Antifascist camp moves to Turnersee as Peršmanhof probe continues

The antifascist educational camp will be held at Turnersee this year, one year after a police operation at Peršmanhof was found to have been partly unlawful, ORF reports. Investigations into the operation remain ongoing.

The camp is organised by the Club of Slovenian Students in Vienna. Organiser Meta Vouk said the move was mainly due to logistical reasons, as registrations had risen to more than 160 participants and there was no longer enough space at Peršmanhof.

The organisers also want to reach other parts of the bilingual region. Participants will be offered special guided tours of the Peršmanhof memorial site.

This year’s camp will focus mainly on the history of Turnersee. The lake was formerly called Sablatnigsee, or Zablaško Jezero, before the National Socialists renamed it Turnersee in 1932.

Investigations into last year’s police operation at Peršmanhof have still not been completed. The authorities are investigating the Völkermarkt district governor, the operation’s commander and an official from the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum.

Lawyer Rudi Vouk, who represents the camp organiser, said the case file comprised almost 4,000 pages but that no applications or proposal for how to proceed had yet been submitted. The parties involved were waiting for the public prosecutor’s decision, he said.

Christian Kroschl, a spokesman for the Graz Public Prosecutor’s Office, said investigators were working intensively. A proposal for partial completion of the investigation had been forwarded to the supervisory authority, but no decision had been made.

The decision will determine whether the police operation commander faces internal disciplinary proceedings, according to the Carinthian State Police Directorate. The senior official, who was deputy head of Carinthia’s State Office for State Security and Countering Extremism at the time, was transferred to another unit last year.