Kočna () is a settlement in the
Municipality of Jesenice
The Municipality of Jesenice (; sl, Občina Jesenice) is a municipality in northwest Slovenia. The seat of the municipality is the town of Jesenice.
Geography
The municipality lies in the Upper Carniola region, in the Upper Sava Valley. It is b ...
in the
Upper Carniola
Upper Carniola ( sl, Gorenjska; it, Alta Carniola; german: Oberkrain) is a traditional region of Slovenia, the northern mountainous part of the larger Carniola region. The centre of the region is Kranj, while other urban centers include Jeseni ...
region of
Slovenia
Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...
.
Name
''Kočna'' is a relatively common toponym in Slovenia. It is derived from the Slovene common noun ''kočna'' '
cirque
A (; from the Latin word ') is an amphitheatre-like valley formed by glacial erosion. Alternative names for this landform are corrie (from Scottish Gaelic , meaning a pot or cauldron) and (; ). A cirque may also be a similarly shaped landform ...
' and originally refers to a local geographical feature.
Mass grave
Kočna is the site of a
mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...
from the period immediately after the Second World War. The Kočna Mass Grave ( sl, Grobišče Kočna), also known as the Poljane nad Jesenicami Mass Grave (), is located southeast of the settlement, a few dozen meters from a dirt road. It is a visibly sunken area measuring and it contains the remains of up to 40 German prisoners of war murdered on 7 or 10 May 1945. One of the intended victims was able to escape.
Cultural heritage
Excavations in 1982 at the Jamnik Rock Shelter ( sl, Jamnikov spodmol) east of the settlement revealed artifacts from the
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...
era. The finds included a bone harpoon blade.
[Jamnik, Pavel. 1998. "Potek raziskovanja Jamnikovega spodmola na Kočni nad Jesenicami in rezultati sondiranj v okoliških jamah." ''Arheološki vestnik'' 49: 17–30.]
References
External links
Kočna on Geopedia
Populated places in the Municipality of Jesenice
{{Jesenice-geo-stub