Slovenia / Yugoslavia / Second World War

Mass Grave of 700 People Found in Slovenia
By Matthew Day
The Telegraph, September 8, 2010
Photo: "Human skulls and bones at a mass grave discovered in Prevalje, Slovenia." (AP)

"Investigators in Slovenia have found a mass grave containing the remains of 700 people murdered in the weeks that followed the end of the Second World War in Europe. The grave was discovered in a forest in Slovenia close to the Austrian border and is thought to contain Nazi collaborators, around 100 Austrian citizens, and civilians that Yugoslavia's fledgling communist regime deemed as 'class enemies' and a threat. Acting on information given by eyewitnesses investigators unearthed a trench three metres wide and 21 metres long packed with human remains. 'Some were killed kneeling, with hands tied behind their backs, and their bodies revealed traces of gunshot wounds,' said Marko Strovs, head of the Slovenian government's commission for mass graves, but he added that other victims appeared to have been killed with an axe. The scale of the massacre surprised officials, who had originally thought it had involved no more than a hundred victims, and investigators explained that the presence of shoes in the grave indicated that some of the victims were civilians. Eye witnesses said that in May 1945 a convoy of 19 lorries carried the victims into the forest where they were probably killed on the site of what is now the grave. The latest discovery is further evidence of the tremendous bloodletting that engulfed the former Yugoslavia in the weeks and months that followed the German surrender. Josip Tito's victorious communist government sought to eliminate anybody considered a fascist collaborator or a possible opponent of the new regime. Slovenia alone has an estimated 600 mass graves containing the remains of at least 100,000 people.
Despite the profusion of graves bearing testament to the scale of the post-war massacres, Slovenia's left-wing government has faced accusations of trying to stall investigations into crimes committed during the socialist period. Critics maintain that the Social Democrats, which have their political roots in the communist past and are also the largest party in the country's governing coalition, prefer not to investigate Tito-era crimes as it would expose them to adverse publicity."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch.]