Thomas Olip

Thomas Olip (17 December 1913 - 29 April 1943) was a Slovene resistance activist against National Socialism in Carinthia. He was captured on 1 December 1942, together with his diary. He faced Nazi justice at Klagenfurt on 12 April 1943 and was executed by guillotine at Vienna on 29 April 1943. His diary, which survived, became one of the most important source documents on the (otherwise sparsely recorded) anti-government resistance in the frontier lands between south-east Austria (between 1938 and 1945 part of Germany) and the northern part of Jugoslavia.

Life Thomas Olip was born less than a year before the outbreak of the First World War, at Zell/Sele, a small town on the frontier between Austria and Slovenia. The village itself was overwhelmingly Slovene speaking, but in the interpretation placed on the 1920 plebiscite, conducted in order to determine the placing of the frontier between the newly configured states of Austria and Jugoslavia, Zell was deemed to be an integral part of the region by which, on its north side it was surrounded. Accordingly, after the war's rubble and dust had settled, Olip grew up in Austria. In common most if his immediate neighbours, his first language and ethnic identity were nevertheless Slovene. He was illegitimate, and brought up in conditions of some poverty as a Roman Catholic by his mother Maria, attending school in Zell/Sele. He is described in sources as a forestry worker or lumberjack. A year later, on 19 September 1939, he turned up across the border in Jugoslavia, still wearing the uniform of the German army, and presented himself as a deserter. He was taken to Kranj where he faced six intensive questioning sessions by Jugoslav officers, keen to know every available detail on the military strength of the army garrison at Klagenfurt. During March/April Jugoslavia was invaded from the north, and on 20 April 1941 Thomas Olip crossed back over the mountains that had hitherto separated Jugoslavia from occupied Austria. The date was memorable as Adolf Hitler's fifty-second birthday. Another important date followed six days later. 27 April 1941 marked the foundation of the Osvobodilna Liberation Front.

Slovene resistance Initially he lived in the forests, together with fellow resistance activists Jakob Oraže and Josef Malle. Another of the activists, Franz Pristovnik ensured that they were properly fed from his father's farm. Olip may have been among the Slovene partisans who found shelter in a barn on the Pristovniks' farm during the coldest nights. Later during 1941 he moved on to the hamlet of Ebriach where he based himself, with others, close to the farm estate of his cousin, another Thomas Olip (1883-1943). He persuaded his cousin, Maria Olip, to fetch him food. Towards the end of 1941 Pristovnik negotiated an association between Thomas Olip and the brothers Johann, Peter and Valentin Olip with another army deserter, Johann Gruden. Thomas Olip and Jakob Orasche both spent the winter of 1941/42 in an outbuilding on the Pristovnik family farm. They were considered to be members of the so-called "green cadres". These were Slovene resistance fighters actively engaged in southern Carinthia who did not wish to become members of the Osvobodilna Liberation Front because of its close links to the Communist Party. It is nevertheless clear that in terms of the shared objective of antifascist resistance, the Osvobodilna Front and the green cadres worked closely together.

As Spring returned, during the first part of 1942 Thomas Olip and Jakob Orasche constructed a first bunker in the Setitsche Hill, near the Pristovniks' farm buildings. Pristovnik provided the necessary digging tools. In June 1942 they constructed a second bunker in a ravine above the Hlipoutschnik sawmill. They lived in it briefly. The bunkers became meeting points for the partisan fighters.

Arrest was followed by intensive interrogation, incorporating serious torture.

The trial was presided over by Roland Freisler, president of the special "People's Court", which normally heard its cases in Berlin or Vienna. On this occasion, however, hearings for all 35 of the "Zell defendants" took place at Klagenfurt. The trials were brief. Verdicts were delivered on 12 April 1943. 13 of the defendants among them Thomas Olip, were sentenced to be executed.

On 29 April 1943 all thirteen of those condemned to death in the court at Klagenfurt fifteen days before were killed on the guillotine installed at the District Court complex a few years earlier. Olip's body was exhumed a few years later, in 1949, and reburied in his home village.