At the age of 27, Ljubo Sirc was sentenced to death. It was 1947, and at least 200,000 people had been murdered under Marshal Tito’s reign of terror in Yugoslavia. Sirc was one of the accused in the infamous Nagode show trial against members of a newly formed liberal party in Slovenia. Crtomir Nagode, their leader, was executed, but others, including Sirc, had their sentences commuted to 20 years in prison.
When Sirc had been arrested, he had been taken to the former psychiatric department of Ljubljana’s main hospital, which had been used by the Gestapo for interrogations. There he was questioned by the notorious Mitja Ribicic, the man in charge of the reign of terror, about a trip he had taken into the mountains