The Kočevski Rog massacre was a series of massacres near

Kočevski Rog Kočevski Rog or Kočevje Rog () or simply Rog is a karstified plateau in the Kočevje Highlands above the Črmošnjice Valley in southeastern Slovenia. The plateau is part of the traditional Lower Carniola region of Slovenia and of the Dinaric ...

in late May 1945 in which thousands of members of the Nazi Germany–allied

Slovene Home Guard The Slovene Home Guard (, SD; ) was a Slovenes#World War II and aftermath, Slovene anti-Slovene Partisans, Partisan militia that was founded and supported by the Germans and fought alongside them against the Partisans. It operated during part of ...

were executed, without formal charges or trial, by special units of the

Yugoslav Partisans The Yugoslav Partisans,Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian language, Macedonian, and Slovene language, Slovene: , officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia sh-Latn-Cyrl, Narodnooslobodilačka vojska i partizanski odr ...

; other victims were Croat, Serb and Montenegrin collaborationists as well as much smaller numbers of Italian and German troops.

Events

After the armistice, the British repatriated more than 10,000 Slovene collaborators who had attempted to retreat with the Germans;

Josip Broz Tito Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito ( ; , ), was a Yugoslavia, Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician who served in various positions of national leadership from 1943 unti ...

had most of them massacred at the infamous pits of Kočevje. The killings continued after the war, as Tito's victorious forces took revenge on their perceived enemies. The British forces in Austria turned back tens of thousands of fleeing Yugoslavs. Estimates range from 30,000 to 55,000 killed between spring and autumn 1945. Most of these prisoners of war who were repatriated by the British military authorities from Austria, where they had fled, died in these post-war

summary execution In civil and military jurisprudence, summary execution is the putting to death of a person accused of a crime without the benefit of a free and fair trial. The term results from the legal concept of summary justice to punish a summary offense, a ...

Number of victims

The victims were thrown into various pits and caves, which were then sealed with explosives. There were many thousands of victims, including most of the more than 10,000

POW POW is "prisoner of war", a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. POW or pow may also refer to: Music * P.O.W (Bullet for My Valentine song), "P.O.W" (Bull ...

s. Author Nikolai Tolstoy wrote an account of the events in his book '' The Minister and the Massacres''. British author John Corsellis, who served in

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

with the British Army, also wrote of these events in his book ''Slovenia 1945: Memories of Death and Survival after World War II''. In his 1958 book ''Kočevje: Tito's Bloodiest Crime'', Borivoje Karapandžić, a publicist and World War II propaganda chief for the Serbian fascist, anti-Semitic and Nazi-collaborationist Zbor organization of

Dimitrije Ljotić Dimitrije Ljotić ( sr-cyr, Димитрије Љотић; 12 August 1891 – 23 April 1945) was a Serbian and Yugoslav fascist politician and ideologue who established the Yugoslav National Movement (Zbor) in 1935 and collaborated with N ...

, estimated the total number of victims at about 18,500: 12,000

, 3,000 Serbian volunteer troops, 2,500 Croatian Home Guard and 1,000 Montenegrin

chetniks The Chetniks,, ; formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland; and informally colloquially the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist m ...

. Karapandžić's evaluation is reported in another newer book printed in Slovene and Italian by a group of scholars.

Notable victims

* France Dejak (1925–2003), thrown into a pit but escaped * Odon Peterka (1925–1945), poet

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kocevski Rog Massacre 1945 in Slovenia Massacres in 1945 Aftermath of World War II in Slovenia Political and cultural purges Massacres in Slovenia Massacres in Yugoslavia May 1945 in Europe Massacres of Croats Massacres of Serbs World War II prisoner of war massacres by Yugoslav Partisans