When it became obvious at the end of April 1945 that the Germans were preparing to withdraw from Slovenia, the Slovene collaborators intended to negotiate with the Germans to hand over power to them. But they refused. Rösener then handed over Gorenjska to Leon Rupnik for administration on 5 May, and Rupnik handed over administrative affairs to the National Committee, which had been formally established by the Slovene reactionary politicians at the end of December 1944. The only option left to the Slovenian collaborators was to flee to Carinthia, under German command.
The flight towards the Karavank mountains was very miserable. There was no way to cross Jesenice. The retreat towards Solčava was also impossible, because the 15th Shock Division had occupied the whole area between Domžale, Kamnik and the Kamnik mountains. At the same time, the 29th Herzegovinian Shock Division, which had liberated Škofja Loka and Kranj on 10 May 1945, was driving them from Ljubljana and then began to pound the Quisling units near Tržič. On the slopes of Dobrče and Kriška Gora, the Home guard and SS tried to hold back the Herzegovinians on 11 May, but by afternoon they had already pushed them to Sveta Anna below Ljubelj / Loiblpass and started shelling them fiercely.
Agreement between the SS and the Home guard
Even before that, there was a lot of confusion on Ljubelj / Loiblpass. The SS had blocked the tunnel and used it only for their own men and vehicles. Bračič's brigade and two battalions of the Carinthian detachment were ordered to secure the crossings over the Drava / Drau by all means and to capture all the enemies pressing towards Borovlje / Ferlach from Ljubelj / Loiblpass - among them SS, Home guard, vlasov and Chetniks of various colours. First the SS regiments collided with the Carinthian detachment and the Bračič Brigade. They were the first to lay down their arms. This did not sit well with the Home guard in particular, so SS General Erwin Rösener and Home guard commander Franz Krener agreed on 10 May 1945, near Mali Ljubelj, to jointly attack the positions of the Bračič Brigade and the Carinthian Detachment with their units in order to take Borovlje / Ferlach and the Humperk / Hollenburg bridges over the River Drava / Drau.
The first fighting took place towards evening of the same day. They lasted for three hours, but did not bring any success to the SS and Home guard, only many casualties. It is probable that the enemies also used this fight as a means of violent mirroring. Overnight, the fighting subsided and the German troops began to surrender again, but only little by little; at the same time, the losers wanted to negotiate a crossing of the Humperk / Hollenburg Bridge.
It was suspiciously quiet on the enemy side, and this did not bode well. It was clear that they were preparing for battle…
17 tanks and two Home guard shock battalions
The enemy was still surrendering on 11 May 1945 by 10:00, but disarmament was slow. Shortly after twelve o'clock, however, a larger convoy refused to surrender its arms, and the conflict was exploited by the enemy for a fierce attack from the peaks above Borovlje / Ferlach, as seventeen tanks, in addition to two Home guard shock battalions, entered the fray. The artillery preparation was terrible. The ground was on fire from the grenade blasts. It immediately became clear that the enemy wanted to take Borovlje / Ferlach in particular, because machine-gun and mortar fire from the town and from the surrounding positions was dangerous for them, also for the crossings to the bridge. The worst was to come upon the 1st Battalion of the Bračič Brigade and the Austrian Battalion, the one formed in March 1945 in Slovenj Plajberk / Windisch Bleiberg from German soldiers who had voluntarily defected to the partisans, and those groups of fighters who were disarming the enemy or were on the bridge without cover. These fighters simply disappeared without anyone knowing what had happened to them.
The Quislings - the White guards, the Home guard, the Ustasha, the Chetniks and the vlasovists - refused to lay down their arms despite the capitulation of Germany. They did not achieve their objective of surrendering to the British rather than to the Yugoslav People's Army or the partisans to the extent desired. The British, who at first did not want to get involved in fighting on the side of the partisans, only then decided to help the partisans disarm the enemy troops. In the area from the bridge to Humperk / Holenburg Castle, Home guard and SS soldiers surrendered to the British and the Partisans on 12 and throughout 13 May 1945. About 180 partisan fighters fell in the battles of Borovlje / Ferlach, at a time when other European battlefields were already in a lull.
Memorial to 49 partisans
The old cemetery in Borovlje / Ferlach originally had a large, 12-metre-long burial ground for fallen partisans. However, when the municipality decided to abandon the old municipal cemetery, the Association of Carinthian Partisans decided on 30 April 1959 to arrange a suitable partisan burial site in the new cemetery and to bury all 49 fallen partisans there. In addition to the central wrought-iron memorial, a memorial to the other victims who died for the freedom of Austria was erected alongside the partisan memorial in a suitable, park-like location.
The partisan monument is a recumbent stone square above the burial ground, with a stylised figure in shallow relief and an inscription on a stone base:
To the fallen partisans. 1941-1945.
Štefan Trbovšek, Jože Cigovc, Anton Bohorič, Štefan
Rus, Gustl Osenk, Rudolf Toplak and partisan Miloš.
42 unknown partisans.
Most of those buried here belonged to the Bračič Brigade; they were killed in battles with German, Ustaše and White guard units during the retreat from Yugoslavia from 9 to 14 May 1945. Many of the killed partisans were swept into the Drava / Drau by the enemy; therefore, all trace of them was lost.
Štefan Trbovšek, a political commissar, was originally from Raven na Koroškem, Anton Bohorič was from Tržič, the partisan Miloš and the miner Gustl Osenk were from Kranj, Jožef Cigovc and Štefan Rus were from Borovlje / Ferlach. Some of the fallen fighters (22 in number) were dug up in autumn 1946 from individual graves in the villages and forests around Borovlje / Ferlach. At the time of the burial Dean Košir said, among other things: "To risk one's life for the freedom of others is the greatest sacrifice an earthling can make."
Location:
The cemetery is located slightly outside the centre of Borovlje / Ferlach, on the right side of the road if you are driving towards Šmarjeta v Rož / St. Margarethen im Rosental.