mass graves are. We were told most in the immediate area have cancer.</p>
  • <p>Ivan (right) was a Partisan during WWII and had seen mass executions, and was fortunate to not have to been part of them. Since then he has become an outspoken opponent of the ongoing coverup. He is a retired GP.<br /> <br /> Janez (left) was 10 years old during the war and post-war time killings. Interestingly, he had only gotten involved with research and activism around the mass graves in the Celje area from being concerned with the environment and trying to find out why the zinc factory was dumping so much where it was and why so much of the city`s geography had been completely rewritten.</p>
  • <p>Beyond this hedge was a dump site owned by the zinc factory which is still actively being used as a toxic dump. The factory tried to make it a golf course shooting range for a while. Local outcry had it shut.</p>
  • <p>The memorial is the only large scale monument to the thousands buried at that particular site and the tens of thousands (possibly over 100,000) in the Celje municipality. The berm behind it holds in the artificial lake covering them. Nowhere here is it written what happened or who did it.<br /> <br /> The city of Celje and a golf club organised by the zinc factory nearby made plans to have it razed and a golf course put there.</p>
  • <p>The dump is approximately 15 m above the former original ground elevation. The entire geography of Teharje and Celje is new since the end of the war, and largely due to covering up and trying to bury the graves as far as possible and make their exhumation impossible.</p>
  • <p>This zinc factory has been producing heavy metals and toxic sludge since after the war when the main facilities were built. The factory, along with a dozen or so tower blocks, a sports centre, primary school and a railroad are built on German anti-tank trenches 1 km long that hold tens of thousands of people executed within two months after WWII piled head to foot alternatingly.</p>
  • <p>Its said that because of the water and mud at the bottom of the hill, some shoes and other remains of the ca. 600-700 civilians that were shot from where this photo was taken can still be seen. One little boy escaped and watched as he hid in a tree.</p>
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  • <p>This mine was always alleged to have victims of the post war massacres in them. Excavations started in 2008. Its estimated that up to a 1000 or even possibly more were buried alive, largely stripped naked to prevent further identification and gassed in the mine.</p>
  • <p>Alija is the head excavator at the Barbara Pit site for a mining company hired by the government to excavate the site. Alija, trained and schooled in mine engineering is from Srebrenica, Bosnia, which he fled in the 90`s to Slovenia. In his hometown, ca. 7000-8000 Muslim Bosnjaks including his brother were killed in a concentration camp there in 1995.<br /> <br /> He described the excavations and how the entrance to the mine shaft was filled with 100m of concrete and rubble, which he described as easily being able to survive an atomic bomb. Inside he had recently uncovered a shaft filled completely with bones 35 m deep.</p>
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  • <p>Alija spoke deeply about his work and how he felt the deep need for it. This was also particularly ironic considering we were asked in some interviews "This stuff happened ages ago. What about Srebrenica? That was only 16 years ago." Here was a man that lived through Srebrenica and is in my opinion, making another history known so it hopefully won`t be repeated like it was in Bosnia.</p>

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