The Kočevje municipality said that the festival aimed to preserve the Goetschee culture, which is fading or has already faded, and to raise awareness on the importance of protecting the culture of all ethnic groups.

The Days of Gottschee Culture is taking place for the second year and is a joint effort of the Kočevje, Semič and Dolenjske Toplice municipalities, which would like to make the festival traditional.

The festival will open with the unveiling of a memorial honouring Kočevje-born painter Roman Erich Petsche (1907-1993), who was named The Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Holocaust remembrance authority Yad Vashem after risking his life to save two Jewish girls from extermination during the Holocaust.

The memorial, built into the wall of Petsche's home, will be unveiled by President Borut Pahor. An exhibition on Petsche will also open at the Kočevje Regional Museum.

The museum will also organise screenings of films on Goetschee culture at various venues from Tuesday until Sunday, a tour of exhibition of another Kočevje-born painter and sculptor, Michael Ruppe, and an art colony.

A hike around Gottschee landmarks will also take place as part of the festival and a book will be released on famous Gottschee figures, written by Mihael Petrovič Jr.

The Gottschee, named after the German word for the region of Kočevje, are descendants of a German-speaking group that settled there in the 14th century.

Data from the Gottschee Association (Gottscheer Altsiedler Verein), which was set up in 1992 and has some 200 members, indicates the community was at its strongest in 1870 counting 26,500 members.

Due to emigration provoked by the economic crisis in the 1930s, their numbers dropped to 12,500 before WWII. Most of these moved out during the war.