12th February 1945
Hanna Hertell

Artworks by Hanna Hertell

'Gottschee' (VDA postcard B.5, R.2 Nr.2). Ref: 12.02.1945

Notes on Gottschee from Wikipedia. Kočevje, German: Gottschee, a town and the seat of Municipality of Kočevje in southern Slovenia.

Some Gottscheer community leaders embraced Nazism and agitated for 'assistance' and 'repatriation' to the Reich even before the German invasion in 1941, but most Gottscheers had no interest in reuniting with Greater Germany or in joining the Nazis. They had been integrated into society with their Slovene neighbours, often intermarrying and becoming bilingual while maintaining their Germanic language and customs. But propaganda and Nazi ideology prevailed, and the Main Welfare Office for Ethnic Germans (VoMi) began planning the Gottschee resettlement from the Italian-annexed territory to the Rann Triangle (German: Ranner Dreieck), the region in Lower Styria between the confluences of the Krka, Sotla, and Sava rivers.

To achieve their goal, accommodation had to be made for the Gottschee settlers and, beginning in November 1941, some 46,000 Slovenes from the Rann Triangle region were deported to eastern Germany for potential Germanisation or forced labor. Shortly before that, propaganda aimed at both the Gottscheers and the Slovenes promised the latter equivalent farmland in Germany for the land relinquished in Lower Styria. The Gottscheers were given Reich passports and transportation to the Rann area straight after the forced departure of the Slovenes. Most left their homes following coercion and threats as the VoMi had set 31st December 1941 as the deadline for the movement of both groups. Though many Gottscheers received houses and farmland, inevitably there was great dissatisfaction that many properties were of lesser value and quality than their original lands, and many were in disarray after the hasty expulsion of their previous occupants.

From the time of their arrival until the end of the war, Gottscheer farmers were harassed and sometimes killed by Yugoslav partisans who saw them as an instrument of the Axis powers. The attempt to resettle the Gottscheers proved a costly failure for the Nazi regime, which needed to deploy extra manpower to protect the farmers from the partisans. The deported Slovenes were taken to several camps in Saxony, Silesia, and elsewhere in Germany, where they were forced to work on German farms or in factories from 1941 to 1945. The laborers were not always kept in formal internment, but often in nearby vacant buildings. After the end of the war, most returned to Yugoslavia to find their homes destroyed.

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