Johann Županc

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Johann (Ivan) Županc-Johan (born April 4, 1915 in Ebriach ; † October 14, 1943 in Klagenfurt ) was a Slovene-speaking Austrian resistance fighter against the Nazi regime and founder of the partisan movement in Carinthia .

Life

Johann Županc was the son of the small farmer Georg Županc and Barbara Županc nee. Pegrin born. He became a woodworker, deserted the Wehrmacht in 1939 and, after the Anschluss, went to Ljubljana with Thomas Olip from Zell-Pfarre in September 1939 . Here he was exiled to Serbia like other armed forces deserters , from where he returned to Ljubljana in 1940 and where he lived with other refugees from Carinthia and founded a choir (“Sextet Javornik”), which often performed Carinthian folk songs on the radio. In April 1941 he volunteered for the Yugoslav military, whose collapse he witnessed near Karlovac . In the summer of 1941 he met the Carinthian Slovenian Anton Jelen in Ljubljana, to whom he told that he was going to join the partisans. In June 1941 he went to the partisans, first in Dolenjska, then to the Kokra department in Gorenjska . He soon joined the Kokra Association of Partisans and Communists; he first went to the Šmarna gora to the 2nd Styrian Partisan Battalion and from there back to the Karawanken . In April 1942 he returned to Carinthia with Stane Mrhar as a trained partisan, where they founded the first local committees of the Osvobodilna Fronta as the organizers of the Slovenian liberation struggle in Lobnig, Zell and in the Jauntal and camped on the Strachnitz under the leadership of a certain Crtov. Through relatives and acquaintances, he established connections with nationally conscious and left-wing Slovenes. Franz Weinzierl from Zauchen was one of his close colleagues, and he also worked with his sister Maria in particular. All members of the Žnidar family were partisan activists. Some of them came to the concentration camp or were charged in front of the courts. Janez Male from Zell Winkel reports: “In the forty-two year, May or June, the Županc Janez appeared in our bunker. Maks, my wife's brother, brought him to us; Županc was already fully armed, he had rifles, bombs, everything, and he said to us: 'When our units come here, you will join'. ”But Malle wanted to stay with the“ green cadres ”and not to Osvobodilna Fronta. On May 12, 1942 Ivan took part in the first partisan conference ("Fichtenwaldkonferenz") in Koprein-Petzen, which Prušnik-Gasper describes, who later came to the fore with the Carinthian partisans.

In July 1942, Županc came to the Hlipovcnik bunker in Zell and brought the residents of Crtov's order to come to him and submit to him. But only Maks Kelih and Thomas Olip went. The Zellaner wanted to remain “green cadre”. In the summer of 1941 he met the Carinthian Slovenian Anton Jelen in Ljubljana, to whom he told that he was going to join the partisans. In June 1941 he went to the partisans, first in Dolenjska, then to the Kokra department in Gorenjska. Then he returned to Carinthia; in August 1942 he also became acquainted with Karel Prušnik-Gasper. In a speech he emphasized that the Slovenes must be called upon to resist the resettlement: “Comrades, now it's getting serious. Almost three hundred farmers were resettled and driven from their farms. We have to fight back, we have to unite! We have to do what the communists have always told us: unite and fight together! These are words that Comrade Kordesch said to us again and again years ago. Today we have to recognize how right he, how right the CP has always been in its statements. Comrades, we are not alone. There are already numerous partisans in our mountains. For conspiratorial reasons, I cannot say where they are, they are everywhere and will strike where they meet the enemy. The Allies are with us too. We have been distributing leaflets written by the partisans for months. We must all unite as one to defeat the enemy. Not everyone should go to the forest. We need bases among the population, we need people here who work daily in the population and support us, draw our attention to special actions and particularly vulnerable areas of the enemy. The current beginnings of the resistance must turn into a people's war against the German occupiers. We have to win friends and fighters among the Germans as well as the Slovenian population. Unfortunately, many communists are already in the prisons and concentration camps there, but there are still some on whom we can lean and with whom we can organize the fight. ”On August 11, 1942, he came back to the Zellaner bunker to meet a few people to take with you for use. His sister Maria Olip , who lived in Eisenkappel-Vellach , introduced him to Franz Weinzierl, who collected aid and distributed pamphlets. On August 16, he came back to Zell. In a report dated October 4, 1942, Political Commissar Stane Mrhar wrote: “In the area around Obir, Johan has made contact with people who he knew were nationally conscious Slovenes. ... It was also successful politically, so people are already a little informed about our struggle. As soon as we came to the Eisenkappler area, we formed a committee of the Osvobodilna Fronta ”- a statement that is not undisputed. The report is exaggerated, however, because Županc was not very successful in the Eisenkappel and Petzen areas either. In August and September 1942 he met his brother Miha near his house. On October 7, 1942 he was in the bunker of Thomas Olip with Stane Mrhar and Peter Blaschitz - who was later to reveal the hiding place to the Gestapo .

Discovery and Arrest

The mass arrests began a month later in Eisenkappel, Ebriach and Zell. The entire Johanns family was also sent to prison, Ivan and Mrhar managed to escape at the last moment. In October Ivan went with Franc Pasterk to the Petzen to the partisan section commander. On November 11, 1942, Zupanc and Mrhar came to the Golobkeusche in Eisenkappel, where they almost were arrested by the Gestapo, which had smuggled in two informers. When the Zellaner were arrested on December 1, 1942, a diary of Thomas Olip was found in which Županc was named as a co-conspirator. The Gestapo had been looking for him ever since. In 1942 Županc formed the East Carinthian Partisan Association, which soon comprised around 200 men.

Prušnik-Gasper reports that he said in a speech: “There are also bishops in Klagenfurt; and what's worse, they're Germans and have long since sold us the gentlemen. The political center of the Carinthian Slovenes was the Ordinariat. That's why we're so few. The gentlemen don't care about the Slovenian people. ... The black gentlemen conduct such a policy that the German count could stretch out his arms to almost all farms or Leitgeb, Rosenberg, Voit, Maresch and Lichtenstein could buy them up. Of our guides, only the doctor Petek from Völkermarkt and the former MP Ogris from Ludmannsdorf were upright. Petek, from whom the Slovene poor sought healing, was the only one who saw how the people were vegetating and how the ordinariate was duping them. I went to Petek once. He told me how Blümel, the right-hand man of the ordinariate, threatened him on the occasion of the 1930 elections. Petek wanted to take a different path back then and did not agree that we Slovenes vote for the Christian Social Party, our own gravedigger. Petek remained in the minority in the leadership clique, but not with the people. You can see that today too, after everyone has crawled away. ... The Klagenfurt 'leaders' never preached to us about our rights, always only about our duties. And only in order to destroy our self-confidence. "

He was wounded and captured on October 13, 1943 in Sankt Margareten im Rosental , interrogated in the Klagenfurt hospital and then succumbed to his injuries a day later. During the interrogation, he allegedly admitted to the Gestapo man Sellak that he had been forced to violence in the Eisenkappel area by Prušnik-Gasper under threat of death. Prušnik himself was rather cowardly and only appeared after the houses were occupied. He died in Klagenfurt, where he is also buried. Many of his family members were also interrogated by the police. His brother Miha and his sister Maria were among the thirteen Slovenes who were beheaded on April 29, 1943 in Vienna . Županc is the actual founder of the Osvobodilna Fronta in Carinthia, who tried in vain to win the majority of Slovenes to revolt against the Nazi regime.

literature

• All Slovenes, ed. v. Franc Kattnig, Klagenfurt 1976
• Josef Rausch: The Partisan War in Carinthia in World War II, (= Military History Series 39/40), 1979
• Karel Prušnik-Gašper: Chamois on the avalanche. Der Kärntner Partisanenkampf, 3rd edition, Klagenfurt 1984, 41f, 60–63, 125–126, 151–153, 394–395.
• Einspiel Valentin: Epilogue. From the historian's point of view, in: Ingomar Pust: Titostern over Carinthia 1942–1945.
• Silent Tragedies, Klagenfurt 1984, 248–300
• Search for clues. Narrated story of the Carinthian Slovenes, Vienna 1990
• August Walzl: Against National Socialism. Resistance to Nazi rule in Carinthia, Slovenia and Friuli, Klagenfurt 1994
• Enciklopedija Slovenije 15, 2001
• Valentin Sima: IZ in: Carinthia and the national question, Klagenfurt 2005, 325f.
• Marjan Linasi: Koroški Partizani, Klagenfurt-Ljubljana 2010
• Wilhelm Baum : Županc-Johan Ivan (Janez) in: The book of names. The Victims of National Socialism in Carinthia, ed. v. Wilhelm Baum u. a., Klagenfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-902585-53-0 , pp. 803-806.
• The Diary of Thomas Olip. Like a Caged Bird, ed. v. Wilhelm Baum, Klagenfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-902585-56-1 .
• Wilhelm Baum: The Freisler Trials in Carinthia. Evidence of resistance against the Nazi regime in Carinthia, Klagenfurt 2011, Kitab, ISBN 978-3-902585-77-6 .