Polajna () is a small settlement in the
Municipality of Zreče
The Municipality of Zreče (; sl, Občina Zreče) is a municipality below the slopes of Pohorje in northeastern Slovenia. Its seat is the town of Zreče. The area is part of the traditional region of Lower Styria, Styria. The municipality is now ...
in northeastern
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 ...
. It lies on the main road from Zreče to
Vitanje
Vitanje (, formerly ''Vitanje trg'', sometimes ''Vitanjski trg'', german: (Markt) Weitenstein) is a small town in northeastern Slovenia. It is the seat of the Municipality of Vitanje. It lies on the Hudinja River north of Celje. The area is part ...
. The area is part of the traditional region of
Styria
Styria (german: Steiermark ; Serbo-Croatian and sl, ; hu, Stájerország) is a state (''Bundesland'') in the southeast of Austria. With an area of , Styria is the second largest state of Austria, after Lower Austria. Styria is bordered to ...
and is now included with the rest of the municipality in the
Savinja Statistical Region
The Savinja Statistical Region ( sl, Savinjska statistična regija) is a statistical region in Slovenia. The largest town in the region is Celje. It is named after the Savinja River. The region is very diverse in natural geography; it mainly com ...
.
History
Polajna was a hamlet of
Stranice until 1998, when it was administratively separated and became a village in its own right. Further territorial adjustment was made between Polajna and the village of
Mala Gora in 2004.
Mass graves
Polajna is the site of two known
mass graves
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 end of the Second World War. They contain the remains of an unknown number of Croatian soldiers and civilians that were disarmed and then murdered at the end of the war. Most of the victims were murdered in the mine, but a smaller group was murdered at the
tailings
In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlie ...
dump. The Polajna Mine Mass Grave ( sl, Grobišče rudnik Polajna), also known as the Hasenbichl Mine Mass Grave (), is located on a slope north of the houses at Polajna no. 10. It is an abandoned mine shaft. The Mine Tailings Mass Grave () is located south of the settlement, from the house at Poljana no. 1.
References
External links
Polajna at Geopedia
Populated places in the Municipality of Zreče
{{Zreče-geo-stub