Celje - Memory of the Child Collection and Shelter/Missing Children

Memorial site at Celje's First Primary School, where from 1941 to 1945 it served as a collection center for children who were sent to camps or to Nazi families. The memorial plaque was unveiled on July 4, 1957. The plaque stands as a remembrance and warning to younger generations.

The Nazis had already made detailed plans for Germanization before the occupation. Upon taking control, they immediately began implementing these plans. Thousands of people were unenthusiastically driven away from their homes into exile. Following the expulsion of "politically dangerous" individuals and those resettled to Steiermark after World War I, came the expulsion of partisans' families, elders, mothers, and children. The former primary school in Celje was transformed into a camp collection center. It was surrounded by wire and guard posts, filled with partisan families, activists, and collaborators. This is where the most thorny path began for partisan mothers and their young children, who were torn from their families and even from their mothers' arms, sent to camps or designated for takeover by Nazi households. Source: Guide through Partisan Trails, p. 476.

Source: Memorials of Our Suffering in 1941-1945, Zdenka Kaplan, DIS -Society of Slovene Exiles 1941-1945, Ljubljana 2005.

Memorials of Our Revolution, Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1961, p. 185.

Keywords: children123