Grave and ossuary on the municipal cemetery, Kočevje

A memorial plaque for the fallen fighters is placed at the town cemetery in Kočevje. On two marble slabs (225x435x52 cm) the names of 74 fighters are engraved.

During the war years, it was not possible to bury all the fallen fighters in cemeteries or graves. Many fighters were buried on the battlefields in a common grave or individually. Documents or records about the fallen were not preserved. Therefore, to this day, there are graves and cemeteries with the inscription "grave of the unknown partisan". After the end of the Second World War, the exhumation of the fallen fighters began. On Kočevje, this action started in October 1948 and continued in spring 1949. The action was led by the Regional Committee of the Fighters' Union. Field conditions, especially the vastness of Kočevje, poor traffic connections and lack of transport means, made the exhumation difficult. The identification of the remains also presented a particular problem. Fighters were not allowed to carry documents or personal papers with them.

The collected remains of the fighters were buried at the partisan cemetery on Trati. However, with the new spatial planning, it was later decided to abolish this cemetery. The remains were reburied in 1968 at the new town cemetery on Črnomaljska cesta. In the common grave, 167 remains of the fallen fighters were buried.

The plan for the memorial was not fully realized. In the obelisk, three more sculptures in horizontal position were supposed to be embedded, representing the fallen partisans.

The plan for the memorial was designed by architect ing. Marjeta Rupnik. The monument - obelisk - is the work of academic sculptor Staneta Jarma. The memorial was ceremoniously unveiled on 3rd (or 8th) October 1968.

Source: mag. Irena Škufca, Commemorative Monuments of the National Liberation Struggle on Kočevje, 2005

Guide through the partisan trails, Ljubljana: Borec Publishing House, 1978, p. 125.

EŠD 24225

.

Nace Karničnik, Memorial – ossuary – 176 fallen fighters on the town cemetery in Kočevje /Monuments of the National Liberation Struggle on Kočevje/, Kočevske novice, Newspaper OK SZDL Kočevje, Year III, No. 10, Wednesday, 16. 12. 1986, p. 12. Electronic source: Kočevske novice, No. 10, 1986 Access: 8. 2. 2024.