Historian Says Maribor Mass Grave Definitely One of Biggest

Ljubljana, 9 August

A historian heading the probing work at a mass grave near Slovenia's second-largest city, Maribor, confirmed reports that it was one of the biggest if not the biggest post-World War II mass grave in Slovenia.

According to Mitja Ferenc, 15,000 bodies is probably a conservative estimate. Ferenc said on Thursday that any estimates about the number of victims of Communist reprisals buried in the disused anti-tank ditch would be pure speculation, although numbers being mentioned now exceed the 15,000 widely circulated in reports on Wednesday.
According to Ferenc, the excavation teams he heads continue probing at the current location in Tezno near Maribor before moving on to the slopes of Pohorje hills, where up to ten new potential locations for mass graves used by Communist deaths squads to dump the bodies of political opponents have been identified.
"All three probes carried out so far have confirmed our hunches. The work will continue at other parts of the ditch all the way to the Maribor water pumping station. As always in such cases, new witnesses are cropping up, providing new information that should help in uncovering what happened in the location of the bomb craters, which were also used to dump the bodies of those executed," said Ferenc.
According to him, the mass grave near Maribor is similar to those elsewhere in Slovenia. The remains of victims are found buried about a metre to a metre and a half under the ground. Asked whether, the mass grave in Maribor also contains the remains of women and children, Ferenc said that the objects found alongside the human remains suggested that those killed were for the most part soldiers.
He added that the probes were being used only for checking the presence of bones rather for more detailed analysis.
Ferenc added that the work on the excavation of the anti-tank ditch had been started in the 1990s but stopped in 1999 due to the wishes of the Slovenian Motorway Company (DARS), which was in a hurry to finish a motorway section there.
However, fresh construction work on the motorway is not expected to hinder the excavation, as the motorway will run alongside the ditch, he added. He said that the excavation efforts headed by the government Commission for Concealed Mass Graves now had sufficient funding to push ahead.
According to him, the authorities have "promised a lot" but "delivered very little over the last 16 years" in this respect. He added that a total of 550 potential locations have been earmarked for probing, with only a minor share actually having been checked so far.
Much work awaits the commission, which is counting on the assistance of the state, Ferenc told the press. He said that completion of the excavation work was important for expressing reverence to the victims.
The Slovenian team is being assisted in the probes by a group of Croatian experts, since the majority of the victims are thought to be Croatians.
Zelimir Kuzatko, head of a Croatian group studying the fate of Croatians who were killed in the Bleiburg massacre after the end of WWII, said the grave probably also contained Montenegrin and Serbian victims, as well as Slovenian and other victims of Communist reprisals.
He said he was convinced that the ditch contained not only the remains of men in uniform, but also women and children and that his estimates suggest that the number of people buried here was well over 15,000.
Kuzatko added that it was "high time" Croatia and Slovenia signed an agreement on cooperation in uncovering and marking mass graves.

Historian Says Maribor Mass Grave Definitely One of Biggest

More articles from this issue:

Archive