About the Book

What have the erased and their loved ones carried within themselves for more than thirty years after this mass violation of human rights (as the act of the Slovenian state was defined by the European Court of Human Rights)? Following the example of Svetlana Alexievich, Andraž Rožman set out in search of answers among the erased, their relatives, and their advocates, transforming testimonies into stories. In interviews, the author sought small moments that at first glance seem insignificant—perhaps even banal—but when given space, when we search for their core, they can reveal the full depth of (traumatic) experience, sometimes leading us into entirely unexpected territories of human consciousness or even the unconscious. In this way, around forty chapters of documentary fiction came into being—chapters that may appear separate at first glance, but in fact are not. They are bound by the same experience, though lived through from very different perspectives and told from diverse narrative angles; multiple narrative threads converge into a shared arc that traces the story of the erasure and the struggle for the rights of the erased.

The author also asked himself, “Why, with the exception of a handful of activists, did we do nothing when we should have?” and turned his attention to the other side of the process of erasure—to the residents who did not lose permanent residence, that is, more or less ordinary people. In this part, drawing on imagination, the theoretical concept of organized innocence, and his own observation of the world, he wrote fictional stories that examine the shared responsibility of the majority of the population for a crime of the Slovenian state that is still ongoing.