Ljubelj is best known as a mountain pass and tunnel connecting Slovenia and Austria across the Karavanke. It is less known that it was built by internees of the only Nazi concentration camp in Slovenia.

As traffic flows across the border moved westwards when the Karavanke tunnel opened in 1991, Ljubelj is now a quiet, almost idyllic spot surrounded by majestic mountains, forests and meadows.

It is also a place associated with suffering and trauma, yet despite the annual commemoration ceremonies held there the story of the camp is partly forgotten 80 years after the end of Second World War.

The Ljubelj concentration camp was established in June 1943 by members of the SS, one of the most notorious Nazi organisations, as a subunit of the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz in Austria.

It was established with a clear aim in mind; to build a tunnel through the Ljubelj mountain pass to create a strategically important and faster connection between Austria and the Adriatic, researcher Vilja Lukan Pišek says.

A curator at the Museum of Contemporary and Modern History, Lukan Pišek first learned about Ljubelj when she started working at the Tržič Museum, in the town below the pass, and it became a subject of her research.

"We didn't learn about it at school, and many people around me didn't know about it either. So I started wondering why it wasn't being talked about," she told the Slovenian Press Agency.

Agonising labour and suffering

To realise their bold construction plan, the SS needed free labour force. This is why internees of various nationalities were brought to the Ljubelj camp.

Most of some 1,800 prisoners interned there were French (around 800), Poles (around 450), citizens of the Soviet Union (188) and Yugoslavia (144), most of them Slovenes (110).

They faced an arduous task: breaking through the rocky mass of the Karavanke day in day out. "They would start working at four in the morning, when they had a modest meal. They worked whatever the weather, in heat, cold and snow.

"Hypothermia, exhaustion, illness and injury were part of everyday life. Those who could no longer cope were often sent back to Mauthausen, where death awaited them in the gas chambers," Lukan Pišek says.

It took the prisoners six months to break through the 1,566-metre tunnel and they worked more on it in 1944 and 1945. A system of terror was in force until the end of the war.

The Nazi doctor Ramsauer, known for his cruel experiments, used the internees for medical experiments, often killing them with a petrol injection. "The internees feared medical treatment more than wounds or disease, so they would hide those as much as they could," Lukan Pišek explains.

Because the weak were returned to Mauthausen, the exact number of victims of the Ljubelj camp is not known but it is estimated there were around 40.

Brave and helpful locals

Despite the violence and gruelling work, the internees found moments of solace. "On the way to the tunnel, they would see the Church of St Anne by the roadside, a quiet source of comfort for many of the faithful.

"In their testimonies, they often mentioned the mountains that surrounded them. For some, they were a symbol of being trapped and hopelessness, for others, they were a symbol of hope, as they sheltered partisans, and several camp prisoners managed to escape across them," the researcher says.

Unlike concentration camps in Austria and Germany, where there were almost no successful escapes, 28 prisoners attempted to escape from Ljubelj, 22 of them successfully.

This was due to the partisan resistance movement and the extraordinary bravery of the local people, who helped the internees with a great deal of sacrifice. "Ljubelj was a rarity among Nazi camps in that the local population tried to help the internees as much as they could," Lukan Pišek says.

Janko Tišler, a 22-year-old civilian worker on the tunnel site, was one of those who helped the internees to escape and he smuggled letters by which they kept in touch with their families.

He also took risk when he listened to foreign radio stations to gather information about developments worldwide. After the war he dedicated his life to preserving the memory of the camp. He collected testimonies and documents that are still a valuable source of historical memory today.

Another local, Mici Mally, who lived in Tržič, near the bakery, helped the internees by secretly bringing them bread, cigarettes and clothes.

Unlike the Nazi doctor, Czech doctor František Janouch, who arrived at the camp near the end, actually treated the patients and saved many lives. He stayed with the internees after the camp was disbanded and stood by their side until the end of the war.

Forty-four SS members took 900 internees through the tunnel to the Austrian side on 7 May 1945. They were liberated by Slovenian partisans on 8 May 1945.

Ljubelj criminals were tried in Klagenfurt before a high English court martial in 1947. The camp leader Jakob Winkler was executed and doctor Ramsauer was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released by the Austrian authorities in 1954. "Most of the crimes against the prisoners remain unpunished," Lukan Pišek says.

Difficult and rather neglected heritage

After the war, the memory of the Ljubelj camp began to fade quickly. The site had been left shut and abandoned for many years as public attention focused on the stories of resistance and triumph.

Today a memorial park, a museum and a statue of a skeleton with a beating heart testify to the horrors of the Ljubelj camp. The statue, called J'accuse, was designed by the architect Boris Kobe and made by the blacksmith Jože Bertoncelj from Kropa, a village known for its iron-forging tradition.

However, Lukan Pišek regrets that those do not function as a single space of remembrance. "The museum and the memorial park are not integrated. Visitors to the park often do not even know that the museum exists."

The museum is located in the basement of the Karavla guest house without a permanent presence of museum staff.

The Tržič Museum has in recent years focused on a modern presentation of this difficult heritage. They have taken an important step by mounting an exhibition that highlights personal stories, photographs and historical facts. But the researcher warns that memory alone is not enough.

"Younger people today hardly have any contact with people who can tell them about the war first-hand. That's why it's not enough just to remember. It's crucial that we educate ourselves, about human rights, about the consequences of violations, about the power of the individual. To understand that violence never happens overnight and that it can be prevented by small actions, every day," she stressed.

She would like visitors to the Ljubelj memorial park to "feel the importance of values such as peace, solidarity, non-violence. To understand how precious every human being is and how important individual actions are."