By: Milan Gregorič, economist, cultural activist and journalist
The hidden truth about the bitter fate of the TIGR members and other Primorska patriots under communism, which we will present with some of the most glaring examples, emerged forcefully during Slovenia’s independence and democratisation.
Official left-wing keynote speakers at commemorations of the mentioned anniversary continue to remain silent as the grave. Like historian Dr Martin Premk on May 13th, 2023, at Mala gora near Ribnica.
Or President of the TIGR Primorska Association, Gorazd Humar, in his address on September 27th, 2022, at the prestigious academy of the left-wing elite, gathered in the front row (Milan Kučan, Matej Arčon, Marjan Šarec, Tatjana Bobnar, along with a multitude of MPs, state secretaries, cultural figures, mayors, representatives of veterans’ organisations, etc.). It is even claimed that Humar foolishly uttered the statement, “Everyone who came to this celebration is a TIGR member of the present time.” (Novi glas, October 13th, 2022)
In October 2018, Kučan, in his speech honouring the Kobarid Republic, the precursor of today’s democratic Slovenia, which was liberated and declared by the TIGR members led by Ferdo Kravanja on September 19th, 1943, two days after Italy’s capitulation, discreetly omitted to mention that Kravanja himself was one of the first leaders of TIGR who was treacherously liquidated by the leadership of the NOB (National Liberation War) (Tatjana Rejec, Partija in tigrovci, Slovenska matica, Ljubljana 2006).
Vili Kovačič, on one occasion, pointed out that under public pressure, Kučan belatedly awarded the TIGR members posthumously in 1997. However, on May 9th, 2015, almost two decades later, in his address at the Republic Square in Ljubljana, “when mentioning the annexation of Primorska to the homeland, Kučan consciously disregarded TIGR by not even mentioning it”.
At the end of 2017, Tomaž Vuk from Renče, under the mentorship of Prof. Dr Jernej Pikalo, published a thesis titled “Perception of the TIGR Organisation before and after Independence”. The thesis aimed to demonstrate, based on literature from the period 1945-1991 and post-1991, that TIGR was not suppressed during the previous regime, “as it was often claimed in public discourse”. Vuk concluded his thesis with the statement that, “based on various publications from the period 1945-1991, it cannot be said that the TIGR organisation was suppressed, although its leaders were somewhat marginalised”.
During the previous regime, TIGR may not have been suppressed, but the bitter fate of the TIGR members and other Primorska patriots during and after the war was indeed suppressed, including in Vuk’s thesis. After Slovenia’s democratisation, this truth emerged in countless print and online media sources, as we will see further on. Apparently, Vuk and his mentor “failed to notice” this, as otherwise, such a foolish statement as the TIGR leaders being “somewhat marginalised” should not have appeared in the thesis, considering they were, in fact, treacherously “liquidated” to a significant extent.
Therefore, Vuk and his mentor should visit Basovizza, kneel before the monument, repent, and apologise to the four heroes for their stubborn concealment.
Here are some prominent examples of revolutionary violence against TIGR members and other Primorska patriots during and after the war:
Let’s begin with the treacherous pre-war assassinations of three leading TIGR members, Ferdo Kravanja, Dr Maks Rejec, and Anton Majnik, as well as the prolonged post-war torment of Albert Rejec, co-founder of TIGR and its political and organisational leader. Albert Rejec endured constant interrogations, imprisonment, as well as mass post-war interrogations of other TIGR members, official transfers, forced retirements, and more (Tatjana Rejec, Partija in tigrovci, Slovenska matica, Ljubljana 2005).
There was the treacherous murder of TIGR member Franc Pelicon (1949), the brother of long-time president of the Koper veterans’ organisation, Ciril Pelicon (Svobodna misel, 14. 9. 2007). Additionally, there were post-war abductions and executions of well-known patriots Dr Andrej Uršič and Ferdo Kalin (Slovenec, 24. 4. 1995), as well as the post-war abduction and liquidation of leading TIGR member Zorko Ščuka (Delo, 8. 8. 2015). Another crime was the murder of the great patriot, writer, and politician Dr Stanko Vuk, along with his wife Danica Tomažič and their acquaintance Dr Drago Zajc on Rosetti Street in Trieste in 1944 (Martin Brecelj, Anatomija nekega zločina, Mladika, Trst 2016). Furthermore, there was the death of Danilo Zelen, the military leader of TIGR, as a result of the betrayal by communist Filip Tekavec (Pričevalci TV show).
In the book “Revolucionarno nasilje na Primorskem 1941–1945” by Dr Renato Podbersič Jr., we learn, for example, that during the war, on the territory of Vipavska and the wider Goriška region alone, 364 people were killed and thrown into unexplored mass graves, including 7 priests and seminarians (Novi glas, 14. 6. 2012). There were also the liquidation of 13 innocent individuals, including two priests, Lado Piščanc and Ludvik Sluga, in Cerkno during the German execution of 44 partisan trainees in 1944, and the treacherous murder of priests Filip Terčelj and Franc Krašna on July 7th, 1947, in a forest on the way to Železniki. After 1946, 20 members of the Čedermac organisation were arrested without being convicted, and they collectively spent 82 years in prison or forced labour (Metod Pirih, interview, Siol net, 18. 10. 2008).
Primorska, for instance, fell silent when it recently learned from the show “Pričevalci” that the iconic figure of TIGR resistance, Janko Premrl Vojko, was also a victim of the bloody red hand. Dr Tamara Griesser Pečar, in her lecture on the persecution of the clergy in Zone B, mentioned the case of Viktor Perkan, a priest in Jelšane, who was killed in May 1945 during a funeral while burying a partisan. There were also the murders of two priests, Alojzij Kristan and Miroslav Bulešič, and an attempted murder of Jakob Ukmar, an icon of Primorska’s Čedermac organisation, during a bloody confirmation ceremony in Lanišče, Istria, in August 1947 (Mladika, 9/2020), and so on, without end, throughout Primorska region.
Some reactions to the bloody revolutionary violence against the TIGT members and Primorska patriots:
In response to Gorazd Humar’s statement, “who can be a TIGR member today”, Saša Vuga, as the keynote speaker at the 50th anniversary celebration of liberation in Nova Gorica in 1955, gave the following response before a massive crowd: “At this solemn gathering, among us, there are not only surviving TIGR members. Everyone here is, every single one of them. An endless line of Primorska’s sufferers. And martyrs. They are here, listening to us. And waiting to see how we, who have reaped the fruits of their courage, unwavering patriotism, and suffering, will act. Will we act as saturated, degenerate opportunists or as upright guardians of a precious heritage? The TIGR members did not know political extremism, yet they experienced it first-hand. That is why they did not need to be exterminated by the other side of the resistance movement (namely, the Partisans, author’s note) if the political side that did so can still be called a resistance movement. Let the TIGR members hear this silenced word as well. Whoever acknowledges it is a TIGR members today.”
And when the surviving TIGR members, Anton Rutar, learned after independence that the newly established Society TIGR Primorska was crowded with former communists, he exploded, saying (Karle Kocjančič, Življenje in delo, Mladika, Trst 2008): “So now the TIGR is being rehabilitated by the Udba agents, those who oppressed us for many years after the war… and now, out of a guilty conscience, they are erecting monuments for us… As if Stalin were erecting monuments for his victims in Siberia… Moral hypocrites!”
