Memorial for the victims of the partisans (Denkmal für die Opfer der Partisanen)
Not one visitor of this memorial site should get the impression that it is in memory of the Carinthian partisans that were killed in battle or executed in their fight for liberation from the Nazi regime. This memorial, quite contrary, keeps alive the myth of "Carinthians who were abducted by Yugoslav partisans". It distorts the anti-fascist struggle of the Carinthian partisans, denouncing it as an unjustified act of aggression against the "helpless" Carinthian people, while actual Nazi crimes against the Slovenian-speaking population, such as the forced emigration and deportation of more than 900 persons, are whitewashed – a historical misrepresentation that is common throughout Carinthia. The arrest of some 250 individuals by the Yugoslav army, most of them markedly active national-socialists, around a third of whom would never return, was used by German-nationalist organisations to propagate an ideologically motivated reversal of the roles of oppressor and victim.The quadrangular chunk of stone on the centrally located Domplatz, erected in 1990 and expanded in 2002, forms the centre of regular pompous ceremonies by the far right organisations of the Kärntner Heimatdienst (KHD, litterally: "Carinthian homeland service") and its no less German-nationalist sister organisation, the Kärntner Abwehrkämpferbund (KAB, "Carinthian defence fighter association"), remembering the victims of the partisan "terror against Carinthia". The office of the KAB, the biggest and most influential German-nationalist movement in Carinthia apart from the Kärntner Heimatdienst, is located on Domplatz directly opposite the memorial. Behind a façade of endeavouring to uphold regional traditions, it plays a significant role in the German-nationalist oriented Carinthian political landscape, for example by preventing further dissemination of bilingual town boundary signs. In a publication by the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance it is defined as an organisation in the milieu of far-right extremism.
Whereas this memorial remembers Carinthian national-socialists, there is hardly a memorial in Carinthia marking the antifascist struggle of the only armed resistance organisation Austria had – the Carinthian partisans. One exception is the Peršman memorial.