Kočna () is a settlement in the
Municipality of Jesenice
The Municipality of Jesenice (; ) is a municipality in northwest Slovenia. The seat of the municipality is the town of Jesenice. It has 21,895 inhabitants.
Geography
The municipality lies in the Carniola, Upper Carniola region, in the Upper Sava ...
in the
Upper Carniola
Upper Carniola ( ; ; ) is a traditional region of Slovenia, the northern mountainous part of the larger Carniola region. The largest town in the region is Kranj, and other urban centers include Kamnik, Jesenice, Jesenice, Jesenice, Domžale and ...
region of
Slovenia
Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...
.
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 Glacier#Erosion, glacial erosion. Alternative names for this landform are corrie (from , meaning a pot or cauldron) and ; ). A cirque may also be a similarly shaped landform a ...
' 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 Unidentified decedent, 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 exec ...
from the period immediately after the Second World War. The Kočna Mass Grave (), 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 () east of the settlement revealed artifacts from the
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic (Ancient Greek language, 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 i ...
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