Society of Peasant Soldiers and Girls Gradac

Gradac communist party members, among them primarily Jakob Butala (when he returned from the Maribor prison), began in the decade before the Second World War to systematically spread Marxist ideas. The party cell, with the help of students of agronomy Janez Marentič and Jože Berkopč and especially the railway worker Tonet Šušteršič, together with their members and sympathizers, took over the leadership of the established in mid-1933 Association of Peasants' Boys and Girls, in which the well-known revolutionary song "Kosec koso brusi" was born. Due to the dominance of the communists and because the meeting of the Catholic organization of Slovene boys for the White Homeland on 15 September 1935 at the church in Kloštar, the banal administration in Ljubljana dissolved the association already on 15 October of the same year, but nevertheless did not stop their influence on political events. The communist Jakob Butala was sentenced by the district court in Celje on 17 July 1929 to three years of strict imprisonment, which he served in the Maribor prison. He fell as a fighter of the Belokranjski detachment in August 1942 in the Kočevski Rog. A commemorative plaque on the wall of the new market in Gradac was unveiled on 22 April 1977 by Tine Železnik.

archive ZB NOB Metlika (30)

Photo: archive Dolenjski list 28. 4. 1977

Vodnik, 70

Vodnik po partizanskih poteh, Ljubljana: Založba Borec, 1978, p. 134

Vodnik (70) mistakenly mentions that the plaque is on the building of the former communal house (h. št. 115?). I did not find the plaque, on this address there are only new buildings. A 75-year-old lady in the neighbouring house, who belonged to the railway during the AO period, said that Gradac never had a communal house. Probably we have the wrong location. D. Škodič 25. 4. 2021