MARIBOR, SLOVENIA MARIBOR, July 30 (Hina) - The remains of 1,179 victims, most of whom were Croats executed in the end of World War II, were buried on Friday at the cemetery called "Dobrava " in the Slovene town of Maribor. The
remains were unearthed in Tezno during the construction of a bypass around Maribor this April. Skeletons of mostly Ustashi and Croatian homeguardsmen (WWII Domobrani), killed by Partisans in the wake of the war, were found in a 70-metre section of a three-kilometre-long anti-tank trench. After digging through the former trench's section over which the bypass should be built, Slovenes did not continue with unearthing. Estimates of possible corpses go between 7,000 victims, according some historians, and 40,000 according to the Croatian parliamentary commission for victims in the wake of the war. Exhumed corpses were buried in a recently built charnel house, the construction of which
MARIBOR, July 30 (Hina) - The remains of 1,179 victims, most of whom
were Croats executed in the end of World War II, were buried on
Friday at the cemetery called "Dobrava " in the Slovene town of
Maribor.
The remains were unearthed in Tezno during the construction of a
bypass around Maribor this April.
Skeletons of mostly Ustashi and Croatian homeguardsmen (WWII
Domobrani), killed by Partisans in the wake of the war, were found
in a 70-metre section of a three-kilometre-long anti-tank trench.
After digging through the former trench's section over which the
bypass should be built, Slovenes did not continue with unearthing.
Estimates of possible corpses go between 7,000 victims, according
some historians, and 40,000 according to the Croatian
parliamentary commission for victims in the wake of the war.
Exhumed corpses were buried in a recently built charnel house, the
construction of which was completely financed by Slovenia's Road
Management. The charnel house is behind a monument erected in 1990
to victims killed after May 9 1945.
Paying tribute to those victims, a member of the Sabor's commission
for victims in the wake of war and Croatian MP, Vice Vukojevic,
stressed that "the Maribor station" of Croats' Way of the Cross was
the hardest. Stressing the importance of establishing the truth
about Croats' suffering and about who was a victim and who a
perpetrator of the crime, Vukojevic maintained that Josip Broz Tito
was to be mostly blamed for Croats' plight. Voicing hope that the
truth about Croatian victims would no longer be distorted and used
for everyday politics, Vukojevic said "in Croatia there are still
persons who would like that the real truth remains unrevealed."
On behalf of the Slovene Government, a Vice Premier Marjan Podobnik
said the task of Croatia and Slovenia, that share tragic events from
the joint past, is to bury all victims in a dignified manner and to
mark all sites of suffering of those victims.
The charnel house was consecrated by Roman Catholic Bishop of
Maribor, Franc Kramberger. and dignitaries from the Moslem,
Orthodox and Evangelic religious communities.
Present at Friday's event were about 400 people, including a few
Croatian officials and representatives of the "Hrvatski Domobran"
association and the Croatian association of political prisoners.
(hina) ms