Celje - Memorial to the Collection of Children and Mothers for Camps / Stolen Children

Memorial at I. Primary School in Celje, where during the years 1941–1945 it was a collection center for children who were sent to camps or to Nazi families. The memorial plaque was unveiled on 4 July 1957. The plaque was placed as a reminder and warning to younger generations.

The Nazis had already prepared detailed plans for Germanization before the occupation. After the occupation, they immediately began to implement them. Tens of thousands of people were mercilessly driven from their homes into exile. Following the deportation of "politically dangerous" individuals and those who had settled in Styria after the First World War, as well as the deportation of people from the border coastal strip, came the deportation of partisan families, the elderly, mothers, and children. The former surrounding primary school in Celje was turned into a collection camp. The school was surrounded by barbed wire and guard posts and filled with families of partisans, activists, and resisters. Here began the most thorny path for partisan mothers and the bitter fate of the youngest, who were torn from their families and even from the arms of their mothers and sent to camps or assigned to be raised by Nazi officials. Source: Guide to Partisan Paths, p. 476.

Source: Monuments of Our Suffering in the Years 1941–1945, Zdenka Kaplan, DIS – Society of Slovene Refugees 1941–1945, Ljubljana 2005.

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

Motto: children123