The file of Leopoldina Pečar is an ordinary paper envelope, with her name and two markings written on the front. Inside are three yellowed sheets: a statement, an interrogation record, and an indictment stamped with the date 7 June 1945. The indictment reads briefly: “/…/ She was a member of the KB and a fanatical Hitler supporter.”
Leopoldina’s daughter, Poldika Damjan, received copies of these documents from the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Slovenia in December 1992, based on a written request. Yet she never discussed them with us, her already adult children. To be honest, I never asked her anything about the events after the Second World War, being far too occupied with business opportunities in the years following the Ten‑Day War. But when, around the year 2000, I finally examined the documents in the file for the first time, I felt confused—and even a faint sense of guilt. What if she really had been a fanatical Hitler supporter, I wondered quietly, without truly understanding what that would even have meant. For twenty years, I never spoke to anyone about this question.
After reopening the case of our missing grandmother two years ago, I requested from the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia all documentation concerning Leopoldina Pečar and all persons connected to her. Once again, I received only the same three sheets, which still did not reveal much. I reflected that being “fanatical” or strongly convinced of something is, fortunately, not a criminal offence today. I wondered who the interrogator had been, how the interrogation had unfolded, and of course, what had happened afterward.
Gradually, I discovered that the file numbered ZA‑450/3414—now stored in a box marked SI AS 1931_911 in the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia—was only one among a total of 4,886 files. They contain information on 4,918 individuals, most of whom were members of the Kulturbund or conscripts in the German army from the region of Lower Styria (Source: Malnar M., 1997). When the Archives granted me access to the entire collection, the so‑called KB fund, I spent hours leafing through the files, slowly forming a picture of the trials faced by my Styrian compatriots during the war and in the post‑war years. I began to understand how different the meaning of certain words had been eighty years ago. I paid particular attention to the files of people who had been interrogated on the same day as Leopoldina Pečar or who came from the same village—Kamnica near Maribor. Practically all of them had indictments written against them, and for most, this meant the same fate.
