By: Paul Zakelj
My Dilemma
Every Memorial Day Weekend, my siblings and I, dressed in narodna nošas (Slovenian national costumes), would join a procession to an outdoor Slovenian Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine in Euclid, Ohio. There were speeches in Slovenian, a wreath placed at the grotto, and solemn faces among the adults. As a fidgety child, I paid little attention. I did not understand what we were commemorating or why it mattered but it must have been big to warrant such a ceremony. I do remember being aware that I had some dead uncles and an aunt somewhere and that three of my siblings were named after some of them (Ani, Stanko, Janko).
It would take decades before I began to understand.
My father did not speak to us about his life before Cleveland. He did not tell us how he came to America, what happened in Slovenia at the end of World War II, or why he had to leave. Those conversations were reserved for his buddies at Baragov Dom.
Baragov Dom, which opened in 1957 on St. Clair Avenue in Cleveland, was a community center that housed post-World War II Slovenian immigrant societies and organizations. It included a hall, which had space for approximately 150 seats, a kitchen, several office rooms and a basement tavern. My father was a member of the Organization of Former Anti-Communist Fighters, which was housed in Baragov Dom.
My Quest
Some years ago, I began searching for my father’s story. But he was no longer on this earth to provide insight. Now, 33 years after his passing, I am still searching, discovering and piecing things together.
I realized something unsettling: if I did not learn and preserve our family’s story, it would disappear. How could I pass it on to my children and grandchildren if I did not understand it myself?
So, I began searching — through memoirs, archived testimonies, and the writings of relatives in Slovenia. My cousin in Slovenia, Janko Maček, was a prolific and published writer of local history as well as family history. His writings have inspired me to search for more stories and to try to document them in English. My Slovenian language skills had faded, so the work is slow. But piece by piece, the stories emerge.
[I must acknowledge that I am using artificial intelligence (AI) to help with translation and documentation, including this article.]
May 1945
This chapter of my father’s story begins in May 1945.
As the war in Europe ended, he, along with thousands of others, fled the advancing Communist forces under Tito. They retreated to Vetrinj ( in British-controlled Austria, believing they would find protection.
They did not.
On Sunday, May 27, 1945, my uncle, Monsignor Vinko Žakelj, a seminarian at the time, celebrated his first Mass there. A photograph taken afterward became the last image of several of my relatives — including my pregnant Aunt Ani, her husband Franc Grdadolnik, and my uncles France, Stanko, and Janko.
Within days, in a brazen act of treachery, British forces began repatriating Slovenian Home Guards (Domobranci) back to Yugoslavia where they were handed over to Tito’s Communists. What followed were forced marches, imprisonment, torture, and execution in mass killings across Slovenia.
My father was among those repatriated.
Unlike most, he escaped and survived.
Had he not, I would not be here to write this. I’m writing because I believe that we must find and keep alive the stories and memories of the martyrs and survivors.
A Record Found
In my online research, I discovered a 1957 Cleveland publication titled Krivda rdeče fronte (“The Guilt of the Red Front”), compiled by Matija Škerbec. Matija Škerbec was a Slovenian priest, publicist, and political thinker active during the turbulent decades spanning the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the First World War, the interwar Yugoslav period, the Second World War, and the postwar exile community. During the Second World War, he supported anti-communist efforts in Slovenia. After the war, like many who opposed the new communist regime, he went into exile.
Škerbec’s book contains survivor testimonies, including my father’s 1955 account of what happened to him after the war.
Some of the affidavits were notarized by Slovenian American attorney Edmund J. Turk, suggesting that émigrés hoped these records might one day serve as evidence in war crimes proceedings.
Reading my father’s words — describing deception, brutality, loss, and his desperate escape — was overwhelming. His story was tragically similar to that of thousands of others, except for one fact: he lived. Most did not. Their remains lie in mass graves throughout Slovenia.
Standing Where He Escaped, Another Discovery
In October 2025, my sister (Ann Zitko) and I traveled to Slovenia on a post–World War II historical tour organized by Maria Velikonja. One stop was the St. Stanislav Institute in Šentvid, Ljubljana — the site from which my father escaped in 1945.
Founded in 1905 as the first fully Slovenian-language secondary school, the institute later became, after the war, an OZNA (Communist secret police) detention and extermination site for Home Guard soldiers and other political prisoners. After 1945, the building was used as a Yugoslav military barracks until 1991. Following Slovenian independence, the institute was returned to the Archdiocese of Ljubljana and reestablished in 1992. Over the following decades, it expanded to include a high school, dormitories, a music school, an elementary school, and a kindergarten.
The building also includes a memorial to Dr. Valentin Meršol. He was responsible for saving over 6000 lives by convincing the British not to send any more civilians back to Yugoslavia from Vetrinj.
While we were there, our guide, Dr. Joze Kurincic, explained that each year on the Feast of Corpus Christi, third-year high school students make a pilgrimage to Kočevski Rog, one of over 700 of Slovenia’s hidden mass grave sites. The day includes Mass and the reading of a survivor’s testimonial.
Afterward I commented that this was the place from which my father escaped. He asked a couple of questions, including my name. He then told us that the testimonial being read to students was my father’s.
My sister and I were stunned.
More than 80 years after the events — and more than 70 years after he wrote his account — his words are still being heard.
Record of a Survivor in Slovenian and English tranlation >
RECORD OF A SURVIVOR
I, the undersigned Pavel Žakelj, born December 23, 1914, in Št. Jošt nad Vrhnika , currently residing in Cleveland (Ohio), joined the Village Guard (Vaška straža) immediately upon its establishment in Št. Jošt above Vrhnika. Early May 1945, I retreated with the Upper Carniolan sections (Gorenjska) of the Slovenian anti-communists across the Ljubelj pass into Austria, to Vetrinj in Carinthia (Koroška). There I was assigned to the Upper Carniolan Regiment, with which I was returned by the British and handed over to Tito’s army on Monday, May 28, 1945.
Due to statements made by the English authorities, we were all convinced that they were transporting us to another camp in Italy. In Podrožčica (Rosenbach), British soldiers searched us, took our maps and all military items, and then crammed us into livestock railway cars and guarded the entire train with machine guns.
Already on the train, there were rumors that someone had noticed the train engineer wearing a communist star on his cap. When the train turned on the track toward Jesenice, we still had some hope that perhaps they were transporting us to Italy through Yugoslav territory. This hope completely vanished on the other side of the tunnel when Tito’s partisans stormed the train. They verbally abused us, beat us with rifle butts, and forcibly took whatever they fancied. There, they also removed some of our officers from the train; they never returned because they were killed.
Late in the afternoon, we arrived in Kranj, where the brutal verbal abuse, beating, and looting continued. If a communist noticed anyone among us with better shoes or trousers, he forced him to take them off or undress, and the communist gave him his own torn and lousy rags in exchange. Toward evening, they brought us to Škofja Loka, where we disembarked, and were led to the local Ursuline convent. As we were stepping off the train and during the walk into the city, they beat us with rifle butts. Along the road, I saw several of my brothers-in-arms lying beaten on the ground.
There were already many Croats in the convent building. They crammed us into rooms and hallways so tightly that in some places it was impossible to even sit down. They gave us some smelly vegetable soup to eat, in which a few beans were floating, and not everyone even received this sludge.
The entire time that we were imprisoned there, the communists beat us. The communists from Selca above Škofja Loka were the most brutal. They threw some among us into cement bunkers, where, tied up, they had to lie on the cement floor. The Communists went in there to beat them mercilessly.
During the time I was with the others in Škofja Loka, I personally saw Tito’s partisans driving groups of 30, 40, or even more of our people to execution sites at night, primarily to Bodalska grapa (gorge) and into a hole below Blegaš, where they shot them in masses.
We learned that they were shooting our brothers there from a Home Guardsman (Domobranec) who was also taken to the mass execution site with others, but his brother, who was a communist, pulled him out of the crowd there and saved him, so he then went home. In his hometown, people persuaded him to return to Škofja Loka to intervene for his friend so that he might also be released. But when he returned to Škofja Loka, the communists did not let him return home again; instead, they imprisoned him among us once more. He told us where they were driving our brothers to be executed.
After about a week, they marched us on foot from Škofja Loka to Št. Vid above Ljubljana, specifically to the Bishop’s Institute (Škofijski zavodi), which was so packed with prisoners that they could no longer get us under a roof. Tito’s partisans themselves told us that there were 28,000 (twenty-eight thousand) Slovenians, Croats, Serbs, and Germans imprisoned in the Bishop’s Institute at that time. Our brothers, who were imprisoned inside the building and came out for bodily needs, told us what horrific conditions prevailed inside the buildings. In the room where our men were held, 600 persons were packed in such a way that everyone always had to stand, and no one could sit or lie down. All windows were closed; the air was entirely spoiled so that they were suffocating in the stifling, stale air. They were exhausted and worn out. Communists also entered the rooms and mercilessly beat the imprisoned poor souls. Everyone envied us who remained outside in the open, in the sun and rain.
Even here, we received some smelly soup made of grass, vegetables, and rotten beets to eat, and they did not give us even that every day.
The very first day that they brought us to the Bishop’s Institute, I saw with my own eyes Tito’s soldiers driving away large cargo trucks full of people from those who were imprisoned. Tito’s soldiers stood at the back of these trucks with rifles. In less than an hour, these trucks returned empty, and the soldiers threw picks and shovels off the trucks, from which we immediately concluded that they were driving people to mass execution sites in this manner, just as we had previously observed in Škofja Loka.
Our group was then led away to the back of the institute’s courtyard.
Some of us discussed and agreed to escape. At night, the number of guards increased, so we decided to escape in the twilight when visibility was poorer, and the guards had not yet been reinforced. Two prisoners jumped ahead of me, and then, at a favorable opportunity, I also jumped over the fence and crawled through the wheat away from the house of misery. Another fellow from Upper Carnolia (Gorenjska) jumped after me, but I do not know if he escaped.
For some time, I hid in the forests around my home village with others in hiding (skrivači) who had previously stayed home and did not want to flee with us to Carinthia. They told me how the communists, upon coming to power after our departure for Austria, imprisoned and murdered people in masses. Thus, I learned that in Rovte above Logatec, Tito’s authorities arrested and murdered 80 individuals. In Št. Jošt, they arrested and murdered 11 people, whose names are on the list of Št. Jošt victims.
During this time, the Titoists took all our brothers-in-arms, anti-communist fighters, from the Bishop’s Institute to various execution sites, mostly to Kočevje. None of my former brothers returned.
In the autumn of 1945, a small group of us gathered and successfully crossed the Italian border and thus saved ourselves.
Cleveland, May 1, 1955 Pavel Žakelj, (signed)
ZAPISNIK REŠENEGA
Podpisani Pavel Žakelj, roj. 23. decembra 1914 na Št. Joštu nad Vrhniko, sedaj bivajoč v Clevelandu (Ohio), sem takoj ob pričetku ustanovitve Vaške straže pri Št. Joštu nad Vrhniko pristopil k njej. Začetkom maja 1945 sem se z gorenjskimi oddelki slovenskih proti komunistov umaknil preko Ljubelja v Avstrijo, na Koroško v Vetrinj, kjer sem bil prideljen Gorenjskemu polku, s katerim sem bil vrnjen od Angležev in izročen Titovi vojski v ponedeljek, dne v28. maja 1945.
Vsled izjav angleških oblasti smo bili vsi prepričani, da nas vozijo v drugo taborišče v Italiji. V Podrožčici so nas angleški vojaki preiskali, nam vzeli zemljevide in vse vojaške reči in nas nato natrpali v živinske železniške vozove ter s strojnicami zastražili ves vlak.
Že na vlaku se je nekaj govorilo, da je nekdo opazil da nosi strojevodja pri našem vlaku komunistično zvezdo na kapi. Ko je vlak zavil na progi proti Jesenicam, smo še imeli nekoliko upanja, da nas morda vozijo v Italijo skozi jugoslovansko ozemlje, to upanje pa je popolnoma izginilo na drugi strani tunela, ko so tam vdrli v vlak Titovi partizani, nas zmerjali, pretehali s puškinimi kopiti in nam s silo jemali, kar se je komu zljubilo. Tam so tudi že odvedli iz vlaka nekatere naše oficirje, ki jih ni bilo več nazaj, ker so vse pobili.
Pozno popoldan smo se pripeljali v Kranj, kjer se je nadaljevalo surovo zmerjanje, pretepanje in ropanje. Če je kak komunist opazil pri komu izmed nas boljše čevlje ali hlače, ga je prisilil, da se je sezul ali slekel in komunist mu je dal v zameno svoje strgane in ušive cape. Proti večeru so nas pripeljali v Škofjo Loko, kjer smo izstopili in so nas odvedli v tamkajšnji uršulinski samostan. Ko smo stopali iz vlaka, so nas pretepali s puškinimi kopiti in tudi med potjo v mesto. Ob cesti sem videl ležati več svojih tovarišev, ki so ležali zbiti na tleh.
V samostanskem poslopju je bilo že dosti Hrvatov. Po sobah in hodnikih so nas natrpali, da ponekod niti sesti ni bilo mogoče. Jesti so nam dali neko smrdljivo zelenjavno juho, v kateri je plavalo nekaj fižolov, pa še te brozge niso vsi dobili.
Ves čas, kar smo bili tu zaprti, so nas komunisti pretepali. Najbolj surovi so bili komunisti iz Selc nad Škofjo Loko. Mnoge izmed nas so vrgli v cementni bunker, kjer so morali ležati zvezani na cementnih tleh. Tja so jih hodili komunisti neusmiljeno pretepat.
Med tem časom, kar sem bil z drugimi v Škofji Loki, sem osebno videl, kako so Titovi partizani ponoči vozili skupine po 30, 40 ali še več naših na morišče, predvsem v Bodalsko grapo in v neko rupo pod Blegašen, kjer so jih v masah streljali.
Da tam streljajo naše tovariše, smo izvedeli od nekega domobranca, ki je bil z drugimi vred tudi odveden na masovno morišče, tam pa ga je iz množice potegnil njegov brat, ki je bil komunist in ga je tako rešil, da je nato odšel domov. V domačem kraju pa so ga ljudje pregovorili, da je prišel nazaj v Škofjo Loko posredovat za svojega prijatelja, da bi ga izpustili. Ko pa je prišel nazaj v Škofjo Loko, ga komunisti niso več pustili domov, marveč so ga znova zaprli med nas. Ta nam je povedal, kam vozijo naše tovariše na morišča.
Čez kak teden dni so nas odvedli peš iz Škofje Loke v Št. Vid nad Ljubljano in sicer v Škofijske zavode, ki pa so bili z ujetniki tako natrpani, da nas niso mogli več spraviti pod streho. Titovi partizani sami so nam pravili, da je bilo tedaj v Škofijskih zavodih zaprtih 28.000 (osemindvajset tisoč) Slovencev, Hrvatov, Srbov in Nemcev. Naši tovariši, ki so bili zaprti v poslopju in so prihajali ven na telesno potrebo, so nam pravili, kako strahotne razmere so vladale v notranjosti poslopij. V oni sobi, kjer so bili naši zaprti, je bilo 600 oseb natrpanih tako, da so morali vsi vedno le stati in se nihče ni mogel usesti in ne uleči. Vsa okna so morala biti zaprta, ves zrak pokvarjen, da so se dušili v soparici, ljudje so bili vsi izčrpani in izmučeni. V sobe so prihajali tudi komunisti ter zaprte reveže neusmiljeno pretepali. Vsi so blagrovali nas, ki smo ostali zunaj na prostem, na soncu in dežju.
Tudi tu smo prejemali za jesti neko smrdljivo juho iz trave, zelenjave in gnile pese, pa še tega nam niso dali vsak dan.
Že prvi dan, ko so nas privedli v Škofijske zavode, sem na lastne oči videl, kako so Titovi vojaki odvažali velike tovorne avtomobile in na njih polno ljudi od teh, ki so bili zaprti. Zadaj na teh kamionih so stali Titovi vojaki s puškami. Še prej ko čez eno uro so se vračali ti avtomobili nazaj prazni in vojaki so metali raz avtomobile krampe in lopate, iz česar smo takoj sklepali, da vozijo tako ljudi v masah na morišča, kakor smo prej opazovali v Škofji Loki.
Našo skupino so nato odvedli zadaj na zavodovo dvorišče.
Z nekaterimi tovariši smo se dogovorili, da pobegnemo. Straže so ponoči pomnožili, zato smo se odločili za beg v mraku, ko ni bilo mogoče dobro videti in ko še niso bile straže pomnožene. Pred menoj sta skočila že dva ujetnika, nato sem pa še jaz ob ugodni priliki skočil čez ograjo, nato sem se pa plazil po pšenici proč od hiše gorja. Za menoj je skočil. še en tovariš iz Gorenjske, pa ne vem, če se je rešil.
Nekaj časa sem se skrival okrog domače vasi v gozdovih z drugimi skrivači ki so prej ostali še doma in niso hoteli bežati z nami na Koroško. Ti so mi pripovedovali, kako so komunisti, ko so prišli na oblast po našem odhodu v Avstrijo, v množicah zapirali in morili ljudi. Tako sem izvedel, da so Titove oblasti smo v Rovtah nad Logatcem aretirale in pomorile 80 oseb. V Št. Joštu so aretirali in pomorili 11 oseb, katerih imena so v seznamu žrtev iz Št. Jošta.
Med tem časom so titovci odvedli iz škofijskih zavodov vse naše tovariše, proti komunistične borce, na razna morišča, največ v Kočevje. Nihče od mojih nekdanjih tovarišev se ni vrnil.
Jeseni 1. 1945. se nas je zbrala mala skupina in smo srečno prekoračili italijansko mejo in se tako rešili.
Cleveland, 1. maja 1955.
Pavel Žakelj, 1. r.
My Quest Continues
I began this journey because I feared losing our family’s history.
My siblings and I — and our children — are in the United States because of historical tragedy, existential choices, and blind luck. For me, that truth carries responsibility. This feeling of responsibility has become a desire to continue digging, documenting and sharing.
I want to help preserve my father’s story, his history, as horrific as some of it is, for his Slovenian American descendants. And I have come to realize that however I do it, it must be in English, in a form they can access, and in snippets they can consume.
History is not static. It lives through memory, documentation, and storytelling. If we do not preserve it and keep it in our consciousness, it fades.
I believe I owe it to those who perished, those who survived — and to those who come after us — to keep their stories alive.
Krivda rdeče fronte, p. 116-118, (The Guilt of the RedFront) edited by Matija Škerbec, self-published in 1957 in Cleveland and printed by: Tiskarna Mohorjeve družba Klagenfurt, AUSTRIA.
http://www.safaric-safaric.si/knjige/MS_1957_Krivda_rdece_fronte_2a.htm
