The area of Železna Kapla / Bad Eisenkappel has been known since 1942 as the central territory of the anti-fascist and national liberation struggle. In the spring of 1944, the Regional Committee of the Liberation Front (PO OF) was based in the area below Ojstra / mountain. It was there that the Carinthian partisans received the first shipments of weapons from British planes.
One of the first partisan outposts was Vivod's homestead in Lobnik / Lobnig. All of the family members were dedicated and devoted OF activists. The whole family was deported in January 1944 and the homestead remained abandoned until the end of the war. The master's sisters did not return from the extermination camps in Germany. Alongside the names of the family's victims, the master, Franz Boltežar (1885-1973), had the following inscribed on the family tombstone in the cemetery in Železna Kapla / Bad Eisenkappel:
Even if they killed your bodies, they could not kill your spirit,
which cries out to us all, Comrades, you! Follow our example,
shown by our shed blood!
The Nazis felt the spirit of resistance
The entrenchment of the anti-Nazi movement in and around Železna Kapla / Bad Eisenkappel was noted by the local Gendarmerie Commander in a report to his superiors in 1946:
"The Austrian resistance movement was brought to life by the resettlement of Carinthian Slovenes and the terror of the Gestapo. The harsher the measures taken against the resistance movement, the larger it became. In the local post area, 97% of the population were members of the resistance movement. As far as the difficulties faced by the resistance movement are concerned, it can be said that every person who belonged to the resistance movement or was associated with it was sent to prison or a concentration camp. If this was an owner, the whole family was deported."
A common island of remembrance for 154 victims
The rootedness of the partisan movement is also evident in the cemetery in Železna Kapla / Bad Eisenkappel, where 120 partisan fighters are buried, as well as the 34 victims who were murdered in their homes by the fascist police for supporting the partisans. The graves of the fallen are scattered throughout the cemetery. They share a common memorial, a tall marble square in the centre of the cemetery with the names of 78 fallen fighters carved on it. With them rest 26 more unknown combatants. According to the carved names, 60 are locals and 14 are Yugoslavs; three were Soviet citizens, one Polish.
Among his fighters rests a local man, the national hero Franc Pasterk-Lenart, the first commander of the First Carinthian Battalion. In 1981, the Association of Koroška Partisans erected a bronze relief of him. The inscription on the central monument reads:
Bridges grow from all human hearts and reach into all hearts!
The Peršmans also have a grave here
Next to the central partisan memorial stands a common gravestone of the Peršman family, who were murdered by SS on 25 April 1945 in their own home in Koprivna-Podpeca / Koprein-Petzen. There is also a common grave of three members of the Hojnik family who were killed by Nazi gendarmes at their home on 18 January 1944. Thus, it is a sad peculiarity of the Železna Kapla / Bad Eisenkappel cemetery that the youngest and oldest Slovene - Mirko Sadovnik from Peršman, 8 months and 21 days young, and Hojnik's father, 89 years, 8 months and 23 days old, are buried here. As the last victim of the war, Malka Oraže-Tatjana, a partisan who was mortally wounded by a shot from an English occupation soldier on 10 August 1946, is also buried here.
Remembering Peter Kuchar
Peter Kuchar, who died on 23 May 2017 after a long and difficult illness, is also buried in the cemetery in Železna Kapla / Bad Eisenkappel. He joined the partisans as a 13-year-old boy and was a courier from 1943 onwards. He was wounded in May 1945. After the war, he served until his retirement as director of the timber department of the former Obir pulp factory in Rebrca / Rechberg, and for many years he was chairman of the Association of Carinthian Partisans and of the local Slovenian Enlightenment Society "Zarja". After leaving the presidency, he was honorary president of the Association of Carinthian Partisans and Friends of the Anti-Fascist Resistance. His many testimonies gave the youth of both nationalities a vivid image of the national liberation struggle.
Location:
The Cemetery of Železna Kapla / Bad Eisenkappel lies embedded in a somewhat steep slope rising northwards from the market town just as you approach the centre of the town itself.
We recommend:
Kuchar, Helena: Jelka. Testimony of a Carinthian partisan. Based on a tape recording prepared for publication by Thomas Busch and Brigitte Windhub. Translation from German by Jože Blajs. Drava publishing house, Celovec / Klagenfurt 2009.