No other historical period has ever seen such a large percentage of the Slovene population in police or judicial confinement as that between 1941 and 1945, when most of the Slovene territory was under occupation. Repressive measures, such as arrest, detention and confinement, were liberally applied by the occupiers in their attempt to suppress the national resistance movement.

Non-political crime, the rate of which had generally dropped during the Second World War, was of secondary concern to the occupying regime. While the prisons in Slovenia continued to exercise their role in sanctioning crime during the war, many were turned into remand prisons, in order to cope with an ever growing number of detainees who were held there while under investigation, before being deported to transit and concentration camps or their destination of confinement.

After establishing the Ljubljana Province on its occupied territory and swiftly annexing it to Italy on 3 May 1941, the Italian occupier retained the existing penal code and judicial institutions, while introducing some of its own for dealing with cases where one of the parties involved was Italian. Despite the annexation, Italy showed more respect for the Law of War than other two occupiers in Slovenia. It established its own police, with the Slovene police being partly dissolved or individually employed as an auxiliary force. Italy refrained from introducing its own penal code or courts, with the excep- tion of the Military War Court, which used Mussolini’s decree of 3 October 1941 on the use of certain articles of the penal code as its legal basis. In the twenty-one months of operation, until the surrender of Italy, this particular court heard some 13,000 persons, mostly members of the resistance movement. Penal courts, which remained operational, only processed non-political criminal cases.

On the Slovene territory, occupied and subsequently annexed by Hungary, a similar judicial system was introduced. Political offences were dealt with by regular courts as well as the Military Field Court and, subsequently, the Military Court of the Chief of Staff, which swiftly dealt with all offences against the Hungarian state and regime.

The Germans, whose intention was to quickly annex the entire Slovene territory, introduced a different system of repression. Before the planned annexation, which never materialised because of the resistance movement, they immediately deported 8 percent of the population and gave German citizenship to the remaining 90 percent. They abolished the entire judicial system which they intended to substitute with their own after the annexation. In the interim two-year period, the most urgent criminal cases were dealt with by the commanders of German Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei - SIPO) and Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst - SD). For this purpose, the commanders formed a special penal department which considered purely non-political matters, while all politically motivated offences were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the state secret police, the Gestapo. For each case, the Gestapo single-handedly carried out the investigation procedure, considered the evidence and assessed the degree of threat posed by a particular individual. Accordingly, it then prescribed deportation to a concentration camp or, at the personal decision of the said commanders, death sentence. In this way, all the members and sympathisers of the resistance movement were dealt with by the German occupying regime. It was not until 1944 that several such cases were handed over to the Political Penal Chambers in Upper Carniola and the Special Court for the Politi cal Matters in Styria. Both institutions operated outside the regular judicial system, which was established in 1943.

In Autumn 1943, the German occupier introduced its own judicial system in the Adriatic Littoral Operative Zone (Operazion’s Zone Adriatische’ Custeland?), which formally respected the Italian sovereignty, preserving the existing penal and judicial arrangements. Apart from the punitive measures with extra-judicial executions and the deportation to concentration camps (one of which was erected in Trieste) and forced labour, the Germans also introduced special courts for public safety. These courts, which operated in Trieste, Gorizia and Ljubljana, dealt with political and economic offences, such as black market profiteering and similar. The restrictions imposed included curfews and blackouts as well as the ban on border-crossing and radio listening. As a result of the heavy-handed repression against both the resistance movement and ordinary criminals, the prisons in Slovenia filled to overflowing, especially those on the German controlled territory where massive arrests had been made soon after the occupation.

In Slovenia, the occupiers found a functioning system of prisons which, before the war, sufficed for the needs of the police and the judiciary. Two penal institutions in Maribor and Begunje were part of a wider system in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. There were 4 regional court prisons and 49 district court prisons. The regional prisons could hold between 120 and 290 prisoners, whereas the capacity of smaller district prisons was between 10 and 40. The police and the gendarmerie also had prisons of their own; the largest prison in Ljubljana could hold up to 50 persons.

The Germans, whose system of repression required much larger capacities for the detainees under investigation, turned a large female penitentiary at Begunje in Upper Carniola into a central remand prison. After the courts had been abolished, the police also made good use of smaller district court prisons which became remand prisons for political detainees. In Styria there were two large regional prisons, each accommodating around 250 persons. There was a further male penitentiary with the capacity of 460. The penitentiary in Maribor was the only one that retained its original function throughout the war, and was used exclusively for those serving prison sentences. One half of its prisoners, who were also brought from Austrian and Bohemian regions, had been sentenced by the said penal department and, after 1943, by the courts. With the two main remand prisons running out of capacity already in 1941 and 1942, the commander of the Sipo and SD arranged special police prisons at the Borl Castle and in the auxiliary prison of the Maribor court at Strnišče, where prisoners worked on the construction of an aluminium factory. After Autumn 1943, in the final stages of the war, the judicial authorities in Styria closed 14 smaller district court prisons, which were more exposed to attack. In the Ljubljana Province, where the Italians had preserved the pre-war arrangement, the court prisons retained their function, including the two largest ones in Ljubljana and Novo mesto. With the detention of remand prisoners, who were under police and military jurisdiction, the role of court prisons gradually changed. Throughout the Italian occupation, the Court Prison in Ljubljana was used by the Military War Court for detaining the prisoners handed over to it. By the second half of 1942, the number of detainees twice exceeded the prison’s nominal capacity, obliging the authorities to transfer most inmates to the military prison in the so-called Belgian barracks in another part of the city. After early 1943, the Court Prison was intended only for the judicial detainees under investigation and those serving their sentences. Such detainees amounted to between 15 and 20 percent of the entire prison population. Others were those awaiting trial before the Military War Court (Tribunale militare di guerra). Also serving their time in the prison were those whose terms did not exceed six months. All others were, immediately after being sentenced, sent to penitentiaries and prisons in Italy, to serve their terms there. On their way to Italy, the convicts passed through the transit prison in Koper. Every police body and military formation engaged in the policing of the province organised its separate remand prison. In Ljubljana, remand prisons were thus arranged by the fascist militia and the paramilitary Carabinieri. In the latter, people categorised as suspects were detained before being sent to the Italian concentration camps, such as those in Rab, Gonars, Renicci and Visco.

After the Germans had taken over the hitherto Italian provinces and administratively transformed them into the Adriatic Littoral Operative Zone, they preferred to use prisons in larger urban centres rather than those in smaller provincial ones, where the National Liberation Movement had grown sufficiently strong to pose a serious military threat. Hence, those who had been arrested in military and police raids in rural areas, as well as the members of the National Liberation Army and the partisan detachments, were transported by protected military convoys to prisons in Ljubljana, Trieste and Gorizia, and from there deported to concentration camps and forced labour.

A typical wartime feature and a consequence of the independent and ad hoc set up of prisons by individual military units and police forces was the lack of professionalism among the prison staff. Prisoners, especially political ones, thus became more exposed to unprofessional, i.e. violent, treatment by the police, Carabinieri and soldiers. The occupiers considered Slovenes less reliable as prison staff, because of their natural bias towards detainees who were their fellow countrymen. Not surprisingly, some of them ended up behind bars for cooperating with the National Liberation Movement or providing forbidden assistance to prisoners. Among those who excelled in helping the inmates and cooperating with the National Liberation Movement were the staff of the Court Prison in Ljubljana.

The repression aiming at the quashing of the National Liberation Movement greatly changed the structure and status of prisoners throughout occupied Slovenia. Prisoners became one of the largest social categories in Slovenia during the Second World War. Official post-war statistics covering the territory of Slovenia, with the exception of the Julian March, suggests that there were some 64,000 people who spent more than two months in prison during the said period. When considering also those who were deported, interned or confined for longer periods, without actually being imprisoned, the number of those whose freedom was taken away rises to 120,000, which, at the time, amounted to 8 percent of the population. As many as 90 percent of these were included in that number because of the criminalisation of their political activity and resistance to occupation. Among the so-called political prisoners were the members and sympathisers of political resistance organisations participating in the National Liberation Movement, who violated the restrictions imposed by the occupying authorities. A considerable number of detainees were captured partisans. The judicial procedure against them, apart from being stricter because of their offences being qualified as armed resistance or their being members of armed gangs, was no different from those against civilians, and they shared the same prisons as other political prisoners. Political prisoners were often tortured during interrogation, regardless of which police carried it out. Torture or »intense interrogation « as they called it, was one of the Gestapo’s official procedures, approved by the commander of the SIPO and the SD. The life of a political detainee was marked by the brutality of the interrogation procedure and the fear of execution, not to mention the unbearable living conditions in overcrowded prisons.

In the twenty-one months of operation, the Italian Military War Court of the Second Army in Ljubljana delivered sentences to some 3,500 people. This indicates that the number of those who were actually convicted by a court was considerably smaller than that of the detainees in the remand procedure. Special German courts sentenced approximately 500 people in Slovenia. Once convicted, the prisoners were by and large sent to the occupiers’ countries of origin to serve their sentences there. Around 750, who were sentenced by the Military War Court to terms exceeding six months, were sent to prisons and penitentiaries in Italy. Their transfers took place between December 1941 and the surrender of Italy. They were distributed among 50 penitentiaries from Trani near Bari and Naples in the south, to Ales sandria and Venice in the northeast of Italy. Between November 1943 and April 1944, the Slovene Red Cross succeeded in securing their release. In August 1944, two groups of convicts from the occupied Slovene territory were sent to German penitentiaries in Aichach and Kassel-Wehlheiden. Those convicted by the Hungarian military and civilian courts served their sentences in prisons in Szombathelly and Čakovec, and in penitentiaries in Budapest, Vac, Komarno and Sopron-Köhid. The central remand prisons in Ljubljana, Maribor, Begunje and Trieste, resembled large shunting stations because of the big number of detainees who were daily brought to or taken from there in their dozens, amounting to several thousand a month. From the beginning of the war to the Italian surrender, some 8,500 people went through the Court Prison in Ljubljana, 7,700 of whom were political prisoners. In the Court Prison in Maribor, 9,900 people were detained in the first three years of the war. After the establishment of the Adriatic Littoral Operative Zone, 23,900 detainees were brought to the Court Prison in Trieste.

For many detainees, life in prison meant waiting for the next transfer. Ironically, some whose guilt had never been proven, were executed as hostages or in reprisal operations, while convicts were taken to penitentiaries where they received a better protection from the hazards of war than anyone else. Others again were taken to concentration camps for minor offences. With the German police authorities considering prison courtyards a suitable place for executions, judicial and police executions of those sentenced to death became an integral part of life in many prisons. This served as an additional intimidation for inmates and the local population. It goes without saying that life in prison, with all its physical discomforts and psychological anxiety, greatly differed from regular life. Everyone had to comply with the prescribed order and regulations, despite great overcrowdedness. In this respect, inmates often lived in conditions far below the minimum standards that applied in peacetime. The burden of isolation was more tolerable when they lived in groups, which was quite common due to the large numbers. Solitary cells were intended only for those sentenced the longest terms and they only spent short periods there. In some Italian prisons and penitentiaries, Slovene political prisoners dared to challenge the house regulations on compulsory work and the attendance of religious services, considerably straining their relations with the prison administration and staff. On the positive side, such rebellions strengthened the self-confidence of detainees and the inner homogeneity of groups.

With so many people negatively affected by the occupiers’ measures, the attitude of the local population towards prisons and inmates changed. The initial uneasiness and unwillingness to have anything to do with prisoners vanished and they were accepted as an integral part of society under the abnormal circumstances of the war. An increasing number of people was prepared to assist the detainees in one way or another. Relatives, friends and various institutions visited them, enquired about them and intervened for them with the authorities. They sought connections with influential political, military and police officials and were prepared to bribe them if necessary. In doing so, they put at stake their reputation and financial assets. Through their efforts and visits, inmates received mail and parcels with vitally important food, spare clothes and everything else that made their life a little more tolerable, along with the awareness that they were not abandoned. All this, of course, was not devoid of self-interest and, in some cases, became a lucrative business for police officials, prison wardens and intermediaries.

Among those who intervened was the Red Cross which endeavoured to assist those behind bars to the best of its abilities and competences. Thanks to its resourcefulness, almost all of the detainees who had remained in Italian prisons and penitentiaries after the surrender of Italy, were released. Between November 1943 and May 1944, its representatives secured the release of some 1,800 detainees using both genuine and counterfeit documents. Only a relatively small number were taken to forced labour or concentration camps in Germany. The National Liberation Movement, many of whose members were among the detainees, also strove for their release. They were aided by a purposely founded organisation, Ljudska pomoč (People’s Assistance), subsequently renamed Slovenska narodna pomoč (Slovene National Assistance). The organisation made various attempts at rescuing the detainees, especially those who were particularly important to the movement, through bribes or by violent means. On several occasions, its members stormed the prisons in Sevnica, Škofja Loka, Celje, Šmarje pri Jelšah, and Begunje, and rescued the prisoners.