• Peršmanhof Memorial
On April 25, 1945, members of SS and Police Regiment 13 shot eleven members of a Slovene family in the Upper Austrian township of Bad Eisenkappel. The family lived on the remote Peršmanhof farm which was an important base for the partisan resistance against the National Socialist regime.
Since 1981, there has been a small museum at Peršmanhof. In 1983, a memorial to the Carinthian partisans was set up in the property's forecourt.
Image: Bad Eisenkappel, 2006, Memorial to the Carinthian Partisans at Peršmanhof, Gudrun Blohberger
Bad Eisenkappel, 2006, Memorial to the Carinthian Partisans at Peršmanhof, Gudrun Blohberger
On April 25, 1945, a few days before the war ended, a family was massacred on the remote Peršmanhof farm. Peršmanhof was one of the largest farms in the region and an important base for the partisan resistance movement. Beginning 1940, several safe bases for partisans and resistance fighters of the Yugoslav »Liberation Front« were set up in Carinthia. From the summer of 1942 on, members of the Slovene minority in Carinthia became involved in the resistance against the National Socialist regime. Since Austria's incorporation into the German Reich in 1938, they had been subjected to a policy of suppression and expulsion. The official »Volkstumspolitik« (policy on German nationality) entailed the forcible expulsion of about 50,000 Slovenes from Southern Carinthia. When members of the SS and Police Regiment 13 stormed Peršmanhof on April 25, 1945, over 100 partisans managed to flee. In place of the partisans, members of the regiment shot eleven members of the Slovene-born Sadovnik family who lived on Peršmanhof. Afterwards, they burned the farm down. Three children of the family survived the attack.
Image: Bad Eisenkappel, 2006, Memorial to the Carinthian Partisans at Peršmanhof, Gudrun Blohberger
Bad Eisenkappel, 2006, Memorial to the Carinthian Partisans at Peršmanhof, Gudrun Blohberger
Members of SS and Police Regiment 13 shot eleven members of the Slovene-born Sadovnik family, among them four adults and seven children.
Image: Bad Eisenkappel, 2006, Youth project »Time (to) travel-potovanje skozi cas«, Gudrun Blohberger
Bad Eisenkappel, 2006, Youth project »Time (to) travel-potovanje skozi cas«, Gudrun Blohberger
At the end of the 1940s, the residential house of the Sadovnik family was rebuilt and relatives lived there. In 1981, the »Association of Carinthian Partisans« leased the building and opened a small museum in it in 1983. The museum's exhibition contains information about the history of the region's resistance struggle against National Socialism. Moreover, it deals with topics such as the expulsion of the Carinthian Slovene minority under National Socialism and the 1945 massacre. In 1983, a memorial to the Carinthian partisans was set up in the museum's forecourt. It shows three bronze figures, two men and a woman, in a fighting pose. The memorial had first been erected in 1947 in the nearby town of Völkermarkt. In 1953, however, it had been destroyed by nationalists.
Name
Gedenkstätte Peršmanhof
Address
Koprein-Petzen 3
9135 Bad Eisenkappel
Phone
+43 (0)4238 25060 +43(0)
Web
http://www.persman.at
E-Mail
office@persman.at
Open
Beginning of May until the end of October: Friday to Sunday and on holidays 10.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. and by appointment
Possibilities
Exhibition on the topics of expulsion of the Slovenes after the »Anschluss« in 1938, resistance movement and its activities with a special focus on Carinthia, persecution and expulsion of Carinthian Slovenes, documentation on the Peršmanhof massacre, guided tours for groups and meetings with survivors (by appointment)