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SLOVENIA During World War II, Slovenian territory was divided between three occupiers: Germans, Hungarians, and Italians. All three condemned Slovenians to ethnocide, using some elements of genocide. The Slovenians had already been divided between four countries after World War I. At the time of the occupation in April 1941, 1.200,000 Slovenians lived in Yugoslavia on what is now Slovenian territory, while as many as 340,000 or one fourth of the Slovenian population lived in Italy. During the occupation, the Germans attempted to displace around 260,000 Slovenians and replace them with Germans. They managed to expel around 80,000 Slovenians to Croatia, Serbia and Germany. Others were forcefully Germanised by means of the Nazi race laws. The Italians and Hungarians also wanted Slovenians to adopt Italian and Hungarian traditions. The war was very cruel for the Slovenian nation; 80,000 people ended up in prisons, another 80,000 were exiled, and 58,522 were taken to concentration camps (21,234 to German camps, 36,200 to Italian ones, 688 to Hungarian ones and around 400 to Croatian camps). Nearly 1,000 Slovenian children were also taken to concentration camps, while around 100 were taken from their families and sent to reeducation camps or to German families. 12,360 Slovenians died in concentration camps; 19,824 were held in detention, in forced labour camps or in custody as prisoners of war. Around 40,000 Slovenians were pressed into service with the German army, and several thousands into the Hungarian army, while Slovenians in Italy were obliged to serve in the Italian armed forces as Italian citizens. Altogether, the Italian and German occupying forces killed 3,958 hostages. In total, the number of victims rose above 98,000 or 6.6% of the population. The resistance was organised by the Liberation Front coalition between Communists, Christian Socialists, Left Liberals and several cultural players, with the Communists in the leading role. The Front was established on 27 April 1941, and armed resistance started in the summer of 1941. Beside this massive and widespread organisation, a partisan army was created in the cities, together with armed guerillas, which in the end had as many as 36,000 members. The Slovenian Partisan Army operated under the Yugoslav Partisan Army led by Josip Broz-Tito and joined the anti-fascist coalition that from 1943 onwards also included the Allied missions coordinating military operations. During the war, the Army saved many Allied pilots and prisoners of war. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, was surrounded by a barbed wire fence for more than three years (23 February 1942 to 9 May 1945), both under Italian Fascist rule, and under the Third Reich after the Italian capitulation (1943). The city was liberated on 9 May 1945, a date which Slovenians celebrate to this day with marches known as "Around the barbed wire of occupied Ljubljana", a path extending over 38 km arranged for recreation purposes as the Path of Remembrance and Comradeship. In fact, Ljubljana is the only capital that was fully surrounded in this way during World War II. The city was the first in the former SFRY to be proclaimed a Hero City and awarded the the Order of the National Hero. The fighting in Europe ended on Slovenian soil with the arrival of German and other quisling armies from the Balkans in May 1945. Engagements with the Yugoslav Army and internal fighting between and within individual nations lasted for another week after the German capitulation, until 15 May 1945, with the surrender of the last German units. For this reason, there are still many mass graves in Slovenia to this day. For historical reasons (banishments in the Middle Ages and the modern era) only a handful of Jews lived on Slovenian territory and were dispersed throughout the country. It is estimated that only around 200 Slovenian Jews survived the war. Both, the Italian and German authorities deported them to concentration camps. After the Italian capitulation, the Germans occupied central Slovenia (the region around Ljubljana) aided by the extremely anti-Semitic collaborationist authorities (the Slovenian Home Guard). In the Prekmurje region, in Eastern Slovenia, which was under Hungarian occupation, the Jewish community survived until 1944. This was the only Jewish community in Slovenia that lived close together. After the German occupation, the Hungarian and German occupation authorities deported them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Of the 571 Jews from Prekmurje, 387 died, while the survivors moved to Israel after their release; only a few returned to Slovenia. A small, but deeply symbolic sculpture in the form of a suitcase, was erected in their memory. Traditionally, when addressing Slovenian citizens, the President of the Republic of Slovenia emphasises the need for unity, freedom and solidarity. Since 2009, International Holocaust Remembrance Day has also been commemorated in Slovenia on 27 January each year with a number of events throughout the country under the project 'Shoah-Let Us Remember', coordinated by the Centre of Jewish Cultural Heritage Synagogue Maribor.