Muzej talcev Begunje na Gorenjskem
- Museum of Hostages Begunje na Gorenjskem
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History
The Museum of Hostages Begunje na Gorenjskem was founded by the Municipality of Radovljica in 1961 and incorporated into the Radovljica Municipality Museums in 1963.
Begunje in Gorenjska (Upper Carniola) is a village below the Begunjščica mountain, seven kilometers north of Radovljica. The Katzenstein manor house in the center of the village was the site of Gestapo prisons during the Nazi occupation. Between 1941 and 1945, 11,477 people were imprisoned, mostly members of the resistance movement from Gorenjska, but also from other Slovenian regions, passed through the prison.
Many prisoners were sent to concentration camps, most of them to Dachau and Mauthausen. 849 people from the Begunje prisons were executed (by shoting).
According to the Begunje prison register, the number of the people identified as “Gypsies" was 117, most of whom were Sinti with the surnames Rajhard, Reichard, Mueller, Ocepek, Petan, Roi or Roj, Jungvirt, Seger, Taubman and Žagar.
The historians Marjan Toš and Andrej Studen report that around 300 Roma and Sinti were killed or taken to the Gestapo prisons in Begunje in Upper Carniola and Šentvid in Ljubljana and then transported to concentration camps in Europe, including Jasenovac, or exiled to Serbia.
On May 4, 1945, the Kokra detachment of the Partisan army took over the Begunje prisons and freed 632 prisoners. An annual commemoration is held in Begunje on this day.
Building(s)
The Katzenstein manor house, which has a history dating back to the 14th century, is now a psychiatric hospital. Museum of Hostages is now a memorial museum in the north-western wing, which housed the death row cells during the Second World War. The park and the nearby Draga valley are the burial sites of 667 hostages and partisans.
Archival and Other Holdings
The shocking writings of the prisoners on the walls of the cells and the occupier's advertisements about the shooting of hostages have been preserved and presented.
Documentary material and other artefacts show the life of internees and emigrants in prisons and some concentration camps in 1941-1945 and the Nazi atrocities against the local population.
Finding Aids, Guides, and Publication
The Begunje Prison Books are freely available online in reduced resolution, https://www.gorenjski-muzej.si/begunjske-knjige-na-spletu/.
A virtual tour of the museum is available at https://mro.si/en/museum-of-hostages-begunje#tab-d7bc825b08380e0e50b.
Sources
Gorenjski muzej [The Gorenjska Museum], Begunjske knjige na spletu [The Begunje Prison Books Online], available at https://www.gorenjski-muzej.si/begunjske-knjige-na-spletu/.
Vera Klopčič and Marjetka Bedrač, eds., Porajmos, Maribor: Center judovske kulturne dediščine Sinagoga, 2015, available at http://www.dlib.si/?URN=URN:NBN:SI:DOC-H40NE6AG.
Muzej talcev Begunje na Gorenjskem [Museum of Hostages Begunje na Gorenjskem], https://mro.si/en/museum-of-hostages-begunje.
Andrej Studen, Neprilagojeni in nevarni: Podoba in status Ciganov v preteklosti [Maladjusted and Dangerous: Images and Status of Gypsies in the Past], Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2015.
Marjan Toš, “Genocid nad Romi – pozabljeni holokavst” [“Roma Genocide – the Forgotten Holocaust”], in Ursula Glaeser et al., ROMI v gibanju [Roma on the move], (Maribor: Center judovske kulturne dediščine Sinagoga, 2013, 39–50 (available at: https://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN:SI:doc-GZSTOZ4P).
The Roma Holocaust/Roma Genocide in Southeastern Europe: Between Oblivion, Acknowledgment, and Distortion, a study by the the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, New York, U.S.A. and The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, Boston, MA, U.S.A., 2022.