The three known mass graves in Maribor itself and six additional mass graves in the immediate vicinity include some of the largest mass graves in Europe.
[1][2][3] By the end of the war, Maribor was the most devastated major town in Yugoslavia.
[4] The remaining German-speaking population, except those that had actively collaborated with the resistance during the war, was summarily expelled following the end of the war in 1945.
At the same time, Croatian Home Guard members and their relatives trying to escape from Yugoslavia were massacred in the Yugoslav Partisan death march of Nazi collaborators and buried in mass graves.
[1][5] Maribor is the site of several known mass graves associated with the Second World War: