Temporary photographic exhibition of the National Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia entitled Echoes of Victory: Photographs of Crowds at the End of World War II, created in collaboration with the Slovene Ethnographic Museum and the Archdiocesan Archives of Ljubljana, sheds light on the last days of World War II and the echoes of victory in May 1945 on Slovene ethnic territory. Franc Cerar, Karol Holynski, Jože Kološa, Marjan Pfeifer, Slavko Smolej, Rudi Stopar, Edi Šelhaus, Nande Vidmar, Rudi Vavpotič were photographers who accompanied the end of the war and whose photographs are mostly kept in the museum’s Foto Slovenija collection. The motifs depicting the arrival of the Partisan army in various cities show an exceptional mass presence. Mass participation was achieved at numerous rallies that took place day after day in May 1945. The fallen fighters of the Partisan army experienced a dignified and mass farewell with a mourning ceremony in the Cathedral in Ljubljana and a funeral in Žale. The end of the war was greeted by the majority of the population with expressions of joy, happiness and hope for a better future, with great confidence in the new political authorities, which was expressed in countless textual and pictorial banners at post-war events. After the mass withdrawal of various military units after the end of the war, piles of discarded weapons and equipment remained on Slovene territory. The last motif in the exhibition is a photograph of a large number of rifles that remained without an owner. The motif thus symbolically concludes the photographic narrative of a difficult, multi-year period for the Slovene nation, which caused much suffering and many emotional wounds.
Exhibition is due 3 September 2025.
