Leon Rupnik

Leon Rupnik^[a] (1880‒1946) was a Slovenian Catholic^[2] Nazi collaborator^[2][3] who helped Nazi Germany commit the Holocaust in occupied Slovenia.^[b]

90% of Slovenia's Jews^[c] were killed when Rupnik was the president of the Province of Ljubljana,^[1] supported by Bishop Gregorij Rožman.^[2][6] Under Rupnik, the Slovene Home Guard^[d] helped the Germans deport Jews to death camps.^[1] Only 67 Slovenian Jews survived.^[1] After the war, Rupnik was convicted of treason, and executed on September 2, 1946.^[1]

Leon Rupnik was born on August 10, 1880 in the village of Lokve in present-day Slovenia.^[1]

Rupnik became a major in the Austro-Hungarian army after training at the General Staff Academy in Vienna.^[1] He saw action in the Austrian-occupied Serbian frontlines in World War I.^[1]

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.^[1]

When the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, he quickly ordered the 4th and 7th Armies to retreat from the frontlines.^[1] 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.^[1] He moved to Italian-occupied Ljubljana.^[1]

Rupnik became the mayor of Ljubljana in June 1942.^[2] He worked well with the Italian occupiers, mobilized locals to support fascism and fight for the Axis powers.^[2]

Meanwhile, the Italians banned Slovenian from being spoken in public, schools and churches.^[2] Likewise, the Hungarian occupiers forced Slovenian kids to join paramilitary groups, and men to join their army.^[2] Resisters were sent to the Szarvar concentration camp.^[2]

In September 1943, the Germans took over Ljubljana after the Italians surrendered to the Allies.^[1][2] On September 20, Rupnik became the president of the Province of Ljubljana,^[1][2] hoping for the formation of a Slovenian protectorate.^[1]

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.^[2][7] On September 30, Rupnik, as the Chief Inspector, gave the Slovene Home Guard this order:^[8]

Rupnik set up secret police forces, one called the Information Bureau^[e] to monitor his fellow Slovenes,^[1] the other called the Black Hand^[f], whose members killed and tortured innocent locals.^[1] Some Catholic chaplains betrayed their townsmen to the secret police, which resulted in arrests, torture and hostage shootings.^[2] As said by one of them, they considered it a holy duty:^[2][9]

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!

Rupnik was an antisemite who loved Hitler and Nazism,^[1][2] while his views aligned with a form of Catholic fascism popular back then.^[2] He encouraged Slovenes to turn in resistance fighters to Nazi troops, and forced locals to attend pro-Nazi rallies.^[2][1] Gregorij Rožman, the pro-Nazi Bishop of Ljubljana, praised Rupnik as "the most capable man for this administrative position^[g]".^[6][10]

In a 1944 lecture, entitled "Bolshevism: a tool of international Judaism" and subtitled "Jewish endeavours towards global supremacy", Rupnik said:^[11]

The Jews' straight dogmatic hatred of all who are not Jewish 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.

On April 20, 1944 (Hitler's birthday), Rupnik, Bishop Rožman, and the Slovene Home Guard took the following oath:^[2][12]

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!

At the ceremony where the Slovene Home Guard swore their oath of allegiance^[6] on January 30, 1945 (12th anniversary of the Nazi takeover of Germany), Rupnik said:^[13]

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.

The British handed over Rupnik, who disguised as a refugee, to the Yugoslav communists.^[1] They put him on trial in August 1946.^[1] He pleaded guilty to treason and war crimes, while denying that he did it in bad faith.^[1] He was sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad in Ljubljana on September 2, 1946.^[1]

However, the conviction was cancelled in January 2020 by the Slovenian Supreme Court on "procedural grounds".^[14] The cancellation was condemned by Jewish groups worldwide, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center^[h], which noted:^[14][16]

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:^[17]

[...]

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.

[...]

For the past decade, there has been a revisionist movement in Slovenian society to whitewash Leon Rupnik.^[1][2] It is reportedly led by the Slovenian Democratic Party^[i] and The New Slovenia.^[j] These parties draw support from traditionalist Catholics.^[2]

Leon Rupnik's grandson petitioned to challenge the 1946 conviction of his grandfather.^[1] His petition unexpectedly succeeded in January 2020,^[14] when the Slovenian Supreme Court cancelled the 1946 conviction on "procedural grounds".^[14] The cancellation was condemned by Jewish groups worldwide,^[14] including the Simon Wiesenthal Center.^[14]

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.^[2] The Catholic Church, along with conservative parties and revisionist historians, often accused others of "justifying totalitarian Communist dictatorship" for rejecting Rupnik's antisemitic legacy.^[2] Apart from beatifying the pro-Ustaše Archbishop of Zagreb Aloysius Stepinac,^[18] the Catholic Church has tried rehabilitating Bishop Rožman, despite his antisemitism and Nazi collaboration.^[k][6]

Displays of antisemitism in Slovenia have become unchecked. For instance, Boris Vasev,^[20] a journalist of the Slovenian state television Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTV Slovenija) promoted conspiracy theories about Jews,^[21] 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".^[21] Boris Vasev also reportedly praised the Hamas, and celebrated the 1972 Olympic games massacre.^[20]

Writing for the Algemeiner^[l], Anel Bisaki noted:^[20]

He has done this despite a lack of appropriate academic credentials, and his reporting is frequently distorted, biased, historically inaccurate, hateful [...] Many of these absurd phrases [...] cheerfully brought forward while Vasev has been conducting interviews with particularly controversial individuals from abroad, such as Daud Abdullah,^[23] Ilan Pappe,^[24] Hamid Dabashi,^[25] Bahador Aminian,^[26] Richard A. Falk,^[27] Ajamu Baraka^[28] [...] and Jeff Halper.^[29]

Synagogues in Slovenia were frequently vandalized during the Gaza War.^[30] 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."^[30]

This happened at a time the Slovenian government had been accusing Israel^[m] of genocide,^[31] along with countries like South Africa^[32] and Ireland,^[33] whose government-approved textbooks misrepresented the Auschwitz concentration camp as a "prisoner-of-war camp" and Judaism as "a violent religion".^[34]