The exhibition “Exiles” (“Izgnali so nas”) of the Museum of National Liberation Maribor, author Irene Mavrič Žižek, PhD, opened in the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, on Thursday, October 10th, 2024, starting at 7 p.m.
At the beginning of the opening, the attendees were greeted by Darko Gučanin, director of the National Museum Kraljevo, who said on this occasion that the “Exiles” exhibition tells about the occupation of the Slovenian Lower Styria in the spring of 1941, when the mass deportation of the Slovenian people to Serbia and the territory of the Independent State of Croatia was carried out on 6,802 people who lived with Serbian families were deported to Serbia. Fifty Slovenians were unfortunately shot in the camp between October 15th and 20th, 1941. The hospitality and friendships that arose in the whirlwind of war and suffering continued even after the Second World War as individual and group visits, the creation of joint events such as the Train of Brotherhood and Unity and the fraternization of Maribor and Kraljevo.
The audience was then addressed by Simona Tripkovič, director of the Museum of National Liberation Maribor, who thanked them for their trust and hospitality. She pointed out that the National Liberation Museum Maribor has been in existence for 66 years. It was originally founded in 1947 as a museum of the National Liberation Struggle, and in 1958 it grew into a museum with its current name. It has a very rich collection of objects from the period of the Second World War, as well as archival material.
Irena Barič Žižek, PhD, curator of the Museum of National Liberation Maribor, the author of the exhibition, reflected on the concept of the exhibition and the thematic units. The first refers to the deportation of Slovenes, in accordance with Hitler’s order “Make this country German again!”. According to Heinrich Himmler’s guidelines, nationally conscious, especially educated Slovenes were to be expelled. The Nazis expelled about ten percent of the entire population from the occupied Slovenian provinces. The second part shows the arrest of Slovenes and the resettlement camps. The first arrests in occupied Lower Styria were carried out by army units, artillery and members of the Kulturbund, already in the first days of the occupation, and all prisons throughout Lower Styria were filled with mass arrests. For these reasons, concentration camps were arranged, which were similar to the German concentration camps in terms of operation. The third part talks about the transport of exiles. The first transport left the Melje barracks on June 7th, 1941. The fourth segment shows the life of deported Slovenes in Serbia, some of whom Nedić’s government distributed to rural households, but a large number of them remained in the cities where they founded exile colonies. A significant number of exiles joined the resistance movement: around six hundred Slovenians joined the 5th Slovenian Battalion of the 1st Krajina Brigade in November 1944. The last part of the exhibition shows the return of exiled Slovenians home, which began in a mass form only on June 23rd, 1945, due to severe damage to the Belgrade-Zagreb railroad.