Franc Markelj

Franca Marklja was murdered by members of the Gestapo's Black Hand on the night of 31 March 1944.

v: 27 cm
š: 41 cm

The plaque was made by Železarna Jesenice.

The plaques in the museum are not listed in the inventory. When inquiring at the former Music School, now located in these premises, no response was given.

Archiv ZB Jesenice

Guide to Partisan Paths, Ljubljana: Borec, 1978, p. 202.

EŠD 5366

..

He was born on 1 April 1944. There was no one in Jesenice who had been affected by the first-of-April incidents. Six people secretly murdered in one night caused unrest even among the Nazi-thinking people, Slovenes and Germans. It should be known that the Gestapo carefully kept the secret of who the Black Hand members were and who supported them. […]

A large crowd attended the funeral of murdered Franca Marklja. The funeral procession was long, from the administrative building of the steelworks to the railway station, and was the largest funeral in Jesenice up to that time. […]

The day after the funeral, leaflets were scattered throughout the streets of Jesenice, written on a typewriter, with the following content:

'Everyone who attends such a funeral will suffer the same fate.'

Franc Markelj was born on 26 January 1904 in Jesenice. Already at the age of fourteen, as the eldest of six children, he was employed at the steelworks. After the death of her husband, Frančiška Markelj received no support until liberation, except for the partisans who helped her survive with herself and her child. Their son, Franc, followed in his father's footsteps and worked at the steelworks.

Rozalija Markelj, the sister-in-law of the murdered Franca, told me: "When I received the telegram from Golnik saying that Franc had died from his wounds, I went to Savo to Dežman, the priest, and asked him to ring the bell in his memory. The priest could not understand that Franc had been alive the whole day. I was convinced that he had participated in the crime. After the war, he fled with his family abroad. Why? In that barracks housing, everyone was pious, except for the brother-in-law who did not regularly attend church.

Exactly because of this, the clericals accused him of being a Black Hand member. Franc was a careful family man and father. He and his wife understood each other so well that she could not forget him until his death in 1963."«

(Jože Vidic, Po sledovih črne roke, Ljubljana: Založba Borec, 1982, 125, 126)