Franja Partisan Hospital

The Franja Partisan Hospital was a secret Second World War hospital at Dolenji Novaki near Cerkno in western Slovenia. It is now a museum. It was run by Yugoslav Partisans from December 1943 to the end of the war as part of a broadly organized resistance movement against the Fascist and Nazi occupying forces. Although Wehrmacht occupying forces launched several searches for the hospital, it was never discovered.

The Franja Partisan Hospital is a cluster of functionally arranged hospital facilities located in the narrow, barely accessible Pasica Gorge, which is itself a natural attraction. The hospital complex comprises 13 wooden buildings and several small auxiliary facilities that were gradually set up in the period from December 1943 to May 1945. The founder and first builder of the hospital was Dr. Viktor Volčjak. The hospital was named after its manager and physician, Dr. Franja Bojc Bidovec, who began work there in February 1944.

The hospital was among the best equipped clandestine partisan hospitals, with an operating room, X-ray apparatus, an invalid care facility, and a small electric plant. Most of the equipment is preserved in situ. The hospital had a capacity of up to 120 patients, and provided treatment to a total of 522 severely wounded persons. Some 1000 wounded soldiers of various nationalities were treated in Franja and its remote units alongside Slovenes and other Yugoslavs, including Italians, Frenchmen, Russian, Poles, Americans, and an Austrian. One of the patients, a captured German soldier, joined the hospital staff after his recovery and remained there until the end of the war. During the entire period of the hospital's operation, 61 patients died. Conspiracy and security were of crucial importance to all clandestine partisan hospitals because, if discovered, they lacked effective defense mechanisms. Most of the route leading to the hospital ran along Pasica Creek, which flows through the gorge. The wounded were blindfolded and carried to the hospital by its staff, most often at night. In selecting its location, consideration was also given to adequate self-defense in the form of minefields and machine-gun nests, and for this purpose the hospital was accessible only by footbridges and drawbridges hidden in the steep Pasica Gorge. Still preserved in the steep walls rising above the stream are several fortified bunkers and natural caves that served as hiding places for the wounded.

Franja is on a list of candidates for UNESCO World Heritage status. The hospital was badly damaged in a flood after torrential rain on 18 September 2007.