“Tonight’s journey will not be pleasant, on the short literary road, there will be no laughter and no satisfaction, just an insight of what we experienced, what we went through…”

…This is a time that less and less people remember, as fewer and fewer contemporaries of the former Fascism, Nazism and later Communism regimes remain alive. At that time, words like extermination, genocide, and holocaust were fashionable and later in practice. Those who were not members of the Nazi party, who wanted to remain free and who did not want to live according to German regime laws – were eliminated from society, detained, shot, murdered or sent to one of the many concentration camps. This was also the destiny to be experienced by many Slovenians. Those who survived the atrocities of inhumane treatment behind the barbed wire and returned wrote down their experiences, feelings, memories, sentences and poems. That which had been recorded became concentration camp literature; the horror, not only on paper or in photographs, but also in the eyes of the survivors, was preserved. It was a scream of the helpless, a curse of the disgraced, a record of the survivors.” (Branko Šömen)

We kindly invite you to the FORTRESS OF ASHES literary evening. It will be held on Wednesday, 13 May 2015 at 6 p.m. in Sinagoga Maribor at 4 Židovska ulica. It will be dedicated to Slovenian internees in Nazi-fascist concentration camps and to the Jews of Prekmurje on the occasion of the 71th anniversary of the massive deportations to death camps. At the same time, the event will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

This literary evening has been designed by Branko Šömen and directed by Bojan Labovič. The selected texts will be interpreted by Milena Zupančič, Vlado Novak and Jure Ivanušič, musical accompaniment will be provided by Vesna Čobal and Petar Marić.

The literary evening is organized within the frame of the Stone Tears project, which is supported by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – IHRA and Municipality of Maribor.