Leon Rupnik

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.


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 


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  of Slovenes, replace them with German settlers and turn the remaining Slovenes into Germans.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. On September 30, Rupnik, as the Chief Inspector, gave the Slovene Home Guard this order:

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:F. Saje, Belogardizem, 2008, 126

Antisemitism


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:

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

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:"The Home guard has sworn fidelity to its homeland," Slovenec, no. 91(April 21st 1944): 2.

 Tamara Griesser Pečar, Razdvojeni narod. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 2007.
  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:

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:

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.

Antisemitism in 21st-century Slovenia

Displays of antisemitism in Slovenia have become unchecked. For instance, Boris Vasev, a journalist of the Slovenian state television Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTV Slovenija) promoted conspiracy theories about Jews, like "the vaccination campaign exposes the essence of Israel's Apartheid regime" and "the policy of Jewish supremacy in Israel means that the government restricted vaccines to its Arab citizens". Boris Vasev also reportedly praised the Hamas, and celebrated the 1972 Olympic games massacre.

Writing for the Algemeiner, Anel Bisaki noted:



Synagogues in Slovenia were frequently vandalized during the Gaza War. In January 2025, a medieval synagogue in Maribor, Slovenia was sprayed with "Jews are the evil of the world" and "Death to Jews, glory to Slovenia." 

This happened at a time the Slovenian government had been accusing Israel of genocide, along with countries like South Africa 



  and Ireland, 

  whose government-approved textbooks misrepresented the Auschwitz concentration camp as a "prisoner-of-war camp" and Judaism as "a violent religion". 






Footnotes

References

Category:Nazis
Category:Catholics
Category:The Holocaust
Category:War criminals
Category:Slovenian people
Category:Antisemitism in Europe