The massacre that haunts Slovenia

[jd in .hu]

The massacre that haunts Slovenia

At the war's end, British troops lured 12,000 unarmed Slovenians into
train wagons and sent them to their deaths. The massacre haunts a
witness who says Britain should at last own up

By Andy McSmith
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-massacre-that-haunts-slovenia-967682.html

Almost nothing spoils the beauty of the little Adriatic republic of
Slovenia, where the Queen and Prince Philip begin their first state
visit today. It slipped out of the disintegrating communist republic
of Yugoslavia 17 years ago, almost without bloodshed, to become the
most untroubled and prosperous state in south-east Europe.

And yet, there was a time when the woods and mountain slopes of this
picture-postcard state concealed one of the murkiest secrets of the
20th century. There are hundreds of Slovenian families who lost
relatives in a massacre committed under British eyes when the Second
World War was supposed to be over.

From the official British reaction, you might think the massacre never
happened, but 85-year-old John Corsellis was there as a 22-year-old
relief worker, and saw 12,000 unarmed Slovenian militiamen lured to
their deaths by British Army officers who lied to them. His sense of
rage at what he witnessed is undiminished, after more than six decades
and he thinks it is time that the British owned up.

"What to me is so shocking is that nobody in the government has ever
admitted it has happened," he said yesterday. "We have consistently
lied about it, so the least we can do is tell the truth now and
express our regret. This is not a black and white issue. They were
dressed in uniforms supplied by the Germans, though they were not part
of the German army, and they had surrendered to the British. We had
required them to hand over their arms, and they were entitled to the
protection of the Geneva Convention.

"They were told they were being moved to better accommodation in
Italy, in a small town north-east of Venice. They were put in Army
trucks, taken to the nearest station, and herded on to cattle wagons.
The wagons were closed, and the British withdrew. When the men inside
the trucks looked out through the grilles and saw the communists
coming they howled, because they knew they were going to be killed,
but there was nothing they could do."

Slovenia is now a prosperous tourist destination, vastly different
from the war-ravaged province it was in 1945. Living standards are
higher than in any other former communist state. Britain's ambassador,
Tim Simmons, has said that the two-day state visit by the Queen and
Prince Philip will be a celebration of 17 successful years. During the
years when it was part of communist Yugoslavia, nothing was said about
the bloodbath in the weeks after Germany surrendered, as the communist
partisans commanded by Josif Tito secured control. After independence,
a special commission was formed to examine 383 mass graves.

As Tito's reputation for ruthlessness spread through Yugoslavia, the
mountain road from Slovenia to Austria was choked with hundreds of
thousands of refugees, including German soldiers trying to get home,
and large numbers of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs who had backed pro-
German regimes and feared communist reprisals. The area of south
Austria where they all sought refuge was controlled by 25,000 British
soldiers from V Corps of the 8th Army.

John Corsellis was working with the Friends Ambulance Unit, looking
after 6,000 Slovenian civilians in Viktring, in south Austria. In an
adjacent camp were 12,000 Slovenian men in uniform. When word spread
that they were being moved to Italy, several hundred women and
children under Mr Corsellis's care asked if they could go too. They
were bundled into the wagons with the men, and sent to their deaths.

The uniformed Slovenians were domobranci who had been supplied and
armed by the Germans, but who claimed allegiance not to the Nazis but
to the Catholic Church and an independent Slovenian state. They
considered they had been fighting a civil war. Slovenian nationalists
formed a short-lived separatist government in May 1945, in the vain
hope that the British Army would occupy their homeland before the
communists arrived. But Winston Churchill had struck a private deal
with Stalin, under which the Soviet dictator undertook not to aid
communist guerrillas in Greece, and Britain recognised Tito's
partisans as allies in the war against fascism.

The 8th Army also deported thousands of Serb and Croat collaborators,
who ended up in the same mass graves as the Slovenes. About 40,000
Russians and Ukrainians who had fought for the Germans were handed
over to Stalin's police. Their fate has been raised on the right of
British politics, but never officially by the Conservative Party,
partly because so many prominent Conservatives were involved.

The future Tory MP Nigel Nicholson was an officer in V Corps, and
admitted later that he had deliberately lied to the refugees to get
them to go quietly. When they realised they had been betrayed, he
said, they "began hammering on the inside of the wagon walls, shouting
imprecations, not at the partisans but at us, who had betrayed them.
This scene was repeated day after day, twice a day. It was the most
horrible experience of my life."

Another future Tory MP, Toby Low, was a brigadier in V Corps. He rose
to be vice-chairman of the Conservative Party and was ennobled, as
Lord Aldington. In 1989, he sued Count Nikolai Tolstoy, a Russian
historian who had taken British citizenship, for writing a pamphlet
accusing him of complicity in mass murder. His libel award, of £1.5m,
was the highest in British legal history, but was overturned by the
European Court of Appeal. An even more important figure on the spot
was the future prime minister and Lord Stockton, Harold Macmillan,
Churchill's envoy to the Balkans in 1945, who visited the headquarters
of the 8th Army five days after VE day, just before the deportations
began. Shortly before his death aged 92, in 1986, Lord Stockton made
highly embarrassing criticisms of Margaret Thatcher's government, to
which the Federation of Conservative Students retaliated with an
article in their magazine suggesting Lord Stockton should be tried as
a war criminal. This led to the FCS being disbanded.

Marcus Ferrar, co-author of a book on the Slovenian massacre, said:
"The trouble with Tolstoy was that he went over the top. Macmillan
probably knew what was happening, and did not stop it, but mainly the
action was by the Army who wanted to clear up. There is the question
about why did these people collaborate. The British knew damn well
they were going to be killed, and they just didn't care.

"Slovenia's population is more or less divided half and half over
this. There are a lot of people in Slovenia who lost a grandfather or
an uncle in the massacres, and there are others who go along with the
communists. Slovenes are our friends now. They don't deserve to be
treated shabbily by failing to acknowledge what was done. A decent
expression of regret would reflect well on Britons of today. The
Queen's visit to Slovenia is the moment to put this right."

Asked whether an "expression of regret" is in prospect, a Foreign
Office spokesman said: "The short answer is, 'No'. I'm not aware there
plans to do so."