Description
Ludvik MRZEL (1904-1971), Editor.
VESTI: Moskva-London-Beograd-Paris-New York-Ljubljana-Zagreb-Trst.
[News: Moscow-London-Belgrade-Paris-New York- Ljubljana-Zagreb-Trieste]
Dachau, June 6 and 7, 1945.
After issuing the only daily newspaper in the camp, Dahavski Poročevalec (The Dachau Reporter), from May 2, 1945, on (please see the previous item for a longer description), the Slovenian printers at the Dachau concentration camp, eager to return to their homes after the war, edited the last and farewell issue on June 5, only to receive a devastating news, that the American soldiers, occupying the camp, could not guarantee a save release of the prisoners. The publishers, led by the editor Ludvig Mrzel (1904-1971) returned to the printing room the next day and founded a new daily newspaper, Vesti (The News). Comparing to Dahavski Poročevalec, the new publication only included short contemporary news on the world and homeland, the prisoners were hoping to return to soon.
The top news of the first number read “Returning of Slovenians and Croatians will Only Begin in Three Weeks”, hinting to the prisoners at Dachau to prepare for further long weeks of eager waiting to return to their liberated homeland.
The second issue, printed only a day later, on June 7, sported a far more optimistic header: “Our First Group Reached Our Capital on Tuesday Before Midnight”. The roads were safe and the prisoners could travel back home.
The following day, the Slovenians closed their press at the Dachau concentration camp and were finally free to leave.
Sadly, only four years later, in 1949, the editor of this newspaper, Ludvig Mrzel, and many of his inmates at Dachau were tried in Yugoslavia at communist show trials (so called Dachau trials) and were either executed or sent to harsh Yugoslav prisons. Mrzel, who was after his return from Dachau making a career as a director of the Slovene National Theater, was marked “insufficiently cultured person for building socialism” and sentenced on 12 years of harsh prison. He was released on parole in 1955 and was put under surveillance for the following years.
The Note on Rarity
Worldcat lists examples in three libraries: Narodna in študijska knjižnica (Slovene National and Study Library, Trieste), Mestna knjižnica Ljubljana (Ljubljana City Library) (unclear if both issues) and Munich State Library. Muzej novejše zgodovine Celje (Museum of Recent History, Celje) houses an example of the June 6 issue. We owed examples of both issues of the magazine in 2017, which were sold to the trade. The newspaper Razsvit is not mentioned in the bibliography of partisan and underground printing of World War II (which lists Dahavski Poročevalec).
References: OCLC 439668936.
