The camp was abandoned for a short time after the war, but was reactivated by the Yugoslav communists at the end of May 1945 to accommodate former members of the Slovene Home Guard and others that had collaborated with the Axis, as well as civilians that had fled before the advancing Yugoslav People's Army to Allied camps in Austrian Carinthia.
It is estimated that the postwar authorities executed approximately 5,000 internees of Teharje without trial during the first month or two after the Second World War.
[1] A memorial park designed by Slovenian architect Marko Mušič was built on the site of the camp in 2004, where an annual ceremony is held by the Government of Slovenia.
After the occupation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the area of Slovenia was divided into three parts between Germany, Italy and Hungary.
[2] On 27 April 1941, Liberation Front (Osvobodilna fronta) was established in Ljubljana as the main anti-fascist organization.
[3] The Italian authorities sponsored local anti-communist units that served as auxiliary troops in fighting the Slovene Partisans.
[4] At the end of the war, Croatian and German forces began retreating to the Austrian border through Slovenia.
[6] The camp was built by the Germans near the town of Teharje in the summer of 1943 to accommodate members of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend).
It had six large barracks and four courtyards where members of the organization trained shooting, learned geography and played sports.
A report from the OZNA on 16 May stated "in addition to the prison, we established a concentration camp at Teharje".
[8][9] The People's Defence Corps of Yugoslavia (KNOJ) organized the transports of prisoners to Teharje.
[10] A report from 16 May 1945 mentions that there were 1.088 internees in the Teharje camp, most of whom were captured in raids carried out by the KNOJ in Celje.
The OZNA conducted mass arrests of Germans from the Kočevje region (Gottscheers) that were also brought to Teharje.
[11] The Slovene Home Guards that surrendered to the British forces in May 1945 were interned in the Vetrinje (Viktring) camp near Klagenfurt, Austria.
From 27 May to 31 May they were brought by trains to Bleiburg and repatriated to Yugoslavia, in total around 9,500 Home Guards and 600 civilians.
[17] The camp was not suitable for the admission of prisoners from Bleiburg,[18] but was chosen because it already had barracks and was near the town of Celje.
At times, the OZNA guards would take female prisoners to the main barracks during the night where they were raped.
[23] Three underage Home Guards were killed after they were caught taking canned food from backpacks that were confiscated from them upon arrival.
Once they arrived, the prisoners were taken off tracks, ordered to take their clothes off, lined up along the edge of the pit and shot.
[29] The largest mass grave of prisoners from Teharje is an abandoned coal mine in Huda Jama, where Home Guards were killed in the Barbara Pit massacre.
Other mass grave locations include Hrastnik, Pečovnik, Marija Reka, Zgornja Hudinja, Prapretno and Bežigrad.
In 1974 the area of the former camp was turned into a waste depot for the chemical processing factory in Celje.
[38][39] An annual ceremony in remembrance of the victims of post-World War II killings is held at the memorial site.