Prime Minister Janez Janša at the opening of Turjak Castle

Prime Minister Janez Janša at the opening of Turjak Castle | Author Danijel Kovačič Grmek/KPV

Prime Minister Janez Janša at the opening of Turjak Castle Prime Minister Janez Janša at the opening of Turjak Castle Prime Minister Janez Janša at the opening of Turjak Castle Prime Minister Janez Janša at the opening of Turjak Castle Prime Minister Janez Janša at the opening of Turjak Castle

In his speech, he said that the renovation has not only restored the castle to its former glory, but also breathed new life into a place that for centuries has had a significant impact on the territory of today's Slovenia, as well as of Central Europe. He recalled its links to the Auersperg family, or Turjaški as they are called in Slovenian, and the important role the castle played in Slovenian history.

The Prime Minister highlighted that the beginnings of comprehensive renovation date back to the time of the drafting of the recovery and resilience plan, when the key decisions on the preparation of the project and the provision of funds were taken. The renovation cost more than EUR 13 million, of which over EUR 10 million were covered by EU funds, and is one of the largest investments in Slovenian cultural heritage in recent years.

The Prime Minister also spoke at length about the tragedy that happened in September 1943 at Turjak Castle and the fate of the castle's defenders. He emphasised that Slovenia should be capable of recalling even the most difficult chapters of its past with frankness, and that its facing the past should not be based on hatred and vengeance but on truth, fairness and forgiveness.

"We do not remember in order to pass hatred from generation to generation. We remember so that evil is not repeated," said the Prime Minister. He concluded by expressing his wish that the opening would be the start of a new life in Turjak and inspire the restoration of other Slovenian castles and cultural monuments. Turjak should thus serve as a bridge between the past and the present, and a space where future generations will learn about their history. "May Turjak live on. May it speak and tell future generations the story of who we were, who we are and who we want to be in the future," concluded the Prime Minister.

Before the opening ceremony, the Prime Minister attended the Holy Mass led by the Auxiliary Bishop of Ljubljana, Msgr Dr Anton Jamnik. The event was also attended by many Government representatives: Minister of Culture Ignacija Fridl Jarc, Minister of Education, Science and Youth Borut Rončević, Minister of Health Tadej Ostrc, State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance Kristina Šteblaj, State Secretary at the Ministry of the Economy, Labour and Sport Katja Koren, State Secretary at the Ministry of Culture Uršula Menih Dokl, State Secretary at the Ministry of Health Tea Košir, State Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister Zdravko Počivalšek and former Minister of Culture Vasko Simoniti, deputies and mayors. The presence of descendants of the Auersperg family gave today's opening a special significance, symbolically reconnecting the centuries-long history of the family with the castle, which used to be their home and to which their story is inextricably linked.

The Prime Minister's full address:

"Dear Minister Ignacija Fridl Jarc, Mayor of Velike Lašče Matjaž Hočevar, former Minister of Culture Vasko Simoniti, Auxiliary Bishop Msgr Dr Anton Jamnik, dear ministers, deputies, mayors, dear representatives of the Auersperg family, ladies and gentlemen.

Today, we are marking the restoration and new life of one of the most remarkable castles in Slovenia, returned to its former glory. A living monument, which has been testifying to our rich cultural and historical heritage for centuries.

But Turjak is not just a castle. It is a place of remembrance. A place where over centuries the history of Slovenia and Central Europe has been made. It is one of those rare places where a person can step inside the ancient walls and almost physically feel how far into the past the roots of our civilisation, both Slovenian and European, extend.

The beginnings of comprehensive Turjak Castle renovation date back to the time of the drafting of the recovery and resilience plan, when the 14th Slovenian Government, with the then Minister of Culture, Vasko Simoniti, and the then State Secretary and present Minister of Culture, Ignacija Fridl Jarc, adopted key decisions on the preparation of the project and provision of funds.

It is particularly significant that this decision was adopted during the worst days of the COVID-19 epidemic. When the country was focused on hospitals, the economy and saving lives, somebody also looked decades ahead.

Today's renovation is one of the largest investments in Slovenian cultural heritage in recent years. It is worth over EUR 13 million, of which more than EUR 10 million were provided from the EU funds.

Turjak Castle stands out, not only in Slovenia but also in Central Europe, for its age, image, recognisability and, in particular, the role it played in history. Its walls tell us stories of the development of our culture, the defence of Europe against Turkish incursions, the political and military history of Carniola and the people and families whose hard work and sacrifices shaped the environment from which the modern Slovenian state emerged.

The history of Turjak is inextricably linked to the history of the Auersperg family. The Auerspergs lived and died for the castle, from its medieval beginnings to the Second World War. This centuries-long connection of a family to one castle is almost unheard of in Central Europe.

So today we are not only restoring a castle, we are also restoring a home to the historical memory of one of the most important families that left a mark in this region. This is why I am particularly pleased that the descendants of the Auersperg family are here with us today.

Dear representatives of the family,

Your ancestors were not only the lords of Turjak. They became a part of Slovenian historical consciousness. It is interesting and significant that among Slovenians the family is better known by its Slovenian name - Turjaški - than by the German name, Auersperg. This shows how closely the family was connected to our nation. Special places in Slovenian historical memory are held by Andreas of Auersperg, who in 1593 led an army in the famous Battle of Sisak, and Herbard of Auersperg, the Governor of Carniola, who fell in a battle against the Turks in Budački.

The Turks cut off his head. The Auersperg family later paid a large ransom for his head, together with that of Friedrich von Weichselburg. Both heads were kept here, at Turjak Castle, for centuries. Let us think for a moment what this means. Centuries later, the head of a person who fell defending his country witnessed a new generation of the castle's defenders. As if history were warning us: times change, threats are different, but the answer to the question what a person is prepared to defend and give their life for remains the same.

The time came when Turjak was no longer just a symbol of history. It became its bloody witness.

In September 1943, the Slovenian village guards took refuge inside its walls. These were the people who night after night trembled in fear for the lives of their close ones, their wives, children, parents, brothers and sisters. The people who decided to not allow others to intimidate, rob and murder them.

Our responsibility to them and future generations is to speak about this dark side of the Slovenian nation's history. And more than that. To take actions and decisions that will clear the lives of the victims of communist violence in Slovenia and their love for their close ones, home and country, which their executioners dirtied with lies about treason.

In his homily at Mass in Kočevski Rog in June 2024, Archbishop Stanislav Zore spoke about this and about our attitude towards the events of that time.

He asked himself: "Can someone who defends his wife and children, who defends his home, be a traitor?", and referred to the French philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj and his reflection on the Christian teaching that if anyone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other one to him also. Hadjadj says: "This is possible and acceptable as long as it concerns me, my cheek, my life. But when someone threatens my wife and my children, I have no right not to protect and defend them; not to stop the attacker."

These words also contain the answer to a question that transcends Turjak and that tragic September of 1943. For that was precisely what it was all about. This is the essence of the entire anti-communist resistance and, consequently, of Turjak. It is therefore right and just that, in the name of the struggle and the sacrifices of all those who defended their loved ones, their homes and their homeland, we call the events that followed what they truly were. They were a manifestation of evil. Evil that must be recognised, named and condemned. For evil cannot be overcome by revenge. Nor can it be overcome by silence and oblivion. It can only be overcome by truth, justice and the rule of law. For unpunished evil always returns, stronger than before.

Partisan forces surrounded Turjak and attacked it relentlessly for several days. The communists demanded that the defenders immediately lay down their arms, whilst offering them surrender and amnesty, claiming that this would prevent fratricidal bloodshed. The defenders replied: "Only those who started the fratricidal bloodshed and those who are attacking can prevent it, not those who have been attacked and are defending themselves." They concluded their reply with the words: "With God for the nation!"

In the end, however, the surrender did take place. On 19 September, the exhausted defenders were finally forced to lay down their arms. And it is precisely here that one of the most tragic and painful chapters in the history of Turjak, as well as in the history of Slovenia, begins.

The promise of amnesty remained unfulfilled. Following the fall of Turjak, many of the captured defenders were brutally killed. The tragedy of Turjak continued with the mass executions of prisoners and the wounded, carried out without fair trials. It was then that something became clear, although the survivors would only come to understand its full horror in the events that followed: that the promise of amnesty had been nothing more than a means by which the enemy could secure their surrender.

Just as the truth is always alive and can never truly be silenced, so too these people, the defenders of Turjak and others, whose brutally murdered bodies lie unburied across Slovenia, in ravines, gullies and mine shafts, have never truly died. They lived, they were among us, and through their presence they left a mark on time and space. Over time, the grip of the imposed silence has weakened, and thoughts once left unspoken, thoughts that people sometimes kept hidden even from themselves for fear that unwelcome ears might hear them, as Archbishop Zore put it - are today spoken aloud and recorded in an ever-growing number of books, supported by testimonies and documents.

The book Svoboda v razvalinah (Freedom in the Ruins), written by France Grum and Stane Pleško and published in 1961 in Cleveland, though banned in Yugoslavia, described this experience in the following words:

"All those who witnessed the struggle, and all those who experienced the communists' deceit after the surrender, could already recognise 18 years ago that the moral victor was the village guard, a man who understood that freedom is not slavery. And in that great hour, anyone could realise that to a Slovenian communist, no promise and no treaty is sacred."

One might think today that these events left those who fought for their families and for a free Slovenia, and who sought to protect Slovenia from communism, as well as their descendants, above all, with feelings of hatred and a desire for revenge. Yet what followed was something altogether different.

Karel Mauser, himself one of the captured village guards and a survivor of the Turjak tragedy, spoke precisely about this 15 years later. He said:

"When we speak of the dead who have crossed life's final threshold, we can set aside bitterness and thoughts of revenge. And we Catholics have a duty to do so, for revenge makes us resemble those against whom we fought. We stand for justice, but we should never forget that every human being has a soul and that each person is created by God."

He then spoke words that perhaps offer the finest answer to the question of what Turjak means to us today:

"I also know that ultimate victory belongs to the righteous, to those who, in the darkest of times, supress the desire for revenge within themselves and remain human. The fighters of Turjak who stood in self-defence have fallen, but in the eyes of history they will remain the moral victors."

This is the legacy we return to this castle today. Not a legacy of hatred, but a legacy of remembrance and also of forgiveness. Yet Mauser's words on forgiveness should not be understood as a call to forget. To renounce revenge does not mean to renounce justice. To forgive does not mean to remain silent about a crime, to excuse it, or to blur the lines between good and evil.

This is precisely where Turjak's deeper message lies. "We do not remember in order to pass hatred from generation to generation. We remember so that evil is not repeated. So that future generations may know where times can lead when the rule of law falls silent, when ideology replaces truth, and when human life loses its value.

If we wish to live in a free and democratic Slovenia, we must be able to confront even the darkest chapters of our past and learn from them. That is precisely why it is so important that Turjak has come back to life today.

For many decades, its fate stood as a sad reflection of the attitude towards Slovenian cultural heritage. The castle was destroyed during the war and nationalised afterwards. Its centuries-old connection with the Auersperg family was severed, and its walls gradually fell into ruin. During the communist era, many castles and manor houses were nationalised; their original purpose was lost and the care they received was often inadequate. We can still see the consequences of this attitude today.

Yet Turjak has survived. It has survived wars, raids and destruction. It has survived decades of neglect. And it has also survived decades of silence. Today, however, it stands before us, restored.

That is precisely why this day cannot be taken for granted.

This will be a place where future generations can stand before these walls and ask "What happened here?", and receive an honest answer. Not one that has been concealed or embellished, but one that is true. For a nation that forgets its victims forgets a part of itself.

In 1958, 15 years after the tragedy of Turjak, Karel Mauser reminded us of it with these words:

"My friends, a nation that so quickly forgets its victims, is a weak nation. Such a nation no longer has a strong backbone and will wither away in a foreign land like a dead flower.

Today, nearly 70 years later, his words sound almost prophetic. That is why it is our duty to remember.

To ensure that our children know that reconciliation cannot be built on forgetting, and that freedom is not something to be taken for granted. That they know that its price was paid in blood. That they know that among our ancestors there were also people who, in the darkest of times, believed it was their duty to defend freedom, family, home and homeland, and who, despite this, remained human.

Castles are not merely monuments to the past. They are a bridge between the past and the future. Today, Turjak is such a bridge. On one side are centuries of Auersperg family history: the defence against the Turks, Andreas and Herbard of Auersperg, Prešeren and the fairy-tale figure of Rosamund of Turjak, as well as the treacherous betrayal and fratricidal conflict during the Second World War. On the other side are the present day, future visitors, young people who will come here to learn about their history, and future generations of Slovenians.

They will discover a place that has witnessed both the worst nightmares and the most beautiful dreams. The worst and, at the same time, the best of what humanity can produce.

And between these striking extremes stand these walls. Walls that were torn down, yet never truly disappeared. Walls that stand once more today. May today's opening thus be more than the completion of a restoration.

May this mark the beginning of a new chapter in the life of Turjak. May Turjak serve as an inspiration for the renovation of other Slovenian castles and cultural monuments. And let us also remember those who shaped the history of Turjak and died for it. Those who defended their faith and homes with their lives within these walls. Those who, after their surrender, faced death. Those whose names were kept in silence for decades. And all those who believed that the day would come when Turjak would stand once again.

And that day is today. May Turjak stand for centuries to come. As a monument of Slovenian history. As a tribute to the Auersperg family and to all those who have shaped its story through the centuries. As a reminder of the tragedy of Turjak. As proof that the truth can never be destroyed. And as a symbol of a nation that has survived the hardest of times and today dares look its history in the eye - in the name of truth and justice, without hatred and revenge, and with the Christian strength of forgiveness and compassion.

May Turjak live on. May it speak and tell future generations the story of who we were, who we are and who we want to be in the future.

God bless Slovenia."