Barbara Stollen

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Entrance to the Barbara tunnel, 2009

The Barbara studs ( Slovenian Barbara rov , named after Barbara , patron saint of miners) is a mine tunnel next to the village of Huda Jama (municipality Lasko ) in Slovenia , was mined in the 1902-1942 lignite and after the end of World War II to Mass grave was a massacre . By the end of 2009, the remains of several hundred victims had been found. It is believed that the May and June 1945 massacre was perpetrated by Yugoslav partisans. According to the information provided by the Slovenian authorities commissioned with the investigation, there are no final numbers of victims, the course of the crime is unknown and, despite more than 1,000 witnesses interviews, the perpetrators have not been identified. The name Huda Jama , which translated means Bad Cave , is also used as a synonym for the Barbara tunnel.

Mass grave

The site as a mass grave was known to insiders and became a political issue after Slovenia gained independence in 1990.

In the summer of 2008 the tunnel was opened by the Slovenian War Graves Commission because it was believed to have been a mass grave from the Second World War. Since 1992, a parliamentary commission set up on the initiative of the Slovenian dissident Jože Pučnik has been investigating communist crimes, including what was going on in the Barbara tunnel. In 1994, criminal investigations into massacres on Slovenian soil began, including those of the Barbara tunnel. The investigations are still ongoing. So far there are no final numbers of victims, the course of the crime is not known and despite more than 1,000 witness interviews, the perpetrators could not be identified. However, charges were brought against two alleged perpetrators. The first corpses were brought to light in March 2009 after rubble and earth and a five and a half meter thick barrier made of masonry, concrete and clay had been removed over a 100 m length. Because of this hermetic seal, many corpses were mummified .

726 corpses had been recovered from the mine by the beginning of December 2009, but the historian Mitja Ferenc from the University of Ljubljana expects around 2500 corpses in one of two unexplored shafts alone. The corpses of those victims who have already been exhumed have been examined by forensic medicine since 2016 ; afterwards they are to be buried in a memorial in Maribor .

Because the bodies were found naked, it is very difficult to identify them. However, it is likely that these are not all captured soldiers, but civilians as well. Numerous braids, a widespread woman’s hairdress, were found on the skeletons. It is not yet clear how the victims were killed. A large proportion of the mummified bodies do not have gunshot wounds, but some other types of injuries have been found. Therefore, it is believed that many of the victims died from suffocation.

A former partisan testified in 1994 that he had brought domobranzen captured from the Teharje camp to Huda Jama in June 1945 . As with the prisoners, the partisans guards were also Slovenes. Trucks drove several times a day within five days until the tunnel was full.

Political reactions

The Slovenian attorney general Barbara Brezigar visited the grave as the first high representative of the Slovenian state. She described the sight as appalling. Shortly afterwards, the MEP and former Slovenian Prime Minister Lojze Peterle also visited the site, while the Slovenian President Danilo Türk has not yet visited the grave and described the matter as "secondary" when he visited the nearby town of Trbovlje on May 8, 2009. The Slovenian Defense Minister Ljubica Jelušič , on the other hand, was the first representative of the Slovenian government to take a position stating that there could be no excuse for the mass killings after the end of the war.

The Slovenian Partisan Association ( Zveza združenj borcev za vrednote NOB Slovenije , or ZZB NOB for short) distanced itself on March 6, 2009 from the “extrajudicial, illegal and criminal” mass killings after the end of the Second World War. Association chairman Janez Stanovnik said: "The killings were diametrically opposed to the values ​​of the people's liberation struggle."

The Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia Jadranka Kosor visited Huda Jama together with the Croatian Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko on March 9, 2009. On March 10, 2009, the Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader called for a joint Croatian-Slovenian investigation into the mass grave.

The Slovenian historian and museum director Jože Dežman described the Huda Jama massacre as “the worst crime of all time in Slovenian in an article in the Slovenian weekly Demokracija at the beginning of December 2009, which also presented an exhibition on the subject of the Museum of Modern History in Ljubljana Ground". The same statement can also be found on the museum's website.

Web links

Commons : Barbara-Stollen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Karl-Peter Schwarz: The gruesome secret of the partisans , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 87/2009, April 15, 1009, p. 7
  2. ↑ Slovenian Press Agency ( STA  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ), December 7th, 2009: V Hudi Jami danes nadaljujejo z deli [Work continues today in Huda Jama]@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.sta.si  
  3. ↑ Karl-Peter Schwarz: The silence of the "evil pit" is broken. One of the largest mass graves in Slovenia is opened. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 11, 2016, p. 4.
  4. ↑ a b Demokracija, 51/2009: Article Huda Jama - Najhujši zločin vseh časov
  5. ↑ a b Temporary exhibition of the Museum of Modern History of Slovenia: Huda Jama ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.muzej-nz.si
  6. ↑ Kleine Zeitung (online), March 5, 2009: A cruel find in the mine ( Memento from September 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ 24ur.com: V rove so jih zmetali še žive. Roman Leljak vložil ovadbo zoper domnevno odgovorne [They threw them into the shafts while they were still alive. Roman Leljak files criminal charges against allegedly responsible]. March 4, 2009
  8. ↑ Testimony of the former partisan Jakob Ugovšek before the investigative commission in 1994 (PDF; 69 kB)
  9. ↑ Slovenec, May 10, 1994, page 4. (PDF; 381 kB)
  10. ^ Mladina , March 8th, 2009: Za Türka Huda Jama danes drugorazredna tema
  11. ↑ http://24ur.com/novice/slovenija/nismo-rekli-zlocinu-zlocin.html
  12. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.siol.net
  13. ↑ http://www.sta.si/vest.php?s=s&id=1370704
  14. ↑ Kleine Zeitung (online), March 6, 2009: Partisans condemn mass graves in Slovenia ( Memento of May 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ^ Croatia calls for joint investigation of WWII-era mass grave