In 1945 Partisan units marched into the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana. This was the end of several days of fierce fighting between the Nazi occupation forces and the 7th Corps and 29th Herzegovinian Strike Division of the Yugoslav Army.
The Province of Ljubljana was the central-southern area of Slovenia, created on May 3, 1941. In 1943 the province was occupied by Nazi Germany as part of the Operation Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, territories previously administered by Fascist Italy.
Under Italian control the Province of Ljubljana was subjected to brutal repression after the emergence of resistance and the occupying fascist forces erected a barbed wire fence around the city in order to prevent communication between the underground Liberation Front activists in Ljubljana and the Slovene Partisans in the surrounding countryside.
In memory of May 9, 1945 and the interwar wire ring around Ljubljana a sports and recreational event was proposed by the Ljubljana District Committee of the Association of National Liberation Army Combatants during the first Slovene Festival of Physical Culture in 1957. The event has since become traditional, and The Path of Remembrance and Comradeship (Pot spominov in tovarištva, also known as Path along the Wire Fence of Occupied Ljubljana) is now protected as a historical monument with a Town Act specifying that a memorial walk takes place along the wire fence of occupied Ljubljana each year on May 9th.
