The following text is not a historical study. It is a retelling of the witness’s life story based on the memories recorded in the interview. The story was processed by external collaborators of the Memory of Nations. In some cases, the short biography draws on documents made available by the Security Forces Archives, State District Archives, National Archives, or other institutions. These are used merely to complement the witness’s testimony. The referenced pages of such files are saved in the Documents section.

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Vesna Terselić (* 1962)

• born in Ljubljana, April 18, 1962.

• head of Documenta - Centre for dealing with the past

• grandfather, on the father’s side, participated in the Second World War (survived the war)

• grandfather, on the mother’s side, was in Gonars fascist concentration camp (released from the camp)

• lived with her family in Ljubljana

• graduated from high school in Zagreb

• enrolled in philosophy, comparative literature and physics in Zagreb in 1980.

• in 1985, organizes the TTB initiative, and the Svarun initiative

• participates in Green Action and the Croatian Green Alliance

• in the early 90s, as a reaction to violence and the start of the war in Croatia, he launched an anti-war campaign and implemented non-violence programs and initiatives

• in 2004, Teršelič founded Documenta - Centre for dealing with the past, advocating for human rights, supporting all civilian victims of the 90s war

• to this day, Documenta follows trials for war crimes, publishes reports on trials, initiates investigations and through a series of initiatives advocates the democratization of society, by encouraging recognition of the value of equality and awareness of human rights of all citizens of the Republic of Croatia and beyond

Vesna Teršelič was born in Ljubljana, on April 18, 1961. For a number of years, she has been engaged in human rights advocacy, peace education and helping society face their past; from civic self-organization to encouraging the development of a culture of memory. She currently works as the head of Documenta - Centre for dealing with the past.

Teršelič’s parents are from Slovenia. Her mother is from Ljubljana, and her father is from the village of Skopice, near Brežice. Teršlič’s grandfather, on her father’s side, worked in Zagreb, in what is now the Janko Gredelj factory, and in that factory he came into contact with the SKOJ (League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia). Later, during the time of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), he joined the Partisans. On her mother’s side,. Teršelič’s grandfather was taken to the Gonars concentration camp, northern Italy, in 1942. When he was still imprisoned in the courtyard of the prison barracks in Ljubljana, Teršelič’s mother and her grandmother visited him and pleaded to release the prisoners. Teršelič emphasizes that hundreds, and later, thousands of men were imprisoned at that time. Those demonstrations of women with children, who demanded the release of their husbands and fathers, are known in Slovenia today, and several monuments of women with their children were erected in Ljubljana as a sign of remembrance of those unsuccessful demonstrations. The prisoners were taken to Gonars where they starved. However, the owner of the wholesale store, Mr. Majer, for whom Teršelič’s grandfather worked, demanded his release, alongside several of his other workers, thinking that they were connected to the left and the partisans. After several months of survival in prison, and then in the camp, Teršelič’s grandfather was released. She remembers how they talked about how thin he was when he came back and how the only thing he said was that he would only eat potatoes to make up for the lost weight. He never said another word about the prison camp. Teršelič emphasizes that everyone in her family helped in some way those who organized resistance to the fascist regime. Teršelič takes the story of her mother’s cousin, Erma, as an example. Erma had just turned 18 when she and Teršelič’s mother were searched by fascist soldiers, because they were handing out some leaflets. Erma was immediately arrested, and Teršelič’s mother was ordered to flee, considering that she was only 7 years old. Her mother saw her cousin only once after that, visiting her in prison, before her cousin was shot by the fascists.

Teršelič’s talks about how in her early childhood she often spent time with her grandparents, in the village of Sap (Šmarje-Sap settlement near Ljubljana) on her mother’s side, and always listened to their stories about the war. Her grandparents didn’t just talk about their own personal experiences of the war, but also the stories of their cousins, some of whom were partisans, and some of whom survived the war in Ljubljana. Teršelič also listened to stories about tragic events that befell her neighbors. For example, how the neighbor’s husband hanged himself in prison after the Second World War. She also heard stories from her father’s side, in Skopice. However, she never heard anything about the war from her grandfather, whom she knew was a partisan. In this sense, Teršelič was left with the image that everything that happened in the war was much more complex than what she heard from her closest relatives. That knowledge about the complexity of the war remained etched in her memory for her since her early childhood, which influenced her life direction of helping people observing the past more critically and more fully, and advocating for human rights.

According to Teršelič, Ljubljana was under the control of fascist forces right from the beginning of the war. The Italian fascists soon pulled a barbed fence around Ljubljana, so from that point on it was only possible to enter the city through well-guarded checkpoints. However, this did not prevent the illegal movement from operating, which was soon organized after the occupation and capitulation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, as it was the case with other neighboring republics at the time. Despite the hunger and lack of weapons, the partisans slowly built up their forces. Even though the main battles between the partisans and the fascist forces mostly took place outside of Slovenia, the partisan war in Slovenia was brutal, and it left its mark on those who survived. As mentioned earlier, Teršelič’s mother saw her cousin being taken to the camp, followed by her father. It has also already been mentioned that her mother was at protests with her mother, with women who were demanding that their husbands and fathers be freed from fascist camps. She remembers her mother’s great energy and strong voice, but she also notices this new dimension of timidity and insecurity, which she believes her mother inherited after the war. This insecurity was also manifested in other people, who before the war were loud and brave, but then quieted down and became more timid after the war. As another example that shows a critical view of the Second World War, Teršelič returns to the story of her grandfather’s boss whom he freed from the Gonars concentration camp. After the Second World War, her grandfather’s boss was imprisoned and his workers signed a letter stating that he had saved them and that he had given money to the initiators of the resistance against the fascists. However, the plea to free the man was futile, since he was a landowner. He was killed, and it has never been established to this day exactly where he was killed and where his grave is. His family lost all of the ownership assets. After 1991, when Slovenia became an independent state, the family started the process of property restitution and they got the family storehouse back. However, as mentioned before, they never found out where their father’s grave is.

Teršelič states that the Second World War in the territory of Slovenia and other Yugoslav republics was as bloody as its consequences. She also states that the burden that the people of these republics feel, some more, some less, is actually the burden of violence tracing back to that war. On the one hand, there is the burden of the Holocaust, the genocide committed against Jews, Serbs, the Roma, Croats and all those who were suspected of being conspirators against the fascist government and partisans or the sympathizers of the partisan cause. On the other hand, the burden of violence lies in the revenge for that violence and is felt amongst and within the families of those who were members of the fascist army or the Home Guard, and even those who did not belong to either side of the conflict, but fell victims to violence committed by the partisans. As a girl, Teršelič heard from her neighbors about all of these stories of violence that took place after the war, but everyone kept quiet about those acts of violence until 1990. She added that in 1990 a number of people who, after losing the war on the side of the fascists, fled to other countries, such as South America, and who returned to Croatia and supported the right, became very influential. And that amalgam actually led to a turning point, in which the partisans suddenly became hated and their contribution to the People’s Liberation Struggle was no longer recognized. Croatia is still dealing with this legacy. This has distorted the image of the Second World War for a significant part of the people in Croatia, which can be exemplified in the impossibility of reaching a political agreement on the banning of the fascist salute ‘Za dom spremni’, which is equated with the Nazi salute ‘Heil Hitler’.

However, despite the unresolved issues from the past, the first monument to the victims of the Holocaust and the victims of the fascist regime was recently unveiled in Zagreb. Teršelič is optimistic about this, understanding that the new monument signifies a step forward and that more steps will follow in which the Second World War will be looked at more critically. She adds that all violence should be seen in all its nuances, regardless of who the victims are and who the perpetrators of the crime are. The most important thing is to acknowledge the suffering of the victims of violence, and the suffering of the descendants of these victims, their families, because these families expect that acknowledgement, and they need it in order to somehow step out of the trauma. They cannot forget the suffering, but the recognition of suffering is important for healing, not only for their healing, but also for reaching out in our divided society, which is divided every day anew by hatred, by not acknowledging the suffering of people on the other side of the war. We don’t admit to each other what happened. In the process of social maturity, we should actually acknowledge each other’s suffering.

With the stories she grew up with, Teršelič deals with advocacy of human rights, peace education and confronting the past, in search of social changes with the goal of equality and democratization of society.

After elementary school in Ljubljana and Brežice, at the beginning of her high school years, Teršelič  lived in Zagreb, where in 1980. She enrolled in philosophy, comparative literature and physics. In Zagreb, she met colleagues from the faculty of the University of Zagreb, with whom she began working on a series of civic initiatives, with the purpose to defend and exercise the rights of her fellow citizens and all those who are denied that right from other parts of the country. In the 80s, she started the TTB initiative and then founded Svarun, through which she organized and successfully implemented the initiative against the construction of a nuclear power plant in Prevlaka, near Zagreb. Advocating for the protection of rights based on religion, and as a reaction to mandatory military service, in cooperation with the Ljubljana Movements for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence, Teršelič organized a petition for the recognition of conscientious objection and the introduction of civil service. She launched the Green Action group and worked in the Croatian Green Alliance, and at the beginning of the Homeland War in the 90s, in cooperation with Croatian peace centers for non-violence and international associations, such as War Resisters International, launched the Anti-War Campaign. The Campaign strived to promote conscientious objection, non-violent communication and peaceful education; it provided support to refugees and exiles, rape victims, and everyone else that suffered from the war. At that time, Teršelič also dounded Documenta - Centre for dealing with the past, an initiative organized by the Center for Peace Studies, the Croatian Helsinki Committee, the Citizens’ Committee for Human Rights, and the Osijek Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights. Documenta, in addition to the dimension of field research, emphasizing the importance of looking at the perspective of neighboring countries, and in cooperation with the centers and funds of those countries, is instrumental in listing human losses, which includes all those killed and missing, regardless of their nationality, religious affiliation or ethnic origin. After the year 2000, Documenta also supported the work of the Croatian state attorney’s office, the police and the courts, in the prosecution of criminal proceedings for war crimes committed by Croatian troops, which included the trial of responsible Croatian generals such as Mirko Norac and Ante Gotovina. Documenta continues its work in research, hoping to soon publish data on the missing and killed during the war of the 90s. Teršelič continues to alleviate the pains of those that carry the burden of the war from the 90s, just like her family, her neighbors and friends carried the burden and painful memories from the Second World War.