Candles are being lit openly at the entrance of an old air-raid shelter in northern Slovenia, hiding the remains of hundreds of people killed by anti-fascist forces in the aftermath of World War II.
"People have been placing candles here secretly since 1945 and there were many tales of horrible things that happened near today's aluminium factory which led us to initiate the exhumation," Emil Vezjak, deputy mayor of Slovenska Bistrica, 60 kilometers north-east of Ljubljana said.
In all 231 bodies, including those of women and children, have been exhumed during the past few months from the first of two shelters near the factory. Bullet holes were found in all of the skulls, Mr Vezjak said.
The exhumation of the second shelter, whose entrance is still hidden under ground, as it was blown up to cover the crime is to, begin in mid-December.
A DNA identification of the exhumed remains should shed light on the fate of some 80 people from Slovenska Bistrica who went missing after the war, Mr Vezjak added.
The former Yugoslav republic is trying to settle the dark side of its history. Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek's government decided at the end of November to investigate and mark numerous mass graves scattered throughout the country.
Tens of thousands of domobranci, Slovene pro-Nazi forces, soldiers of the Croatian Nazi puppet state and Serbian and Montenegrin collaborators, as well as civilians who joined them in their flight towards Austria, are believed to have been executed by the Yugoslav communist regime in 1945.
Seventy-five mass graves have been registered, but the final number is believed to be about 140, the head of the government commission for the mass graves, Peter Kovacic Persin, said.
The monuments that would be erected at the sites would all have the same inscription: "To victims of war and revolution."
"Most of the sites are located near the western borders with Austria, where the fugitives were captured before reprisals were taken against them, under instructions from Belgrade," Mr Persin said.
Many prisoners of war and civilians were killed on the way to to Serbia after they had been tried, Persin added.
AFP