Ignacij Nadrah

In memoriam

Ignacij Nadrah was the parish priest at the Church of the Virgin Mary in Puščava (Pohorje). He was born to a farming family in Mrzlo Polje on 21 July 1896. Through the help of his uncle Ignaci Nadrah (later the cathedral provost in Ljubljana) he was able to attend the episcopal secondary school in Šentvid (Ljubljana). He then studied theology in Stična, and later in Ljubljana. He was ordained a priest on 18 June 1920, and sent to the Gorizia archbishopric. Under Italian pressure, he was withdrawn to Yugoslavia in 1932, and transferred to the Maribor diocese due to a lack of clergy there. During the Second World War he was exiled by the Germans to Croatia but managed to flee to the monastery in Stična along with other refugee priests. During this time he often went to Mrzlo Polje to assist his elderly parents on their farm. In May 1945, along with a number of monks and others, he fled to Carinthia, Austria to escape the communists, but then returned to his parish at Puščava after the war, where he worked to repair the damaged church. During this time he spoke out against communism. In January 1947 he was alone at home because his housekeeper had gone on vacation for a few days, a fact that was apparently known to his murderer. On the morning of 9 January 1947 the altar server found the church still locked, so he went to the rectory for the key, where he found the priest lying in a pool of blood on the stairs. He was still alive, but had been beaten in the head with an iron bar. The neighbors called the neighboring priest and a doctor, who ordered him taken to a hospital, but a driver could not be found. It was only that afternoon that they were able to put him on a passing truck. At the Maribor Hospital it was determined that his skull had been broken in two places and he could not be saved. He died at the Maribor Hospital on 12 January 1947. The local people suspected who the murderer was but were afraid to discuss the matter. Two weeks before the murder a Yugoslav secret police (OZNA) agent from Stična had paid a visit to Nadrah. The abbot of Stična and Ignacij's nephew, Anton Nadrah, surmised that the OZNA agent had made demands that Nadrah would not accept and then arranged for him to be liquidated. The murder was carried out by a local that had initially served in the German army and then switched to the Partisan side, working his way up to an officer's rank. In a conversation some time later, the murderer admitted that the act had been a test to prove his loyalty to the Communist Party leadership. (Summarized from: http://www.druzina.si/icd/spletnastran.nsf/all/E2B5754838FF5E2CC1257164004183C3)

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