By: Bogdan Sajovic
Eighty years ago, a mass crime took place on our soil, committed by communists under the leadership of the Yugoslav communist dictator Josip Broz Tito. Hundreds of mass graves remain unexplored, and some still revere the murderers as heroes, as well as the criminal ideology that inspired the massacre.
Eighty years ago, around 150,000 people were massacred by the communists on Slovenian soil after the end of the Second World War – both prisoners of war and civilians. Among the victims were Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins, Germans, Hungarians, Italians… The perpetrators disposed of the victims in some 700 mass graves, the vast majority of which remain unexplored. Even the victims from some of the known mass killing sites have still not been given a proper burial. The ideological heirs of the communist criminals are doing everything in their power to minimise these crimes and, where possible, justify them.
The course of the war itself made the eventual mass killings foreseeable. Communist terrorists had been carrying out murders of actual or potential opponents in Ljubljana from the very start of the war. It was no different in towns and villages throughout Slovenia. Armed gangs of criminals would break into victims’ homes at night, killing and looting.
Over corpses to power
On January 1st, 1943, the authorities in Ljubljana counted as many as 30,000 refugees who had fled into the city from the regions of Dolenjska and Notranjska to escape the partisan terror raging there. Communist propaganda labelled them as “fascists and collaborators,” which is, of course, nonsense. If all these people had truly been collaborators, they could have crushed the partisans practically with their bare hands. But since they were, for the most part, decent, God-fearing people, the idea of responding to terror with terror of their own did not even occur to them. Only a small portion of anti-communists joined armed anti-communist units, and even then, mostly out of necessity, once it became clear that the communists would literally go over corpses to seize power.
News arriving in the winter and spring of 1945 from the “liberated” eastern parts of Yugoslavia confirmed the communists’ determination to eliminate anyone who might be a rival in their quest for power. Weeks before Belgrade fell into communist hands, thousands of actual collaborators, led by members of Nedić’s government, fled the city. Nevertheless, once the communists took over, they immediately executed thousands of “traitors and collaborators.” Similar reports came from all over Yugoslavia – from Vojvodina to Dalmatia and everywhere in between. The communists carried out mass executions with no legal basis. Later, they held sham “trials” for some of the murdered, posthumously sentencing them to death to retroactively “legitimise” the killings. These so-called revolutionary courts were, of course, a parody of proper legal proceedings.
It is therefore not surprising that tens of thousands of anti-communists in western Yugoslavia decided to flee abroad to save their lives.
The betrayal by the British
Unfortunately, those fleeing did not anticipate the treachery of part of the Western Allies. British commanders in Carinthia were open to negotiations with the communists and mainly sought to rid themselves as quickly as possible of the logistical burden posed by such a large number of refugees.
This began with the largest Slovenian refugee camp, located at the Vetrinje Field, and the two main Croatian camps in Grabštajn and Kriva Vrba. Thus began the forced repatriation of refugees, which was carried out between May 18th and 31st, 1945, following British-Yugoslav negotiations in Klagenfurt. The Croats were the first to be expelled between May 18th and 24th, followed by Slovenes, Serbs, and Montenegrins by the end of May. This grim operation was effectively overseen by Harold MacMillan (later British Prime Minister), then the top British political representative in the Mediterranean. While he could not directly issue military commands, the highest Allied military officer in Southern Europe was Field Marshal Alexander, also British, who opposed the forced return of anti-communist units, especially refugees. MacMillan waited until Alexander was officially called back to London and then pressured his administrative officer, who, under political pressure, issued the repatriation order without Alexander’s knowledge. The order made its way to the 5th British Corps in Carinthia, which carried out the technical execution of the handovers. The person responsible was Brigadier Toby Low. Interestingly, when MacMillan later became Prime Minister, he recommended Low for a peerage, he became Baron Aldington.
Some mid-level British military and civilian officials were appalled by the deceit and by the reports of massacres of those handed over. They alerted the 15th Army command in Udine, which immediately informed the Mediterranean headquarters in Naples, Alexander’s command. After learning what had been done behind his back, Alexander banned all further repatriations to Yugoslavia as of May 31st, saving tens of thousands of lives. Sadly, for tens of thousands of others, it was already too late.
The martyrdom of the repatriated anti-communists
Those handed over to the communists faced a martyr’s death. The Serbs and Montenegrins generally executed their countrymen swiftly. The repatriated Croats faced a death march, the so-called Way of the Cross, during which many were killed along the way, and the rest upon reaching their destination. Eleven thousand Slovenian Home Guard soldiers and several thousand of their family members faced days of torture followed by execution.
Slovenian communist criminals were not satisfied with just killing. Before the executions, they beat, tortured, and humiliated their victims all the way to the collection camps, whether in Šentvid, Škofja Loka Castle, Teharje, or elsewhere. The abuse escalated, particularly against officers and even family members. Among the few survivors was the then-underage Marko Kremžar, who later described how the officers were tortured. The torturers could rightly be described as sadistic psychopaths. And yet, some of these inhuman monsters are still celebrated as heroes today! The organisation preserving their legacy, funded by the state budget, was recently awarded the highest national decoration by the President of the Republic.
The killing did not end in the camps. The victims were tortured on the way to the killing sites, and even at the sites themselves. We have the testimonies of former Home Guard soldiers France Dejak, France Kozina, and Milan Zajec, three lucky men who miraculously survived the massacre. All three later gave multiple testimonies about the events of May and June 1945; Zajec and Dejak also wrote books about the slaughter of Slovenian anti-communists.
As mentioned, the ideological and even blood descendants of the communist criminals are still influential enough in today’s Slovenia to prevent a full investigation into the post-war massacres. They even obstruct the dignified burial of victims whose remains have already been found. They justify the crimes, and some even publicly approve of them. They glorify the supreme murderer, his accomplices, and the criminal ideology that enabled the atrocities. As long as this remains the case, our society will stay cemented eighty years in the past.
