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THERE IS A TIME OF WAR AND A TIME OF PEACE. NOW IS THE TIME OF PEACE.
Reconciliation ceremony (video in slovenian language)
Speech by the President of the Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia, Milan Kucan
Kocevski Rog, 8 July 1990
There is a place for life and a place for death. A time of hatred and a time of tolerance. We are here in a place of death. Ready and determined to take as our own a time of tolerance, mutual understanding and a common future. In any other way, our gathering here as mourners today would have no true sense or justification. What we desire and must do here today, deep in the embrace of the Kocevski rog forests, and not merely as a symbol or directed to the outside, but above all in our conscience through a responsible act of affirmation by Slovene society, could have, or indeed should have happened earlier. There were opportunities for things during the war and particularly at the end of the war and directly afterwards to develop and be settled between us differently. So that long ago the sons and daughters of the Slovene nation, divided and forced against their will into the senseless and apocalyptic whirlwind of war, might long ago have found their own peace. It is up to us perhaps to recognise the circumstances, the facts, as well as the individual human acts that hindered or even prevented today's events from taking place at all. It is also true, however, that a time of maturing was required for the general awareness that a new spirit of the times was needed, and that we might be able, I trust in all sincerity, and without enmity in our hearts that are so shaken in accepting one more painful truth from the last war, to reconcile ourselves to our own past, and to allow it finally to become history.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. History has chosen us to assume – as we face both history and the future – this responsibility. Let us do so with maturity. It is not an act that can be repeated. It can be done by a historically mature nation, capable of going beyond old divisions and preventing new divisions being sparked in their embers. The reconciliation with all the dead victims of war that we now have a duty to perform, is a test of our nation's maturity, self-confidence and self-respect. It is a renouncing of the false hope that someone else can do this instead of us. It is a historic necessity and our cultural and civilisational duty. It is an invitation and an essential condition for future reconciliations between the living that have been left to time and to our generation. For this reason, let us take this responsibility upon ourselves with full dignity,” stated President of the Presidency Milan Kucan at the ceremony in the Slovene necropolis, as was the name given to Kočevski rog, one of Slovenia's virgin forests which during the Second World War was a hide-out for partisan units. This was also the location, just after the war, for the liquidation of those who had collaborated with the occupation forces and who had been sent back to Yugoslavia from Austrian Carinthia by British allied forces.
There is a place of life and a place of death. There is a time to hate and a time to tolerate. We are in a place of death. Prepared and determined to accept as our own time a time of tolerance, mutual understanding and common future. Otherwise our sad assembly today would have no proper sense of justification. What we want and must do here today, deep in the heart of this virgin forest is not simply a simply a symbolic and outward expression, but above all in our consciousness through the responsible action of the affirming of Slovenian society, this could and even should have happened before. There was a possibility that events during the war, and particularly at its end and directly after it might have evolved and developed in a different way. That the sons and daughters of the Slovenian nation, forced into and divided against their will by the senseless and apocalyptic spiral of war, might have found peace a long time ago. We can recognise the circumstances, as well as individual human actions, which impeded or even prevented today's events from ever taking place. It is also true that a general awareness had to come to maturity, that we had to arrive at a new spirit of the times, for us to be able, and I sincerely trust this is so, without enmity in our hearts and pained by the acceptance of one more hurtful fact of the last war, to reconcile ourselves with our own past, to allow it finally to become history.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven! History selected us, in the face of this and the future, to take on this responsibility. Let us attend to this with maturity. It is not possible to repeat this event. It may be accomplished by a historically mature nation, capable of cutting through old divisions and preventing new divisions from sparking their fires of hatred. Reconciliation with all the dead victims of war, which we must accomplish here, is the test of a nation's maturity, self-awareness and selt-respect. It is a rejection of the false hope that someone else might do this in our place. It is a historical imperative, and it is our cultural and civilisational duty. It is a summons and an urgent condition for a future reconciliation, left to time and to us, the people, with those who are living. And so we accept this responsibility with all dignity!
We must attend to this as an event which is born out of sincere respect for the dead, the fallen and the killed. There must not and cannot be any kind of victory or any king of defeat. We should close the book of all our wars and post-war wounds. Completely, without any feigned ignorance and without any final thoughts. Let us bury all the dead once and for all, with all dignity and all respect. Let us leave them to the memory and judgement of history. Let all violent deaths, from a time when the demons of war raged around us, be equal in our consciousness. Let there be no more evil from wartime and post-war settling of differences, which is evil for all entirety. With this awareness he is also responsible, in the conditions in which he lives, for his good as well as his evil deeds. For this reason man on earth is a tragic being. He cannot change the wrongs he has already done. Our past cannot be rendered different, it cannot be kept silent. It is time for us to stop endlessly and glibly burdening our lives and our future. Why should there remain antagonisms, when the world, of which we too are a part, is becoming ever freer and more connected. It happened" Let it never happen again. Let us say this here in the forest of Kocevski Rog, which in the myriad storms of the last war that raged through it, became a Slovenian necropolis. By this act, which is dedicated to recognising and remembering the death of victims in these caves, known and unknown Slovenians, who were, without any kind of establishing of their possible individual guilt from their wartime activities, after the war was already over, senselessly and incomprehensibly pushed into a violent death; let us take on this awareness and say: never again!
There is a time to die, and a time to be born. We Slovenians lived through the fatefulness of wartime events in a particularly tragic way. There was war, there was occupation, in which we Slovenians suffered violent military subjugation, the carving up of our territory and aggression of all kinds. The Slovenian nation was nailed to the cross, branded and condemned to extinction. And for this reason it seemed to many Slovenian men and women that the determination to cooperate in the great world anti-fascist movement of freedom-loving people from all continents, religions, races and colours signified a sensible - and the only - possibility for personal and national survival, independence and ultimate establishment of man's conceptual and the nation's universal freedom. From the fires of aggression there should arise a modern European, as E.Kocbek believed, freed from the shackles of darkness and violence. On the altar of this belief, which allowed us as a nation to survive, have burned too many Slovenian lives, buried in known or anonymous partisan, refugee, exile and camp graves both at home and in many foreign lands. When we accept the dead, who have been hitherto incomprehensibly denied or even forgotten, and when we recognise them as a part of our national history, we cannot allow ourselves to forget those whom we have remembered and recognised already and whose actions also enabled, after so many years, this reconciliatory and appeasing event to take place here in a free and sovereign Slovenian state. So as not to exchange one wrong for another, and not to do violence to history and its truths. Many of our people rest here and elsewhere in Slovenia. There are many different reasons, many different paths, which often led the sons of the same mother to the grave. But each of them had a mother, a father and his own dreams. The dead have nothing more. Let us therefore reconcile ourselves with them, let us bury them, but along with them let us also take away and bury our arms. We must not and cannot forget anything. It is difficult to forgive, often even impossible. Forgiveness cannot be ordered or forced. It is possible, however, to look bravely into the past, so that we may then turn our gaze towards the future.
In the fifties, when many times we tempered our life with the past to such an extent that we went beyond all bounds in painting it gold or black, encrusted it with stars or sent it to hell, we left it to many different fates, unstated and forbidden - during this time, new generations grew up. No-one can take away from us - neither individuals nor groups - the responsibility for the decisions which we made, nor can anyone take from us the right to lay the past our in front of us and be reconciled with it. If we were to deny it, we would be undermining our foundation for the future. The obligation has fallen upon us, who regard ourselves as the post-war generation, and upon younger people, who no longer mark time with wars, to work additionally for reconciliation among the living. With the preparation of a new constitution, the Slovenian government is also setting up frameworks and rules so that through human freedoms and rights it might respect and protect the differences between people, and in this way facilitate a life of tolerance in a democratic community. It is not within the power of the state to command love and reconciliation between people. It is, however, within the power of all citizens, to create such a state which shall be fair to all, irrespective of their views of the world, their political convictions or national identity.
Let us take up our history, full of light and darkness, and turn towards the common future of our and later generations. Let us end our national diaspora, because of which for so many years Slovenia has not been a home to all her sons. We are people among people. Let us make possible for ourselves a life reconciled with the dead, and let us live it in such a way that our descendants will be more easily reconciled with us when we too take our place in the unchangeable past. There are too few of us, and we are living through too difficult a time, for us to reject peaceful co-existence, the recognition of differentness, tolerance and respect. It would be oppressive for us, and we will again be a threat to each other, if we do not set such a life as our goal.
The dignity of our once-only and too often tragic life is revealed in our relationship with the dead. In death all people are equal. In the recognition of this incontestable fact lies the secret and need of our reconciliation with the dead. All the dead have the right to public memory. Let us therefore arrange this place of death with the proper dignity, and make it worthy of our memory, as the generation that will no longer hide or hate the past, that will preserve here, in this place, a message for itself and future generations: there were people who knew their human duty to the dead, because they learnt and desired to live with one another in peace.
The presidency of the Republic of Slovenia will together with other bodies of the Republic contribute, inasmuch as it can and must, and through actions on a state level, towards an implementing of this will, this message, this invitation to all people of good heart to work together, towards a reconciliation between the living and for a common path to the future, such that we do not hide or forget our history, which will look into the future and rely no more on the burdens of national and political divergence, but on the creation of a free Slovenian society, which has its own identity, homeland and state.
Kocevki Rog, peacefully ordered and serene, remains and is now becoming one of the symbolic monuments to the history and future of this society. Through this place, surrounded by the impenetrable Slovenian forest, perforated with inaccessible underground secrets, passed the most terrible winds of our recent past. Here we were put to death. Here we put ourselves to death, here we fought and sought shelter from violence. Here we were victorious and we concealed the evil caused by our fighting and victory. Here, victory was turned many times into defeat. Let us tell ourselves: here, where strewn about are the bones of all who fought for this or another truth, for this or another ideology, this is the right place for that reconciliation which as a nation set on the future we need. Let us mourn sincerely that which happened! Let us and it, here and now. It happened!
There is a time to love and a time to hate, there is a time of war and a time of peace. So says the preacher in the Old Testament. Now is the time of peace.
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