FORGOTTEN VICTIMS
Slovenian Mass Grave Could Be Europe's Killing Fields

SPIEGEL ONLINE

International
August, 31  2007

Slovenian officials estimate that a mass grave found near Maribor will
most likely prove to be the largest in Europe, surpassing even that of
Srebrenica.

Slovenian forensic experts investigate the site discovered in 1999 by
Slovenian highway workers near Maribor, where 1,179 skeletons were
found in a World War II-era trench.

Slovenian forensic experts investigate the site discovered in 1999 by
Slovenian highway workers near Maribor, where 1,179 skeletons were
found in a World War II-era trench.

A mass grave in Slovenia could turn out to be the largest in Europe,
bigger even than that of Srebrenica.

Exhumations in Tezno, a residential district of Slovenia's second-
largest city Maribor, are likely to uncover the remains of thousands
of victims of purges carried out immediately following World War II,
according to Slovenian government officials.

"It just might be that the greatest crime of the period following
World War II will be uncovered in the mass grave in Tezno, one that
even surpasses that of Srebrenica," Joze Dezman, head of the
Commission on Concealed Mass Graves, told Slovenian state radio
recently.

Dezman referred to Tezno as "the murderous epicentre of Europe,"
according to the English-language newspaper The Slovenia Times. He
also compared Slovenia's 540 estimated post-war graves to Cambodia's
infamous "killing fields," the mass graves of victims of Pol Pot's
Khmer Rouge regime.

Slovenian officials believe the grave might include the remains of
roughly 15,000 Croat members of the Croatian Home Guard, known as the
Domobrani, and forces of the pro-Nazi Ustashas regime, who were trying
to escape from Yugoslavia at the end of the war.

The mass grave was apparently originally an anti-tank trench dug by
Germans near the end of the war. It is 1 kilometer long, 4 to 6 meters
wide and the layer of human remains measures 1.5 to 2 meters deep,
according to measurements provided in the Slovenian daily Delo.

The mass grave was first found by chance in 1999 during highway
construction in a forest near Tezno. At the time, 1,179 remains were
found in an incomplete excavation of the site. A new exhumation began
two weeks ago.

Slovenia was part of the former Yugoslavia ruled by Josip Broz Tito
for over 40 years following World War II. The country declared its
independence in 1990 and was spared the violence that tore the region
apart in the following decade.

jtw/spiegel