The northernmost partisan monument is in Svinec / Eberstein, a small town with an old manor house. Celovec / Klagenfurt is 35 kilometres away. In the sensibly laid out cemetery, a real park, a tall stone square is prominently placed with an inscription indicating that here is the grave of two fallen partisans of the Northern Battalion of the Carinthian Detachment. The first, Ernest Šrot, is known to have been born in 1929 in Leše near Ravne na Koroškem, while the name of the second remains unknown. Both of them arrived at the end of March 1945, completely exhausted, from the Svinška planina / Saualpe mountain near Svinec / Eberstein. In the high snow, they were captured by the Nazi gendarmerie and taken to the station in Svinec / Eberstein. After interrogation, they were led back to the place where they had been captured and shot.
The investigation ended in a conviction
As one of the few war crimes in Carinthia, this murder was investigated, and the perpetrators were convicted—gendarme Andreas Feldner was sentenced to life imprisonment, while gendarme Georg Hartl received 15 years in prison. The third gendarme, Otto Haberland, fled to Germany. The case file for this trial is in Gradec / Graz and bears the number 6 V R 236/45.
Location:
Svinec / Eberstein is situated in front of the western slope of the Svinška planina / Saualpe, north of Mostič / Brückl in the valley of the Krčica / Görtschitz River.