Croatia Receives Remains of 500 WWII Victims

Croatia’s Minister Tomo Medved received the remains of 500 people at the Macelj border crossing from Slovenia on Wednesday. The victims were Croats killed after the end of World War II, exhumed from four mass graves between 2013 and 2017. Most were men between 18 and 40, including some minors, and died along a route known as the “Way of the Cross.”

These individuals were part of defeated forces and fleeing civilians handed over to Yugoslav Partisans near Bleiburg, Austria. Evidence suggests violent deaths with gunshot wounds and broken bones. Medved emphasized condemning all totalitarian regimes—Nazi, fascist, and communist—while acknowledging potential divisions within Croatian society regarding this history.

Individual identification of the remains is unlikely due to their fragmented state. Croatia continues to search for and investigate mass graves from both World War II and the 1990s Croatian War of Independence, but a complete accounting of victims remains elusive.