Monument to the Slovenske gorice Company from World War II in Mostje

In the wider Ptuj area, the battle at Mostje is considered one of the most important and also one of the most tragic events of the Second World War. On the night of August 7–8, 1942, ten fighters of the Slovenske gorice Company spent the night in a small grove near Mostje. They were betrayed, and in the early morning a unit of German soldiers surrounded them. After two hours of gunfire, four partisans were killed, a fifth died of his wounds the next day, two surrendered, and three managed to escape — among them Jože Lacko, who was soon captured and tortured by the Germans; due to his injuries, he died on August 18, 1942, in the Ptuj prison.

The Germans also took revenge on the relatives of the fallen partisans, who were deported to concentration camps, while children who were deemed of “favorable” racial appearance were taken as “stolen children” and adopted by German families.

In 1959, a monument was erected in Mostje, designed by Maribor architect Branko Kocmut. At the very roadside, where the truck carrying German soldiers had stopped before the battle, a small square was arranged with an obelisk made of seven-meter-high stone blocks. On the lower part is a plaque with an explanatory inscription, while at the junction between the first and second block an oval opening was drilled. When kneeling, one can see through the opening the forest one hundred meters away where the partisans had rested — and at the same time one takes the position of a soldier aiming his rifle at the forest, waiting for the command to fire. The feeling is haunting. Kocmut created a symbolic distance between the place of raw military power and the tree-covered meadow — the place of death.