The first permanent exhibition dedicated to the Holocaust in Slovenia opened in the Jewish Culture Centre in Ljubljana on 1 September, remembering the Ljubljana Jews who perished in the genocide.

The exhibition, entitled The Holocaust in Ljubljana, is based on research by several local historians and Holocaust researchers, especially Boris Hajdinjak and Robert Waltl.

The pair had been involved in the project of Stolpersteine in Ljubljana, the stumbling stones which symbolically returned Holocaust victims their names, erecting symbolic graves at their family gates.

Intermedia artist Vuk Ćosić created digital portraits of the victims in a project called Undeleted, using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Their stories were re-enacted by Slovenian actors for the exhibition.

The exhibition was created by the Jewish Culture Centre and the Ljubljana City Museum and was curated by Blaž Vurnik.

The Stolpersteine project began in Ljubljana and the Prekmurje region six years ago. Along with with it started the research into the fates of Ljubljana Jews and the Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, who fled to Ljubljana in the 1930s, in particular after the 1941 occupation.

Ljubljana The Stolpersteine or stumbling stones in 26 Komensky Street in Ljubljana. Photo: Nebojša Tejić/STA

The Stolpersteine was first launched by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 to commemorate the Holocaust victims at their last known place of residence before they fell victim to Nazi terror.

The brass stones feature inscriptions displaying the victim's name, date of birth and fate.

In Slovenia, such memorial blocks have been laid in Ljubljana, Maribor and the north-east of the country, Lendava and Murska Sobota, where most of Slovenian Jews lived before the Second Word War.

Out of around 1,000 Jews who lived on the Slovenian soil before the war, only a good hundred remained after May 1945 and most of those moved out in the following years.

Also on display in the Jewish Culture Centre in Križevniška Street until the end of October is an exhibition titled Slovenian Schindlers - Slovenians Righteous Among the Nations. The display presents Slovenians who helped Jews during the Second Word War, risking their lives and the lives of their families.