Nande Smrekar

Yugoslav military police (KNOJ) arrived in Šentpavel on 4 July 1945, where they abducted several men and took them away. They were shot in the woods above the mills on the Reka River, below the hamlet of Razore (in the village of Zagradišče). Although they had been killed immediately, the authorities told the villagers that the men were in prison, and so their families sent regular care packages to them. This continued until mid-August 1945, when a local discovered the men's bodies buried in two pits in the woods. However, before the villagers could rebury them in the local cemetery, the bodies were taken away and reburied anonymously in a mass grave at Saint Ulrich's Church in the Ljubljana neighborhood of Dobrunje. Nande Smrekar was the sexton in Šentpavel, the father of seven children: two by his first marriage, and five by his second marriage after he was widowed. He owned some land assigned to the sexton's office and also worked at the paper factory in Vevče. He took diligent care of the church in Šentpavel. He and his family lived in Šentpavel as renters, and he had bought and fixed up an old house in Sostro shortly before he was killed. It has been suggested (see source, below) that his killing was connected with the presumed prewar murder of his pregnant unwed sister by a boyfriend that later became a Partisan. The KNOJ agents were unable to locate Nande on the 4th because he had gone to Ljubljana to do errands and then to Vevče to work the night shift. He was abducted the next morning while walking home on the path through the forest between Sadinja Vas and Šentpavel. (Source: Zaveza no. 42, 25 February 2010 )