Leon Rupnik

Leon Rupnik
Leon Rupnik during World War II
Nickname(s)Lev
Born(1880-08-10)August 10, 1880
Lokve, Nova Gorica, Gorizia and Gradisca, Austria-Hungary
DiedSeptember 2, 1946(1946-09-02) (aged 66)
Ljubljana, PR Slovenia, Yugoslavia
Cause of deathExecution by firing squad
Allegiance Austria-Hungary (1895–1918)

Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1919–1941)

Slovene Home Guard (1943–1945)
Years of service1895–1941, 1942–1945
RankDivisional General
UnitSlovene Home Guard
Battles / warsWorld War I, World War II

Leon Rupnik (1880‒1946) was a Slovenian Catholic Nazi collaborator who helped Nazi Germany commit the Holocaust in occupied Slovenia.

Overview

90% of Slovenia's Jews were killed when Rupnik was the president of the Province of Ljubljana, supported by Bishop Gregorij Rožman. Under Rupnik, the Slovene Home Guard helped the Germans deport Jews to death camps. Only 67 Slovenian Jews survived. After the war, Rupnik was convicted of treason, and executed on September 2, 1946.

SS general Erwin Rösener with wounded members of the Slovene Home Guard.

Early life

Leon Rupnik was born on August 10, 1880 in the village of Lokve in present-day Slovenia.

Early career

World War I

Rupnik became a major in the Austro-Hungarian army after training at the General Staff Academy in Vienna. He saw action in the Austrian-occupied Serbian frontlines in World War I.

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

Initially a major in the Royal Yugoslav Army, Rupnik rose through the ranks to become a divisional general in 1937, and built part of the Rupnik Line along Yugoslavia's border with Italy and Austria.

World War II

When the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, he quickly ordered the 4th and 7th Armies to retreat from the frontlines. After the Axis powers broke up Yugoslavia, Ustaše's leader Ante Pavelić, who set up the pro-Nazi Independent State of Croatia, ordered Rupnik to leave Zagreb. He moved to Italian-occupied Ljubljana.

The Province of Ljubljana

Italian-Hungarian occupation

Rupnik became the mayor of Ljubljana in June 1942. He worked well with the Italian occupiers, mobilized locals to support fascism and fight for the Axis powers.

Meanwhile, the Italians banned Slovenian from being spoken in public, schools and churches. Likewise, the Hungarian occupiers forced Slovenian kids to join paramilitary groups, and men to join their army. Resisters were sent to the Szarvar concentration camp.

Nazi occupation

Leon Rupnik with Friedrich Rainer, Nazi Gauleiter of Carinthia, on September 20, 1943.

In September 1943, the Germans took over Ljubljana after the Italians surrendered to the Allies. On September 20, Rupnik became the president of the Province of Ljubljana, hoping for the formation of a Slovenian protectorate.

However, the Nazi Germans planned to eliminate the Slovenian identity, deport ​1⁄3 of Slovenes, replace them with German settlers and turn the remaining Slovenes into Germans. On September 30, Rupnik, as the Chief Inspector, gave the Slovene Home Guard this order:

“ Whoever is not directly tied to cooperation with the German Army or the police is an armed bandit, and must be attacked and destroyed without delay. ”

Secret police

Rupnik set up secret police forces, one called the Information Bureau to monitor his fellow Slovenes, the other called the Black Hand, whose members killed and tortured innocent locals. Some Catholic chaplains betrayed their townsmen to the secret police, which resulted in arrests, torture and hostage shootings. As said by one of them, they considered it a holy duty:

It is not ugly to announce criminals to the authorities [...] Anyone who informs the authorities is not a traitor but does a good job of charity for their neighbor by protecting them from accidents and preventing public misfortune. God, natural, human and international law require notification and delivery of criminals, dangerous to the public. Duty bounds under sin!

Antisemitism

Leon Rupnik speaking at a Nazi rally.
Antisemitic poster in Nazi-occupied Slovenia saying "A knife in the back at the fateful moment", referring to the stab-in-the-back myth popular among Germans back then.

Rupnik was an antisemite who loved Hitler and Nazism, while his views aligned with a form of Catholic fascism popular back then. He encouraged Slovenes to turn in resistance fighters to Nazi troops, and forced locals to attend pro-Nazi rallies. Gregorij Rožman, the pro-Nazi Bishop of Ljubljana, praised Rupnik as "the most capable man for this administrative position".

Antisemitic speeches

In a 1944 lecture, entitled "Bolshevism: a tool of international Judaism" and subtitled "Jewish endeavours towards global supremacy", Rupnik said:

The Jews' straight dogmatic hatred of all who are not Jewish[broken anchor] is finally challenged everywhere by a revolt by the home nation that sooner or later removes all parasites from their country or limits by law their economic, religious and political activity.

In another lecture on June 5, 1944, Rupnik said:

With solid trust in the righteousness of the leader of Europe, of the German nation, we must calmly and with all fanaticism lead the battle against Jewish global supremacy serving Stalin’s and Tito’s bandits and their assistants, Anglo-American gangsters.

Oaths of allegiance to Nazi Germany

On April 20, 1944 (Hitler's birthday), Rupnik, Bishop Rožman, and the Slovene Home Guard took the following oath:

I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful, brave and obedient to my superiors, that in the common war with the German armed forces, under the command of the leader of Great Germany, (the) SS units and the police, I will faithfully fulfill my duty to my Slovene homeland, which is a part of free Europe, against bandits and communism as well as their allies. For this I am prepared to sacrifice even my life. So help me God!

Leon Rupnik, Bishop Gregorij Rožman and SS General Erwin Rösener review Home Guard troops in front of the Ursuline Church, Ljubljana, after the Home Guard oath of allegiance on January 30, 1945.

At the ceremony where the Slovene Home Guard swore their oath of allegiance on January 30, 1945 (12th anniversary of the Nazi takeover of Germany), Rupnik said:

If the German soldier and you, my bold Home Guard soldiers, allowed these Jewish mercenaries to flourish, they would yet kill all decent thinkers, believers in the nation and homeland of true Slovenian birth together with their children – or we will make cannon fodder or slaves of them, steal their property, homes, villages, devastate the national body and suppress the Jew. These are the nations of Europe, our broader homeland, in whose centre the largest, German nation has taken upon itself the struggle against the Jewish corruption of the world.

Trial

The British handed over Rupnik, who disguised as a refugee, to the Yugoslav communists. They put him on trial in August 1946. He pleaded guilty to treason and war crimes, while denying that he did it in bad faith. He was sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad in Ljubljana on September 2, 1946.

However, the conviction was cancelled in January 2020 by the Slovenian Supreme Court on "procedural grounds". The cancellation was condemned by Jewish groups worldwide, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which noted:

This shameful decision constitutes a shocking distortion of the history of the Holocaust and a horrific insult to Rupnik's many victims and their families. We kindly request that you promptly convey our protest to the pertinent Slovenian authorities so that the proper measures can be taken to undo the enormous damage wrought by this unjust decision of the Slovenian Supreme Court.

Ljubljana's Jewish Cultural Centre also condemned the cancellation:

[...]

It is our assessment that we are witnessing the first step in a politically motivated ambition to rehabilitate the criminal collaborationist regime in Slovenia during WWII whose “president” was the aforementioned Leon Rupnik, and who was justly tried and sentenced to death as a war criminal, and whom even the pre-war Yugoslav Royal Government, then in exile, renounced as a traitor.

[...]

Denial

For the past decade, there has been a revisionist movement in Slovenian society to whitewash Leon Rupnik. It is reportedly led by the Slovenian Democratic Party and The New Slovenia. These parties draw support from traditionalist Catholics.

Leon Rupnik's grandson

Leon Rupnik's grandson petitioned to challenge the 1946 conviction of his grandfather. His petition unexpectedly succeeded in January 2020, when the Slovenian Supreme Court cancelled the 1946 conviction on "procedural grounds". The cancellation was condemned by Jewish groups worldwide, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Slovenian Catholic Church

The history of Slovenian‒Nazi collaboration has become a polarized topic in Slovenian society, with the pro-Rupnik side backed by the Slovenian Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, along with conservative parties and revisionist historians, often accused others of "justifying totalitarian Communist dictatorship" for rejecting Rupnik's antisemitic legacy. Apart from beatifying the pro-Ustaše Archbishop of Zagreb Aloysius Stepinac, the Catholic Church has tried rehabilitating Bishop Rožman, despite his antisemitism and Nazi collaboration.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Also known as Lav Rupnik or Lev Rupnik.
  2. ↑ Part of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral.
  3. ↑ Historians claimed that Jews lived in Slovenia as early as the Roman times (2nd century AD), as shown by the finding of an oil lamp with a menorah. Meanwhile, Slavic tribes did not start living in Slovenia until the 6th century AD. The Jewish presence in Ljubljana is dated to the 12th century, with the earliest synagogue built in 1213. There were 820 Jews in present-day Slovenia before World War II, which dropped to 67 after the war.
  4. ↑ A Slovenian auxiliary police unit in Nazi-occupied Slovenia; Slovenian: Domobranci; German: Slovensko domobranstvo – Slowenische Landeswehr.
  5. ↑ Slovenian: Informativni urad
  6. ↑ Slovenian: Črna roka
  7. ↑ President of the Province of Ljubljana under Nazi occupation
  8. ↑ Based in Los Angeles, United States, the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a global human rights group that combats antisemitism and contributes to Holocaust education.
  9. ↑ Slovenian: Slovenska demokratska stranka, SDS
  10. ↑ Slovenian: Nova Slovenija, NSi
  11. ↑ Rožman's antisemitism and Nazi sympathy are clear in a pastoral letter on November 30, 1943, where he wrote: "only by this courageous fighting and industrious work for God, for the people and the Fatherland will we, under the leadership of Germany, assure our existence and better future in the fight against the Jewish conspiracy."

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 "Leon Rupnik". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Petrović, Zorica (2018). "The Roman Catholic Church and Clergy in the Nazi-Fascist Era on Slovenian Soil" (PDF). Athens Journal of History. 4 (3): 227‒252. doi:10.30958/ajhis.4-3-4. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  3. ↑
  4. 1 2 3 4 "The Enduring Spirit of Slovenia's Small Jewish Community". The Times of Israel. August 1, 2024. Retrieved May 26, 2025.
  5. ↑
  6. 1 2 3 4 5
  7. ↑ T. Ferenc, Okupacija slovenskega ozemlja [The Occupation of Slovenian Territory], in Slovenska novejša zgodovina 1848 – 1992 ed. J. Fischer (Ljubljana: Institute of Contemporary History, 2005), 581-601.
  8. ↑ Kranjc, Gregor Joseph (2013). To Walk with the Devil: Slovene Collaboration and Axis Occupation, 1941-1945. University of Toronto Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-4426-1330-0.
  9. ↑ F. Saje, Belogardizem, 2008, 126
  10. ↑ Grum, Janez (1995). "Predlog ali mnenje" [Proposition or opinion]. Zaveza (in Slovenian) (19). Nova Slovenska Zaveza. Archived from the original on March 27, 2012. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
  11. ↑ "Boljševizem: Orodje Mednarodnega Židovstva" (PDF). Peace Institute. pp. 202–206. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-05-25. Retrieved 2025-05-25.
  12. ↑ "The Home guard has sworn fidelity to its homeland," Slovenec, no. 91(April 21st 1944): 2.
  13. ↑ Repe, Božo. "No Title". theslovenian.com. Glasilo Magazine. Retrieved March 14, 2016.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6
  15. ↑ "About the Simon Wiesenthal Center". Simon Wiesenthal Center. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  16. ↑ "Wiesenthal Center Slams Cancellation by Slovenian Supreme Court of Conviction of Leon Rupnik, World War II President of Provisional Government of Ljubljana". Simon Wiesenthal Center. January 14, 2020. Retrieved May 25, 2025. The Simon Wiesenthal Center today sharply criticized the recent (January 8) decision by the Slovenian Supreme Court to annul the 1946 conviction of the notorious anti-Semite Leon Rupnik, who headed the Provisional Government of the Nazi-occupied Province of Ljubljana and played a major role in the arrest and deportation of Jews from Ljubljana [...] "This shameful decision constitutes a shocking distortion of the history of the Holocaust and a horrific insult to Rupnik's many victims and their families. We kindly request that you promptly convey our protest to the pertinent Slovenian authorities so that the proper measures can be taken to undo the enormous damage wrought by this unjust decision of the Slovenian Supreme Court."
  17. ↑ Waltl, Robert (January 9, 2020). "Full Statement of Ljubljana's Jewish Cultural Centre on Annulment of Death Sentence on WW2 Slovene Nazi". Total Slovenia News. Archived from the original on May 25, 2025. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  18. ↑ Retchkiman, Golda (2020). "The Ustaše and the Roman Catholic Church in the Independent State of Croatia". Occasional Papers on Religions in Eastern Europe. 40 (1: Thirtieth Anniversary Issue of the Fall of Communism). Retrieved December 27, 2024.
  19. ↑ Friedländer, Saul (1980). Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation. New York: Alfred A Knopf. p. 106. ISBN 0-374-92930-0.