“If the National Liberation Movement (NOB) in Slovenia had organised itself naturally, without the influence of Moscow and Stalin’s collaboration with Hitler at the beginning of the war, its natural core would have been the resistance organisation TIGR (the organisation’s full name was the Revolutionary Organisation of the Julian March T.I.G.R.), which actually started the resistance without any ideology. In that case, there would have been no national division, no unnecessary civilian casualties and no crimes against humanity after the war. We would be celebrating Victory Day today, just like Europe and the USA do, and not on the same day as Moscow and Belgrade do. We would be reconciled; we would be more than 3 million people strong, and we would have prosperity at the level of Switzerland.”
The 13th of May 1941 is a date that carries a special significance in Slovenian history. The first armed confrontation of the TIGR organisation against the Italian occupier after the occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April took place on Mala Gora pri Ribnici, near the Češark or Lovšin hunting lodge.
TIGR (which is an acronym for Trieste, Istria, Gorizia, Rijeka) was an anti-fascist organisation founded in September 1927 to resist the fascist oppression of Slovenians and Croatians in the coastal region, which had been annexed to Italy after the Treaty of Rapallo. The organisation carried out intelligence activities, sabotage and armed actions, including planning the assassination of Benito Mussolini in 1938, which was cancelled. Before the Second World War, the TIGR organisation had already established an intelligence network, which passed information to the Yugoslav army and British intelligence. After the occupation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, members of TIGR joined the Liberation Front (OF), but were betrayed by the communists who dominated the partisan movement, which led to their contribution being suppressed after the war.
How the Battle of Mala Gora was fought
Italian forces surrounded the hut and demanded that everyone in it surrender. Danilo Zelen and Ferdo Kravanja were wounded in the first shooting. Anton Majnik initially surrendered, but during the surrender, he took the opportunity to escape. Kravanja was captured, but after four months, he managed to escape from the hospital and join the partisans.
Danilo Zelen, despite his serious wounds, decided to fight to the end. The Italians used more than 20 mines and hand bombs to break his resistance. In a stalemate, Zelen, knowing that he would not survive, chose death rather than capture and took his own life. In doing so, he became the first Slovenian to die fighting against the occupiers after the start of the occupation.
On Saturday, the 10th of May, in memory of the fateful events of the Second World War, people gathered on Mala gora pri Ribnici. The President of the Slovenian TIGR – the 13th of May Association, Vili Kovačič, gave a speech, and the keynote speaker was a member of the Presidency of the Association for the Values of Slovenian Independence (Društvo za vrednote slovenske osamosvojitve – VSO) and the President of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), Janez Janša.
You can read his speech in its entirety below:
Dear Slovenians, veterans, dear compatriots!
20 years ago, the first national celebration of the Day of Resistance against the Occupier was organised on this spot – on Mala Gora nad Ribnico. It is therefore worth starting by repeating a few sentences that were said at that time. I quote:
“Since the message of the holiday is particularly characteristic of the anti-fascist struggle, there is no more fitting place to commemorate it than today’s event. Today, for the first time in 64 years, a national event is being held here on Mala Gora nad Ribnico. It has never been held before. There have only been association and municipal gatherings before. Although it was here that the first armed confrontation on Slovenian territory took place between the anti-fascist rebels of the national defence organisation TIGR and the occupying forces after the capitulation of the Yugoslav Royal Army.
Slovenians, or rather the people of Slovenia’s coastal region, proved their resistance throughout the whole period of fascism. In these efforts, the TIGR organisation, whose members and sympathisers represent the oldest armed anti-fascists in Europe, has risen to the top in military terms. In addition to them, we should also remember the clerical organisation, the Society of St Paul’s Priests, which has done a great deal to defend Slovenian culture. The efforts of the Slovenians of the Littoral region also enjoyed the moral and material support of many organisations and individuals in the Yugoslav part of Slovenia and in the whole of the country at that time, and especially among the emigrants from the Littoral region. Slovenian anti-fascism is therefore not an invention of 1941, or of the then-founded Anti-Imperialist Front, or of the later Liberation Front, but is much older. It was practically part of the political and national consciousness of all Slovenians at that time.
The famous English historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote that Slovenians were the first allies of Great Britain in World War II, thanks to TIGR. In fact, their fight on Mala Gora on the 13th of May 1941 was the first armed confrontation of Slovenians with the invaders. This fact bothered those who wanted to monopolise the Slovenian resistance, regardless of historical facts, throughout the post-World War II period. The members of TIGR were effectively silenced. They were only given full recognition by the independent Slovenian state. Today’s national commemoration at this site is also part of the effort to rectify this historical injustice.
The Anti-Imperialist Front, which was founded on the 26th of April 1941 and only later renamed the Liberation Front, was actually created in the spiritual and political atmosphere of the German-Soviet Pact of 1939. For its main initiators and organisers, it was not rooted in principled anti-fascism and anti-Nazism, but in the conviction of the necessity of a clash of imperialist camps. Since the basic aim of the anti-imperialist front was not national defence, the TIGR organisation was never invited to be one of the founding groups.
The key problem of the Anti-Imperialist Front, later the Liberation Front, was the monopolisation of the national defence struggle, which was formally confirmed by the Liberation Front on the 16th of September 1941, when it branded as traitors to the Slovenian nation all those who were unwilling to recognise its, i.e. the Communist, leadership. No democratic party or government can agree to special ideological secret summary courts in which convicts were shot without the right to a hearing or an appeal. This monopolisation of the national resistance movement fundamentally distinguishes the Liberation Front from most Western European resistance movements.
The first confrontation of TIGR members took place here, on Mala Gora, on the 13th of May 1941. Shortly after the occupation, members Tone Majnik, Ferdo Kravanja and the military leader of TIGR, Danilo Zelen, retreated here. When, after being betrayed by the local communists, they were tracked down by an Italian patrol, they fought heroically. Danilo Zelen was severely wounded and took his own life to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy. The badly wounded Kravanja was captured by the Italians, but Majnik, already cuffed, later managed to escape. This heroic confrontation soon became known all over Slovenia and raised the spirit of rebellion among the Slovenians.
Anton Majnik, together with the TIGR members Tone Černač and Just Godnič, organised the first partisan unit in the area, the Ribnica Unit. The unit was formed four days before the Communist Party of Slovenia (KPS) issued its call for an uprising. The Party leadership soon sent a commissar to the unit, who demanded that they swear an oath to Stalin. The TIGR members, however, resisted this demand, saying that they had already sworn an oath to the TIGR organisation and to the struggle for the unification of Slovenians. Then, a member of the Communist Party leadership, Dr Aleš Bebler, came from Ljubljana and replaced the TIGR commander, Tone Černač. As a result of these misunderstandings, the TIGR members left the Ribnica unit and joined other partisan units, but they did not achieve prominent positions there. Most of them were later killed in action, Majnik in circumstances that have still not been fully explained.
Despite 15 years of tradition and experience in the anti-fascist struggle, the TIGR organisation was never included in the Liberation Front. The first armed confrontation of the TIGR members with the fascist invaders was neglected for most of the time after the Second World War. The Day of Resistance or the Day of Uprising and the Republic in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia was chosen as a mockery of the truth, the event of the 22nd of July 1941, which was not about a confrontation with the invaders at all, but about a reckoning between Slovenians.
The legal basis for the national holiday of the Day of Uprising Against the Occupation was laid down by the legislature, the first democratically elected Slovenian Parliament, and the law was proposed in 1991 by the first democratically elected Slovenian Government. The law defines the 27th of April, which was celebrated as the Liberation Front Day in the one-party era, as the Day of Uprising Against the Occupation. In the explanatory memorandum and the debate on the Law on Public Holidays and Work-Free Days, the government stressed that this holiday is intended to commemorate the Slovenian resistance throughout history, and in particular, its message bears the hallmarks of the anti-fascist struggle.
During the adoption process, a proposal was also made to continue to designate the 27th of April as the Liberation Front Day, but this was overwhelmingly rejected. And it was never formally repeated afterwards. The broader basis of the holiday was accepted by the public with overwhelming consensus, because it did not unjustifiably exclude anyone, despite the fact that in certain years, state celebrations have sought to narrow its legal content.”
These sentences were said two decades ago. I am repeating them today also because the historical facts they contain are even more hidden and suppressed in the Slovenian public after 20 years than they were before. It is also because of naivety. Because history teaches us that evil that goes unpunished always comes back. Rewarded evil, however, returns even more quickly. The evil of communism, which was also responsible for starting the Second World War, has never been punished, and that is why we have a great war on European soil again today. Putin, in his own words, is persecuting the Nazis there, and he has many admirers and imitators in Slovenia, including in the government ranks. They do not dare to go to Moscow for parades yet, because we are in the European Union and NATO, but they are staging similar celebrations at home.
After the aforementioned celebration on the 27th of April 2005, in the evening, the then-President of the ZZB NOB (Associations of the National Liberation Movement of Slovenia), Janez Stanovnik, and the then-President of the Social Democrats party (Socialni demokrati – SD), Igor Lukšič, spoke up. Both condemned the ceremony and claimed that members of the TIGR organisation were terrorists. They used the language of Italian fascists and suggested that Slovenian left-wing politics was not prepared to acknowledge even simple historical facts, let alone turn its actions in the direction of reconciliation. Today, 20 years later, the results of such anti-conciliation, divisive, anti-Slovenian politics are in plain sight. As a nation, since independence, we have never been as far from reconciliation as we are today. We have been pushed away from it especially in recent years. It began with the shameful abolition of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communist Violence, continued with the prevention of a decent burial for the victims of the Macesnova Gorica massacre, and has reached its peak in recent weeks. The national holiday of the Day of Uprising Against the Occupation was illegally renamed the Liberation Front Day at national celebrations, the one-party committee from Ajdovščina was declared the first Slovenian government, and yesterday, the end of the Second World War was celebrated on the same day as in Moscow and Belgrade. Under the same symbols. Those of us who are older will remember that in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the time of partition was celebrated with similar pomp in the years when the communist Yugoslav regime began to collapse. The more rigid a regime is, the more threatened it feels by the voice of the people and the greater the pomp.
At this year’s commemorations, no one mentioned the first armed confrontation with the occupier, no one spoke the name of the first victim, Danilo Zelen, and no one apologised for the communist abuse of the struggle against the occupier for the bloody seizure of power.
On the contrary, the Prime Minister, Dr Robert Golob, used the National Liberation Movement just like the Communist Party did during the Second World War – as a means of struggle for power. To reckon with the class enemy. Which is anyone who opposes his government. We have also heard the big lie of the President of the Associations of the National Liberation Movement, Križman, who said how his organisation was strongly supporting Slovenian independence. In reality, many Associations of the National Liberation Movement organisations were strongly opposed to independence even after we had declared Slovenia independent and the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA) had attacked us in June 1991. You can read about that in the documents in the White Paper on Slovenian Independence.
What we saw yesterday was an official, national celebration, formally dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. But we did not hear a single sentence of sympathy, only one-sided interpretations and repeated calls for death. How far this speech was from the speech made 20 years ago, on the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, by the late President of the Republic, Dr Janez Drnovšek. He spoke at Teharje. This time, 20 years later, the official policy did not include even a sentence about the fact that after 1945, there was no freedom and democracy, but a one-party dictatorship, bloody reprisals, mass murder and a time of decline. As the victors of the Second World War, until 1990, we developed once again more slowly than, for example, neighbouring Austria, which, as part of the Reich, was the loser of that war. We did not hear a single sentence of compassion for at least a million of our fellow citizens:
– for the tens of thousands of relatives of the murdered, who still have no place where they can light a candle for their fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers;
– for the relatives of the more than 70,000 thousand Slovenians forcibly mobilised into the German army and sent to the slaughterhouses of the Eastern Front. They were more numerous than all the partisans and Home Guard soldiers put together, and their suffering was silenced for decades;
– for the tens of thousands of exiled, imprisoned and tortured Slovenians who were displaced around the world after the Second World War, instead of living in peace and prosperity in their homeland.
Not every one of them was a traitor to the Slovenian nation, as they are still being called these days by the successors of those who, out of greed for power, actually betrayed the nation and appropriated the property of their victims. Nor was every partisan a criminal because the Communists took advantage of the occupation and abused the National Liberation Movement for a bloody revolution. Most ordinary people in the war and on both sides of the civil conflict took up arms to defend their homes and their loved ones. By denying the truth, we are insulting, above all, all their victims. Every war is a disaster and brings with it suffering. However, during the time we are talking about, things happened on Slovenian territory that should not have happened in human civilisation.
To quote from the speech from 20 years ago: “The Slovenian State, even in the name of the struggle against the occupier, must never accept violations of international standards of the law of war and civilised legal principles, which, even in times of war, guarantee, especially to the civilian population, the right to life, to personal integrity, to freedom of religion and of the person, to an impartial trial and to due process of law, and to private property. These principles and rules bind the occupier and those who rebel against them.
In the situation described, the greatness of the actions of the TIGR members stands out in particular. They were determined to fight, prepared to make sacrifices, but they respected the norms of European civilisation. They avoided civilian casualties in combat. In 1938, they did not carry out the assassination of Mussolini, which they had prepared well when he arrived in Kobarid, because they would have had to sacrifice a group of school children. They were not willing to sacrifice others in the name of the higher aim. They were patriots.”
If the National Liberation Movement (NOB) in Slovenia had organised itself naturally, without the influence of Moscow and Stalin’s collaboration with Hitler at the beginning of the war, its natural core would have been the resistance organisation TIGR (the organisation’s full name was the Revolutionary Organisation of the Julian March T.I.G.R.), which actually started the resistance without any ideology. In that case, there would have been no national division, no unnecessary civilian casualties and no crimes against humanity after the war. We would be celebrating Victory Day today, just like Europe and the USA do, and not on the same day as Moscow and Belgrade do. We would be reconciled; we would be more than 3 million people strong, and we would have prosperity at the level of Switzerland.
An unreconciled nation cannot breathe with both parts of its lungs. It cannot make the most of its development potential. We cannot progress if we continue to call each other traitors, call for the cleansing of political opponents and exclude each other.
That is why national reconciliation is still – and even more now – a prerequisite for a good future for Slovenians. We also have all the objective conditions for it. We have the time of independence, we have the plebiscite for an independent Slovenia, which united us. We have the glorious victory in the War for Slovenia, which was clean, without the shedding of fraternal blood. And the more we emphasise and celebrate the time that united us, the closer we are to reconciliation. The more we emphasise and celebrate the time that divided us, the further we are from it. By the way, April marked the 35th anniversary of the establishment of parliamentary democracy in Slovenia. No celebrations were organised by the authorities, not even a formal sitting of the Parliament. This is a further indication of the direction in which we are being pushed. It is also proof that the turn is near. For the night is darkest just before dawn. And dawn is coming. A warm yellow sun will shine in a blue sky. Soon. Also because of the message found in the verses of Alojz Gradnik:
“There is a generation left, and there will be a generation left,
For sacred, of the thousand graves of memory,
here every river, mountain and valley,
and every thought of the grandfathers revealed.”
Long live the reconciled Slovenian nation, long live Slovenia!
Mala gora nad Ribnico, the 10th of May 2025
