|
Croatia probes a Serb for post-WWII killings |
|
Diskriminierung auf dem Rechtsweg - FAZ |
|
Carantha Editorial responds to the assassination of Ivo Pukanic! |
|
In addition to KOS and Udba, SID also spied in Croatia |
|
Commemorating the End of WWI - The Slovenia Times |
|
Balkan Dictator's Villa Turned into Vacation Spot |
|
Army Cornerstone of Slovenia - The Slovenia Times |
|
The world needs a stronger UN - Herald Tribune |
|
Hospital Franja A Symbol of Resistance to Be Rebuilt by 2010 - The Slovenia Times |
|
Occupation and Revolution in Sovenia (1941- 46)- FAZ |
|
Der Verbrecher, mein Nächster - Neue Zuericher Zeitung |
|
Germany - its new role in Europe |
|
Life and death on Slovenia's forgotten front - Telegraph.co.uk |
|
Home on the Hill - Helena Leber, Melbourne, Australia |
|
Balkanization could split Belgium - The Australian |
|
Oh, Yugoslavia! How They Long for Your Firm Embrace - NYT |
|
Slovenia celebrated the Day of Independence on the eve of June 25th |
|
Remembrance Ceremony for Kocevski Rog Victims |
|
Slovenia: CIA the world factbook |
|
Meja v Istri (Australian Slovenian Conference) |
|
Istria, without its people |
|
Poem: The Sun drowned at Šentjanz by Božidar Tvrdy (courtesy of Oliver Obad) |
|
Dr. Ljubo Sirc - The Last Dissident |
|
John Austin, Labour Member of Parliament (London), apologized... |
|
Serbian Occupation of Slovenia |
|
The War for Slovenia - 15th anniversary |
|
Late revelations - it's late, but maybe not too late? D. Gustincic and E. Kardelj |
|
In Memory of Dr. Joze Pucnik |
|
Filip Tercelj |
|
Lojze Grozde |
|
Slovenian student slain in WWII beatified |
|
The Fatal Year 1919 |
|
Remembering May 13, 1941 |
|
Remembering the Victims of the Communist Revolution |
|
Resistance Day |
|
Does the FSB (ex KGB) know Slovenia? |
|
The CIA misjudged the situation |
|
How an inhuman regime can destroy the children |
| Peter Handke |
|
Visions From Mitteleuropa - Peter Handke - The New York Sun |
|
Der lange Abschied von Jugoslawien Peter Handke- Neue Zuericher Zeitung |
|
Peter Handke est interdit de Comédie-Française - Le Monde |
| The aftermath of war in ex-Yugoslavia |
|
Kriegsverbrecher Radovan Karadzic gefasst - Berliner Morgenpost |
|
A New Republic is Born: Unintended Consequences - The New York Sun |
|
Broken Borders - New York Post |
 |
| Croatia probes a Serb for post-WWII killings |
| SNJEZANA VUKIC |
| 03/31/2009 |
 |
| An October 1991 file photo showing Simo Dubajic. The Croatian state attorney is accusing Dubajic, an 86-year-old former major in the communist-run Yugoslav army of orchestrating the post-World War II executions of thousands of people and asking that Dubajic be detained and investigated for war crimes. A spokeswoman for the attorney's office, says Dubajic is suspected of ordering the execution of about 13,000 people, mostly pro-Nazi Croatian soldiers, but also civilians, in May 26-June 5, 1945. The victims were killed near Kocevski Rog in neighboring Slovenia and buried in pits. Dubajic who is suspected of crimes against humanity and war crimes against prisoners of war lives in Belgrade, Serbia. ((AP Photo/Str, Vreme weekly, files) |
| ZAGREB, Croatia—A prosecutor in Croatia has lifted the veil on a painful episode of Balkan history: the execution of thousands pro-Nazi soldiers and civilians at the end of World War II. |
| The Croatian state attorney has asked that a case be brought against an elderly former major in the communist-run Yugoslav army on suspicion of ordering 13,000 people put to death. |
 |
| A June 9 1991 file photo showing Simo Dubajic. The Croatian state attorney is accusing Dubajic, an 86-year-old former major in the communist-run Yugoslav army of orchestrating the post-World War II executions of thousands of people and asking that Dubajic be detained and investigated for war crimes. A spokeswoman for the attorney's office, says Dubajic is suspected of ordering the execution of about 13,000 people, mostly pro-Nazi Croatian soldiers, but also civilians, in May 26-June 5, 1945. The victims were killed near Kocevski Rog in neighboring Slovenia and buried in pits. Dubajic who is suspected of crimes against humanity and war crimes against prisoners of war lives in Belgrade, Serbia. |
| It marks the first legal procedure ever in Croatia regarding postwar killings carried by the victorious antifascists, or partisans. And part of the evidence may be the accused's own autobiography. |
| Simo Dubajic, 86, is suspected of ordering the executions—mostly of Croatian pro-Nazi soldiers, but also civilians—between May 26 and June 5, 1945. Dubajic is believed to be living now in Belgrade, in neighboring Serbia, and the Croatian state attorney has asked that he be detained, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. |
| The allegations relate to a cataclysmic period at the end of the war. As partisans poured into the cities and villages of Yugoslavia, thousands of troops loyal to the Nazis, accompanied by frightened civilians, tried to flee. But many were caught and executed. |
| Martina Mihordin, a spokeswoman for the attorney's office, said Tuesday that Dubajic's victims were killed near Kocevski Rog in neighboring Slovenia and buried in natural pits. Most of the remains were recovered in recent years, but no one has ever been tried for the killings. |
| The people allegedly killed by Dubajic's unit managed to reach Austria, but the allies turned them around and forced them back toward Yugoslavia. |
| The state attorney's office said Dubajic's unit was tasked with the liquidations. Dubajic is suspected of crimes against humanity and war crimes against prisoners of war, Mihordin said. |
| Postwar communist authorities are believed to have ordered the execution of thousands of troops loyal to fascists from across the former Yugoslavia, but many civilians also fell victims to the revenge killings. |
| Croatia was a pro-Nazi state during World War II, and neighboring Serbia, Slovenia and Bosnia also had troops opposing the antifascists. Those countries formed communist-run Yugoslav federation, which disintegrated in bloody wars in the 1990s. |
| The post-World War II killings were a taboo topic in the former Yugoslavia and they remain a sensitive issue today. |
| Croatian nationalists often use them to diminish the crimes committed by pro-Nazi Croatian forces during the war. Others vehemently deny that any such executions took place, saying the claims are meant to blemish the partisans. |
| Croatian media have speculated that part of the attorney's evidence against Dubajic is his autobiography, "From Kistanje to Kocevski Rog," published in Belgrade in 2006, in which he reportedly admits the killings. |
| A leading daily, Vecernji List, quoted Dubajic as saying in 1990: "I did participate in liquidation of people, as I was commanded to do so. I am telling this today because I realized that conscience is stronger than victory." |
 |
 |
| 3. Frebruar, 2009 |
| Wie Slowenien mit den Restitutionsanträgen ehemaliger Bürger umgeht / Von Karl-Peter Schwarz |
| Diskriminierung auf dem Rechtsweg |
| LAIBACH, im Mai |
| Im Sommer 1945 wurden die jugoslawischen Staatsangehörigen Ferdinand Graf Attems und seine Frau Wanda verhaftet und in Maribor (Marburg) vor ein Militärgericht gestellt. Die Anklage lautete auf Kollaboration und stützte sich darauf, dass die Familie an die deutsche Besatzungsmacht Holz verkauft hatte. Am 17. August wurden die beiden Angeklagten zu Haftstrafen zwischen zweieinhalb und dreieinhalb Jahren sowie zum Verlust der Staatsbürgerschaft und ihres beträchtlichen Vermögens verurteilt. Ende 1945 kamen Ferdinand und Wanda Attems sowie einer ihrer Söhne unter nie geklärten Umständen in Jugoslawien ums Leben. |
| Am 12. Juli 1993 wurde das Urteil aufgehoben. Rund 30 Zeugen hatten ausgesagt, dass Ferdinand Attems ein Gegner des Nationalsozialismus gewesen sei und Partisanen geholfen habe. Seit fünfzehn Jahren bemüht sich Johannes Attems dennoch vergeblich darum, das Eigentum seiner Großeltern, das als Rechtsfolge des Urteils nationalisiert worden war, zurückzuerhalten. Slowenien hatte 1991 ein weitgefasstes Denationalisierungsgesetz in Kraft gesetzt, das die materielle Restitution des Eigentums oder eine angemessene Entschädigung für alle Personen vorsieht, die am 8. Mai 1945 jugoslawische Staatsbürger waren, und zwar unabhängig von ihrer Nationalität. Ein weiteres Gesetz über die Vollstreckung von Strafsanktionen (ZIKS) aus dem Jahr 1978 ermöglicht die Revidierung ergangener Strafurteile und die anschließende Rückgabe des auf ihrer Basis entzogenen Eigentums. Noch 2004 erklärte der für die Rechtsvertretung des Staates in Eigentumsangelegenheiten zuständige Prokurator gegenüber dem Europäischen Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte, dass beide Rechtswege begangen werden könnten. Graf Attems, der mit beiden Erfahrungen hat, weiß es mittlerweile besser. Fünfzehn Jahre eines zermürbenden, teuren und zeitaufwendigen Ganges durch die Instanzen führten ihn zu dem paradoxen Resümee, dass er sein Erbe vielleicht schon zurückerhalten hätte, wenn seine Großeltern nicht von den Kommunisten verurteilt und ermordet worden wären. |
| Die Familie stellte 1993 die ersten Anträge nach dem allgemeinen Denationalisierungsgesetz und hatte damit zunächst in zwei Gemeinden Erfolg, die ihr Teile ihres Eigentums zurückgaben. Indes war der Umfang des Gesetzes auf Druck der ehemaligen Kommunisten, die wieder an die Macht gelangt waren, durch Novellen immer mehr eingeschränkt worden. Damit änderten sich die Spielregeln während des Spiels. Je später ein Antrag eingebracht wurde, desto schlechter wurden die Aussichten auf positive Erledigung. Mitte der neunziger Jahre war bereits ein völliger Restitutionsstopp zu befürchten. |
| Die Familie Attems beschloss deshalb, den zweiten Rechtsweg einzuschlagen, den das besondere Gesetz über den Vollzug von Strafsanktionen eröffnete und hatte damit zunächst auch teilweise Erfolg. Dass sich auf diesem Rechtsweg die sogenannten AVNOJ-Erlässe als Hindernisse erweisen könnten, die für die Restitution nach dem allgemeinen Denationalisierungsgesetz belanglos sind, konnte Graf Attems damals nicht ahnen. Die AVNOJ-Erlässe vom 21. November 1944 und vom 6. Februar 1945 hatten das "gesamte Vermögen von Personen deutscher Volkszugehörigkeit" für nationalisiert erklärt. |
| AVNOJ stand für "Antifaschistischer Rat der nationalen Befreiung Jugoslawiens" und war eine Art Partisanen-Sowjet, der sich zugleich als Gesetzgeber und als Regierung verstand, aber zum Zeitpunkt dieser Erlässe von keiner der alliierten Mächte als legitime Regierung anerkannt war. Titos neues Jugoslawien wurde erst am 7. März 1945 anerkannt. Die Gleichsetzung der AVNOJ-Erlässe mit den Benes-Dekreten in der Tschechoslowakei führt daher in die Irre, weil die staatsrechtliche Legitimität der tschechoslowakischen Präsidialgesetzgebung nicht in Zweifel gezogen werden kann, die des Partisanen-Sowjets hingegen durchaus. |
| 2001 stellte der Oberste Gerichtshof in Laibach (Ljubljana) fest, dass die Verstaatlichungen nicht bereits per Erlass Wirksamkeit erlangten, sondern erst durch die entsprechenden Bescheide der Beschlagnahmekommissionen oder durch Gerichtsurteile. Im Mai 2003 änderte der Oberste Gerichtshof jedoch seine Meinung und meint nun, dass die Enteignungen jugoslawischer Staatsbürger deutscher Nationalität bereits mit dem Inkrafttreten des Erlasses erfolgt seien. Die Aufhebung des Militärgerichtsurteils gegen Attems wäre demnach unerheblich gewesen, weil Ferdinand Attems zu diesem Zeitpunkt gar nicht mehr Eigentümer gewesen wäre. |
| Nicht nur, dass unterschiedliche Gemeinden und Gerichte Restitutionen unterschiedlich handhaben und dass der Gesetzgeber durch Veränderung rechtlicher Grundlagen in laufende Verfahren eingreift: Seit 2003 wird auch über die Wahl des Rechtsweges diskriminiert. Angesichts der Widersprüchlichkeit der Urteile des Obersten Gerichts wundert es nicht, dass slowenische Gerichte in gleichen Fällen unterschiedlich urteilen. Es ist wie im Glücksspiel: Einmal wird Eigentum zurückgegeben, ein anderes Mal nicht. Die Rückkehr auf den durch das Denationalisierungsgesetz eröffneten Rechtsweg, für den die AVNOJ-Erlässe keine Bedeutung haben, ist im Falle Attems verbaut, weil die entsprechenden Antragsfristen längst abgelaufen sind. Vier nach ZIKS eröffnete Verfahren wandern noch durch die Instanzen. In drei davon urteilten die Gerichte, dass die Enteignung nicht durch den AVNOJ-Erlass erfolgt sei, in einem gelangte das Gericht zur gegenteiligen Erkenntnis. |
| Nach einem Bericht des Justizministeriums wurden bis Ende vorigen Jahres 39 633 Denationalisierungsanträge gestellt, von denen 38 262 abgeschlossen wurden. 1371 Verfahren sind noch offen, davon betreffen 262 österreichische Staatsbürger, die (oder deren Erblasser) am 8. Mai 1945 jugoslawische Staatsbürger waren. Von den 1405 abgeschlossenen österreichischen Fällen wurden knapp die Hälfte negativ entschieden, oder die Anträge wurden zurückgezogen. Man muss sehr wohlhabend und energisch sein, um kostspielige und komplizierte Verfahren über Jahre hinweg betreiben zu können. Die Regel ist, dass die Restitutionshindernisse proportional zum Streitwert anwachsen: Je größer der Eigentumsanspruch, desto größer der legale und nicht legale Widerstand gegen seine Erfüllung. |
| Ein Vorstoß der slowenischen Regierung, die Denationalisierung durch die Setzung von Fristen (drei Monate für Gerichte der ersten und zweiten Instanz, 30 Tage für übergeordnete Instanzen, 60 Tage für den Verfassungsgerichtshof) zu beschleunigen und die Gleichbehandlung von Restitutionsanträgen nach dem Denationalisierungsgesetz und ZIKS sicherzustellen, scheiterte Ende März im Parlament, weil sich Abgeordnete der konservativen Mehrheit der Stimme enthielten. In der Frage der Eigentumsrückgabe ziehen sich die Fronten quer durch die Gerichte und quer durch die Parteien. Der Rechtswissenschaftler Lojze Ude etwa, Sohn eines Partisanen und Berater des sozialdemokratischen Oppositionsführers Borut Pahor, ist sich mit dem konservativen Justizminister Lovro Sturm darin einig, dass die Rückgabe geraubten Eigentums nicht nur ein juridisches, sondern vor allem auch ein moralisches Gebot sei. Dem in Slowenien häufig zu hörenden Vorwurf, von allen Bereichen der Gesellschaft habe sich die Justiz am wenigsten von ihrer kommunistischen Vergangenheit emanzipiert, widerspricht Professor Ude nicht. |
| Der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte (EGMR) deckt die diskriminierenden Praktiken slowenischer Gerichte und schiebt Klagen von Restitutionswerbern jahrelang vor sich her. Das jüngste einer langen Serie einschlägiger Straßburger Urteile betrifft den prominenten Dissidenten Ljubo Sirc, der von einem kommunistischen Gericht 1947 zum Tode verurteilt worden war. Nachdem die nationale Justiz den Restitutionsanspruch des mittlerweile 87 Jahre alten Mannes seit 20 Jahren verzögert und vereitelt, wies der EGMR am 8. April nach zehn Jahren seine Klage auf Entschädigung in der Höhe von knapp 8,4 Millionen Euro ab. Zugesprochen wurden ihm lediglich 10 000 Euro für die Verschleppung der Verfahren sowie 2500 Euro als Kostenentschädigung. |
|
| Carantha Editorial responds to the assassination of Ivo Pukanic! |
| Carantha stays away from criticizing openly events that happen in Croatia, because we have enough material on Slovenia, which needs reporting. But we could not overlook the assassination of Ivo Pukanic, the editor of the Croatian political weekly Nacional, who had been killed in the centre of Zagreb on October 23, 2008. Entire press releases and television media outlets covered this crime extensively. So, we looked up some articles published in English by “National Weekly”. One of them deals with the Secret Service of former Yugoslavia, and even though it was printed some years ago, it is still a hot subject even nowadays, which sheds light on the era of Tito's dictatorship and is interesting for Slovenian readers. All this still exists today in spite of the dismantling of Yugoslavia. |
| (Carantha Editorial) |
 |
| NEW FINDINGS ON THE WORK OF BELGRADE INTELLIGENCE |
| In addition to KOS and Udba, SID also spied in Croatia |
| 07.03.2006 |
| The Service for Research and Documentation of the Federal Secretariat for foreign affairs was yet another Belgrade intelligence agency with a strong network of agents in Croatia |
 |
| SID was founded by Edvard Kardelj (right) on this picture with Josip Broz Tito |
| Only days after the publication of the list of KOS agents in Croatia, at the end of last week, Nacional received several more documents from the Croatian intelligence agencies revealing that they hold very precise information in their archives not only in the volume and methods of KOS operations, but also of the operations of several other Yugoslav secret services in Croatia after its independence was proclaimed. Among these, special interest is given to the Service for research and documentation of the Federal Secretariat for Foreign Affairs (SID) with its headquarters in Belgrade. According to this information, the Croatian Security Services in Croatia also had a fairly active network of colleagues. |
| SID directed approximately 80% of its potential towards gathering information on the activities of emigrants from the former Yugoslavia. The majority was dedicated to the data on the Ustasha emigrants. SID was actually a Yugoslav civil secret service, and operations were conducted from the headquarters in Belgrade and by the intelligence agents scattered among Yugoslavian embassies and consulates. SID was created in 1947 and was called the Service for Research and Documentation (SID) as part of the Secretariat for Foreign Affairs. The Service for Research and Documentation (SID) of the Federal Secretariat for Foreign Affairs SFRY was legally defined as a part of the system for state security; it was an intelligence and counter-intelligence agency. It operated through the Yugoslav diplomatic consular missions. The primary task of SID was through its operational work: it collected information of a political, security and economic character which was related to the former SFRY and to inform government leadership of the information. These were not classic secret agents but people who were present in every diplomatic mission of SFRY in foreign countries, and the members of the secret service in the countries where they resided knew about many of them. These were mostly cultural attachés, economic advisors, and political secretaries of the embassy and so on. |
| SID was founded by Edvard Kardelj and his intelligence agents were diplomats Maksimilijan Bace, Antun Vratusa, Zdenko Sveta, Edo Brajnik, Faik and Raif Dizdarevic, Veljko and Arso Milatovic, Ales Bebler, Milivoje Maksic, Branko Mikasinovic, Cvijetin Mijatovic, Josip Vrhovec, Janko Smole and Borisav Jovic. As Nacional's sources claim, the intelligence diplomatic services of SID operated very well until the breakdown of Yugoslavia, when its collapse began. Among other things, this service was largely used by Slobodan Milosevic and Milan Milutinovic, and played a significant role in transferring money from Cyprus and other countries under sanctions. The fact that the long term leader of this service was immediately appointed as Ambassador to Cyprus speaks for itself. |
| From 1992-1994, SID was led by Zoran Janackovic, later Ambassador to Macedonia. Then Petar Jankovic received the top position in SID, which he led until 1999. Jankovic was then appointed Ambassador to Cyprus. None of the former leaders of the diplomatic intelligence service were punished, fired or arrested, because many knew of the contacts with the former opposition, today the government in Serbia, with several centres of political power in foreign countries. Currently, SID, along with intelligence operations, works in cooperation with foreign intelligence services and prepares documents for the accused in the Hague from Serbia and Montenegro. Through this service, a complete exchange between Serbia and Montenegro and the International Criminal Triunal in the Hague occurs. Well referenced police sources confirmed for Nacional that one time leader of SID's Emigration Administration was the current Croatian ambassador to the Netherlands, Frano Krnic. |
| In the meantime Krnic made a diplomatic career, it can be assumed that he found himself most likely unjustifiably included in these documents, or upon establishment of the Croatian country he immediately offered his services to the Croatian government, like virtually the entire SDS of the former Croatian RSUP. This service immediately began the intelligence war with its former colleagues from Yugoslavia and practically initiated Operation Janjicar, gathering facts on all colleagues of the secret service of the former Yugoslavia. |
| At that time, certain people found themselves on the list, even though they were immediately involved in the defence of Croatia or involved in its political life. That is how Rahim Ademi, Imra Agotic, or Branko Borkovic found themselves on the list. After publication of this list, Nacional received numerous telephone calls, as well as written reactions from people found on the list. A part of these reaction show that several people were included by mistake, as there was no specific mention of why they were included. |
| Despite that, the official list by KOS agents compiled by SIS for the Defence Ministry, reconstructed within Operation Janjic(ar which Nacional published in last edition was not complete, but covers only those people that were confirmed by SIS employees as being KOS agents, and not as those people who, as KOS agents in that action, were confirmed by other Croatian security services which participated in that action. |
| A once distinguished official from the security services told Nacional that the reconstruction had to begin somewhere and this was 'raw' evidence, which was additionally corrugated and systemized. It was most likely possible for that reason that in part of the archive of the Croatian security service, as a recorded colleague of the State Intelligence Service (SDB) in BiH, you can find the late leader of the Bosnian Muslims, Alija Izetbegovic. Nacional's available facts on the security services uncovers that during the duration of his prison sentence, Izetbegovic was recruited by Resid Music and that Izetbegovic' delivered quality information on Muslim nationalists. |
| It is interesting that Father Anto Bakovic is mentioned on the same list. Among other things, it writes that Bakovic apparently had sexual relationships with the nuns, “which the SDB documented and then recruited him based on this compromising information”. In the information from the Croatian security services, it mentions that he was contacted by agent Mato Krizic and that Bakovic at that time was under operative analysis. With him, SDB Serbia was operatively combined, and he was not honest and he tried to be tactical in his contacts. |
| The archive of the Croatian security services reveals that war commander of Armija BiH, Sefer Halilovic was listed as a colleague of Bosnian UDBA. In short notes on his activity, it states: “…Aleksandar Vasiljevic offered to help the SDB Centre in Mostar in their analysis of Croatian emigrants in Sweden offering them Halilovic who had relatives in Sweden. It was planned that SDB used him for his connections, and Tomo Kokor, an agent from the SDB Centre in Mostar, spoke with him about it. In the early 1990s, Halilovic was in a significant operative position of the Yugoslavian Army within the framework of Operation Štit." |
| Operation Štit was intended to suppress the independence of Croatia and was only one in a series which reveals that the former KOS operated outside of its legal authority, which according to certain legal interpretation can be useful in technical assertion of Serbian aggression on Croatia in courts in various proceedings. |
| KOS is actually a mutual name carried by two security services from the former JNA: the Security Administration of the Federal Secretariat for National Defence and the II Administration of the YNA General Staff. |
| Both of these services operated outside of the legal framework, which became markedly expressed after the death of Josip Broz Tito, because they began to collect information on all interesting persons and events in the area of the civil sector. At the end of the 1980s, these activities increased in Slovenia and Croatia. |
| In Operation Štit, KOS covered all structures and individuals that had any contact with armament of Croatia, beginning with Martin Spegelj. Croatian security services are in possession of detailed documentation on other illegal KOS actions, including: Operations Drava, Bosut, Lovište, Lovište 2, Pionir - 25, Ljubavnik, Mlinar, Elba and others. |
| For example, in Operation Lovište which began in 1984, according to German citizen Guenter Rihter assumed to be a BND agent, KOS wanted to unmask the BND point in Istria. Operation Drava dealt with 500 - 600 Croatian emigrants in Germany, in München, Dortmund, Köln and Düsseldorf. People who were processed included Petar Kegalj from Cista Velika, who allegedly threatened that he would mine the YNA military hospital in Split. In the archives of the Croatian security services on the operations of these actions, a document states the following: “Based on the threats, the intelligence institutions spoke with the daughter of Kegalj's sister Silvana Situm, who worked in the military hospital and was in an intimate relationship with Josip Gojun, a secret agent from the SDS Centre in Split, and Vlado Ferencic, an agent from the intelligence institution was involved with her other sister." |
| Operation Bosut dealt with Croatian emigrants in Austria: special attention was paid to Ivan Milas, Anto Kovacevic and Father Perica Juric. The Croatian community in West Berlin was also a target, which resulted in the creation of a special operative action Kajmakcalan, which dealt especially with the Cultural Art Society Srijem actively involving Croatians from Vojvodina. |
| All the actions in different ways destroyed not only the lives of many Croatian families, but were also a serious threat to the creation of Croatia. That is why, especially after the Patriotic War, it was necessary to reconstruct who worked with KOS and to what capacity. However, evidence from the Croatian security services were partly left incomplete and were not systemized in one place, which allowed space for additional manipulation. |
| A similar situation occurred with evidence of colleagues at SID, which also were partly reconstructed and archived at the Croatian security service. Fran Visnar, a commentator at Vjesnik is also considered to be a colleague at SID. In evidence from the Croatian Security Agency, there is record that Visnar used the pseudonym Anatol. Information held by Nacional uncovers that SID also informally suspected Visnar of being a M16 agent. It is interesting that Miroslav Lazanski, a Serb reporter, is also mentioned as a SID agent in information in Croatian Security Agency. Lazanski used the pseudonym S-101, and in one report on Visnar it stated that Visnar was very fond of Israel and that he displayed various Jewish items in his home. |
| A portion of the employees of the security agency used this evidence temporarily in the 1990s for personal conflicts, blackmail and several political circles used this information to politically disqualify their opponents. |
| Because all official evidence remains classified as a government secret, they are only publicly discussed at times. Many former and active members of the security services which Nacional had the opportunity to speak with over the past several days has claimed that a part of these documents should be given out by the government for public review, so that the topic could objectively be discussed in order to correct the injustice of those people whose names appeared without reason. |
|
| Isonzo Front |
| Commemorating the End of WWI |
| The Slovenia Times |
| 24.10.2008 |
| Matija Pavlic |
| Last week in September the first Festival of Military History at Pivka celebrated the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI that witnessed important battles also on Slovene soil as part of the Isonzo Front, which was the stage of the biggest mountain warfare in the history of mankind. |
| WWI was called “the war of all wars” set to end all future military conflicts. The war caused the downfall of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian Empires, marked the decline of the mighty British Empire and set the stage for the rise of a new global force the USA. The WWI battlefield most significant to Slovenes was the Isonzo Front—a very important period in Slovene history in which Slovenes as part of the Austro-Hungarian multi-ethnical army engaged in a military conflict with Italy, then part of the Triple Entente, which made no pretence of concealing its expansionary appetites along the Adriatic Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. Battles of the Isonzo were fought between June 1915 and November 1917 mostly on the territory of modern Slovenia, some also took place in Italy. |
 |
| Life in the trenches |
| WWI in Slovenia—the Isonzo Front |
| On 23rd May 1915 a new 600km-long front was opened between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire extending from the triple border between Switzerland, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire over the Tyrolean Dolomites, Carnic and Julian Alps along the Soc(a (Isonzo) River up to its outfall into the Adriatic Sea. The mountainous part of the front covered some 450km and saw battles over glaciers, narrow gorges and ridges take place at altitudes over 3,000m. It soon became obvious that nature was the deadlier of the two enemies. The Isonzo Front began with the Julian Alps—battles there unfolded on a slightly lower terrain but due to the environment again proved uncharacteristic of the warfare of the time. |
| Italian army nursed high expectations against scarce and poorly armed Austro-Hungarian army, but it was soon proved that the terrain would be a far deadlier enemy. In two and a half years of the Isonzo Front there were eleven Italian offensives, all vastly unsuccessful, the only exception being the 6th Isonzo Battle during which the Italian army captured Gorica. On the other hand, the Austro-Hungarian army was fatigued due to fighting at the Western and Solun Fronts, so it mostly held its position, only once attempting an offensive in southern Tyrol during which the Austrians nearly broke through the Italian frontlines, but eventually had to retreat due to problems at the Western Front. Yet in the second half of 1917 when everything seemed lost, the German and Austrian forces tried one last attack to defeat the Italians. On 24th October 1917 at 2am German and Austrian troops issued a full-blown attack at Kobarid, Slovenia, using war gas and blitzkrieg combined infantry and artillery tactics, causing the Isonzo Front to collapse in a matter of three days. The Italians could not withstand the unexpected attack until they were pushed far back to the Piava River where they regained their strength with the help of western allies and it was here that the Italian Front was established until the end of the war. The Italians dubbed the events at Kobarid—to understate their defeat—“the Kobarid Miracle”. |
| Changed beyond forever |
| The Isonzo Front covered some 90km in the western mountainous world of Slovenia, covering the valley of the Soc(a (Isonzo) River and Karst plateaux. Due to harsh terrain, the Isonzo Front proved to be one of the toughest battlegrounds of WWI—in Karst soldiers frequently had to resolve to drinking their own urine due to scarcity of water supplies. Almost all nations of the multi-ethnical Austro-Hungarian Empire fought in this war—Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Slovenes, Croatians, Serbs, Bosnians, Czechs, etc. |
| The lives of the people along the Isonzo River changed drastically in 1915. Villages were evacuated due to the proximity of the front on both sides, with Austrians deporting some 80,000 Slovenes and Italians exiling around 10,000 to 12,000 Slovenes. Over 300,000 soldiers died and were buried in ossuaries and military graveyards, some of which have been preserved to this day. There were many civilian casualties and many people died of cholera or in refugee camps. Some of the more lasting detrimental effects of the war are the pollution and the destruction of the environment, which has not yet been healed even after all this time. |
| The Isonzo Front was the stage of the biggest mountain warfare in the history of mankind and is also the largest military conflict that ever took place on Slovene soil. Despite its devastating effects, the war represents an important period in Slovene history during which the Italian aggressor was prevented from penetrating deeper into the territory of present-day Slovenia, which secured that the Slovene territory was less significantly dissected after the war than it would have been otherwise. |
 |
| Relief map of the front lines in Kobarid Museum |
| End of WWI commemorated at Pivka |
| The 90th anniversary of the end of WWI was commemorated at the Park of Military History in Pivka as part of the very first festival of military history. The park—designed to offer a multitude of educational possibilities and free individual exploration—acts both as a museum and a venue for experiencing the heat of the battle itself. Among the many interesting things to see is a collection of tanks and artillery featuring some of the most valuable specimens various armies over time left behind on Slovene soil, representing important military and technical heritage. |
| Part of the first Festival of Military History featured new exhibitions, lectures, guided tours, presentations of army life and battles. The main event of the five-day festival lasting from 24th till 28th September was the re-enactment of a historic battle in which the 2nd Mountain Artillery Regiment, the 5th Dragoon Regiment and Hungarian artillery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire attacked the position of kote 110 defended by the Italian army. The festival also saw the overflight of a historic plane, fire-fighters from Kobarid with a historic Italian war truck, the 1313 Group from Bovec presenting the everyday life and worriers of the ethnically varied Austro-Hungarian army and a fair of military artefacts. During the festival the Hungarian Ambassador to Slovenia József Czukor opened the exhibition of a Hungarian Military Museum entitled Artillery in WWI. |
| Re-enactment of a WWI battle |
| The highlight of the festival was the Sunday’s re-enactment of a battle at the Isonzo Front. The battle for kote 110 was as true as it gets—the initiators of the event created a veritable outdoor museum, set barbwires and even tidied up the old barracks supposedly dating from the times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The main event showcased the training and fighting of the 2nd Austrian Mountain Artillery Regiment and the 5th Austrian Dragoon Regiment, and how they attacked fortified positions of the enemy. These two regiments are important for Slovenes, since they featured the highest number of Slovenes in the Austro-Hungarian Army. The 2nd Mountain Artillery Regiment showcased military warfare during WWI, which was marked by fighting in the trenches. The 5th Dragoon Regiment played some part in WWI also, but more importantly in the second half of the 19th century when the cavalry still played a major role—in WWI, however, the invention of the machine gun rendered cavalry vastly ineffective. The Isonzo Front was one of the most important periods in Slovene history yet is, unfortunately, also the one that is most commonly overlooked—this demonstration was certainly aimed at changing just that. |
| The Festival of Military History certainly reached its goal, i.e. making the Slovenes aware of just how important WWI was for the entire nation, resurrecting the memories of those who gave their lives at the Isonzo Front. The message of the festival was clear—this part of our history is not to be neglected (as is commonly observed) but remembered, deeply respected and learnt from. |
|
| Balkan Dictator's Villa Turned into Vacation Spot |
| Luxist |
| Jul 31st 2008 - by Jared Paul Stern |
 |
| Former Yugoslavian dictator Marshal Tito's lavish villa on Slovenia's beautiful Lake Bled has been refurbished and turned into a top-drawer hotel under the auspices of the famed Relais & Chateaux group. The white Dalmatian marble mansion, called Vila Bled, on 12 landscaped acres surrounded by the dramatic Julian Alps, was visited by the likes of Liz Taylor, King Hussein of Jordan and Prince Charles when it was the former president's retreat in the '50s and '60s. Now it's divided into 20 luxe suites with a vintage feel, with a newly-added spa featuring both Turkish and Finnish saunas and food prepared by the first Slovenian chef to earn a Michelin star. |
| See the gallery for more: |
| Villa Bled |
|
| Army Cornerstone of Slovenia |
| The Slovenia Times |
| 16.05.2008 |
| By STA |
 |
| President Danilo Tuerk said that Slovenian Armed Forces represented the core of Slovenia's independence and sovereignty. Their importance is increasing as the country gets more and more involved in EU and NATO operations, the supreme commander said on Slovenian Armed Forces Day. |
| Tuerk pointed to the beginnings of training of the armed forces in the months leading to and after the declaration of independence. The first conscripts into the Slovenian army marked a seminal point of the new era that followed the decision for independence. |
| "But the decision itself was not enough to guarantee the state to be created. The decisions from the spring of 1991 and the training of our own armed forces gave us the feeling that the procedure to secure independence was really launched," the president said. |
| According to Tuerk, Slovenian soldiers fought well throughout history, even if they were mainly part of multinational armies under foreign command, and underlined the role played by Rudolf Maister, the general who is credited with securing Slovenia's northern border after the end of World War I. |
| But now Tuerk sees the duties of the army also increasingly linked with solidarity at home and abroad in the wake of climate change and natural disasters. |
| The military will remain dependent on its soldiers, which is why care must always be dedicated to its staff and why ethics and personal dignity must never be forgotten, Tuerk added. |
| The ceremony was addressed by Chief-of-Staff, Lt-Gen Albin Gutman, who drew attention to all those who could not be present at the ceremony because they are taking part in peacekeeping missions around the world. |
|
|
|
 |
| LJUBLJANA, Slovenia. The convergence of the world's leaders on the United Nations in New York last week has put that organization under its annual spotlight, and as usually happens, many have found it wanting. As never before, the United Nations is an embattled institution. It is therefore worth recalling the still considerable - and irreplaceable - value of the United Nations. | |
|
|
| As a citizen of one of Europe's so-called "new" nations (a phrase that handily ignores the fact that Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Croatia and others are all products of cultures that have existed on their respective territories for just as long as Europe's "great powers"), I and most of my fellow Slovenes can easily remember a time when we, as a nation, simply didn't exist - or at least not so far as the rest of the world was concerned. We were, as our poet Oton Zupancic once wrote, "doomed to silence in the council of nations." | |
|
|
| The world's most powerful nations only rarely have experienced such feelings. Not coincidentally, it is among such nations that the most savage criticisms of the United Nations are most commonly heard. The view from Slovenia, a country that has invested a good deal of effort in its multilateral diplomacy over the last decade, is of course very different. |
 |
| Celebrations in Lublana, when Slovenia declared its independence in June 1991. In the picture we see the large three-coloured flag, which, since the so-called "awakening of nations" in the 19th century, has been used in Slovenia. In fact, these are the Russian colours, which at that time in general were considered the "Slav" ones and were adopted by Slovenian leaders. They believed that Slovenians, as a Slavic nation, had their roots in Russia, which was considered the "mother of all Slavs". - Anyway, below this flag we already see a standard with the Black Panther, which represents the very historical, cultural and state tradition of Slovenians. They are an autochthon people, which originated from Carantania (or Sclauinia), first mentioned in 595 AD. In the years following the declaration of independence, the image of the Black Panther has spread all over Slovenia. Its image, in spite of great resistance from the ancient Yugoslav apparatus, gradually is changing the mentality of Slovenians. | |
| We were spared the worst of the warfare that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 90s. But I still remember witnessing jets of the Serb-controlled Yugoslav Air Force dumping bombs on a national guard installation near my hometown in 1991. The violence of our 10-day independence struggle - insignificant though it may have seemed later in the context of the far greater bloodshed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo - was a shattering experience. | |
|
|
| It was therefore with a mingled sense of relief, accomplishment, disbelief and also pride that most of us watched on television in May 1992 as our flag rose among all the others in front of the United Nations. Slovenes tend to be unsentimental types, but this was a truly incredible sight: Just a year after proclaiming independence, our small country had become 176th member of the world's only joint council. | |
|
|
| As President Harry Truman declared prior to the San Francisco conference in 1945 that brought the United Nations to life, "We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to always do as we please." Truman's reasoning reflected the postwar notion that not even the greatest powers can deal unilaterally. On our increasingly interlinked planet, such an idea is surely more, not less, relevant. | |
|
|
| So it bears remembering the many things that the United Nations has in fact got right, and continues to get right. These include activities ranging from peacekeeping in some of the most violent parts of the world, to humanitarian aid in some of the most desperate, to the adjudication of disputes in some of the most contentious. | |
|
|
| These are not easy tasks. In fact they're just about the most intractable imaginable - and, as one might expect, they sometimes fail spectacularly. But they also succeed, with many lives saved. The former scenario, of course, always receives the most attention. But even in the failed cases, at least the attempt was made. And a failed try can at the very least serve as the basis for designing more effective ones in the future. |
|
|
| Contrast this with doing nothing - history's more typical scenario. Perhaps the best way to understand the UN's continuing importance is simply to try imagining a world without it. | |
|
|
| We shouldn't kid ourselves: A return to that kind of Hobbesian universe is always possible, and some are even actively working for it. If history is really "a nightmare from which we're trying to awake," as James Joyce had his character Stephen Dedalus observe, then perhaps it's the United Nations, flawed though it may sometimes appear, that remains the most serviceable instrument of that awakening. - We should be thinking about how to reform and strengthen the United Nations, and not diminish or dilute it. - (Melita Gabric is the senior adviser on foreign affairs to the president of Slovenia.) | |
| Our Comments: | |
| Showing a military parade of the Slovenian Army as part of the anniversary celebrations, would cause a polemic in Slovenia. The ex-Yugoslav lobby and President Drnovšek are opposed to it. But the Slovenian public would like to see their troops, who were fighting the Yugoslav army for Slovenia's independence in 1991. They fought so bravely that the enemy was forced to leave the country after two weeks. |
|
| Hospital Franja |
| A Symbol of Resistance to Be Rebuilt by 2010 |
| The Slovenia Times |
| 07.03.2008 |
| Matija Pavlic |
 |
| Old Franja Hospital as it once was. |
| Last September’s floods completely destroyed the Franja Partisan Hospital, yet the story may not be without a happy ending after all; the symbol of partisanship and comradeship will be completely rebuilt and restored to its original form, the restoration committee decided mid February. |
| A tonne of debris and sorrowful remnants that lied scattered across the Pasice gorge was all that was left of the Franja Partisan Hospital after last September’s natural catastrophe that saw Gorenjska literally swell up with water. Torrential rains caused massive floods that in a matter of hours changed the face of north-western Slovenia. Several places were catastrophe-stricken, hundreds of houses were destroyed, the waters caused landslides and the country was in a state of shock. The eye of the storm fell on elezniki that was most severely devastated, and the steep narrow gorge of Pasice, home to the Franja Partisan Hospital, fared no better – the WWII clandestine field hospital, a symbol of the Slovenian WWII partisan movement, appeared as though hit by a tornado; rampant waters carried almost all of the 13 barracks leaving behind only barracks no. 1 and 9. Some of the remains were propelled into the pile formed in the yard, but most of the hospital was torn apart by the raging waters; some parts were even found at a 30 km distance outside the gorge in the days following the aftermath. |
| The damage was immeasurable and resulted in the loss of precious museum specimens. Out of 787 listed items that were in the hospital, only 83 pieces of the two unharmed barracks and 60 more or less damaged items found later after the raging waters subsided in the beds of the C(erinšc(ica and Cerknica streams were preserved. Explorers also found component parts of 40 various specimens, while the origin of many others could not be precisely determined. |
 |
| The hidden road to the hospital |
| Reconstruction plans |
| Mid February the Slovenian government and the Cerkno municipality decided to fully rebuilt the Franja Partisan Hospital after carefully weighing several other options. The committee eventually settled on a complete restoration agreeing that only a host of barracks gives the proper feel of the hospital. The rebuilding of the hospital alone will cost between EUR 2.5 and EUR 3.0 million, yet even before the complex is rebuilt, the bed of the C(erinšc(ica stream and its hinterland will have to be hydrotechnically and geologically prepared to secure stability in the gorge, costing additional EUR 1.32 million. Only after the successful implementation of the initial phase will the barracks be built in their original form, presumably not before 2009. |
| The Franja Partisan Hospital will be completely rebuilt by 2010 and opened to visitors in guided or individual tours, who will be able to make use of a brand new EUR 1.03 million worth information centre that will feature a virtual museum-like presentation of key information about this important historic monument. |
 |
| The shack-like hospital Franja, a Slovenian landmark. |
| World War II Relic |
| The Franja Partisan Hospital operated in Dolenji Novaki near Cerkno between December 1943 and May 1945 and was one of the few preserved partisan hospitals in Slovenia; these were built in barely accessible gorges, forests and underground caves as part of a broad resistance movement against the Fascist and Nazi aggressors. The Franja Partisan Hospital comprised of 13 wooden barracks of different sizes designated for various purposes and several auxiliary facilities. It had an operating and an X-ray room, invalid care facility and even an electric plant. The 13 barracks were not built at once; their number gradually increased by the end of the war. The founder and first constructor of the hospital was Dr Viktor Volc(jak while the hospital itself is named after Dr Franja Bojc Bidovec who was its manager and physician until the end of the war. |
| Designed to treat wounded soldiers and other heavily ill at the territory of the 9th Corps of the Slovenian Partisan Army, the hospital could receive up to 120 wounded. Part of the hospital facility were also several dislocated units for treating soldiers that suffered minor injuries, yet these have not been preserved. Of around 1,000 people that received treatment in the hospital, 522 of them were severely wounded and only 61 died. |
| The locals played an important role in the hospital’s operation, hiding the facilities before the aggressor and providing food to the wounded and the staff. The wounded were blindfolded on route to the hospital preventing possible disclosure of its location if they were captured and tortured by the aggressor later on. The first plan included only a few barracks but it turned out that the need far exceeded the initial assessment. In April 1944, the German troops attacked the hospital for the first time, sending the wounded and the medical staff in hiding. Before the end of the war, the hospital was attacked once more in March 1945, but both of these two assaults were unsuccessful. On 5th May 1945 the wounded and the medical staff left the hospital for good; it was a historic monument and a tourist attraction ever since and one of the few preserved WWII clandestine partisan hospitals in Slovenia. |
 |
| One of the facilities inside the hospital |
| Hidden in the middle of an inaccessible nowhere |
| For Franja and other partisan hospitals of Slovenia, secrecy and security were crucial. If the hospital were discovered by the enemy, it would surely be razed to the ground in the blink of an eye lacking effective defence, not to mention that the wounded would hardly pose a threat to the invaders. It was crucial therefore to hide the trails made when the wounded were carried through the streambed in handmade stretchers. They were blindfolded for fear of revealing the hospital’s location if they were captured and tortured into submission by the enemy after recovery. |
| The success of the Franja Partisan Hospital was attributed to the gushing stream flowing through the gorge which made the trails of the wounded untraceable. Those carried to the hospital by the staff were typically transported at night. Still preserved in the steep walls rising above the stream are several fortified bunkers and natural caves that served as hiding places for the wounded while minefields and machine-gun nests were placed in the surrounding area narrowing the access to the hospital through the stream, footbridges and drawbridges hidden in the steep gorge. Although enemy forces launched several attacks in search for the hospital, it was never discovered. |
| A monument to humanity and friendship |
| Although primarily intended to treat the soldiers from the 9th Corps of the Slovenian Partisan Army fighting the aggressor in Primorska and Gorenjska, the hospital received both allied and enemy soldiers in accordance with the Geneva Convention, providing medical treatment to Italian, French, Russian, Polish and American soldiers as well as many others. Particularly interesting is the story of a captured German soldier who voluntarily joined the hospital staff after his recovery and remained there until the end of the war. A special acknowledgment of gratitude was awarded to the hospital 52 years after the war by an American association of war veteran pilots for the treatment the hospital provided to one of its members. |
| The hospital became part of the Cerkno museum in 1963, was awarded the Label of European Heritage in 2007 just months before the floods and is currently on a list of candidates to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. All this, of course, and much more, rendered the Franja Partisan Hospital a symbol of not only partisanship and revolt against the aggressor, but also a symbol of international unity and friendship. It stood and will stand again as a remarkable monument to humanity and comradeship as well as a primetime example of nobler human traits. |
|
| Eine völkerrechtliche Untersuchung | |
| Der Autor behandelt die rechtlichen Folgen der Besetzung und Teilung des slowenischen Hoheitsgebiets durch die Invasionsmächte Deutschland, Italien und Ungarn ebenso wie die daraufhin von der Kommunistischen Partei Sloweniens geführte Revolution, die verschiedenen Methoden des Selbstschutzes gegen den revolutionären Terror, die spätere militärische Zusammenarbeit dieser Selbstverteidigungsgruppen, die Bildung einer neuen jugoslawischen Regierung unter Tito und Subašic im Jahre 1944 und deren Anerkennung durch die Westalliierten. Ein Hauptaugenmerk der Arbeit gilt der Flucht der slowenischen Selbstverteidigungsgruppen (Domobranci) und Zivilisten nach Kärnten, um dort bei den britischen Streitkräften Schutz zu finden, und der Liquidierung von Tausenden von Gegnern der kommunistischen Guerillastreitmacht nach Kriegsende. |
| Mit großem Respekt vor dem 2005 "viel zu früh" verstorbenen Staats- und Völkerrechtler Dieter Blumenwitz stellt Rezensent Christian Hillgruber dessen letzte völkerrechtliche Untersuchung vor. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Situation der slowenischen Zivilbevölkerung, die zwischen 1941 und 1946 "zwischen die Fronten" verschiedener Interessen und machtpolitischen Konstellationen geraten ist. In deren Folge habe sie unter "eingefallenen Besatzungsmächten" ebenso zu leiden gehabt wie unter dem "zunehmenden Terror kommunistischer Widerstandsgruppen". Auch Titos bis heute ungesühnte Verbrechen seien von Dieter Blumenwitz klar als solche klassifiziert. Der Rezensent hebt vor allem das große Gerechtigkeitsempfinden heraus, das er aus dieser Studie sprechen sieht, das keine Opfer erster und zweiter Klasse kennt. |
| Zasedba in revolucija v Sloveniji (1941 - 46) |
| Narodno-pravna raziskava |
| Pisec obravnava pravne posledice zasedbe suverenega slovenskega ozemlja, ki so si ga razdelile okupacijske sile Nemcije, Italije in Ogrske, kot tudi sledeco revolucijo, ki jo je izvajala komunisticna partija Slovenije. Obravnava nacine samo-obrambe proti revolucionarnemu terorju, kasnejše sodelovanje samo-obrambnih skupin ter ustanovitev nove jugoslovanske vlade po sporazumu Tito - Šubašic leta 1944 in njeno priznanje po zaveznikih. Posebno pozornost posveca umiku samo-obrambnih skupin (domobrancev) in civilnega prebivalstva na Koroško, ki je tam iskalo pri britanskih silah zašcito, kot tudi likvidacijo nasprotnikov komunisticne gverile ob koncu druge vojne. |
| Recenzent Christian Hillgruber predstavi z velikim spoštovanjem zadnjo raziskavo državno- in narodnopravnega, veliko prezgodaj umrlega izvedenca Dieterja Blumenwitza, ki jo je napisal pred letom 2005. V središcu njegove raziskave je slovensko civilno prebivalstvo med 1941 in 1946, ki se je znašlo "med frontami" razlicnih interesov in struktur politicnih sil. Ljudstvo je trapelo pod "okupacijskimi silami" kot tudi pod "narašcajocim terorjem komunisticnega odpora". Blumenwitz jasno klasificira kot tarane tudi Titove zlocine. Recenzent poudari velik cut za pravicnost, ki izhaja iz študije. To je cut, ki ne priznava nobenih prvo- in drugorazrednih žrtev. |
|
| Der Verbrecher, mein Nächster |
| Neue Zuericher Zeitung |
| Zürich, 26. Februar 2006 |
| Historische Wahrheit und erinnerndes Gedenken müssen in Südosteuropa stärker Fuss fassen |
| Über der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit Jugoslawiens lag lange Jahre ein Mantel des Schweigens ausgebreitet. Nach ihrem Sieg rechneten die Kommunisten unter Tito brutal mit echten und vermeintlichen Nazi- Kollaborateuren ab. Fremde Volksgruppen wurden vertrieben. Der slowenische Schriftsteller Drago Jancar beschreibt, wie sich in Slowenien nach 1945 die Gewaltspirale weiterdrehte. |
| von Drago Jancar |
| Mein Vater wurde 1944 von der Gestapo verhaftet und nach Folterungen und Verhören in Maribor und Celje ins Konzentrationslager gesteckt, das er überlebte. Doch das Ende der Naziherrschaft brachte keine Befreiung. Im Frühjahr 1945 setzt sich in Slowenien das Rad der Gewalt noch einmal in Bewegung. Im Mai hält Marschall Tito auf dem Balkon der Universität in Ljubljana eine Rede. «Die Hand der Gerechtigkeit, die Rächerhand unseres Volkes hat die grosse Mehrheit von ihnen bereits erreicht, und nur einem kleinen Teil der Verräter ist es gelungen, unter dem Schutz von Gönnern aus unserem Land zu fliehen. Diese Minderheit wird unsere herrlichen Berge und unsere blühenden Felder nie wieder sehen. Und sollte es doch geschehen, dann nur für sehr kurze Zeit.» |
| RACHE ALS PROGRAMM |
| Titos Rede bestätigt, dass man zu der Zeit in der politischen Führung des neuen Jugoslawien schon entschlossen war, die Gegner aus der Kriegszeit zu beseitigen, dass die Massaker auch bereits eingesetzt hatten. Sie enthüllt uns die Tatsache, dass es sich um einen Plan handelte, demzufolge die entwaffneten Domobranzen und zivilen politischen Gegner ohne grössere juristische Umschweife an geheimen Orten zu erschiessen waren. Die Vollstrecker verwendeten für diese Tätigkeit den buchhalterischen Ausdruck «liquidieren». Natürlich handelte es dabei auch um Rache. Ein slowenischer Schriftsteller jener Zeit veröffentlichte am selben Tag, an dem Tito sprach, in der Zeitung einen Leitartikel unter dem Titel «Rache ist ein Schreckenswort!». Dort heisst es: «Wir haben die Rache als Programm und Inhalt mit Blut in unsere Herzen eingebrannt, um diese Gesellschaft von Verrätern und Henkern zu vernichten und zu zerschmettern.» |
| Es ist heute bewiesen, dass es zu schrecklichen Massakern an unbewaffneten Kriegsgefangenen und aus den Wohnungen verschleppten Zivilisten kam und dass ihre Leichen in die Panzergräben rings um Celje und Maribor, in die Karsthöhlen (foibe) in Istrien und in die schrecklichen Abgründe des Kocevski rog (Gottscheer Wald) geworfen wurden. Bauern, Schüler, Intellektuelle, Frauen und Kinder. Jeder ein Einzelner mit seinem Vor- und Nachnamen, jeder mit seinen Hoffnungen und Träumen. Das Rad der Gewalt kam im Jahre 1945 nicht zum Stehen. |
| Die Diskussion über das blutige Drama, das sich Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts im Raum zwischen Alpen und Adria abspielte und das Gruben voller Leichen zurückliess, ist noch nicht ausgestanden. Die Republik Italien erklärte den 10. Februar 2005 zum Tag des Gedenkens an den Exodus der Italiener aus Istrien und Dalmatien, und das staatliche Fernsehen RAI strahlte an diesem Tag den Film «Das Herz im Abgrund» aus, der von der Rache der Partisanen erzählt, nicht nur an den Faschisten, sondern auch an unschuldigen Zivilisten, an Italienern, die von den «Slawen» erschlagen und in die foibe, in die Karsthöhlen, geworfen wurden. |
| Die foibe sind heute zum Inbegriff der neu aufgelebten Debatte über die faschistische und - als deren Folge - die «slawische», wie der Film behauptet, Gewalt geworden. Der Film hat in Slowenien, teilweise aber auch in Kroatien einen Sturm der Entrüstung ausgelöst. |
| Er reisst die alten Wunden erneut auf und ist doch weit entfernt von Wahrheitsliebe und moralischer Vivisektion. Er ist weit unter dem Niveau der Debatte, die auch in Slowenien schon über die Nachkriegsmassaker abgelaufen ist. Als Zyniker könnte man sagen: Warum so viel Aufregung um einen Partisanenfilm? Handlung, Dramaturgie, bildnerische Gestaltung, die gesamte Ästhetik von «Das Herz im Abgrund» ist nicht mehr als eine Kopie der jugoslawischen manichäischen Filmschule: Durch Leiden zu Licht und Freiheit, Mut und Liebe siegen, das Böse wird vernichtet. |
| Wegen eines durchschnittlichen Films, der das Prädikat «ästhetischer und politischer Kitsch» zu Recht trägt, erhoben sich in Slowenien Proteste, die einen radikalen Kampf um die historische Wahrheit fordern. Das slowenische Fernsehen startete eine Gegenoffensive gegen die RAI und öffnete ihr Arsenal an Schwarzweissfilmen, die dem hiesigen Publikum noch einmal versichern sollten, dass wir Recht hatten und nicht sie, dass wir noch heute Recht haben und nicht sie. Aber wen will man überzeugen? Glaubt in Slowenien ernsthaft jemand an die Möglichkeit, die Gewaltpolitik des faschistischen Italien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg im Küstenland, sein Angriff gegen Jugoslawien und das brutale Vorgehen seiner Truppen in den besetzten Gebieten von Ljubljana bis zu den griechischen Inseln, von Libyen bis Äthiopien liessen sich rechtfertigen? Oder glaubt etwa hierzulande noch jemand, dass die foibe voller Leichen eine Lüge sind? Oder dass die Nachkriegsmassaker höchstens aus persönlicher Rache geborene Zufallstaten waren, was - paradoxerweise - gerade diese Filmstory in hohem Masse suggeriert? |
| herausgekrochen |
| In dem Buch des italienischen Journalisten Arrigo Petacco mit dem Titel «Der Exodus» lesen wir unter vielen Zeugnissen auch den Bericht des istrischen Lehrers Graziano Udovisi, der lebend aus der foiba herausgekrochen ist: «Dann nahm ein grosser Mann einen Draht und begann je zwei und zwei zusammenzubinden, so dass er den Draht fest um unsere Handgelenke zog. Das Schicksal war vorgezeichnet, und es blieb nur eine Möglichkeit zu entkommen: mich in den Abgrund zu werfen, bevor mich die Kugel traf. . . . Ich fiel auf einen hervorstehenden Ast. Ich konnte nichts sehen, andere Körper fielen auf mich. Es gelang mir, die Hände aus dem Eisendraht zu befreien, und ich begann hinaufzuklettern.» In Slowenien kennen wir derartige Zeugnisse. Man weiss, dass es sich um ein geplantes und gut organisiertes Töten gefangener politischer Gegner und unschuldiger Zivilisten gehandelt hat. |
| Ich bin kein Zyniker, und ich verstehe, dass Augen, die daran gewöhnt waren, kaltblütige Nazimörder oder pathologische faschistische Verbrecher zu sehen, sich einen Partisanenkommandanten mit rotem Stern in dieser Rolle nur schwer vorstellen können. Unter diesem Zeichen haben wir uns doch gegen die faschistische Gewalt zur Wehr gesetzt! Für manchen ist das ein schrecklicher Schock. Aber was ist das, was hier den Schock auslöst? Schein oder Wirklichkeit? |
| Mörder mit rotem Stern an der Titokappe - es war auch für mich unerträglich, von den Nachkriegsmassakern zu erfahren. Ich trage selbst einen solchen Stern am Pionierkäppi, stehe auf der Bühne, gut zwölf Jahre alt, und sage ein Partisanengedicht auf. Ich trage ihn auch auf der Foto in der Uniform der Jugoslawischen Volksarmee. Wenn Symbole so wichtig und so schockierend sind - bedeutet das, dass ich mich mit jenem Kinderabzeichen an der Stirn mit den Nachkriegsmassakern identifizieren muss, zumindest mit der Behauptung, es habe sich um einen Racheausbruch nach überstandenem Leiden gehandelt? Oder darf ich noch immer glauben, dass die Partisanen mutige Widerstandskämpfer gegen die faschistische und nazistische Gewalt waren und dass man sie nicht alle durch die Bank mit den Nachkriegsmassakern in Verbindung bringen kann? Ja auch wenn sie Sozialrevolutionäre, Kommunisten waren, können sie nicht nur aufgrund ihrer Überzeugung für die Massaker verantwortlich sein. Für die Verbrechen sind jene verantwortlich, die sie befohlen haben, jene, die sie ausgeführt haben und darüber schweigen, und jene, die sie noch heute rechtfertigen. |
| Und trotzdem muss man wissen, dass es zuerst den Faschismus gab und dann erst die foibe. |
| Das demokratische Deutschland hat den Nazismus in einer Weise aufgearbeitet, wie es in Italien mit dem Faschismus nicht geschehen ist. Es wurde keine Entfaschisierung durchgeführt, es hat keinen kathartischen Gerichtsprozess gegeben, die italienische Öffentlichkeit weiss nichts über das Vorgehen ihres Militärs und ihrer Polizei in den besetzten Gebieten. Wenig oder nichts weiss sie über die Konzentrationslager. Andererseits ist es nicht wahr, dass es in Italien überhaupt keine kritische Reflexion der faschistischen Pathologie gegeben hätte. Man denke an Bertoluccis Film «1900» oder Pasolinis «Die 120 Tage von Sodom». |
| «Meine erschossenen» |
| Wie dereinst in den slowenischen Schulbüchern für die höheren Gymnasialklassen die Wahrheit über die Nachkriegsmassaker im Gottscheer Wald, ja auch über die foibe stehen wird, so werden, wenn wir überhaupt eine europäische Zukunft in diesem Teil der Welt wollen, auch die italienischen Schüler dereinst lesen müssen, was während des Krieges, während seines Dienstes bei den Besatzungstruppen in Slowenien, ein italienischer Militärkaplan in sein Heft geschrieben hat. Er hiess Petro Brignoli, und das Buch seiner Tagesnotizen trägt den Titel «Eine Messe für meine Erschossenen». In nur wenigen Julitagen des Jahres 1942 notierte der unglückliche junge Geistliche, der einer Militäreinheit in Slowenien zugeteilt war, folgende Sätze in sein Heft: |
| 19. Juli: Noch vier Erschossene im selben Dorf. Weswegen? Ganz einfach: Ein hoher Offizier aus dem Armeekorps war am Morgen zum Oberst auf Visite gekommen und hatte ihm vorgeworfen, zu milde zu verfahren. Alle vier umklammerten den Kaplan und brüllten wie verwundete Tiere. - 21. Juli: Achtzehn Erschossene in einem anderen Dorf. . . . Einer der achtzehn (ein ausserordentlich schöner Dreissigjähriger) bat die anderen still zu sein und sprach kurz zu ihnen in ihrer Sprache. Ich erteilte ihnen die Absolution und Kommunion. . . . Das Exekutionskommando bestand gewöhnlich aus Schwarzhemden, die in der Stadt politisch Verurteilte erschossen, nachdem sie den Regeln gemäss verurteilt worden waren; also lauter unempfindliche Leute: Die Verurteilten wurden mit dem ersten Schuss hingerichtet. Hier aber zitterte der Kommandant und gab den Befehl nicht rechtzeitig, und auch die Schwarzhemden zitterten. Aus vier Gruppen erschossen sie nicht einen Einzigen mit dem ersten Schuss; einer aus der ersten Gruppe blieb sogar auf den Beinen stehen. . . . Wie haben wir nur dieses unglückliche Dorf verlassen! Wir liessen einen Haufen alter Leute ohne Kinder, Frauen ohne Männer und Kinder ohne Eltern zurück, lauter Ohnmächtige. . . . Wenn der Krieg ein weiteres Jahr dauert, wird von diesen Ortschaften nichts anderes bleiben als der Name. |
| Angesichts solcher tragischer Zeugnisse müssten alle verstummen, die auf Rechnung der Opfer ihr eigenes politisches Süppchen kochen. So wie das heutige Deutschland nicht der Erbe des nazistischen Wahnsinns ist, so kann auch das heutige Italien nicht die Geisel der historischen faschistischen Verirrungen sein. Doch Italien muss seine Verbrechen kennen und verstehen, wenn es den Moloch des Nationalismus und der Verachtung des Nachbarn nicht noch einmal aus der Flasche lassen will. Und obwohl auch das heutige demokratische Slowenien nicht verantwortlich sein kann für die stalinistischen Gewalttaten der Nachkriegszeit, müssen wir sie kennen und bedauern. Und alle zusammen müssen wir die Ursachen und die Folgen kennen. |
| Es ist gut, wenn es zu symbolischen Versöhnungsakten von Politikern kommt. Aber diese Akte werden nicht die Tatsachen der Schrecken verändern, die in diesem Teil Europas geschehen sind. Und sie werden uns auch nicht der Verantwortung für eine sichere Zukunft entbinden, wenn wir die Botschaften der Vergangenheit nicht begreifen. Diese Botschaften kommen schon seit Jahren zu uns als Geschichtsfälschungen und totgeschwiegene Kapitel der dunklen Seite des Mondes. Deshalb müssen wir an die Stelle des Wortes Versöhnung, das sich allzu rasch in eine rituelle politische Floskel verwandelt, die Wörter Wahrheit und Erinnerung setzen.(Aus dem Slowenischen von Klaus Detlef Olof.) |
|
| Germany - its new role in Europe |
| Its intervention was decisive in the international recognition of Slovenia |
 |
| The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. |
| In the decades after the WW2, it was a symbol of the divided Berlin, divided Germany and divided Europe. |
 |
| Now, in Germany's new role, this landmark could become a symbol of coexistence and collaboration between West and East Europe. |
| When in June of 1991, it appeared possible that Slovenia might in fact declare independence, the United States Secretary of State, James Baker, flew to Belgrade and in a one day marathon session met with all of the leaders of the six Yugoslav Republics. He warned them again, that Yugoslavia must stay together and remain united. Moreover, Baker told the Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Ante Markovic, that if the Slovenians took overt action to secede from Yugoslavia, the United States would not object, if the Yugoslav army (Serbian) was called in to preserve the unity of Yugoslavia. |
 |
| Slovenian War, the Slovenian army positions at the Lublana Castle, on July 2, 1991 |
| On June 25, 1991, Slovenia declared its independence. Ante Markovic, the Prime Minister, ordered the Yugoslav army into Slovenia. Most observers did not expect the Slovenians to resist against the powerful Yugoslav (Serbian) army, but contrary to all expectations the Slovenians did resist. Armed with hand held antitank missiles, the Slovenians destroyed a number of tanks and the Serbian army was stopped and defeated. |
| The Slovenian War marked a turning point in the attitude adopted by western governments towards the possible disintegration of Yugoslavia. Prior to the Slovenian unilateral action, the European Union and the United States were in agreement that the nation must remain united. This policy soon changed and it became evident that Germany was pressing for the recognition of Slovenia's independence. |
 |
| Slovenian War, checkpoint Slovenia Italy close to Nova Gorica, great numbers of Yugoslav soldiers surrender to the Slovenian army. |
| Germany's determination to grant recognition to Slovenia (and Croatia) was exposed to strong pressure from the United States and faced opposition from France and Great Britain. As to give time to Belgrade in order to subdue Slovenia by military force, the European Union set up a group of jurists called "Badinter Commission". They had to arbitrate disputes and establish "criteria for recognition", which the former Yugoslav Republics would have to meet before independence would be granted. But Germany, without waiting for the outcome of the "Badinter Commission", announced the recognition of Slovenia on December 23, 1991. Then, the members of the European Union decided to recognize Slovenia on January 15, 1992. |
| If this had not happened, Slovenia would have been ground to dust by the Serbian army in the following time. There would have been bloodshed quite likely on a massive scale as it later was in the Balkans. Indeed, Germany was aware of the very serious situation. The main merit for saving Slovenia has to be awarded to its leaders of the time, Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) and in particular Hans Dietrich Genscher, the Foreign Minister (FPD). Slovenian people will not forget the friendly and decisive help of Germany in one of their most critical moments of existence. |
| That Germany stood up against the other members of the European Union and against the United States, who opposed the recognition of Slovenia, was not a simple doing. First, Germany as one of the great and leading European nations stroke down the current practice in international affairs, in sense of which the great nations have ignored the rights of the minor ones. |
| It is true, several states in the world had already recognized independent Slovenia. In spite of this, the image that attracted world attention on this occasion was as follows: Germany on the side of a "province" (Slovenia), and on the other side the European continent. In this position Germany was standing alone. Perhaps it wanted to defy the powerful hand of Washington that gave Belgrade and the Serbian army a carte blanche for intervention and possible massacres in Slovenia. The CIA, it is true, once again delivered to the U.S. Administration an incorrect image of the situation in ex-Yugoslavia. |
| The German standpoint concerning Slovenia, headed by the then German leadership of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, was led by the principle of righteousness, which regretfully is normally supplanted by compromises in international relations. But it was also the merit of the German mass media, that the German public and leadership were aware of the true image of Slovenia. This is, that Slovenians are a separate historical nation and cannot be compared to inhabitants of a Yugoslav "province". Thus, it was a nation in danger of genocide by a possible intervention of the Serbian army. |
 |
| Hans Dietrich Genscher and Helmut Kohl on the EU - summit meeting, in 1991. In the background the sketches of the German flag and the Brandenburg Gate. They did not bend before the pressure, and they forced the European nations to recognize Slovenia. In this way, they saved Slovenians from the attack of the Serbian army. |
| The name Viktor Meier has to be pointed out among journalists, who in the period after the WW2 presented to the German speaking world a correct image of Yugoslavia, i.e., a federation of historical nations (Slovenians, Croats…). For over 30 years he was the correspondent for south-east Europe, who wrote for influential journals like the "Neue Züricher Zeitung" and the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung". In opposition to this, for many decades the majority of foreign journalists were sitting in Belgrade coffee-houses, supplying their papers with "news", which were interposed by so-called "friends" (confidants of the Yugoslav secret service). They did not check out the real situation in Yugoslavia. For them this country was simply a "nation" with a Yugoslav (Serbian) language. |
| The modern German leadership was certainly aware of the facts, that in the past Slovenians were threatened by the great-German expansionism and that they were occupied by Nazi troops in the WW2. But also these circumstances would have been ignored, if they had recognized Slovenia merely as one of the "Yugoslav provinces". In modern times, it is true, Slovenia formally did not exist on the European political scene. For example, Italy, too, occupied Slovenia at the beginning of the WW2. Although, in the critical moment of its existence, it offered decisive opposition to its independence. Said Gianni de Michelis, the Italian Foreign Minister, to the Slovenian representatives openly: "You will never be recognized!" |
| In the same way, Germany could have considered Slovenia's recognition as an insignificant question. |
| The German leadership could have adopted such a standpoint, because the historical image of Slovenians was improperly reflected in numerous German studies and papers, which were preserved from the past. Since the 19th century, such materials had accumulated in many German academic institutions and libraries. And they depict an erroneous image of the Slovenians as well as their supposed insignificance in history. |
| It is about an image of the Slovenian people produced by the German Historical School. According to them, it was the result of "scientific" researches, and in this capacity it is still presented to the wide German public. In fact, it is explained in sense of the great-German ideology, which in the past delivered the basis for cultural, political and later also for military expansionism. Today, the German public is aware of the consequences of the aforesaid expansionism, but their erroneous image about Slovenians has not improved. |
| Let me present some facts to show how the German public still maintains a wrong image of the Slovenian people. For example: When German historians are treating Carantania (the historical Slovenia in present-day Austrian territory), they are still using the term "Alpine Slavs". In this way, they are denying the Slovenian historical and ethnical identity in that period. Moreover, they depict Carantania as a "Bavarian March", and not as a Duchy (State), what in fact Carantania was… |
| Another example: the Kingdom of the Eastern Franks (after 843 AD) is presented as a historical German State and Nation (First Reich). In fact, this kingdom was a confederation of four duchies with Germanic language: Bavaria, Swabia, Francony and Saxony, and also Carantania (Slovenia) and later Bohemia (Czechia) with Slav languages belonged to it. It is true, in the records this kingdom was later called Germania, because the majority of the people spoke German. But this did not mean that it was a German national State. In this historical formation, exactly the opposite as is shown, Slovenians (Carantania) and Czechs (Bohemia) were not considered peoples under the German national domination. |
| The aforesaid image of Slovenians is simply old material which has been copied to the new published studies and works. The writers are not aware or interested in true historical reality. They cover themselves by citing the authors in the footnotes, their works and corresponding pages. It is about a well-known question, which is called "bias" in sociology. Indeed, in order to get away from the stereotypes and the prejudice that is connected, the history of Germany referring to the neighbouring nations still has to be rewritten. |
| Consequently to the above-mentioned facts, a discordant historical image of Slovenians is still prevailing in modern Germany. Therefore, one has to ask the question, why Kohl and Genscher were not influenced by it? By this image the insignificance of recognizing Slovenia was straightforward suggesting. - It was, as it seems, their spontaneous comprehension that justice must be done. Indeed, in such a complex situation their handling was admirable. They took measures in sense of visioning a Europe of Nations, and not a Europe of great powers. |
| Nevertheless, in spite of the steps taken by them and the European idea, which today pervades Germany, the ancient image of the Slovenians (and Slavs) is still alive. It continues to be an ideological mortgage, which in future will still disturb the coexistence in Middle Europe. |
| The Slav ideological propaganda, it is true, continues to present Slovenians as victims of a historical Germanizing. This should have been carried out by the political and social structures of the entire German speaking area. Anyway, in Middle Europe the gradual diffusion of theGerman language for several centuries was rather spontaneous. The role that the German language played can be compared with that of the present-day English. The planned diffusion of German, i.e., the very Germanizing began to be promoted as early as in the 19th century. Until then, the relations between the Slovenian and German-speaking people were friendly. |
| The modern Germany does not deny the responsibility for German expansionism and militarism of the 19th and 20th century. With reference to the Slovenians, it is about their negative image, which continues to burden, like an ideological mortgage, the present-day friendly German - Slovenian relations. This image, it is true, is often misused by foreign political circles, who oppose the coexistence and friendship among nations of Middle Europe. |
| I think, many elements of this negative image could be removed. A simple action concerning the publication of several suitable works, in which the ancient "scientific" stereotypes would have been submitted to a critical revision, would do the job. In this connection I would like to draw the attention to some stereotypes, and at the same time I want to point out the another image of Germany. At the same time, this shall be a contribution to the very image of Central Europe. |
| The aforesaid historical image of Germany is not hidden. It reflects from historical records, books etc., which are treating the life, social and cultural traditions, the diligence, generosity, and hospitality of the German people and its cultural class… This image, it is true, has to be taken into consideration, too. In this way, the propagandistic presentation of the German historical "yoke" over the Slovenians and other peoples would certainly be confuted. |
| Thus considering this, we must go back in time in the early Middle Ages. We find out, that in 743 AD the Bavarian army helped the Slovenians of Carantania against the Avars, whose cavalry would have destroyed Carantania. In this case, the Slovenian people would have disappeared very probably … In the 16th century during the Reformation period members of the Protestant Slovenian nobility found shelter in Germany. There operated also Primož Trubar, the most important Slovenian reformer. The Slovenian Bible was printed in Wittenberg in 1584, and other Protestant liturgical books in Slovenian language followed. |
| In 1871 the German countries united, and then the great-German idea was lanced by the Bismarck regime. In that time, the German people and cultural class were not pervaded of it. They had no prejudice towards Slovenians. In 1877, for example, a poem was published in Leipzig, written by Rudolph Baumbach (1840 - 1905). It bore the Slovenian title Zlatorog (Goldenhorn) and presented a saga from the Julian Alps (Slovenia). The poem became a best seller in the German cultural world. Until the middle of the 30s of the 20th century, 110.000 exemplars were already published. Three German composers set Zlatorog into opera… |
| In 119th century Anton Ažbe (1862 - 1905), a Slovenian painter, maintained an important artistic school in Munich … In Trieste, the poetical mountain describer Julius Kugy (1858 - 1944), published a series of works in German language, which depict the Slovenians Alps. Most of them were published in Munich… In the 30s, the first Slovenian movie star, Ita Rina (Ida Kravanja, 1905 - 1979), started her carrier in Berlin... The Slovenian couple, Pia (*1908) and Pino Mlakar (*1907) have been on the top list of choreography and ballet arts in Germany… In the years after WW1, the Slovenian engineer Herman Potocnik, a pioneer in space travel, found understanding for his studies within the circle that surrounded Hermann Oberth in Berlin. In Vienna, where he lived, his ideas were considered extreme fantastic. And so on… This is another image, which must also be taken into consideration concerning the German Slovenian relationship. |
 |
| The position of Germany and Slovenia in Middle Europe and in Europe |
| Similar facts can very probably be found in Germany's relations with many other nations. In today's democratic Germany, it is true, one can also meet nostalgic persons, who remember the "glorious" and "triumphal" national past. Anyway, the true image of Germans is the one that has been witnessed by Kohl and Genscher. |
| Germany is the greater nation of the Middle Europe. Its central position gives it a corresponding weight in Europe, i.e., the relations between East and West and between North and South. It seems that modern Germany is aware of its new role. |
| With regards to Central Europe, it is true, Germany is still performing a key role. It is trying to do its best, as we saw in the above question of Slovenia's international recognition. Could the German Slovenian relationship serve as an example for a more authentic common Europe, than it has been testified until now? |
| Further Reading: |
|
Viktor Meier: Jugoslawiens Erben. Die neuen Staaten und die Politik des Westens, München 2001 | |
|
Jožko Šavli: Slovenia, discovering of a European Nation (Humar Publishing), Nova Gorica 2004 | |
| (cf: article: The aftermath of war in Slovenia, article: The CIA misjudged the situation) |
|
| Life and death on Slovenia's forgotten front |
 |
| Last Updated: 12:01am BST 20/10/2007 |
| Ninety years ago, the young men of two armies met above the Soca River in Slovenia. That bloody campaign echoes in the mountains today, says Christopher Somerville. |
| In pictures: Slovenia's forgotten front |
|
||||||||||
| Cyclamen were glowing pink under the beech trees on Mengore Hill in the mild Slovenian autumn air. But even their beauty, and that of the Soca River seen winding in milky turquoise bends between the mountains of the Julian Alps, could not soften the chill that went through me at first sight of the gun caverns. |
|
||||||||||||||
| Their naked rock mouths, opening like black wounds in the flanks of Mengore, had not healed at all in the 90 years since the horrific fighting of the First World War, when they belched smoke, flame and bullets again and again down the steep slopes of this hill. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| "The Italians were up there on the Kolovrat ridge," remarked Edward Granville of Upland Escapes, pointing west to a long green mountain back. "When the fighting started in earnest in 1915 they selected their crack troops, their bersaglieri and alpini mountain fighters, to attack the Austro-Hungarians. But after a year or so they were using pretty much anyone who could be made to go over the top. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
| There were 11 major Italian offensives on the Soca Front - the Isonzo Front, as the Italians called it - trying to break eastward into Austria, but they never did get through." Edward gestured down the slope. "You can see why." The cause of the Italians' failure to take Mengore Hill was all too obvious. The hill is only a pimple compared with the majestic mountains round about. |
|
|||||||||
| But its slopes rise at an angle of 1:2 - in places, far steeper than that. A heavy-laden infantryman with a rifle to encumber him, a frightened young conscript already demoralised by one bloody repulse after another, outlined against snow or pale grass as he stumbled upwards among the decomposing corpses of previous assaults, made an easy target for an experienced machine gunner or sniper securely ensconced in a solid rock cavern high above. Mengore Hill, and the other hills and mountains around it, were like the battlefield of the Somme tilted at 45 degrees. The advantage was all with the dug-in defenders. |
|
|||||||||
| Upland Escapes specialises in walking holidays in carefully selected areas that other organisations don't frequent. Generally these settings lack such ferocious and poignant history. The company's Slovenian tour, however, goes right to the heart of the Alpine region contested so bitterly between the Allied forces, represented here by Italy, and the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. |
| In this 90th anniversary year of the last and greatest of the Soca Front battles, Edward had come out to Slovenia to guide me through a stunningly beautiful mountainous landscape, where over 29 months, and on a front less than 50 miles long, more than a million Italians and nearly 700,000 of their opponents - Austrians, Bosnians, Poles, Hungarians and Germans - died or were mutilated for life. |
| What these enormous armies were doing, entrenched opposite each other along the Soca River mountains only a few hundred feet apart, exactly mirrored the positions of their respective Allies 1,000 miles away on the Western Front in Flanders. |
|
||||||||||||
| The Italian commander, the stubborn and autocratic General Luigi Cadorna, convinced himself after each catastrophic repulse that the next strong push, if determined enough, would achieve a complete and decisive eastward breakthrough - a "stroll to Vienna" - and victory. The Austro-Hungarian troops held most of the vital high ground and were determined to prevent that breakthrough, while awaiting their own chance to advance westward into the Friulian plain of northern Italy. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| The stalemate produced a campaign as bloody and terrible as that on the Western Front, but one which - apart from Ernest Hemingway 's classic and romantic account of it in A Farewell to Arms - has remained all but unknown outside Italy, Austria and Slovenia. |
| By another row of defensive tunnels beside the path up Mengore Hill, Edward and I found a noticeboard with two faded black-and-white First World War photographs of this same location. The soldiers have built wooden "houses" out from the stark rock of the tunnel mouths; they have knocked up rough benches and tables where they sit amid wild flowers trained up into a tiny garden - touching efforts by lonely men separated from their families to bring a touch of the domestic and familiar into a place of filth, noise and death. |
| At the top of the hill we came to a chapel. From here Edward pointed out the mountain ridge where a young Erwin Rommel (later to become the famed and feared "Desert Fox" of the Second World War) won the coveted Blue Max decoration, storming the hilltop during the Austro-Hungarians' one great victorious offensive of October 1917. |
|
|||||||||||||
| Before that military triumph broke the stalemate on the Soca, General Cadorna (who never came nearer the front than Udine, nearly 50 miles away) drove and punished his troops with threats, demotions and executions to undertake 11 fruitless and fatal assaults on the impregnable Austro-Hungarian line. I saw more of these fortifications on another climb, this time up the domed hill of Humcic in the northern sector of the line. |
|
||||||||||||
| Here in the damp beech woods and autumn crocuses, the black mouths of the gun caves and their connecting tunnels yawned in the impossibly steep slope of a hill where thousands died. |
| My three-night stay was based at the farm of Vinko and Irena Kranjc in the upland hamlet of Kosec, under the 7,400ft peak of Krn, the highest mountain of the region. Everything you eat and drink is produced by the Kranjc family from their bursting orchards and lush green pastures. Near this homely paradise two contrasting museums filled out the Soca Front picture. |
|
||||||||||||||||
| In the neighbouring village of Drenica, Mirko Kurincic has spent 40 years filling his attic with items collected from the battlefields. Displayed here in profusion are helmets with bulletholes, spoons and forks, homemade snow shoes, shell caps, diaries discovered under rocks, propaganda postcards ("Is your girl getting off with a spiv back home while you're dying on the Isonzo?"), and chest and groin protectors crudely forged of cast iron. |
| But the best way to understand the terror and futility of the battlefield is by climbing above it. |
| Very different is the immaculately organised, award-winning museum in the nearby town of Kobarid. A huge scale model of the entire region helps you appreciate the relative positions of the combatant armies. |
| But it is the contemporary photographs that leave you stunned and silent - Italian corpses contorted by gas attack, zigzag lines of soldiers toiling up snowy slopes, a field hanging of a "coward", bodies stacked like firewood, faces blown apart and crudely reconstructed, a naked man under the knives of bloodied surgeons while a general looks on with a smile of polite inquiry. |
| Kobarid is known to Italians as Caporetto, a name synonymous with disaster. The two museums furnish facts, figures and images of what happened on October 24, 1917 when the Austro-Hungarians initiated their first and final offensive on the Soca Front. A beautifully restored section of the Italian front-line trenches at Predolina just north of Kobarid gives an idea of the environment in which the young men fought and died. |
| But I only caught the terror and futility of the battlefield when I climbed with Edward high above Predolina on to the crest of the ridge around which the Austrian advance surged towards the north Italian plain. |
| The October 1917 Austro-Hungarian offensive would eventually grind to a halt in northern Italy on the Piave River, more than 100 miles to the west, a stasis that would last until the overall Allied victory in November 1918. The Italian troops high on this knife-edge ridge, however, reeling from the shattering effects of Austrian mines exploding under their trenches, hearing the shouts and screams of battle in the morning mists below, then fleeing headlong down the slopes of Mount Vrsiè to captivity or death in the valleys, knew nothing of the future. |
|
||||||||||||||||
| Staring out across the mountains from the ridge today, it's hard to imagine a more serenely peaceful prospect. But the terrified and half-frozen young men who left behind their fish tins, their helmets, their barbed wire and their boot soles remain ghostly presences. |
| Soca Basics |
| From London Stansted, Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies daily to Trieste and Easyjet (www.easyjet.com) flies to Ljubljana. Hire car and onward route instructions included in Upland Escapes package. Upland Escapes (01367 851111, www.uplandescapes.com) organises flexible, independent holidays in beautiful, unfrequented upland areas. These include group or solo walks and cycle rides, guided or self-guided, from easy to challenging. |
| In Slovenia it has a choice of 20 self-guided walks, five escorted walks and four cycle routes, several featuring Soca Front sites. Breaks cost from £615 per week, including hire car, escort/guide, local b & b accommodation, packed lunch, maps and guidebook. Three-night minimum stay. |
| # Other destinations include Italy (Abruzzo region), France (Alpes-Maritimes and Pyrenees) and the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria) |
| Pot Miru, the Walk of Peace, is a waymarked walking trail along the Soca Front. A leaflet guide is available from Pot Miru information centre in Kobarid (0038 6 5389 0167, www.potimiruvposocju.si). |
|
| Home on the Hill |
| Slovenian shrine on Eltham, Australia |
| Helena Leber, Melbourne, Australia |
| (Rodna Gruda No. 10, October 1994) |
| "We are going tonight." Four short, firmly spoken words that changed my life. |
| It seems forever since the moonless night that saw so many of us leave our land of birth. Almost forty years have passed since we escaped without farewells, silently, sadly searching for a new land and freedom. Some of us were lucky, being able to trust our close ones with a last embrace. Others left with heavy hearts, whispering their lonely good-byes into the evening wind. |
| I hurried home from potato picking in the fields, desperately trying to act as if nothing was happening. Yet, in a matter of hours, I was to leave the only home I had ever known. Mentally caressing everything and everyone so dear to me, I managed to fill the hours until nightfall, sharing the heavy secret with no-one. As I clambered out of my bedroom window, my self-control slipped and nervous sobs broke through. I could stifle them no longer. |
| Suddenly, from the shadows of the old barn stepped the darkly clad figure of my mother. Her usually weary posture was almost upright, as if trying to give me courage and strength. With a trembling hand she passed me a small bundle. |
| "Lenka, some photos. Some bread." How could she have known? |
| I quickly sipped them in my little homemade wooden suitcase. |
| Then, she gripped my arm painfully, "Lenka…". She tried again, "…" and she released me and turned towards the house, her body once again hunched and weighed down with the agonizing pressure of this tragic parting. I was only seventeen years old. |
| Sensing her prayer of love and guidance, I quickly broke away and moved through the darkness, vanishing into the night. |
| Knowing that time was passing fast, I tried to dart from one shadow to the next, worrying all the time about mother. |
| She should be all right. The last potatoes were picked only today. Cabbages are in the cellar with lard from the pig. The bullocks brought wood in last week. That should see her through until the snow melts. |
| By now the village was behind me. From the slight rise in the land, I turned back to catch a final glimpse of the world I was leaving. Slovenija, land of my birth. How I love you. A paradise, But history tells a different story. I must leave you. |
| My tears filled eyes swept over the glorious rolling hills as I imagined the lush green pines and oak forest standing tall in the black of night. For a moment I almost heard the cascade of water from melting snow, rushing towards the emerald depths of the Adriatic. I knew I must hurry on. The sacrifice of war had not brought the promised freedom and peace. Heroes kept dying long after it was over. The might of Government was overpowering and I must break out to survive and live. |
| As I passed the gray cemetery walls, I thought of my father and little brothers. I saw the flickering candles on their graves. The flames beckoned me. |
| "Goodbye", I whispered, at their resting-place. You are safe in the shade of the Linden and the Oak. Perhaps I will return to you one day. "Goodbye." |
| The fragrance of the carnations laid on their graves lingered in the air of that warm, tense autumn night. |
| I stole away, an uneasy feeling of impending disaster weighing on my mind. The whole escape was planned and carried out in total secrecy. Yet, why this haunting anxiety? It was a relief to find the other five waiting for me. |
| "Let's go. The guards change at twelve." Stanko whispered, as he moved nervously towards the ravine. |
| Clutching our miserable possessions which were not much more than a change of clothing and a photograph or two, we reluctantly left the valley. |
| "Psst. Lie down quietly here and wait for the change of the patrol. Then, make your move." These were the last whispered instructions Stanko gave us as he stretched out his hand to collect our payment. Then he was gone! Nothing more said. No handshake or wish for good luck. How strange it was. |
| "Now!" Someone said urgently, and the stampede began. Pulses raced almost to exploding point. |
| Suddenly a harsh voice broke through the night. |
| "Stop, or I'll shoot!" |
| It was impossible to stop. The shame to our families and the inevitable imprisonment would be unbearable. So, we ran ahead, knowing someone had talked. We'd been betrayed. |
| "God give us wings to make it across." I prayed as a volley of shots rang out. |
| Someone fell and his scream came at the same time as Kristina's "Oh no! Branko. Oh no!" |
| She bent to embrace her bleeding lover, but he gasped, "Go! Go! Run. You must run!" |
| Somehow we made it across the border alive. Exhilaration of achievement and the great loss of Branko confused our feelings. Gone was the place we'd all called home, our close ones, and now Branko. |
| Mentally and physically exhausted, we gathered around Kristina in an attempt to comfort her, and one another. She was oblivious to it all, sitting in an embryo-like position, rocking back and forth, repeatedly crying "no, no." |
| Frank's sudden slap to her face brought her back to reality. "For your unborn child's sake", you must be strong. You must keep your tears for later. We will look after you. |
| An eerie silence embraced us. In the darkness we tried to find our bearings. The sun was about to shine on our new world. Italy or Austria, it did not matter which direction we chose now. There was no going back. We turned to have a last lingering look at our beautiful valley as Frank stepped forward. |
| "Let's go. We need to find a police station." He urged us on. |
| Strange, frightening, uncertain days followed. Life was only just bearable in the refugee camp. We were now officially displaced persons. Days were spent in waiting. Oh, how we waited. We waited for everything. We waited for showers, meals, toilets, and especially, we waited for news from home. Sometimes a newcomer brought news, but it was always the same. Interrogations, arrests, and even murders were continuing, and escalating, due to our escape. Word of Stanko's arrest came as no surprise. |
| Days passed. We heard unimaginable stories of different countries, far over the sea. America and Argentina were taking displaced persons, but the most hopeful and exciting stories came from Canada and Australia. Strong manual labour was needed, so extensive physical examinations took place. When selections were made, we felt like cattle, in yards at the market. Frank was sent to Canada. The rest of us were required to undergo a second medical. By now we didn't care where we were sent. |
| "Fit to travel. Australia". Magic words which released fifteen hundred of us to the train and then on to the ship. At last! |
| We squashed thirty to a cabin, in triple-decker bunks in the bowels of the huge liner. |
| Packed in like sardines. This was hell to many who had never traveled before and who had always lived in open countryside. The overpowering stench of people, the kitchen and the engine room, will never be forgotten. |
| Seasickness affected everyone and "feeding the fish" was a common occurrence. Card games and the odd shipboard intrigue and romance broke the monotony and filled our days. The crew held evacuation drills, but we dehydrated passengers didn't care much about survival at that stage. Crossing the Equator was our one fun filled highlight. We created costumes from our meager possessions with huge imagination and spirit. |
| Occasionally a false alarm was raised as seagulls followed the ship and our hopes of sighting land rose. Finally, after a long thirty days, the shores of Western Australia appeared. It is a wonder the ship didn't list over with the excitement of everyone clamouring to see land. There were tears and embraces all around. Some lucky souls left the ship at Fremantle, looking very bedraggled and pathetic beside the uniformed officials who escorted them to yet another camp. |
| Then it was our turn to disembark, at Melbourne. We tottered unsteadily down the ramp, onto a bus, finally to rest at Bonegilla, four hours later. The tin sheds, the unaccustomed heat, the language barrier, were a shock. Flies were everywhere. We joked that the flies were worse than the militia back home, always on our backs. Worse than all this was the homesickness. We longed for some privacy, a place of our own. We dreamed of green mountains with cool fresh water. |
| Soon after arrival, we were each given ten pounds and fourteen shillings. For some this money meant the beginning of a fortune. For others, it was too precious to pay with. We didn't want to change that ten pound note, even for a taste of pineapple, which we badly wanted to experience. |
| We soon learned that our qualifications and degrees would not be recognized. The embarrassment of this was taken care of by a camp saying. |
| "New shovels for the educated Reffos, old ones for the rest." |
| Local farmers came, looked us over, called us "Mate" and loaded the men onto the back of their utes (trucks), together with the sheepdogs. The first steps in our new life were taken. A little was earned, a lot was learned. |
| The women waited all day for the men to return from work and their excited cries of "how was it? What did you see? What did you do?" echoed around the tine sheds. |
| We clamoured for information on our new land. Tedious chores in the camp filled our long dreary days. Kitchen duties were the least popular because of the sickening smell of boiled mutton, which spoiled our enjoyment of Australian lamb forever. The birth of Kristina's baby boy was a wonderful highlight. Our first real little Australian. He had many willing mothers and his beauty and gentle nature eased the pain for many of us. Some women, including Kristina, were taken to Melbourne to live with families as home help or factory hands in the textile industry. |
| Finally, we each made our way into Australian life. Frugal living paid off. A house was purchased by one couple and many of us moved in, each family taking over one room. New arrivals were always an excuse to celebrate. Without cars or telephones, somhow we arranged huge dances in large halls so we could all be together once more and swap news of the old home and the new. Many tears fell as bad news from Slovenija was passed on. |
| Women were mobbed at these dances. They were out numbered five to one by the men. The stampede for each dance was a terrifying experience. Many romances blossomed and Kristina's life began again when she found a new loving father for her darling little Marko. |
| Understandably, our inability to integrate made us shy away from local people. As time passed many dreams became realities and a community was established. We worked hard and planned for a permanent place for our gathering. We dreamed of the hills we had left and desperately searched for peaceful places for our souls and comfort for our restless minds. Maps were studied. Money was collected and finally, a deposit was paid on our first place on Australian soil. |
| Now, we have achieved most of our dreams. We have established ourselves in many areas, the most wonderful of these being a creek and a hill. A place to plant our Linden trees - a reminder to us of what we left behind. We planted our own forest of pines which flourished. The Linden trees are having as much trouble settling into Australia as we had. Many have not survived. But we persevere, and more will be planted beside the majestic gum trees at our new home on the hill in Eltham. |
|
| Balkanization could split Belgium |
 |
| Neil Clark, October 01, 2007 |
| Carantha's comment: |
| IT'S given us waffles, the saxophone and the bittersweet ballads of Jacques Brel. Not to mention comic book adventurer Tintin, ace sleuth Hercules Poirot and 400 varieties of some of the best beers in the world. But after 177 years of history, Belgium is facing the biggest threat to its existence since the tanks of the Wehrmacht rolled over its borders in May 1940. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Three months after a general election, the country is in paralysis and still without a government. The elections brought to an end an eight-year period of socialist-liberal rule, with the right-wing Flemish Christian Democrat-Flemish nationalist alliance emerging as the largest parliamentary grouping but without an overall majority. The Flemish nationalists' ambitions are clear: they want independence for the Flanders region from Belgium. The francophone parties refuse to co-operate with parties who demand greater autonomy for Flanders. |
| If Belgium's Flemish and French-speaking areas do go their own way and the country disappears from the map, it will be a sad moment in modern European history. It's easy - and in some circles almost compulsory - to talk condescendingly about Belgium (usually along the line of "what famous people has Belgium produced?"). But the truth is, the small, densely populated kingdom has much to be proud of. |
| A rule-of-law democracy, Belgium has lived in peace with its neighbours and in the post-war period has played a constructive role in European affairs, being a founder member of the European Coal and Steel Community, which evolved into the European Economic Community in 1957. Despite its linguistic divisions, Belgium works: over the past half-century there have been far worse places in the world in which to live. |
| But as worrying as these developments are, the problems facing the country are not unique. The great European paradox is that as the countries of the Continent, under the aegis of the EU, are brought closer together, so separatist movements within countries are gaining ground. |
|
||||||||||||
| In Britain, the Scottish National Party recently won power in elections for the Scottish Assembly, set up by the Blair government in 1997. SNP leader Alex Salmond has formally launched draft legislation that would give Scots the chance to vote in a 2010 referendum of whether to break away from Britain. - "We in the Government believe that independence would be the best for our country," Salmond has said. |
| In Spain, the right of self-determination was asserted by the Basque parliament in 2002 and 2006, while in June the Basque terrorist organisation ETA, blamed for 800 deaths since 1968, officially announced the end of a ceasefire that had been in place since March of the year before. |
| And, of course, in the Balkans, the region where the separatist fever presently sweeping the Continent began in the 1990s, there's Kosovo, probably the most problematic case of them all. In Kosovo what is at stake is not just the futures of the province's Albanian, Serb and other ethnic minorities, but the battle for regional hegemony between the US and Russia. |
 |
|
Kosovo flag |
| The US wants Kosovo to be independent, confident that the new Albanian-dominated state would be a strong ally. Russia wants the province to remain part of Serbia, a country with which it has strong historical ties. And as in Belgium, the parties to the dispute are locked in stalemate. |
| Some would say the EU's unifying agenda has contributed, inadvertently, to the rise in the popularity of separatist movements. The deflationary economic measures adopted by member states in the 1990s to prepare for the introduction of the euro plunged many European countries into recession. In order to reduce their budget deficits to meet the so-called Maastricht criteria, countries reduced government support to industry and unemployment rocketed. |
| In Belgium, this hit the French-speaking south, where most of the country's heavy industry was based, particularly hard. The greater relative prosperity of the north has fuelled Flemish demands for independence: why should wealthy Flanders have to pay higher taxes to subsidise unemployed workers in Wallonias, or so the argument goes. |
| Second, the fact that countries can find a ready-made home in the EU makes independence much more attractive than might otherwise be the case. Europe's separatists may be nationalists, but their nationalism doesn't extend to opposing joining a body to which they must hand over much of their newly won sovereignty. The EU (or the EC, as it was then called), played a not insignificant role in the break-up of Yugoslavia, by prematurely recognising the breakaway republics of Slovenia and Croatia. If Slovenia and Croatia could cede, then why not Bosnia and Macedonia? |
 |
|
Macedonia flag |
| As the Balkans showed, the trouble with the separatist bug is that, like all bugs, it's highly contagious. If Kosovo is allowed to divorce from Serbia, why can't the Basques sever their links with Spain? And if Slovakia - a country which, apart from a six-year period during World War II, had no history as a sovereign nation until its independence in 1993 - can have a seat at the UN, then why can't Scotland, which was an independent state until 1707? |
| Moreover, it's a mistake to think that separatist demands will always rest on ethnicity. What will happen if Europe's sizeable and growing Muslim population starts to demand a right to self-determination? The idea is not as far-fetched as it might seem: in Britain there is already a self-styled Muslim parliament, and a recent poll showed that a clear majority of British Muslims want Sharia law introduced in civil cases relating to their own community. |
| In principle, of course, self-determination is a noble idea that all good democrats should approve of. But in practice things aren't so clear-cut. Do we really want a Europe split into scores of different statelets? And what guarantee is there that the newly independent countries won't split into even smaller parts too? No European state is ethnically homogenous, and if the ethnic minorities of every country demand the right to nationhood the Continent could be bogged down in separatist disputes for generations to come. It's a fair bet that many European countries are already wishing the process of fragmentation, begun in the Balkans in 1990s, had never started. |
| (Neil Clark, a regular contributor to The Spectator and The Guardian in Britain, teaches international relations at Oxford Tutorial College in England.) (Pictures and headlines in colour added by Carantha) |
| Carantha's comment: |
| The Australian paper, if our information is correct, is a media partner of the world-wide known Keith Rupert Murdoch. It would be very uncommon for Murdoch's media empire not be under the control of the Masonry, very probably sponsored by the British mother-lodge, which in a zealous way is acting contrary to small nations. This article, which attacks the Flemish community in Belgium, bears witness to this fact. The author, in the sense of Masonic directives, does not mention the discriminating injustice against the Flemish people. If Belgium really splits into two states, it is rather a consequence of discrimination, which has lasted for unmemorable times. |
| The present-day situation in Belgium, he calls “Balkanization” in a negative modulation, and he is basing his article on this, which is certainly ideological and unreal. What concerns the decay of Yugoslavia, he forgot already the great-Serbian hegemonism and violence in order to create from this state a Great Serbia. This was the true reason for the collapse of Yugoslavia. Anyway, Slovenians still remember the BBC broadcast of 1992, in which this institution – under Mason control – blamed Slovenia for the wars in Yugoslavia at that time. Moreover, Slovenians still remember the year 1945, when the Slovenian anti-communist formation withdrew to Carinthia (Austria), which was under British occupation. But the Slovenian formation, ca. 12,000 men, were handed over to Tito’s troops and were massacred in the woods of Kocevski Rog, south of Ljubljana. In this connection, we have proof, that the return of Slovenian anti-communist formations was secretly initiated by the British Masonry, which always has been an ally of the great-Serbian oligarchy. |
| With regards to the Basques, the author only remember “terrorists”, and he forgets their persecutions by the Madrid regime. In 2003, for example, Egunkaria, the only daily in Basque language, was violently suppressed by this regime and its editors were put to trial, because of their alleged support for ETA. It is about disinformation, typical for papers of the Mason media empire. |
| Furthermore, the author criticizes small European nations in their endeavour to gain equal status, and makes big waves (Do we really want a Europe split into scores of different statelets?). But the accuser does not mention discrimination and even persecution, like in the case of the Serbian march on Kosovo Albanians, to which they were exposed. Why? Because with the creation of future gstateletsh the Jewish and Masonic control over Europe would be almost impossible. In this connection, independent Slovenia is for the Masonry the “whipping boy”. It serves as an example for several nations without proper state: Catalonians, Basques, Bretons and not at last the Flemish. Therefore, in one way or another Slovenia should be disabled. The Masonry of the world together with their ally, the great-Serbian oligarchy, would make it into a Serbian march. |
| Another attempt to disable the country would be its integration in an “Euroregion” together with the neighbouring provinces of Friuli (Italy), Carinthia (Austria), Istria (Croatia)… In this way, its independent state status would no longer be an incitement for other small nations in Europe. This plan was entrusted to Riccardo Illy, a Mason member and former mayor of Trieste, now the governor of Friuli. Anyway, for the time being, Slovenia refused Illy’s European “offer”. - Who will win the fight for Europe? The masonry or the human rights, which include, of course, the rights of small nations also? |
|
| Oh, Yugoslavia! How They Long for Your Firm Embrace |
| The New York Times |
| Ljubljana Journal |
| Published: January 30, 2008 |
| DAN BILEFSKY |
 |
| A poster of Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia in its heyday, |
| is among Bostjan Troha’s collection of Yugoslav memorabilia in Slovenia, |
| which is one of the six republics that once made up Yugoslavia. |
| Carantha's comments: |
| LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — This spring, Bostjan Troha and 50 of his friends from across the former Yugoslavia plan to celebrate the official 116th birthday of the former dictator Josip Broz Tito with a pilgrimage in boxy Yugoslav-era Fico cars to Tito’s Croatian birthplace and his marble tomb in Belgrade. |
| To mark the occasion, Mr. Troha has hired a Tito impersonator and dozens of child actors, who will wear Yugoslav partisan berets, wave Yugoslav flags and applaud enthusiastically after the impersonator’s address. The revelers will down shots of Slivovitz, the Serbian national drink, and dance to the lurching melodies of Yugoslav folk music along the 360-mile route. |
| His group of pilgrims will be modest compared with the 20,000 from the former Yugoslavia’s six republics — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and the Republic of Macedonia — who traveled daily to the tomb during Communist times after Tito’s death in 1980. |
| But sociologists here say it reflects a trend across the Balkans they call Yugonostalgia, in which young and old yearn for the past — even an authoritarian one — as they struggle with a legacy of wars, economic hardship and the grim reality of living in small countries the world often seems to have forgotten. |
| “I miss Yugoslavia,” said Mr. Troha, 33, a Slovene entrepreneur, from a warehouse crammed with his collection of Yugoslav memorabilia, including portraits of Tito, vintage sewing machines, Serbian dolls and 50-year-old bottles of Cockta, the Yugoslav Coca-Cola. “We didn’t have anything, but we had everything.” |
| Cultural observers here say nostalgia for Yugoslavia is manifesting itself in different ways. |
| Nearly 5,000 Slovenian youths made a pilgrimage to Belgrade, the former Yugoslavia’s capital and now the capital of Serbia, to celebrate the New Year. Cross-border investment among the former Yugoslavia republics has seldom been higher. The “.yu” Internet domain name remains popular on Web sites. Croats have been discarding ethnic rivalries to vote for Serbian songs during the Eurovision Song Contest. Basketball, a unifying passion in the former Yugoslavia, is played in a league that includes teams from across the region. |
| All the while, Tito’s image is still used to sell everything from computers to beer. |
| In the northern Serbian city of Subotica, one businessman, Blasko Gabric, was so distraught when the name of his former country, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was finally abolished on Feb. 4, 2003, that he decided to build Yugoland, a four-acre Yugoslav theme park, complete with a mini-Adriatic Sea and a model of Mount Triglav, Yugoslavia’s highest peak. He said the number of visitors had recently exploded. |
| “As far as I am concerned, I am still a citizen of Yugoslavia,” he said. “Today, we have democracy and nothing in our pockets.” |
| Here in Slovenia, a prosperous country of two million, Yugonostalgia is all the more surprising because the country this year will celebrate the 17th anniversary of its decision to become the first republic to secede from Yugoslavia. It did not experience the brutal wars of its neighbors, its economy is thriving, it is a member of NATO and it recently became the first formerly Communist country to assume the rotating presidency of the European Union. |
| But Mr. Troha, who will open a Nostalgia Museum with his collection, said Slovenians nevertheless missed belonging to a large multicultural country of 23 million people that everybody knew. |
| Critics of Yugonostalgia — and there are many — say it is driven by a dangerous and anachronistic fringe of crybabies who crave the social safety net of the Communist era and the cult of personality of Tito while ignoring the poverty, the rabid nationalism and 1,000 percent inflation of the 1990s, not to speak of the political repression and the censorship. |
| “I am puzzled by this nostalgia,” said Dimitrij Rupel, Slovenia’s foreign minister. “People say it was not so bad, that socialism was more human. But everyone was egalitarian in the former Yugoslavia because everyone was poor. Yugoslavia was a dictatorship.” |
| For others, however, being Yugonostalgic means going back to a time of multicultural co-existence before Yugoslavia collapsed, before the autocracy of Slobodan Milosevic and before the Balkan wars of the 1990s in which at least 125,000 people died. “Yugonostalgia expresses the pain of a severed limb that is no longer there,” said Ales Debeljak, a prominent Slovene cultural critic. |
| In Velenje, a onetime socialist model town in Slovenia still known by some as “Tito’s Velenje,” a statue of Tito dominates the town square. Vlado Vrbic, a local historian, said Slovenians were Yugonostalgic because even if Tito kept tight control at home, Yugoslavs enjoyed free education and health care, open borders, a job for life, interest-free home loans, generous pensions and, above all, peace. |
| “The Yugoslav passport was the best in the world, and you could travel anywhere,” said Mr. Vrbic, who at 16 hitchhiked from Ljubljana to India. “In the former Yugoslavia, the pension was guaranteed, so you didn’t need to save anything and the workday ended at 2 in the afternoon.” |
| Peter Lovsin, the lead singer of a punk band in the former Yugoslavia, agrees. Mr. Lovsin, who also founded Yugoslavia’s best-selling sex magazine in the late 1980s, argued that Yugonostalgia was an outgrowth of the former Yugoslavia’s heady mix of laziness and relative liberalism. Mr. Lovsin, whose lyrics “Comrades, I don’t believe you” became a subversive anti-Communist anthem in the late 1970s, said the band was never censored. |
| “Slovenia today is more dangerous than Iraq because Slovenia is so depressing,” he said. “In Yugoslavia, people had fun. It was a system for lazy people; if you were good or bad, you still got paid. Now, everything is about money, and this is not good for small people.” |
| Such idealized notions of the past irk historians like Joze Dezman, director of the National Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana, who says they ignore Tito’s role in creating the mess and the carnage that followed. |
| “An abused child tries to rationalize his abuse and get out of the unpleasant reality by romanticizing the past,” Mr. Dezman said. “But no one is calling for the reunification of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia is dead.” |
| Carantha's comment: |
| Evidently, this article is a common media exaggeration, composed of half-truths and half-lies. The 5000 "Slovenian" youths, who spent New Year Day in Belgrade were in fact Serbs, who live in Slovenia. Of course, the number is exaggerated, which is typical for Balkan customs! The enthusiasts for ex-Yugoslavia, which is a camouflage for Great Serbia, are in fact payees of the Serbian secret service. They explicitly are posing for New York Times reporters, in order to demonstrate a Yugonostalgia, which in truth does not exist in Slovenia. |
| It is evident, that behind all this is the Serbian oligarchy linked to the Western Masonry, which controls world-known papers, not at last the NYT. Through carefully worded articles they are trying to influence the good-minded but somewhat naive American public and politicians, that Yugoslavia (Great Serbia) still exists in the mind of Slovenians and in this way direct their political activity. A very low stroke. What a poor manipulation from the side of the well-known NYT! |
| We want to bring to the attention of American people what really happened in Slovenia. Former Yugoslavia robbed their own citizens of land and properties. American people should be aware, that this created a very strong exodus of Slovenians to countries of freedom, (America, Australia, and so on). Why is NYT avoiding to mention the truth? Don't they know, that the dictatorship Yugoslavia has been dismantled, and that most of their republics gained independence? Slovenia was first to celebrate its independence in 1991. Recognition of independence was signed by many countries including the United States of America. Once given with one hand, Slovenia's independence cannot be taken away by world-body with the other hand, neither can it be dismantled for the benefit of Yugoslavia's creation again. Serbians have a chance to be a member of the European Community if they cooperate with the court of Hague and deliver war criminals for trial, like Ratko Mladic. |
| Slovenia celebrated the Day of Independence on the eve of June 25th |
 |
| Prime Minister Janez Janša delivers his speech during the Independence Day celebration |
| PM Janez Janša stressed in his speech that Slovenia achieved under his government great success at home and abroad. This is absolutely true. Never before Slovenia had such an image in the eyes of the international public and world media. At the same time - what Janez Janša could not publicly reveal - are the enemies of Slovenia, which are still plentiful, in particular forces and governments that are controlled by the Masons and linked with Serbia. The general impression was, that Slovenia's President Janez Drnovšek had cancelled his plans to attend the celebrations, because of pressure from the Serbian lobby. He made clear he had made his decision "because of today's spiritual situation" in Slovenia. His purpose was clear: He wanted to discredit Slovenia's Day of Independence in the eyes of the Slovenian nation. |
 |
| Kocevski Rog, June 3, 2007 |
| at the edge of the pit "pod Krenom" |
| Remembrance Ceremony for Kocevski Rog Victims |
| Kocevje, June 5, 2007 |
| This year, like every year, a commemoration in memory of victims of Slovenian anti-communist fighters was held at the edge of the pit "pod Krenom", who were slaughtered by the thousands in the woods of Kocevski Rog and thrown into pits. It was May 1945. At the end of the WW2 they found shelter in Carinthia (Austria), which was under British occupation. In the sense of the agreement, they were returned by the British to Yugoslavia and murdered by Tito's army under Serbian command. This year, the commemorating Mass was celebrated by Andrej Glavan, the new Bishop of Novo mesto. |
| After Mass, Anton Drobnic, the chairman of Nova zaveza, an association responsible for cultivating the memory of anti-communist formations during the WW2, gave a speech. He deeply criticized the previous and present-day President of Slovenia, Milan Kucan and Janez Drnovšek, because of their post-communist standpoints. However, we disagree with his criticism, because this was clearly not the right place and the right time for this kind of "criticism". It was an open provocation, so that the victims, the anti-communist fighters, become the guilty party, and the attacked domobranci become the attackers, the "traitors". In this way, the pro- and anti- polemics should be prolonged beyond all times. Our standpoint is that political polemics do not belong on a memorial held in honour of murdered Slovenians. This is absolutely uncivilised and tasteless. This issue should be discussed at a different time and place. |
|
| Slovenia |
 |
| CIA - The World Factbook |
|
|
| (Some paragraphs only) |
| (Highlights in colour done by Carantha) |
| Our observation: |
| Background: The Slovene lands were part of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria until 1918 when the Slovenes joined the Serbs and Croats in forming a new multinational state, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. After World War II, Slovenia became a republic of the renewed Yugoslavia, which though Communist, distanced itself from Moscow's rule. Dissatisfied with the exercise of power by the majority Serbs, the Slovenes succeeded in establishing their independence in 1991 after a short 10-day war. Historical ties to Western Europe, a strong economy, and a stable democracy have assisted in Slovenia's transformation to a modern state. Slovenia acceded to both NATO and the EU in the spring of 2004. |
| Economy-overview: Slovenia, with its historical ties to Western Europe, enjoys a GDP per capita substantially higher than that of the other transitioning economies of Central Europe. In March 2004, Slovenia became the first transition country to graduate from borrower status to donor partner at the World Bank. Privatization of the economy proceeded at an accelerated pace in 2002-04. Despite lackluster performance in Europe in 2001-04, Slovenia maintained moderate growth. Structural reforms to improve the business environment have allowed for greater foreign participation in Slovenia's economy and have helped to lower unemployment. Further measures to curb inflation are still needed. Corruption and the high degree of coordination between government, business, and central bank policy were issues of concern in the run-up to Slovenia's 1 May 2004 accession to the European Union. In mid-2004 Slovenia agreed to adopt the euro by 2007 and, therefore, must keep its debt levels, budget deficits, interest rates, and inflation levels within the EU's Maastrict criteria. |
| Disputes - international: the Croatia-Slovenia land and maritime boundary agreement, which would have ceded most of Piran Bay and maritime access to Slovenia and several villages to Croatia, remains unratified and in dispute; as a member state that forms part of the EU's external border, Slovenia must implement the strict Schengen border rules to curb illegal migration and commerce through southeastern Europe while encouraging close cross-border ties with Croatia. |
| Illicit drugs: minor transit point for cocaine and Southwest Asian heroin bound for Western Europe, and for precursor chemicals. |
| Our Observation: |
| The fact that the CIA ranked Slovenia among the nations of Western Europe must be considered, in regards to the views adopted until now, as a very progress. Concerning the situation in Slovenia and its relations with the neighbouring countries, like the dispute with Croatia over the border crossings in Istria, one has to mention also the questionable relations with Carinthia (Austria), its neighbour to the north. A Slovenian ethnic minority is living there, whose human rights are being violated continuously. It is bringing a certain political tension to this part of Europe. Besides the economical expansion, which at the present time is directed from Austria toward Slovenia, evidently contains the ancient tendencies of Austrian (German) penetration toward the South. At the same time, the economical expansionism of the Austrian circles is a German linguistic expansionism, too. Thus, in Slovenia, the leading executives of Austrian based companies, are not obligated to speak Slovenian. But they force the Slovenian employees to speak German. The Austrian - German (apparently not violent) economical expansion is directed in particular toward Maribor and the Slovenian part of Styria. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||
| (cf: Alpe Adria - article: Trieste in search for Space) |
|
 |
| La Parenzana, nickname of a defunct narrow gauge railway |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| Dr. Ljubo Sirc - The Last Dissident |
 |
| On March 12, 2006, Dr. Ljubo Sirc appeared as a guest on the popular TV Lublana interview show "Vecerni gost" (Evening guest) with Sandi Colnik. Dr. Sirc (* 1920) is a liberal oriented authority of international fame. We do not know if he is a party member of the LDS (Liberal Democrats of Slovenia). Anyway, when the LDS was defeated again in the last elections in Slovenia, in October 2006, we read somewhere the following commentary: Political analysts mostly agree, that the end of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDS) began at the moment, when the Party could not come to terms about the candidature of the Chairman of the greatest living liberal, Dr. Ljubo Sirc. Who is he? |
| Dr. Ljubo Sirc, born in Kranj, Slovenia (Yugoslavia) in 1920, is a former lecturer on International Economics at the University of St. Andrew's in Glasgow, Scotland. During the WW2 he was active in the resistance movement while, at the same time, obtaining a degree in Law and Economics at the Lublana University in 1943. In 1960 he took a Dr. Ref. Pol. at Fribourg University in Switzerland and then lectured for a year at the University of Dacca, East Bengal. He is now director of the Centre for Research into Communist Economies in London. Here we reproduce an article about him and one of his articles from the world wide known paper: |
 |
| New York, July 9, 2004 |
| The Last Dissident |
| Marcia Christoff Kurapovna |
| With Central and Eastern Europe formally integrated into the European Union and NATO, the moral and political vision of that region's magnificent Cold War dissident generation is assumed to be no longer relevant, or not even welcome. Indeed, the rebellious allure of figures such as Vaclav Havel, the living symbol of a romanticized Western realpolitik, has receded into respectful nostalgia for a hard-won (but underappreciated) battle. |
| So it is no wonder that the Slovenian economist and philosopher Ljubo Sirc feels like he is fighting on alone. Mr. Sirc, who was recently honored as a Commander of the British Empire, is the 84-year-old former Partisan, ex-Communist, death-sentenced inmate and then refugee who became a University of Glasgow professor and wrote the 1989 classic, "Between Hitler and Tito," a brilliant study of the blood-soaked fate of Yugoslavia caught between the 20th century's twin fascisms. More prominently, he is the founder of the London-based Center for Research into Post-Communist Economies," one of the few unapologetically antisocialist, pro-Hayek schools of economists left in Europe. |
| Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr. Sirc has been an indefatigable political writer, commentator and lobbyist focused on setting a dangerously ignored record straight. The West, warns Mr. Sirc, has barely understood the extent to which the legacy of communism lives on politically, economically and legislatively in the former Eastern bloc. |
| While Mr. Sirc is not the first to question the transparency of democratic reform in the region, he may be the most fiercely confrontational. He maintains that the recent governments of Central and Eastern Europe have stridently abandoned promised anti-Communist political reforms -- including the official acknowledgment of individual accountability in postwar Communist-led crimes against humanity. |
| "The transition is in a rut economically as well as politically and it is important to understand what is the cause of this situation," said Mr. Sirc in an interview last year. "Those who are now being exposed [through the work of Mr. Sirc and other investigative writers] scream that anticommunism is worse than communism but they do not explain why it is worse to condemn crimes than to commit crimes." |
| Observing Washington and Brussels celebrating fast-track NATO expansions, EU enlargements and the Milosevic trials, Mr. Sirc argues that the "new democracies" have all but reneged on two particularly crucial sets of legislative and judicial commitments from the early 1990s. The first, "lustration," required the eviction and barring from public office of anyone who formerly worked in high-ranking Communist Party positions. The second, so-called "decommunization" -- along the lines of the "de-Nazification" process in post- World War II Germany -- obligated the public disavowal of crimes against humanity and the restitution of Communist-directed mass confiscations of land. |
| In 1990-1991, a flurry of strongly worded laws appeared around the region calling for such measures. The Czech Republic led the way in initial efforts to expose informants and collaborators and bring citizens face-to-face with their past. A decade later, however, such laws across the region have languished; minimally implemented -- if at all. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, today the second-most powerful party in the Czech Republic, has threatened to use its clout to repeal all lustration laws passed by Prague in 1991. |
| Poland's "Vetting Tribunal," introduced in the mid-1990s to screen political candidates for past crimes, has remained largely inactive. Legislation passed in the Sejm in the early '90s calling for official condemnation of the former Communist Party was deemed "too offensive" in 2000. In 2002, the Sejm passed a law allowing former Communist officials to hold positions in intelligence, counter-intelligence and border protection services, something a 1990 lustration law had banned. |
| In Hungary recently, parliament rejected amendments to a law on background checks which would have allowed people to learn the names of former police informers -- names which are still protected from public view. The majority parliamentary party in Slovenia, the United List of Social Democrats -- the former Communist Party -- is supporting an initiative by the old Communist managerial elite to reverse the liberal-minded 1991 Act on Denationalization which allowed people to seek restitution of private land and companies confiscated under communism. |
| Nor is Brussels so on the ball: The Council of Europe's tough-sounding 1996 resolution "On Measures to Dismantle the Heritage of Former Communist Heritage Systems" has remained an unenforced relic in the dustbin of EU bureaucracy. Meanwhile, U.S. senators and EU parliamentarians court the "ex-Communists" who hold leadership positions in many countries of the region. |
| The prominent presence of former apparatchiks in many of the region's governments should be disconcerting. Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Poland, among others, all have or have had leaders who were once actively involved in the repressive and often fatally brutal Communist Party machinery. Yes, people change and the leaders and governments of these countries were freely elected. But the fact that voters didn't seem to care about their earlier incarnations and past records would seem to prove Mr. Sirc's assertion that the region has not sufficiently confronted the most gruesome aspects of its contemporary historical record. He believes it's a record that should make the West profoundly more cautious. |
| This is where Mr. Sirc's own story comes in. He joined Tito's Partisans as an army officer in 1943. Immediately disgusted by Tito's brutalities, however, he formed a democratic opposition to the communists, cultivating good relations with Western diplomats. In 1947, Mr. Sirc was sentenced to death by Tito's government along with several fellow soldier-dissidents. Mr. Sirc's sentence had been commuted to forced labor when he escaped to Switzerland and then came to England in the spring of 1955. |
| While Mr. Sirc was imprisoned, some of the worst massacres of the postwar period took place at the hands of Tito's Partisans. In May and June 1945, just after the war in Europe ended, the communists slaughtered more than 120,000 Slovenian civilian refugees and retreating Croatian soldiers trapped on the Austria-Slovenian frontier, known as the Bleiburg-Maribor massacre. While the Croatian soldiers had been formally assured that they would be treated according to the rules of the Geneva Convention, the British Eighth Army declined their surrender. Those soldiers and the civilian population trapped at the scene were turned over instead to Tito's butchers in the Slovenian secret police. |
| Since the 1990s, 110 mass-grave sites have been discovered in Slovenian territory believed to be the massacres area (Carantha's observation: untill now over 400 mass-graves). A 2001 report investigating these murders, known as the Pucnik Commission, after opposition democrat Joze Pucnik, was effectively suppressed in the Slovenian parliament and has never been made public. |
| Such obscure chapters of the region's past, Mr. Sirc maintains, must be brought to light as part of communism's depressing catalog of mass murders, and with forceful acknowledgment by New Europe's governments before more talk of "joining the West" continues. That peoples weary of historical violence and political cynicism might want to bury the past is understandable. However, it is neither the tradition, nor in the interest, of the West to let criminal bygones be bygones -- something Central and Eastern Europe must respect culturally and politically. The great legacy of that region's dissident voices is as crucial today as ever, and Ljubo Sirc is playing the most prominent role. Only, he is doing so without the continuing tradition, without the activist generation -- and without the voices. |
| Ms. Kurapovna, a Vienna-based writer on Central and East European affairs, is at work on book about the political history of Eastern Orthodox Europe. |
| THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, July 13, 1999 |
| COMMUNIST ECONOMICS PLAGUE THE BALKANS |
| Ljubo Sirc |
| Director of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies, London |
| Communist economics, not just communist-inspired nationalist wars, have devastated the Balkans. Western leaders should bear this fact in mind as they devise a plan to fund the economic rehabilitation of the whole area now that the war over Kosovo is finished. One of the key provisions of this plan should be to withhold all aid from those economies that are still run by communists. |
| The plans that Western leaders are considering are inspired by runaway success of the American reconstruction aid to Western Europe after World War II under the Marshall Plan. It's not clear yet what shape the new Balkan plan will take. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has been one European leader who has put particular emphasis on the need for economic aid to all of Eastern Europe, and he has some ideas about the Balkans. Other leaders have ideas of their own as well. What's important, though, is that those who devise the plan not succumb to delusions. |
| Socialism's Spell |
| After ten years of economic transition, only an optimist would claim that Eastern Europe's ex-communist countries have done particularly well. Some have only just regained their pre-1989 growth levels. After World War II, initially, Western Europe faced similar stagnation because the governments of the Allied nations, particularly Britain's were under the spell of socialism. West Germany's economic recovery, however, was most remarkable. In 1948, German Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard initiated his free-market reforms and the Witschaftswunder, the famous economic miracle, got underway. The policies adopted by the German liberals were not unlike those introduced in 1989 by reformers in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia or even Hungary. So why did Erhard's changes take root, while success in Eastern Europe remains in doubt? |
| Because there are two basic differences between the reconstruction of post-war Germany and that of post-1989 Eastern Europe. First, the Nazis on the whole did not remove or kill most non-Jewish entrepreneurs. Although the Nazis did interfere with management, business owners remained, and Germany benefited from their business skills. Secondly, there were no Nazis, or former Nazis, in the post-war government led by Konrad Adenauer. |
| In the case of Yugoslavia (Slovenia included) and other East European countries, however, communists, unlike the Nazis, did remove entrepreneurs. No amount of cash can make a difference in a situation in which there is an absence of genuine entrepreneurs and owners, and where totalitarians, even in disguise, dictate the pace of reconstruction. Yugoslavia is a case in point: Stalin expelled Tito from the Soviet socialist camp in 1948. By 1952, Yugoslavia was forced to introduce some aspects of self-management for enterprises and to drop some features of central planning. A quasi-market economy proved better than none at all, and there was indeed some economic improvement. Communist managers, however, remained in many plants. |
| The United States rushed in to help -- not so much to support this new communist experiment, as to encourage a new Yugoslav foreign policy which was deviating from Moscow. Money poured in. From 1952 until 1970 Tito's regime was given about $2 billion present value a year, along with substantial military aid. Everyone was enthusiastic about the great success of the Yugoslav communists. Contributing to this success were the one million Yugoslav guest workers in Western Europe, who sent home another $2 billion a year. In 1970 state aid to Yugoslavia ceased as governments in the West realized that banks, awash with OPEC money, could step into the breach. Yugoslavia had no difficulty in borrowing about $3 billion a year. Western banks began to worry, however, and ceased their lending around 1979. What happened? Within a decade, Yugoslavia saw wages drop by 30%, back to 1967 levels. The number of workers increased, but output stagnated. Much of the borrowed money had been wasted in investments that didn't make sense by communist managers who didn't understand capitalism. The flood of aid and loans had eliminated the need for Yugoslavia to abandon its inefficient system. The enormous influx of capital had done more harm than good. |
| Have Western leaders learned anything from the Yugoslav experience? They have said that Serbia will receive no aid for reconstruction as long as Slobodan Milosevic remains president of Yugoslavia. Yet this decision appears to stem more from a desire to punish than from a sober reflection on the uselessness of providing financial support to countries governed by communists. However, Western powers could guide themselves by two simple rules when considering extending aid for Balkan reconstruction. |
| The first is that "former" communists be removed from government and management posts unless they publicly renounce communist crimes. The main purpose here is not to seek vengeance, but to prevent the return of pernicious ideas and practices. The second is that, wherever possible, property confiscated by communists should be returned to previous owners or their families. This would help reconstitute an independent entrepreneurial layer in society. |
| The restitution of property is a requirement of economic development. Without the revival of entrepreneurship, not much will happen. In many cases, the original owners who were forced to cough up their property in the 1940s will have died. But giving their property back to their descendants has proved a much better solution, where it has been tried, than leaving it in the hands of "former" communists. Most enterprises in Yugoslavia have continued to be managed by communist bureaucrats. And large proportion of property is retained in government hands. This situation ensures that "former" communists maintain a monopoly on wealth, which often translates into a monopoly on political power. |
| Tainted Justice |
| Entrepreneurship will only prosper under the rule of law, but the rule of law depends on the impartiality of judges. These get appointed by political leaders, so, in Yugoslavia, they are tainted, too. It may be advisable, therefore, to introduce Western supervisory judges, just as, by law, the head of the Bosnian central bank must be a foreigner. |
| Finally the Western organizations should be careful to coordinate their various approaches. There is little point in promoting aid with one hand and preventing trade with the other. Slovenia, for example, has been asked to forgo its special trade arrangements with Macedonia and Bosnia in preparation for joining the European Union (just as several other East European candidates to the EU have been asked to sever their free-trade ties with third countries). Yugoslavia will have to be given access to Western European markets if any financial support is to work. |
| The answer for the Balkans, then, is to give aid only where it will be administered by entrepreneurs and free-marketers. The lesson is that the Marshall Plan worked not just because of the money, but because there were people like Adenauer and Erhard around. |
| Our Opinion: |
| We are delighted to hear about Dr. Sirc' professional career and congratulate him on his success in the field of economics, where he achieved international prestige. Concerning the Slovenian question, however, we established that Dr. Sirc was always a fighter for a democratic Yugoslavia, in which he saw the only secure place for Slovenia. After the WW2, several other Slovenians in the free world shared his view, because in the first Yugoslavia they were educated in the Yugoslav idea. So, Slovenia gained its independence without them. If Slovenia would have received full support from these people at the time of independence, then the present-day social and economical situation in Slovenia very likely would have been better. Results of a recent survey show that Slovenia is listed among 30 of the world's most corrupt nations. This is certainly not a Slovenian tradition but rather the consequences of decades of appurtenance to Yugoslavia and the Balkans. And not at least, it is the result of the government of the Liberal Democrats (a Yugoslav and pro-Serbian party). They ruled Slovenia, based on the ancient Yugoslav structures, for 12 years. |
| It seems that Dr. Sirc in his works does not give the proper importance to national consciousness (not nationalism), as one of the most decisive elements in the social and economical development of a nation. Indeed, not only post-Communist structures are hindering the development of one-time Communist nations. The development is also hindered by misguided consciousness and morals, which the Communist regime as well as the Balkan structures and customs have left behind. This is the reason, why we reject the idea of Yugoslavia, which today is dressed-up in new clothes and presented as the West Balkans. (Carantha editors) |
|
|
||||||||||||||
| 18-20 September, 2006: Five members of the parliamentary group of the Slovene-UK friendship, John Austin, Stephen Hepburn, Bob Laxton, Lord Dubs and Lord Woolmer visited Slovenia to meet with their counterparts at the Slovenian Parliament and to follow up on the visit of the Slovenian delegation to the UK, last year. The visit is organised by the Slovene Embassy in London. |
| John Austrin, a member of 16 parliamentary groups and chairman of the group for Slovenia, apologized in his own name for the repatriation of ca. 12,000 Slovenian home-guards from Carinthia (Austria) to Yugoslavia, in 1945. The repatriated were delivered into the hands of Tito's Yugoslav army, transported to the woods of Rog south of Lublana, where they were slaughtered and thrown into pits. Repatriation began on May 15th in Celovec - Klagenfurt (Carithia) with the visit of Harold Macmillan, the then Minister Resident of the Mediterranean. This was not done without the consent of Winston Churchill, he probably carried out his order. |
| Who among the British functionaries was directly responsible for the repatriation? After 30 years, which is the time frame required by law, the archives in London were open to the public, but the order for repatriation was missing, even though it was listed. The only possibility left is to search for those who were interested in the massacre of thousands of Slovenian men and boys? Seen from this point of view, we meet the Unitarian plans of the Yugoslav (Serbian) freemasonry, which collaborated with their British counterparts. The plans were horrible: the annihilation of the larger part of the Slovenian and Croatian male population would make more room for the "Yugoslavs". |
| After the WW2, the Yugoslavization (Serbization) policy continued under Tito's regime. Moreover, it also continued after Slovenia's declaration of independence, when the Liberal and Social Democrats ruled for 12 years. They were Yugoslav oriented parties supported by the underground confidants of the ancient Yugoslav apparatus. The home-guards, in contrast to the partisans, continued to be marked as "traitors", because they fled from communist attacks and massacres and found shelter with the Italian and German occupying forces in Slovenia. |
| Under the Janez Janša government, all those who were fighting for a free Slovenia during the WW2 - TIGRs, partisans and home-guards - were given national recognition. In this connection has to be mentioned the speech made by France Cukjati, chairman of the Slovenian Parliament, in 2006 on Memorial Day at Mt. Nanos. The following day Janez Stanovnik, chairman of the League of Combatants (Zveza borcev), firmly under Serbian control, started to attack the "traitors" again. - Some time ago, Janez Drnovšek, President of Slovenia, gave a royal reception to Alexander Karadjordjevic, the Serbian prince. He came as a guest of the Serbian lobby in Slovenia to show the Slovenian public, who the real master of the country is. - The visit of the British deputies in Slovenia, and in particular the declaration made by John Austin gives hope for a gradual clarification of the historical burden between Great Britain and Slovenia. John Austin's email: austin@parliament.uk |
|
| We reproduce this article, as to refuse the incrimination of both, the partisans and the home-guards, as is carried out by the confidants of the Serbian secret service. Their play is simple: the left part continues to pursue the "traitors" (home-guards), while the right part is after the "communists" (partisans). Their aim is to distract people's attention from the selling out of Slovenian funds and the tremendous plundering of Slovenian capital, which is carried out by the confidants of the ancient Yugoslav (Serbian) apparatus. (Carantha's Observation) |
| Že med drugo svetovno vojno |
| Srbska okupacija Slovenije |
| in srbizacija slovenske narodno-osvobodilne vojske (NOV) in borbe (NOB) |
| Prispevek, ki nam ga je poslal za objavo eden izmed naših sodelavcev, dokaj nazorno prica o tem, da se je srbska okupacija Slovenije zacela med zadnjo vojno. Slovenski ljudje so v NOB in v NOV in v svobodo, ki jim jo bosta porinesli, iskreno verjeli. Toda tisto, kar je bilo v ozadju, jim je bilo prikrito. Tako je še danes, ko si predsednik dobro financirane Zveze borcev, Janez Stanovnik, ter njegov aparat na mnogih bucnih prireditvah vztrajno prizadevata, kako bi prepricala in v slovenski javnosti tudi v prihodnje ohranila „zmagoslavno" (v resnici pa zelo tragicno) podobo slovenske NOV in NOB. (Uredništvo spletne strani Hervardi) |
| Slovenci smo se na svojem ozemlju, kljub vztrajnemu prizadevanju tujih sil, da nas izbrišejo z evropskega zemljevida, ohranili do danes. Naše vztrajanje na lastni zemlji je tudi v svetovnem merilu nekaj edinstvenega. Naša volja do življenja je prišla najbolj do izraza v kriticnih trenutkih, še zlasti v mnogih vojnah, ki so usodno zaznamovale našo zgodovino. Ena najbolj odlocilnih za naše preživetje je bila nedvomno druga svetovna vojna, ko so naše ozemlje zasedle in si ga razdelile tri okupacijske sile: Nemcija, Italija in Madžarska. |
| Nacrti vseh treh okupatorjev so bili jasni: Slovenci naj kot narod izginejo, bodisi z razselitvijo bodisi v internacijah. Svoje nacrte so okupatoirji zaceli izvajati brez odlašanja. Že kmalu je bilo preseljenih nekaj deset tisoc ljudi s Štajerske, ki je je bila pod nemško zasedbo. V Ljublanski pokrajini, ki jo je zasedla Italija, je vojaški poveljnik gen. Robotti pripravljal podoben nacrt. |
| Upor proti okupatorjeu so prvi zaceli primorski tigrovci, pripadniki osvobodilne organizacije Tigr, ki se je že v letih pred drugo vojno borila za osvoboditev Primorske izpod fašisticne Italije. Že kmalu zatem so se tigrovci vkljucili v Osvobodilno Fronto partizanov (OF), to je, v vseslovenski odpor, ki pa ga je nadzorovala in usmerjala komunististicna partija. Prvenstveni cilj partije pa ni bila osvoboditev slovnskega naroda izpod okupatorja, temvec komunisticna revolucija. Z zmago revolucije naj bi se Slovenci vkljucili v komunisticni svet, ki mu je bil na celu Stalin. V komunisticnem svetu naj bi pod vodstvom Tita zaživela tudi komunisticna Jugoslavija in sicer kot zvezna država bratskih južnoslovanskih narodov. |
| V resici pa je bilo ime Jugoslavija, v kateri naj bi veljalo enakopravno sožitje vseh njenih narodov, le krinka za postopno uresnicenje zamisli o "Veliki Srbiji". In res, medtem ko so imeli slovenski partizanski borci pred ocmi edinole osvoboditev svoje domovine izpod okupatorja ter združeno in svobodno Slovenijo, v okviru bratske Jugoslavije, je srbska stran, z vednostjo in sodelovanjem slovenske komunisticne partije, že od vsega zacetka partizanskega osvobodilnega boja izvajala svoje velikosrbske nacrte. Tako je poleg treh omenjenih obstajal med samimi partizani še cetrti, srbski okupator, ki je bil izmed vseh najhujši. |
| Njegov izvršni organ je bila KOS (Kontra obvešcevalna služba), ki je med slovenskimi partizani delovala že od vsega zacetka. Ne bomo pogrešili, ce z njo povežemo že Zdenko Armic - Kidric, ki je od avgusta 1941 dalje vodila "centralno komisijo" VOS (partizanske varnostno obvešcevalne službe). Vrhovni štab jugoslovanske partizanske vojske, povsem v srbskih rokah, je v prvih dneh avgusta 1942 poslal v Tomšicevo brigado svojega cloveka z nalogo, da v njej vzpostavi mrežo kos-ovih zaupnikov. To je bil Ivan Markovic - Ivanov, ki je v brigadi prevzel mesto vodje brigadne obvešcevalne službe. Podobno temu je srbsko kos-ovo vodstvo poslalo svoje ljudi tudi v druge enote slovenske NOV. Tako so Srbi že kaj kmalu razpolagali z dobro organizirano mrežo zaupnikov med slovenskmi partizani, dobivali o njih vse kljucne informacije in jih imeli pod svojim nadzorstvom. |
|
||||||||||||||||
| Do prvega, vidnega posega v strukturo slovenske partizanske vojne je prišlo v novembru 1942, ko je v Slovenijo prišel Arso Jovanovic, nacelnik vrhovnega štaba jugoslovanske parizanske vojske. Pripeljal je s sabo tudi skupino srbskih in crnogorskih oficirjev. Slovencem so rekli, da so prišli kot okrepitev njihove vojske. Dejansko pa so v njej zasedli vrsto kljucnih položajev, s katerih so izrinili slovenske poveljnike. To se je godilo še pred srecanjem Arsa Jovanovica s slovenskim partizanskim vodstvom, ki s prestrukturiranjem, kot so ga bili že izvedli, sploh ni bilo seznanjeno. |
| Arso Jovanovic ni pokazal nikakršnega razumevanja za posebnosti in cilje slovenskega osvobodilnega boja. Nastopal je bahavo in je priznaval le KPJ. Vsled tega je prihajalo do sporov z izvršnim svetom slovenske OF in glavnim štabom NOV. Spori so bili sprva obrobni, kmalu zatem pa dokaj resni. |
| Nesoglasja med Slovenijo in jugoslovanskim vrhovnim štabom so prihajala na dan že na posvetu v Stolicah leta 1941. Na zacetku 1943 je prišlo do novih zapletov z Ivom Lolom Ribarjem, predsednikom jugoslovanskega vrhovnega poveljstva. Leta 1944 je vodstvo slovenske NOV ostro nastopilo proti njegovi zahtevi, naj se slovenska partizanska vojska umakne v Bosno. |
| Iz spodaj navedenih primerov je razvidno, da so Srbi že od leta 1942 pa vse do konca druge vojne prevzemali najbolj pomembna mesta v slovenski partizanski vojski, kjer so slovenske poveljnike odstavljali in prenekatere tudi likvidirali. Takoj po svojem prihodu v Slovenijo je Arso Jovanovic namestil štiri Srbe, ki so delovali v Cankarjevi brigadi, ter s svojim štabom ustanovil prvo operativno cono. |
| Na tem mestu navajam le nekaj primerov, iz katerih je razvidno, kako so Srbi prevzemali v svoje roke poveljevanje v slovenskih parizanskih enotah. Seznam ni popolen, navedeni so le primeri, ki jih je bilo mogoce povzeti iz objavljenega gradiva. |
| 1.) Šaranovic Milovan: komandant prve operativne cone (Dolenjska) od 7. decembra 1942 do 23. maja 1943; nacelnik glavnega štaba od 23. maja 1943 do 30 julija 1943. |
| 2.) Jovanovic Zdravko: nacelnik štaba druge operativne cone (Notranjska ) od ustanovitve 11. decembra 1942 do 3. februarja 1943. |
| 3.) Tonaskovic Rajko: nacelnik štaba Gubceve brigade od 12. januarja 1943 do 30. marca 1943; komandant 15. divizije od sredine avgusta 1943 do 3. oktobra 1943; komandant 7. korpusa od 3. oktobra 1943 do 10. aprila 1944. |
| 4.) Kilibarda Mile: nacelnik štaba 14. divizije od 3. oktobra 1943 do 25. februarja 1944; komandant 4. operativne cone (Štajerska) od 25. februarja 1944 do 23. julija 1944; namestnik komandanta 7. korpusa od 9. septembra 1944 do 3. oktobra 1944; nacelnik štaba 7. korpusa od 10. novembra 1944 do 15. maja 1945. |
| 5.) Dapcevic Milutin: nacelnik štaba 3. operativne cone (Alpska) od novembra 1943 do 22. decembra 1943; nacelnik štaba 9. korpusa od 22. decembra 1943 do 4. marca 1944. |
| 6.) Popivoda Pero: nacelnik štaba Tomšiceve brigade od 2. dec. 1942 do 24 junija 1943; komandant 2. operativne cone (Gorenjska) od 24. junija 1943 do 4. avgusta 1943; nacelnik štaba 14. divizije od septembra 1943 do 3. oktobra 1943; komandant 15. divizije od 3. oktobra 1943 do 17. decembra 1943; komandant 31. divizije od 21. decembra 1943; komandant 7. korpusa od 10. aprila 1944 do3. oktobra 1944, nato poslan v vrhovni štab. |
| 7.) Jevtic Predrag - Dragan: namestnik komandanta Gubceve brigade od 3. novembre 1942 do 12. januarja 1943; komandant 3. bataljona Šercerjeve brigade od marca 1943 do maja 1943; namestnik komandanta 1. operativne cone (Dolenjska) od 23. maja 1943 do 13. julija 1943; komandant 15. divizije od 13. julija 1943 do 30 julija 1943. |
| 8.) Božovic Radomir - Raco: namestnik komandanta 2. bataljona Tomšiceve brigade od decembra1942 do 12. januarja 1943; komandant 2. bataljona Tomšiceve brigade od 12. januarja 1943 do maja 1943; komandant 12. brigade od 24. septembra 1943 do 20. decembra 1943; namestnik komandanta 15. divizije od 20. decembra 1943 do 9. februarja 1944; nacelnik štaba 15. divizije od 9. februarja 1944 do 23 junija 1944; namestnik komandanta 15. divizije od 23. junija 1944 do 9. avgusta 1944. |
| 9.) Ignjatovic Radojica - Grnjica: nacelnik štaba Bazoviške brigade od 1. oktobra 1943 do 22.oktobra 1943; nacelnik štaba 30. divizije od 22. oktobra 1943 do 19. novembra 1943. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 10.) Brajovic Petar - Pero: komandant 2. bat. Gubceve brigade od 20. februarja 1943 do 30.marca 1943; nacelnik štaba Gubceve brigade od 30. marca 1943 do 12. septembra 1943; komandant 15. divizije od 15. septembra 1943 do 3. januarja 1944; komandant 18. divizije od 1. januarja 1944 do 12. januarja 1944; nacelnik štaba 18. divizije od 12. januarja 1944 do 21. marca 1944; komandant 18. divizije od 21. marca 1944 do 23. junija 1944; nacelnik štaba 4. operativne cone (Štajerska) od 23. julija 1944 do 15. maja 1945. |
| 11.) Došenovic Mico: nacelnik štaba 14. divizije od 16. julija 1944 do 15 maja 1945. |
| 12.) Vojnovic Aleksandar - Vojin: nacelnik štaba 18. divizije od 30. novembra 1944 do 10. februarja 1945; namestnik komandanta 15. divizije od 10. februarja 1945 do 15. maja 1945. |
| 13.) Cubric Mile: komandant 2. Bataljona Gubceve brigade od 30. marca 1943 do 25. avgusta 1943; namestnik komandanta Gubceve brigade od 25. avgusta 1943 do 14. septembra 1943; namestnik komandanta 18. divizije od 12. januarja 1944 do 21. marca 1944; nacelnik štaba 18. divizije od 21. marca 1944 do 23. junija 1944; namestnik komandanta 18. divizije od 23. junija 1944 do 26. julija 1944; komandant posebne oficirske šole. |
| 14.) Marjanovic Ratko: namestnik komandanta Gradnikove brigade od 30. novembra 1943 do 15. marca 1944; komandant Bazoviške brigade od 14. septembra l944 do 10. oktobra 1944; komandant Gradnikove brigade od 20. marca 1944 do 18. septembra 1944. |
| 15.) ŠorovicDanilo: komandant Gradnikove brigade od 26. aprila 1943 do 4. novembra 1943. |
| 16.) Vidacic Nikola: nacelnik štaba Bazoviške brigade od 22. oktobra 1943 do 12. novembra 1943; nacelnik štaba 30. divizije od zacetka januarja 1944 do konca, januarja 1944; komandant Bazoviške brigade od 2. julija 1944 do 14. septembra 1944. |
| 17.) Marjanovic Aleksandar - Leko: komandant 2. bataljona Gubceve brigade od 12. januarja 1943 do 20. januarja 1943; namestnik politicnega komisarja 15. divizije od 3. oktobra 1943 do 9. februarja 1944. |
| 18.) Dukic Nikola: nacelnik štaba 30. divizije od 9. marca 1945 do 7. maja 1945. |
| 19.) Vukadinovic Dušan: nacelnik štaba Gradnikove brigade od 2. marca 1945 do 28. marca 1945; komandant Vojkove brigade od 28. marca 1945 do konca vojne; politicni komisar 1. bataljona Gradnikove brigade. |
| 20.) Kneževic Vladimir - Volodja: politicni komisar 2. cete 3. bataljona Tomšiceve brigade - avgusta 1942; politicni komisar 1. bataljona Tomšiceve brigade - marca 1943; komandant l. Soške brigade leta 1943; komandant 17. brigade Simona Gregorcica leta 1943; prvi komandant Novega Mesta. |
| 21.) Jovanovic Svetolik - Mito: namestnik komandanta Gradnikove brigade od 18. septembra 1944 do 20. decembra 1944; bil je spremljevalec Šaranovic Milana. |
| 23.) Popovic Vuko: komandir minersko-sabotažne cete v Goriških Brdih leta 1944. |
| 24.) Srdic Simon: komandant 2. bataljona Prekmurske brigade leta 1945. |
| 25.) Vucinic Djoko: namestnik komandanta 2. bataljona Tomšiceve brigade - maja 1945; bil je tudi v tem štabu. |
| 26.) Radulovic Branko: politicni komisar 2. bataljona Gubceve brigade od 14. julija 1943 do 10. septembra 1943; politicni komisar 3. bataljona Gubceve brigade od 5. septembra 1943 do 22. oktobra 1943 in od 2. januarja 1944 do 12. febbruarja 1944; politicni komisar Gubceve brigade od 12. februarja 1944 do 20. marca 1944; namestnik. politkomisarja Kokrškega bataljona od 16. novembra 1944 do 8. januarja 1945; namestnik komandanta Kokrškega 3. bataljona od 8. januarja 1945 do 26. marca 1945; komandant 3. bataljona Kokrškega odreda od 26. marca 1945 do 12. maja 1945; v NOV je bil že od 15. avgusta 1941. |
| 27.) Kubic Nikola: v Šercerjevo brigado je prišel za bataljonskega in cetnega starešino; bil je gojenec posebne oficirske šole pri vrhovnem štabu NOV in POJ iz Srbije. |
| 28.) Beslac Mirko: isto kot Kubic Nikola. |
| 29.) Dedeic Boško - Pope: komandant 3. bataljona Bazoviške brigade od 2. marca 1944 do 18. marca 1944; namestnik komandanta 3. bataljona Bazoviške brigade od 18. marca 1944 do 10. maja 1944; bil je tudi spremljevalec Šaronovic Milana. |
| 30.) Vukša Jovo: nacelnik štaba 12. brigade od 16. decembra 1943 do 10. januarja 1944. |
| 31.) Perovic Radoje: namestnik komandanta 12. brigade od 26. septembra 1944 do 8. januarja 1945; nacelnik štaba 12. brigade od 8. januarja 1945 do 18. februarja 1945. |
| 32.) Badovinac Ilija: namestnik komandanta Šlandrove brigade od 1. septembra 1943 do 22. septembra 1943; namestnik komandanta 12. brigade od 24. septembra 1943 do 26. novembra 1943. |
| 33.) Alfirevic Petar - Pero: namestnik komisarja Vojkove brigade od 8. januarja 1944 do 9. marca 1944; namestnik komisarja Prešernove brigade od 9. marca 1944 do 20. oktobra 1944. |
| 34.) Karapadža Branko: komandant P |
