ZAGREB, March 5, 2018 – Huda Jama, a post-WWII Communist mass execution site in an abandoned mine near Celje, Slovenia, is to be transformed into a memorial centre open to visitors who will be informed about victims of extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the Tito-led Partisans.
The remains of 1,420 victims were exhumed from the Huda Jama mine by March 2017. The excavations started nine years ago when the mass grave was discovered.
That disused mine in northeastern Slovenia is believed to be one of the largest gravesites of victims killed by Communist authorities and intelligence services whose acronyms were OZNA and KNOJ in 1945.
According to Slovenian media outlets, plans are now being made to integrate the site “into an emerging local heritage museum”, the STA news agency has recently reported.
The costs of the project have not yet been made public, and the municipality of Laško is set to finance the implementation of the plan for establishing the museum.
Most of the victims in Huda Jama were Croats, but also Slovenians and members of other peoples, according to anthropologist Petra Leben Seljak and archaeologist Uroš Košir.
Slovenia’s state commission for post-WWII victims does not know how many people were buried at Huda Jama, with estimates ranging from 3,000 to 5,000.
