GRIČEK, A HILL OF CONSIDERABLE HISTORY The old name for the hill overlooking the town was Komendski hrib [meaning commandery hill], because it was the location of a large built cellar of the Teutonic knights, which was the order in charge of the town at the time. The structure was connected to the commandery in the town itself. In the 1670s, the notable Carniolan polymath Janez Vajkard Valvasor stayed at the cellar and sketched his townscape there. The cellar was at least two centuries old when it was demolished in a clash between Črnomelj residents and smaller detachments of Napoleon’s army in October of 1809. A few years later, Austrian Emperor Francis I had a chapel built to commemorate the Austrian victory in said encounter; however, the chapel was demolished at the close of the 19th century, when a cutting nursery was established on the hill.
During World War II, the Italian occupying army set up cannons on Griček to shell national liberation force positions.
In World War II, between 1941 and 1942, Bela krajina lost a whole tenth of its population and so, after the war, the hill above Črnomelj was designated a memorial space. A monument to Bela krajina’s World War II victims was erected according to the plans by architect Marko Župančič. The burial mound holding the remains of the members of the first Bela krajina unit was established in 1950 and sculptor Jakob Savinšek’s monument featuring large reliefs was finished in 1961.
Source: Mestna muzejska zbirka Črnomelj, Janez Weiss
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Foto Jan Kocjan