Barbara Pit massacre

Barbara Pit massacre
Part of the Bleiburg repatriations
Bodies in the mine
LocationHuda Jama, PR Slovenia, FPR Yugoslavia (modern-day Slovenia)
Coordinates46°9′31.46″N 15°11′10.28″E / 46.1587389°N 15.1861889°E / 46.1587389; 15.1861889
Date25 May–6 June 1945[1]
TargetNDH Armed Forces
Slovene Home Guard
Croat and Slovene civilians
Attack type
Massacre
Summary executions
Deaths1,416[2]
PerpetratorsYugoslav Partisans

The Barbara Pit massacre (Slovene: Pokol v Barbara rovu, Croatian: Pokolj u Barbarinom rovu), also known as the Huda Jama massacre, was the mass killing of prisoners of war of Ante Pavelić's NDH Armed Forces and the Slovene Home Guard, as well as civilians,[3][4][5][6][7] after the end of World War II in Yugoslavia in an abandoned coal mine near Huda Jama, Slovenia. More than a thousand prisoners of war and some civilians were executed by the Yugoslav Partisans during May and June 1945, following the Bleiburg repatriations by the British.[8] The location of the massacre was then sealed with concrete barriers and discussion about it was forbidden.

The mass grave site, one of the largest in Slovenia, was first publicly discussed in 1990, after the fall of communism in Yugoslavia. A memorial chapel was raised near the entrance to the mine in 1997. Investigation of the Barbara Pit mine began in 2008. It took several months for workers to remove concrete walls built after the war to seal the cave. On 3 March 2009, investigators found 427 unidentified bodies at a ditch in the mine. Another 369 corpses were found on the first five meters of a nearby shaft. The Barbara Pit mine was subsequently visited by the Croatian and Slovenian political leadership to pay tribute to the victims. On 25 October 2017, the Slovenian government announced that the remains of 1,416 victims were exhumed from the site and reburied at the Dobrava memorial park near Maribor.

  1. ^ "U Splitu predstavljena knjiga "Huda jama – strogo čuvana tajna"". Slobodna Dalmacija. 1 October 2015.
  2. ^ "Reburial of Huda Jama victims concluded". Slovenian Press Agency. 26 October 2017.
  3. ^ "Dežman: V Hudi Jami morda več kot 5000 okostij". Delo. 3 March 2010. Retrieved 15 September 2021. so bili v Barbarinem rovu pobiti slovenski vojni ujetniki in civilisti, pripeljani iz taborišča na Teharjah, med njimi tudi ženske (Slovenian prisoners of war and civilians transported from the camp at Teharje, including women, were killed at the Barbara Pit)
  4. ^ Čokl, Vanessa (3 March 2019). "Pred desetimi leti se je odprla Huda jama, polna po vojni pobitih". Večer. Retrieved 15 September 2021. V Hudo jamo so vojne ujetnike in civiliste, tudi ženske (In Huda Jama there are prisoners of war and civilians, including women)
  5. ^ Videmšek, Boštjan (3 March 2013). "Huda jama: Bodo žrtve zločina kdaj pokopane?". Delo. Retrieved 15 September 2021. v rudniku Huda jama pri Laškem, kjer je bilo v prvih tednih po koncu druge svetovne vojne pobitih več tisoč vojnih ujetnikov in civilistov iz Hrvaške in Slovenije (in the Huda Jama mine near Laško, where several thousand prisoners of war and civilians from Croatia and Slovenia were killed in the first weeks after the war)
  6. ^ Newland, Samuel J. (2007). Cossacks in the German army, 1941-1945. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-8199-3. OCLC 191875091.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference MDSSZ was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Robionek, Bernd (2016). ""Bleiburg" and the British Treatment of Croatian Collaborators 1945-48". 1945. Kpaj Или Нови Почетак?. Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije: 277–308.