VISITING AUTHOR/EDITOR ARTICLE APRIL 2009
Human Misery Life
in a Death Camp By Hans Kopp
The Camps as We See and Group Them Correctly To get a better understanding of the political development after WWI or prior to WWII which ultimately led to the tragic ending of the Donauschwaben you may page down to the synopses and a brief history toward the end of this article and read them first. Then allow me to turn your attention to the camps after WWII.
The
names for the death camps which existed in post war Yugoslavia 1944-1948 are
downplayed not only by Tito’s Partisan’s and Serbia but also by many other
nations, since no one who has not experienced them understands what went on
behind them. The atrocities committed in these camps can also be described as
Genocide or better yet human misery at their worst. What you will read here is a
candid description of life in Gakowa one of many death camps; I was incarcerated
in for 25 months. It is certainly not for the faint at heart and makes one
wonder why no one cared what happened to the population of German descent or why
it was tolerated or even encouraged by some of the Allied Nations such as
What you will read may seam to be too graphic; however for us survivors of the death camps, it is not graphic enough. The most graphic stories were never told and died with the victims; their misery can never be illustrated graphically enough. The stories are plentiful, in fact perhaps more then 100,000.
Many
refer to the camps; we were taken too, as interment camps or concentration
camps. Let us define these types of camps we also found in the
The Russian POW camps in contrast for German soldiers and the slave labor camps, in which 73,000 Donauschwaben men and women in their prime were deported too to perform hard labor for the Russians, cannot be compared to the interment camps or concentration camps as seen in the USA and Canada. The camps lacked all comfort and personal hygiene and the shortages of food contributed too many serious illnesses resulting in the death of many; hence we need to call those camps slave labor camps.
The Incarceration to Slave Labor Camps in Yugoslavia The
slave labor camps were everywhere in
My
uncle told me after we arrived in My
Grandfather (Öffler) who served in the Hungarian army from day one during WWI,
only weeks after my mother was born. He was one of the first captured and take
to
In
February of 1945 my grandfather was taken from his home and was a captive in
slave labor camps for 11 years and never seen his wife again. He was released
from
During my research for my book, I had the opportunity to interview several relatives who were on labor details on the slave labor force of Tito; one of them was my aunts Katharina Stefan. Katharina was about 40 years old when one night in February of 1945, Partisans came at midnight, woke her up and told her to take a shovel and come with them. She had no opportunity to take any food or any other clothes except the clothes she was able to put on in the rush. Katharina saw soon that she was not the only one but many other people from our town were taken from their homes that night and had assembled with shovels in their hands.
The
people were marched all night and all day till they reached Bezdan where they
were placed into a hanger overnight. The hanger was so small that they had to
stand all night and could not rest; my aunt told me. The next morning they were
taken to the The Partisan commander was very liberal with his statements and said to his men: “if you return only half the people that are here, it will still be enough”. He also remarked “there are no sick people, only healthy people or dead people”. They were exposed to the elements during their work, deprived of proper food, and personal hygiene. There was no doctor or medicine available and if you became ill you were left to die. When done with the fortifications the survivors of the work details were taken to other locations such as farms and factories. My aunt recalls having to remove hemp from a river were it had been placed the year before for curing. Now the hemp was almost completely decayed. The work was not only extremely difficult and strenuous for men, but totally unfit for women. God must have been watching over her family, because later that same year, my aunt was moved to Gakowa where she was reunited with her children in September of 1946. My
aunt was able to escape with her children and live in The Death Camps By official definition of Tito; the camps to which the young and old Donauschwaben were taken too, was “camps with special status”. What does “special status” mean for you the reader and what did it mean for us the survivors? One can interpret this status in many different ways, however for the Donauschwaben they were camps were people were taken to be starved to death in a very cruel inhumane way by not giving them the necessary food to sustain their lives and when they contracted diseases as a result of being undernourished, they were denied treatment and the necessary medication to recover from their illnesses. We need to call them rightfully “Death Camps”. These camps also lacked all simple comfort; instead the people had to sleep on straw in overcrowded rooms they had to share with between 15 to 20 different people who had no means for privacy or personnel hygiene.
There were seven such death camps or “camps of special status” which have to be classified as such. According to the percentage of survivors the worst such camp was Syrmisch Mitrowitz/Sremska Mitrovica were less than 20% of its inmates survived. As for children who received special treatments we need to mention; Jarek/Backi Jarek, the death camp were more than 5,000 children were put to death by poisoning them in houses specially set aside for them for that purpose and later by killing them with ground up glass mixed into their food when there was no poison left to give the children.
Sustenance and Survival At this point I would like to take the opportunity to site several examples of my personal experiences and observations as a ten year old child of that time, true human misery which existed in the death camps everywhere to a more or less degree which claimed 1/3rd of our population subjected to death camps.
When we arrived in Gakowa we received food tickets we had to show to receive food. But it would not take long before the food we received did become less and the quality worse. By the winter of 1945/46 the bread was made of corn which was hard as a brick and had to be soaked in water and a sort of polenta made out of it without any type of shortening, salt or any other type of seasoning, at least that is what my aunt Katharina (Kopp) made for us so we could eat it.
We also received cow beats which tasted good at first but later when they were frost bitten and partially decayed they would not stay down and did more harm than good. The people, who survived, relied on creativity and ingenuity such as collecting herbs from nature, volunteering for work details to get out of town and go to beg for food. During the winter we focused our attention to catching sparrows and other birds.
Personal Hygiene Shortly after our arrival personal hygiene diminished and was practically none existing. There was a water shortage all the time, so that water which became more and more contaminated had to be boiled to be used for drinking so washing clothes became more and more difficult. The untreated human waist went into the ground water table during the rains and snow which made the water foul and no longer safe.
When you have between 25,000 to 28,000 people in a village which was build for a population 2,500, their waist was difficult to handle. Men had to dig 3 feet wide, by 8 to 10 feet long and 4 to 5 feet deep holes mostly in the back courts away from the living quarters. Some of them were provided with a beam to sit on. We called this beam thunder beam, since it did not take long and all people contracted diarrhea and since we all were plagued with the disease you simply had to rush to the thunder beam in the back court. Justin Bäsl, the owner of our first house we occupied, had one such moment and was rushing as fast as she could, but it was too late and she soiled her skirt from top to bottom. Diarrhea would create dangerous problems for many people which took their lives. Repeated urges to go even if there was nothing left in their intestines was part of the problem, because it forced their rectum through the opening of the anus and would protrude to the outside. It was a blessing that none of our family members ever had such a problem.
Fleas, Lice, Rats and Typhus Existing in rooms crammed with 15 to 20 people sleeping on straw, flee became the first pests. They were extremely difficult to catch and get read off. Soon lice would follow infecting people with stomach and head typhus resulting in an epidemic along with many other diseases like Malaria. Many of you have seen monkeys groom each other and plug flee from each others body. This was the general picture of a daily routine to clean each others head of the pests. One of the measures was to shear everyone bald, which for the women was quite embarrassing. Much later in 1946 we received treatments against lice with DDT, a well-known poison. My
brother, Franz, became one of the first victims of typhus and began to
hallucinate. While I was sitting on our strew pile we had to sleep on busy
catching lice, he said: “Hans, look, the Partisans are robbing us of our
winter coats.” I had to get up, show him that he was just seeing things and
that our coats were still hanging there. When I told my Grandmother (Öffler)
about my brother, she took him to the provisional hospital, better known to us
as the “House of Death”. It was located on My grandmother insisted on staying with my brother. I am certain her decision saved his life. I went to visit my brother and grandmother the next day. When I came to the house where people stricken with typhus were housed, a strange uncomfortable feeling came over me. I did not know in which room my brother was in, so I entered the room closest to me carefully with anxiety and fear. The room was terrifying, dark, damp and cold with the strong odor of death all around. A bone-chilling shiver went down my spine. I felt as though the Grim Reaper was standing behind me waiting to cut down any one of the unfortunate souls brought here. I shrugged off the feeling and rushed out of the room to catch a breath of fresh air. Once outside I turned toward the sun to catch the last warming rays of the day. The sun began to set behind a tall tree, its last rays that warmed me also lit up this “house of death” in a deceiving golden glitter. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I had ever seen and will never forget. The life-giving rays of the sun and its spectacular setting would never be enjoyed, or seen again by many of the unfortunate poor souls brought to this house. I was confronted with the awful decision of whether or not to go back inside and keep looking for my brother and grandmother. My decision was clear; I had to see them and courageously entered another room. After my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the seemingly lifeless bodies and the appalling conditions that existed. This is where the ill had to live the last days of their lives. Were these people still alive or were they dead? I could not tell, but what I could tell was that they did not deserve to die in conditions undignified for human beings. They were forgotten and left to die. While I went through the rooms looking for my brother and grandmother I noticed something else; Rats. The rats became a menace and once they took over the houses we had to guard ourselves from their continued relentless attacks. We in our room did not have too many problems with them, but the places were the older and the sick people, as well as the children without relatives were housed and who could not help themselves, became helpless victims of their attacks. The rats would be chewing on people still living and I have seen a boy who lost an ear lope to the pests. A young teenage woman appeared one day from nowhere. No one knew who she was, where she came from, or if she had any living relatives. Unable to care for herself, her appearance was shocking. Her skin was full of sores and scars left by lice. No one wanted to associate themselves with her, either because of her condition or because everyone had to cope with their own problems. Head lice have a very adverse effect on peoples mental state and it seamed she was somewhat disturbed as a result of her condition. It did not take a long time for the children to make fun of her with the exception of one; me. Because of my tolerance, she was drawn to me and I became her friend perhaps the only friend she now had. She usually sat down next to me in the corridor and watched me work on one thing or another while freely talking to me and I wish I could remember what she was telling me. With my marble playing skills I had won several Hungarian 20 Filér copper coins, which had a hole in the center and with which I patiently hammered several rings I gave all away except one, the one I had kept for me. When she saw my ring, she asked if I could make one for her too. Unfortunately, I had no more coins left, so I gave her my ring. This made her happy in her own way and I began to help her with her lice. However, when I examined her head I found a crusted spot which was about an inch or inch and a half in diameter and it seemed to be alive. When I lifted the crusted part gently up, I was shocked seeing the lice crawling underneath in the pas. I became helpless. I did not know what I should do and if I could hurt her if I would remove the crust, the pas and the lice. I gently placed the crust back on her head and even today I blame myself for not having been able to help her clean up her head.
Begging for Food to Survive, Brought Death to Others More and more often, we found it necessary to sneak out of Gakowa and walk to the neighboring towns to beg for food. I remember the first time I went begging in Svetozar Miletic with my Grandmother (Kopp) and two other women from camp. At one of the Serbian homes a lady promised us lunch if I cleaned her chicken and rabbit stalls while the women went begging. At noon the women returned and as promised, the lady had a meal of chicken paprikash prepared for us. She served the chicken paprikash on top of an upright sitting large barrel standing in the outside corridor of the house. I did not eat. My pride did not allow me to eat although I was hungry. The humiliation of begging and doing the dirty work of the people who drove us from our homes, the people who made beggars and thieves out of us, was too much for me to cope. Surely, this kind woman had nothing to do with all of this and did her best to help us. Was there room for such pride in this world of despair? It was amazing how much I matured in such a short time. I was ten now and there was no birthday celebration, no cake with candles, just hunger and starvation. I was proud, but this was the only time I would not eat because of my pride. Surviving was more important and I understood this.
It was about two weeks before Christmas of 1945 my Grandmother (Öffler) went begging to one of her usual places. She wanted to beg for food so we would have something special to fill our bellies with for the holidays. On her way back to Gakowa she was captured, her food taken away and jailed in the cellar prison. The next morning an announcement was made that the people caught during the night would be executed. After we learned that my grandmother was among them, my brother and I ran to the prison to see if there was any truth to this horrible news. I
don’t remember how long we waited there along with others whose relatives were
to be executed, to find out if the rumor was true. We wondered if we could see
our grandmother for a last time. The gate finally opened, it was very late in
the afternoon and a horse drawn wagon came out with six or seven people loaded
on it, among them my grandmother. We ran toward the wagon. She shouted at us as
the wagon went by, but we couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell us.
As we kept running alongside the wagon, she ripped off her coat and her skirt
and threw them off the wagon. My brother picked up the clothes. Again, we ran
behind the wagon until the Partisans stopped us at the end of However, instead the Partisans did not execute them but drove them to Kruschiwl. There she was mistreated in the worst way we learned later from a man who shared her fait. The Partisans must have continually beaten her face with a rifle but and broke her facial bones and left her to die. However, she recovered from unconsciousness and set on foot to return to Gakowa with rags on her feet and hardly any clothes on her body in the cold winter night with snow on the ground. One can only imagine what ordeal it must have been for her to walk from Kruschiwl to Gakowa in her condition. My grandmother’s love for us, her desire and will power to be with us on Christmas Eve, overcame all the hardship and pain she must have suffered from the severe and inhumane mistreatment she had to endure during her captivity and the conditions she must have faced on her way. Late on Christmas Eve December 24th, the door to our room swung open. In the doorframe stood a dark ghost like silhouette, offset by the light from our lard lamp, staring at us. We held our breath and gazed at the dark figure and finally recognized it was my grandmother. Where did she come from? No! It could not be her! She was executed at the cemetery. We rushed to greet her as we recognized her now. We were though shocked at first but now ecstatic, because we did not expect to see her ever again. Was part of our prayers answered? We hugged each other with great passion only to be shocked again when she collapsed onto straw bed. We had no idea what had happened to her at that time nor did we know what she had been through. She could not speak and after taking a closer look by the light of a lard lamp we become aware of how awful she looked and how severely she was mistreated and injured. What we saw now was horrifying. Her face was swollen and discolored. Her facial bones were shattered so that she could not open her jaws. Her feet were wrapped in rags so she could hardly stand and yet she walked to be with us all the way from Kruschiwl. As my grandmother (Kopp) removed the rags from her feet we saw that both of her feet were raw and frostbitten from walking in the cold and snow without proper footwear and clothing. Since she could not speak, she was unable to tell us what had happened to her. It was God’s mercy and her will to live after she regained her consciousness that led her back to us on Christmas Eve, long enough so we could comfort her during her final hours. My aunt and Grandmother (Kopp) made a valiant effort to make her comfortable. They dressed her feet and wrapped her face in linen. There was no doctor to treat her or give her medication. We knew there was no hope; she would have to die soon. I think she knew that too. She could not open her mouth to eat. Yet, I made a desperate effort to feed her soup through her teeth for I did not want her to die. The soup that I attempted to trifle into her mouth between her teeth did not help. Her jaw was so badly smashed she could not swallow; consequently, it just ran out on the sides of her mouth. I felt so helpless, so helpless, and it was so terribly hopeless! I knelt beside her, not wanting to give up. I thought if I just could get her to eat, she would not have to die. All we could do, however, was to make her as comfortable as possible and hope that the Lord would let her die mercifully. Her suffering was anything but easy, her pain must have been excruciating. It was horrible to see her that way. Her face was nothing more than a living death mask, and the flesh on her legs was decaying from the frostbite. We went to bed on the gruesome night of December 26th 1945. A small lard lamp was placed near her so that we could observe her during the night. I could not fall asleep and stared at the flickering of the flame for a long, long time before I finally closed my eyes. But sleep I could not. In fall, before the grape harvest and wine making time, my father and grandfather would clean the wine barrels and prepare them for the new wine. They would bring the barrels up from the cellar place sulfur sticks in them and light the sticks. When the sulfur sticks were burned up they would put water into the barrels and roll them back and forth and back and forth. “Rum-rum, rum-rum” was the sound the barrels made while they were being cleaned. As I lay on my bunk with my eyes closed I heard that noise “rum-rum, rum-rum.” Was I dreaming? Was I at home in Batschsentiwan? Was that noise coming from barrels outside? Who would wash wine barrels in the middle of the night? I was not dreaming a nightmare took its course. I knew that the noise was not coming from any wine barrels outside. The noise was coming from my grandmother as she lay in pain fighting for her life. She must have gone to hell and back during her ordeal. My Grandmother (Kopp) and my aunt got up several times during the night to comfort her, but there was nothing that could be done to quiet her. I was petrified. I prayed silently for the sound to stop and for her to fall asleep. As dawn broke on December 27th, silence finally filled our room. Did she finally fall asleep? We listened to the silence. A few minutes passed before my Grandmother (Kopp) went to check on her while my aunt lit another lard lamp. We all went over to the side were she had bedded down to take a final look at her pain-ridden face. She was at peace. Her suffering had ended (she was only 54 years old!) The Lord had answered my prayers and taken her to Him. We fell to our knees and prayed for her. Our Father, Who art in heaven…..
Hunger: Starving to Death There is quite a difference between hunger and starving to death. You often hear when your children come home; “Mom I am starving”. Your child is not actually starving but may be hungry. Starving is when you do not get anything of nutritional value to eat today, then tomorrow and after tomorrow and next week and the week after and next month throughout the year. You are hungry all the time over a period of months and it does not take long for the pain to sets in, you get sick, get Diarrhea, malaria or typhus and on top of it you are plagued with lice, flee and rats who may eat you alive. Dying of starvation is an excruciating painful ordeal you only experience if you live under the conditions as described above.
Dr. Jakob Stefan my grandmothers’ cousin not only was the Doctor without medication attempting to help thousands, but was less then successful. He also did keep records of the death at the former morgue near the cemetery till he was taken out of the camp to serve the Tito regime as Doctor, where? I do not know as we lost contact with him nor is it known where the record book went. Did it exist? Yes, because I saw it when my uncle showed it to me in March of 1946 and it had nearly 6,000 entries in it. While he was showing the record book to me, perhaps I am the only eye witness left alive who saw it, he pointed out how many dead could not be documented by name and how many deceased where placed into the mass graves without him knowing. This fact leaves me belief that the death toll in Gakowa was by far higher as records want to have it. The records state that there were 8,500 documented deaths but what about the undocumented how many were there?
During my research I was determined to find people who were infants during our time in the death camps, but could only locate two women, which in itself was remarkable given the fact that infants had the highest mortality rate. We shared our room with a family from Miletitsch. It was a young woman with her 8 month old baby that was still nursing and her mother. Nursing an infant was a very difficult task if you were undernourished as the mother milk suffered and placed mother and child in jeopardy. Can you imagine that the only food for the baby was her mother’s milk and if there was nothing left in her breasts it was a certain death sentence for the baby? This was the case with our Miletitsch women and child and so it came to pass that the young woman from Miletitsch that roomed with us died during one long gruesome night. We were awakened by the scream of the mother who had bedded down next to her daughter. While she was reaching for her daughter she felt her cold hand. She could not understand why she did not become aware of her daughters passing during the night. She blamed herself for allowing her daughter to die while she was asleep next to her. If she would have become aware she could have certainly, so she believed helped her daughter, or if nothing else she could have comforted her during her last hour or say a prayer and good-bye. Several days later she lost her baby grandchild. The old woman had now lost everyone. Why could it not have been her, instead of them? In her grief and pain she repeated this question over and over. “Why could it not have been me? Why could it not have been me, instead of them? The tragedy continued one morning when I stepped outside of our room. As I opened the door I was confronted with a horrible site. My good friend I had given my ring too had found her peace. Her eyes were open and still staring out of her narrow fleshless face into a distant nowhere. Her mouth was wide open as if she wanted to call for help. Her knees were pulled to her chest with her arms clutched around them, searching for warmth during her last moment of the cold winter night. She died alone, with no one to comfort her. Her death was not a peaceful one. Starving to death is a very slow and extremely painful death. Her once beautiful face was distorted from her excruciating suffering she had to endure. I have seen many people die during those days including my grandmother, but none seamed to effect me more than her death. I fell to my knees to mourn and to pray for her, as she had no one to mourn her death. I lost a very dear friend. I will never forget the image of her dead body as it lay there in front of me and I still can see her face when I close my eyes. Her death will always remind me of the misery and suffering everyone in the death camps had to endure. She too was forgotten and left to die. Among the dead was a school friend, then another and yet again another. The horrible winter had passed but the tragedy continued. Josef Klein a school friend just two months older than I would leave a lasting impression on me as well. My Aunt Käthe (Drescher) learned that my school friend was brought to the house next door to were she lived (Mühlgasse 39) just days before. It was the house of the (Rohatsch family Mühlgasse 35) where a children’s hospital was set up. The name children hospital is very deceiving since in reality it was a house where children were taken to die. After my aunt had told me of his stay there I went on my way to visit him. As I came closer to the house, I saw a woman carrying what appeared to be an infant in her arms she had taken for a walk. I stopped and asked if she knew Josef and where I could find him. She told me the child she was holding in her arms was Josef. He did not recognize me nor did I recognize him. He was nothing but a bundle of bones wrapped in skin. His head seemed twice as large as his body. Big broken eyes were staring forlorn out of two large holes in his face. For months he was carried around because he was too weak to stand or walk and was finally brought here after all his relatives had passed away. His heart must have been really strong to keep his small body alive for so long. I started to talk to him but at first there was no response. I don’t remember what I told him, but he recognized me now I could tell, because his eyes lit up and a weak smile graced his face. Perhaps it was the last smile to grace his face for he passed away shortly thereafter at the end of July 1946, a couple of days after my 11th birthday. Those eyes and that smile! Who can ever forget those eyes and that smile?
Our Heroes of the Death Camps During
our fight for survival, the women, the grandmothers in particular, became
heroine’s day in and day out. They had the responsibility of looking after the
children, begging in near-by towns, finding food in the fields, collecting
herbs, berries and nuts. They made clothes from old pleated skirts taken apart
and reworked them for better uses. They had to be cooks, bakers, nurses,
caretakers, healers, and supporters both morally and spiritually. In short, they
carried the entire burden, while our fathers and mothers were in If it had not been for our grandmothers, who fought so courageously for the survival of their grandchildren, many of us would not be here today. Only they knew how painful it was to see their grandchildren starve day in and day out and watch them die and could not help nor avoid it. They were the ones who gave the last piece of bread to their grandchildren and sacrificed their own lives to save the lives of their children’s children. The extreme hardship, the worries, the agony and the despair these women endured so admirably, can be considered one of the greatest achievements on earth. I was there to witness their monumental, heroic, and unselfish deeds. We might well erect a monument to honor the greatest grandmothers of all: “The Grandmothers of the Death Camps”. I
became inspired by my own words of erecting a monument for our grandmother and
women of the death camps at We
also need to mention our teens who shuttled between the camps and the places
they managed to work outside of the slave labor camps to which they had been
able to escape. The willpower and commitment of these teens, our young men and
young women alike, which did everything humanly possible to save their families,
cannot be praised often enough. It is because of them, that many more people
helpless during those days are alive today. The heroics of these young men and
young women were monumental in the struggle for the survival of the
Donauschwaben in Within time the teens established themselves well organized and became in many cases the sole providers of their families, since they were able to be hired on by farmers and thus had more access to food which they transported on foot to the camps. Naturally there was always that danger of being caught by the Partisans, but with their attitude that they had nothing to lose, they overcame the burdens and saved their families.
When
my father returned from
There is a lot to be said about my childhood impressions I collected and preserving them. For this reason I swore never to return to my home town or Gakowa, as I never want those impressions ever disturbed and ruined.
The Death Camps Among
the worst death camps we need to mention was Rudolfsgnad were officially 11,000
lives were lost. But according to witnesses a lot more people starved to death
or were executed there. You may read more about this death camp in the book “A
People on the
Our survivors, the escapees from the death camps, for them escaping would not be the end of their demise. Many had contracted illnesses and sustained injuries in the camps which marked them for life. To mention are the people who had to work anywhere from 3 to 5 years in coal mines without protections or breathing apparatuses after the closing of the camps. One of our neighbors’ in Gakowa, who did not flee from the death camp was forced to work in a coal mine for several years and went to his early grave with the black lung decease. I visited him and his wife, our neighbor Katharina Gassmann from our home in Batschsentiwan. He no longer could sit and had to lean over the couch while we were sitting during our conversation. For him dying was a blessing.
All
the children who lost at least 3 years of school and the children who lost as
many as 6 years and could no longer get the education they needed to learn the
trade of their choice and as a result had to take low paying jobs to bring food
on the table for their families, how does one evaluate these losses. I lost
three years of school and when I went to school again in
The
largest death camp was Rudolfsgnad/Knicanin, in the south of the The
dramatic and tragic fate of the Donauschwaben was sealed at a conference on
November 21. 1944 in Jajce, Bosnia when a tribunal of “Tito’s Communist Partisan
Rebels” which by now calls itself „Antifasiticko
Vece Narodnog Oslobodjenja Jugoslavije“ „Antifascist Tribunal for the
Liberation of Yugoslavia“ in short AVNOJ,
decided that all Germans in Yugoslavia must be eliminated. Their decision
stated: “All persons of German descent living in
As we know now from history the demise of the Donauschwaben was tolerated by the Allied Forces but not only that it was also encouraged as everybody of German descent was considered a National Socialist although according to my experience of my home town perhaps less then 10% of our population were followers of National Socialisms while 90% were followers of Adam Berenz. As prove of this fact we can site that only 130 Families from our town volunteered to flee with the retreating German Army which is about 400 people from a population of 6,300 which is less then 10%.
Synopses When
the Germans settled in
As
second consideration we have to look at the Germans in
What
we saw in all three countries were many injustices. Here we would like to
concentrate on the former Hungarian regions now part of
All
schools were there was less then 30 students in a class were closed and the
children even though they could not speak the Serbia-Croatian language were
thought in that language. As a result student desiring higher levels of
educations had no alternative to either learn the language well enough which in
the short time they could not or had go and be educated in
The
most damaging for the Germans in
When
the National Socialist came to power and the propaganda machine began to work
with Hitler in power in
The
Donauschwaben now grouped as Volksdeutsche became pawn of the “Third Reich”
as all other Germans living on foreign soil. During the occupation of
During
these events, the tribunal decided secretly on November 29th 1943, to
oust Peter, the King of Yugoslavia. On July 31st 1946, by action of
this tribunal decision made on November 2nd 1944 the former
Yugoslavian citizens of German descent, became law. One questions the sanity of
such a law, a law against humanity that Tito would execute to the tee. One also
questions as to why this law has not been abolished in today’s Government of
Yugoslavia or today’s
The propaganda by the NS-movement for the “New German view”, created a strong opposition among the Catholics, especially the farmers, in the “spirit of Catholic actions”. Father Adam Berenz writes in his weekly newspaper “Die Donau” articles against the National Socialistic-movement up to 1944. This was absolutely courageous. He was convinced one could be a good German without having to be a follower of Hitler or a National Socialist. At
the end of the war the Donauschwaben and all other German Volksgruppen in
The result of this ignorance by the Allied Nations and their toleration of the destruction of the Germans on foreign soil left the Donauschwaben vulnerable as they received the full brunt of the hate of the Tito Partisans. Not even the so called “Reichsdeutschen”, the Germans born on German soil where exposed to such cruelties and misery as placed upon the Donauschwaben.
Many
of our young reader are often confused by the following facts which they relate
to the
A Brief History for a Better Understanding of the Germans The
Donauschwaben Settlers in
Before
we can speak about the demise of the Donauschwaben we need to understand part of
the history of
In
1141-1162, after the continued raids by nomadic tribes from the east, the
Hungarian King Geza II prompted to hire German mercenary soldiers from
The
Turks, under the leadership of Murad I, defeated the Serbs on June 28 1389 near
Kosovo Polje in the Balkan. The Serbs presented the strongest resistance in the
region at that time. By 1459-1479 the Turks controlled the regions of today’s
It
was in the year 1683 that Sultan Mehmed IV recognized, what he thought was an
opportunity to conquer the Christian civilization. At the time French troops had
invaded the German regions of
Sultan
Mehmed IV concentrated his armies near
Rüdiger
von Starhemberg heroically defended the city of
The
valiant defensive struggle around
Duke
Karl V of
Duke
Karl V went on to gain victories at Gran (near the
It
was not until the combined Imperial forces of the Holy Roman Empire of German
Nation, under their leaders Karl V, Max Emanuel von Bayern and Ludwig Wilhelm I
von Baden, defeated the Turks at Harsany (Harschan) near Mohács in 1686-1687,
that the Islamic threat to the Christian Civilization came to a halt. These
victories followed by the victories of General Dünewald and Count Leslie in the
regions of Slavonia-Syrmia, secured the land west of the
In
1697, prior to the battle of Zenta, Prince Eugene von Savoy was given the high
command of the allied imperial troops. Following the battle, a 25-year piece
treaty was signed in Karlowitz between the
The
Turks left behind a devastated, barren, and scarcely populated countryside of
low swampland along the
It
was the Hungarian counts who recognized the need to resettle the vast lying
rural areas of their land. The reasoning was quite clear there was no one to
plow and till the land. The Hungarian Kingdom, which practically did not exist
as we know it today during the occupation of the Turks and whose population was
decimated by the Turkish occupation of the land, needed farmers. The landlords
urged the Emperor, Leopold I, to allow the settlement of German farmers in
The
demise of the Donauschwaben began when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the
Austrian-Hungarian throne and his wife Sophie were assassinated in
After the cease fire agreement in November of 1918 Serbian troops marched into the regions of southern Hungary, namely the Batschka, Baranja, and western regions of the Banat to occupy them although they had no right to do so and were to respect the borders in existence prior to in 1914. At the peace treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, the occupied regions were sanctioned. On December 1st 1918 Alexander Karadjordjevic proclaimed the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, which was recognized on December 5th 1919 with the amendment of a “Minority Rights Agreement”.
However, Alexander had no intention to allow the minority to partake in the process of the legislation passed on June 28 1918, prompting President Wilson to state in his Address to the Nation on February 12 1918 that it violated the rights of the Hungarians, Germans and other minorities in that country. In a later proclamation by the now reigning King Alexander, he disowned the rich farmers and gave the land to the poor farmer, thus disowning many industrious Donauschwaben and Hungarian farmers, who had earned the right to the land through their hard labor and effort by purchasing it legally.
On
February 27 1918, 216,644 families profited from this “Agrarian Reform” of
the new state and were settled on that ground. None of them were Germans,
although there were many deserving poor among the Donauschwaben. Many of the
effected had to work for someone else or leave the country to find work. Many of
them came to
After
the peace treaties in Trianon, the territories of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire,
with its population of 54 million people, were dismantled, the territory
truncated and the population with its land geographically separated by the
allied nations. With this geographic separation of land, the settlement regions
of the
“Ungarländischen Deutschen”, with a population of 1.5 million
people, now divided, leaving 650,000 people in the remaining territory Hungary,
350,000 in the annexed part of Romania, and 550,000 the newly formed nation of
the Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians. This division also forced 3,000,000
Hungarians to live in foreign countries and gave the German region of the
Hauerland and Zips to The
“Ungarländischen
Deutschen” became subjects of
The
demise of the Donauschwaben continued when the National Socialist Party came to
power in
Here
rest our Danube Swabian brothers and sisters, they shall always be in our
hearts. With the dedication of this cross we shall honor and remember them
always. The
Danube Swabians are descendants of the colonists, settled by the Habsburg
Monarchy in the Hungarian lowland during the 18th Century. The
camp in Gakowa was in operation from March 1945 until January of 1948.
The
Gedenkstätte für die Hinterbliebenen des Todeslagers Gakowa. Wir können verzeihen jedoch nicht vergessen. Möge dieses Symbol des Glaubens und Friedens in unsere Herzen wohnen, denn nur von Innen kommt die Stärke unsere Schmerzen zu ertragen. Mögen diese Blumen ihre unschuldigen Seelen entzücken. Diese Blätter und Blumen sind vom Friedhof aus Gakowa.
A monument for our beloved, left behind in the death camp of Gakovo. We can
forgive, but cannot forget. May this symbol of faith and peace dwell in our
hearts; only from the innermost of our hearts we will find the strength, to bear
our pain. May these leaves and flowers delight their souls. These leaves and
flowers originate from the
All Pictures Courtesy Hans Kopp
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