29/IV/2009
To go from Ljubljana to Klagenfurt (Celovec in Slovenian) must pass through a tunnel nearly two miles that lies between the two obsolete border between Austria and Slovenia to the height of Ljubelj (Loiblpass, in German), the nearest mountain pass which rises to 1,300 meters above sea level and is closed to traffic for more than forty years .
The strategic importance of the tunnel is almost nil. Has life thanks to the locals, tourists and people who, like me, believes that a map distance is shorter going to get before, without seeing if it goes on a road or highway, such as , winding and steep. Today, people can move between these two cities through Karawanken tunnel.
The truth is that the tunnel Ljubelj was built between 1943 and 1945 by more than 1,500 prisoners from Mauthausen. It built two small camps. One on each side of the tunnel. The Austria side Pudim not locate. On the Slovenian side is 1.6 kilometers from the entrance of the tunnel, as we see thanks to this wonder called Google maps.
about 900 survived. No one's free. The camp was evacuated by the Germans in May 45. The memorial was built at the initiative of France a few years ago, being independent and Slovenia. In the commemorative plaque referring to political prisoners of various nationalities. They draw attention to the lack of English and references Croats and Slovenes.
I am not an expert on the Holocaust. Nor do I pretend to be. But the absence of English in that place is suspect. Most Republicans captured in France ended up in Mauthausen, and it is surprising that among all of them ended up in Ljubelj none. More than sixty years France has denied he was a collaborator. The same time are hiding the role of English in the liberation of its territory. The absence of English in Ljubelj (which, in Slovenia, referring to love) invited me to think that the drivers of the count as fighters memorial in France. On behalf of the Germans is not going to be, because they identified with macabre precision all the groups that came in their centers of terror. Including, of course, to the English.
The presence of Croats and Slovenes, on the other hand, it leaves more clearly a political intention. This becomes even clearer when the word Yugoslavia is not in this official memorial plaque. Political detainees were Partizaner Croats and Slovenes in Yugoslavia. In Mauthausen, near Linz in northern Austria, the flags of Yugoslavia and the English Repúblcia wave in honor of those who were dehumanized by identifying with them.
