55TH ANNIVERSARY OF BLEIBURG TRAGEDY TO BE MARKED SUNDAY

ZAGREB, May 10 (Hina) - The 55th anniversary of the tragedy the Croatian people suffered in Bleiburg field and the Way of the Cross will be marked in the Austrian field on Sunday, May 14. For the first time, homage to the victims will also be paid near Maribor, in Slovenia, where a large number of Croats who had surrendered in Bleiburg field in the spring of 1945 were killed. A solemn mass will be served in the field in memory of the Bleiburg and Way of the Cross victims. Wreaths will be laid by a monument in the field. Croatian parliament vice president Bolta Jalsovec will make an address. The programme also envisages an introductory speech by a representative of the Honorary Bleiburg Platoon. Croatian Deputy Premier Goran Granic will be the government's delegate. The organisers expect more people to attend than in the past, in part due to free transportation by the Croatiabus company. At the end of World War Two, Croatian soldiers, fearing retaliation by the then Yugoslav army, decided to surrender to the English Allies English in Austria. Their families and numerous civilians followed them. However, according to previous arrangements with the partisans, the Allies handed them over to the partisans in the Bleiburg field on 14 and 15 May 1945. According to estimates released in recent years, that exodus included about a half million Croatian soldiers and civilians, of whom many were killed in the field over those two days. In the second half of May 1945, the Yugoslav army returned columns of over 200,000 captured Croats from the Austrian border to the then Yugoslavia. Many of them died of exhaustion or were killed in the long marches, later called the Way of the Cross. In Slovenia, there were more than a hundred execution sites. Executions in the surroundings of Maribor lasted 14 days. (hina) ha jn