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The North Eastern Banat
"The Hunt for Danube Swabians"
Cernje
Cernje
is located in the north eastern Banat in
Yugoslavia. About three thousand Danube
Swabians lived there. In addition there
were approximately ten thousand more
Danube Swabians who lived in the
vicinity in the villages of Molidorf,
Tschesterek, Heufeld, Hetin, Ruskodorf
and others.
During
the first days of the month of October
in 1944 the Partisans took power from
the Russian military. Their rule was
bloody and gruesome. The most atrocious
acts were carried out by the Gypsies who
lived in a settlement in close proximity
to Cernje. The Gypsies had always been
work-shy and intensely jealous of the
prosperity of the hard working and
thrifty Danube Swabians. The Gypsies
joined the communists and Partisans who
were Serbians and attempted to share
power with them. They let the Danube
Swabians know that they had power in no
uncertain way and they were prepared to
use that power ruthlessly. As the new
powers that be, everything that took
their fancy they simply took from the
Swabians including young girls and women
to satisfy their lust.
The
first Swabian killed in Cernje was the
Roman Catholic priest, Franz Brunet. He
was taken from the rectory by Partisans
on October 3rd, 1944 and shot
for no apparent reason. Immediately
after that most of the Swabian men were
taken from their homes and divided into
groups. At the same time many Swabians
from the vicinity of Cernje were dragged
here in chains and fetters. Many
Swabian women from outside of the
village of Cernje were also brought
here. Mostly they were women from
prosperous families and the
“intelligentsia” among the men who were
the first to be tortured and killed. As
these large groups arrived they were
locked in two large cellars and were
imprisoned there for weeks. During the
evenings groups of Swabians were taken
out of the cellars and for hours on end
the Partisans abused, tortured and
mistreated them in as many ways as
possible. Each Partisan was now at
liberty to let Swabian blood flow and
break arms, legs and ribs, knock in a
man’s teeth or simply kill them any way
they pleased. A great number of those
taken out of the cellar never returned.
Their bodies ended up in shallow graves
in the meadows. As the numbers of
Swabians in the cellar declined, they
continued to bring in a new supply of
men and women to endure the same fate.
The
treatment of the women was especially
horrendous. It was brutal, gruesome and
bestial. One evening the Partisans took
a rather beautiful woman out of the
cellar. She had to endure a long period
of excruciating torture. They stripped
her of her clothes and because she
resisted the Partisans and Gypsies used
a hot household iron and “ironed” her
whole naked body. With deep festering
burns all over her body she was thrown
down the cellar steps by the Partisans.
For the next two days she suffered in
the presence of the other prisoners
before she finally died of her burns.
On
October 8th, 1944 a bunch of
drunk boisterous Partisans broke into
one of the cellars. Among them was a
drunk officer who carried a machine
pistol in his hand. All of the Swabian
prisoners were forced to stand and
huddle against the wall in one corner.
The drunk officer simply shot at the
tightly packed group of prisoners in the
corner at point blank range in every
direction, resulting in bloodying and
killing many of them. The numbers
killed and wounded was enormous. The
landowning farmers Kampf Anton and Maier
Josef from Cernje lived for a few days
one of them wounded in his lungs and the
other in his knee but received no
medical help or bandages. Finally on
October 12th both of them
were taken out of the cellar by the
Partisans and shot up against the wall
at the entrance way. In the meanwhile
the surviving prisoners were tortured
and individually liquidated night after
night with new methods devised by the
Partisans.
On
October 22, 1944 on what was a Sunday,
all of the surviving Swabians in Cernje
who had not been imprisoned in the
cellars were forced to dig a pit for a
mass grave. It was twenty-five meters
long, six meters wide and 3 meters
deep. On October 24th, which
was Tuesday the new governing officials
had drums beaten in all of the streets
of Cernje to publicly announce to the
entire population that all of the Danube
Swabians were to be put to death. The
Serbian population and the Gypsies were
invited to come and watch the massacre.
Later that day at 2:00pm, one hundred
and twenty-four Swabian men and fifty
women were led in fetters from the
cellars where they had been imprisoned
for weeks. They were bound with wire to
one another and were beaten and thrashed
all along the way to the place of
execution and screamed at by the
Partisans and the Gypsies who had
gathered to watch. They were beaten so
badly that they were unrecognizable.
When they arrived at the place of
execution all of them were stripped of
their clothes and were shot by a huge
mob of Serbians and Gypsies. The
Swabians were bound together in groups
and driven to the mass grave by some
Partisans and shot by them and then
tossed into the pit. The clothes of the
dead were put on a wagon and led back to
town by the new “officials”. The
clothes were sorted and divided up among
the Serbians and Gypsies. The very next
day they walked around town wearing the
clothes of the dead men and women with
great pride.
Hardly
was the massacre over when the new
“officials” had street announcements
made everywhere in Cernje that wherever
Danube Swabians were still living they
would be slaughtered that evening.
Armed Gypsies went from house to house
and informed the young girls and women
that they, the Gypsies, had been given
the right, the power and the order by
the authorities to rape and slaughter
them if they wished. In fear and
trembling of what awaited them, not less
than seventy-five married and single
young women and their families took heir
own lives on the evening of October 24,
1944. Some whole family groups chose to
die together. Mothers threw their
little children into the well and then
jumped in after them. Other mothers
hung their children and did the same to
themselves beside them. It just went on
and on in a night of horrors as the
Gypsies went on a rampage of lust, rape
and murder.
The
aged former mayor Peter Stein and his
wife Susanne chose suicide. Johann
Goldscheck was one of the men who had
died in the massacre earlier that day.
Gypsies raped his wife and
daughter-in-law in front of the two
children in the house. When the Gypsies
left all four of them took their own
lives. Eva the wife of Kaspar
Rottenbach, Maria the wife of John his
son, and their two daughters aged twenty
and twenty-two were raped by a group of
Gypsies in front of the two men. All
six of them then committed suicide.
They hung themselves in the attic of
their house all in a row. These are
only a few examples. This is the
gruesome way in which the new People’s
Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia of the
Communists and Gypsies was introduced
into this region of the Banat.
On
October 25, 1944 it was time to
liquidate those still imprisoned in the
cellars plus the continuing oncoming
victims being brought in from the
surrounding region who fed the
insatiable massacre machine. On that
day there were still four hundred and
eighty living Danube Swabians, including
thirty women. They were bound to one
another with ropes and wire and were led
by heavily armed Partisans and pushed,
abused and mistreated all the way to an
estate called “Julia Major”. From here
they were to be taken to various hard
labor camps. But there were numerous
situations in which individuals or
groups were slaughtered in the most
gruesome manner.
On
November 15 and 16, 1944 there were one
hundred Swabian men shot at one time and
included sixty-seven farmers from
Stefansfeld and thirty-three Swabians
from Pardanj. This massacre was at the
insistence of a Serbian woman Partisan.
Her husband had attacked German troops
during the occupation and had been shot
by them by return fire. She now wanted
to see the blood of hundreds of unarmed
Danube Swabian civilians flow in revenge
and she had her heart’s desire.
Among
the imprisoned Danube Swabian civilians
in the cellars there were also Danube
Swabian refugees from Romania and one
German Army officer prisoner of war,
Hans Konrad from Hatzfeld. He was badly
crippled from the torture he endured at
the hands of the Partisans and was
unable to work. These were the grounds
for the Partisans for his liquidation.
His wife was also in the camp. As he
was being led out to his execution, his
wife left her labor group and ran
towards him. She reached him just as
they were about to shoot him. She
wrapped her arms around his neck and
refused to leave him. They were shot
together, even though neither one of
them was a Yugoslavian citizen. This
occurred on November 9, 1944. On that
same day another eleven persons were
liquidated. Most of them were sick or
due to the treatment and torture they
had endured that they were unable to
work. The camp commander who ordered
these shootings came from Ban.
Karadjordjevo. He had already been
responsible for the deaths of countless
others in Kikinda and later in Julija
Major” where he boasted of that.
In the
bitter cold of New Year’s Eve of
1944/1945 all of the inmates in the camp
were driven out of their quarters at
midnight. They had to stand and wait in
the cold and the snow and then on the
orders of the Partisans they had to do
sit-ups in the snow for about an hour.
But whoever got up and down too fast was
beaten terribly. The women had to
endure the same thing. A pregnant woman
who was a Danube Swabian from Romania
was not spared either. As a result of
this “exercise” she give birth to a
child that died shortly afterwards.
This operation was carried out in
reprisal because of a speech given by a
Nazi official that was heard over the
radio. The operation lasted as long as
the speech. On April 18, 1945 the very
last of the Swabians in Cernje who were
still alive were driven out of their
homes and taken to concentration camps.
But on April 19th, twenty-two
elderly people among them were unable to
walk were driven out of the camp at
night and were shot. Often in the
following days both men and women were
taken out at night to be shot for no
apparent reason at all. And many young
women were taken out at night and
disappeared forever. Most of them were
buried in one of the mass graves.
Karoline Bockmueller of Cernje writes:
“On
October 4, 1944 at 8:30am the
Russian troops passed through Cernje
and headed west. In the afternoon
of the same day they were followed
by groups of Russians who had been
prisoners of war in Romania. Only
some of them were armed and remained
in Cernje for a few days. Towards
evening of the day when they arrived
they went from house to house to rob
and plunder under the direction of
some local Serbian Partisans.
During the night countless women and
young girls were raped by the
Russians, Partisans and Gypsies.
One of their victims was a
nine-year-old girl (Eva B.) She was
badly injured having been
barbarically raped by nine men. She
became unconscious and her legs
could no longer bend. On the
following day her mother hung her
and herself. This was true of many
of the other women and girls.
The
sisters Maria and Susanne Rottenbach
were raped as well as Sophie B. who
later had a child as a result.
Therese Hoenig was raped by six men
and was injured so badly that she
was unable to walk and could only
crawl on the floor. The following
were also raped: Katharina and
Gertraud Goldscheck.
Therese Hoenig and her mother as
well as the Goldscheck and
Rottenbach sisters all hung
themselves the next day in their
attics. The only raped woman who
went on living was Sophie B.
On
October 5th groups of
Gypsies from the area went from
house to house and yelled to the
Swabians inside that they were to
come to the commons where they would
be shot. Gypsies and Partisans also
entered some houses and took a
number of men and some women whose
husbands were in the German army and
locked them in the cellar at the
town hall. On hearing this news,
fifty-four persons, men, women and
children hung themselves, took
poison or jumped in a well and
drowned.
On
October 7th, 1944 our
priest Franz Brunet was taken to the
town hall by the Partisans. He was
so badly whipped and beaten along
with four other men, so that none
was able to walk. The Partisans
propositioned the priest that if he
wanted to run away all he had to do
was to jump over the wall and they
would let him live. The priest used
all of his strength to jump over the
wall. As he reached the top of the
wall the Partisans shot him. The
other men who had been abused with
the priest were beaten to death.
The priest’s housekeeper Frau
Klementine was brought to the town
hall and she had to wash the blood
away. Other women who came to do
the cleaning at the town hall daily
had to bury the dead priest and the
other men at the garbage dump. In
the cellars of the town hall in
addition to the Danube Swabian men
from Cernje there was a larger
number of men imprisoned with them
from the surrounding area:
Stefansfeld, Heufeld, Mastort and
others.
On
October 8th or 9th
in 1944, Franz Hoffmann begged a
Partisan guarding the cellar to
shoot him because he could not stand
the torture and pain he had to
endure. The Partisan shot him on
the spot and soon other inmates
begged for the same fate. One
Partisan shot at them with his
machine pistol and hit three of
them: Peter Weissmann, Nikolaus
Tabar and Josef Mayer. None of them
was dead but all were badly
wounded. But all four were buried
alive in the grave at the garbage
dump.
Men
and women were taken out of the
cellar at night and were whipped and
tortured, while others were abused
in the cellars. There were fifteen
year olds among them. All of them
were hardly recognizable because of
the terrible tortures their bodies
had endured, and as they were led
two by two bound to one another by
the Partisans to be shot at the dump
we could only identify them by their
voices or their clothes, which were
often just rags that clung to their
bodies.
The
mass shootings lasted from October
12th to November 7th,
1944. Every day several Swabians
were executed. The last shooting
was on November 11th,
1944, and on that day the mass grave
was covered over. There were always
public announcements that the
shootings were taking place and
everyone in Cernje was free to come
and watch.
The
victims were forced to undress naked
at the dump, and step towards the
mass open grave where a Partisan
shot them in the back of the neck
and the victim would fall forward
into the pit. Some of those who
were shot were not dead immediately
but whimpered for most of the day
and some long into the night until
death finally released them. Our
schoolmaster Franz Kremer and Hans
Goldscheck and Katharina Schillinger
were dragged by the hair from the
cellar by the Partisans and Gypsies
and screamed in pain on their way to
execution. The woman was not killed
instantly as a result of the
shooting and she whimpered and
groaned until the next day and
crawled around among the decomposing
corpses in the mass grave. The
Gypsies were given permission to
kill her with shovels and spades,
which they then followed through
on.
From Cernje alone, as far as I can
remember, the following men and
women were shot and buried in the
mass grave at the dump (she names
fifty-two victims). I cannot
remember all of them anymore.
On
November 27, 1944 all men and women
who were able to work were ordered
to report. There were three groups
formed. One group of men and women
went to the hemp factory, the second
had to work on the farms, the third
group, mostly older people had to
empty, pack furnishings and
possessions in the houses of the
Swabians. Regardless of where they
worked they were guarded, beaten and
threatened with death by Partisans
if they did not work hard enough or
fast enough. My own seventy year
old grandmother, Katharina
Bockmueller had to load furniture.
Once when she was unable to lift a
chest she was beaten by Partisans
and Gypsies until she was
unconscious.
At
noon on December 27, 1944 the drum
beats in the streets of Cernje
announced that all young women, both
married and single, from eighteen to
thirty years of age and men from
eighteen to forty-five were to
report to the town hall next morning
at 4:00am. They were to bring food
for fourteen days and a change of
clothes. These people were loaded
in cattle cars at the railway
station. The windows and doors were
locked and the transport of eighty
young women and thirty-five men were
deported to slave labor in the
Soviet Union. Eye-witnesses told me
of the heart rending scene at the
railway station. Parents were not
allowed to say goodbye to their
children and had no idea of where
they were going. I was sick in bed
at that time.
Towards the end of February 1945 we
younger women who were still in
Cernje had to dig up the corpses of
those who had hung themselves or
took poison when the Partisans had
arrived and started the pogroms.
These were often buried in their own
gardens because we were not allowed
on the streets at that time. We had
to disinter them and put them in the
mass grave nearby the cemetery. The
Partisans wanted us to dig up the
bodies with our bare hands but the
local Serbians hindered that from
happening.
On
March 18, 1945, along with four
other women from Cernje I came to
Luise Puszta by Etschka. There was
labor camp here with around one
hundred women and fifty men from
various communities in the Banat who
had been dragged here like we had.
With nineteen other women I shared a
small room. We had to sleep on the
floor with some hay and straw
beneath us, and it was an earthen
not a wooden floor. There was no
way to heat the room and it was over
run with rodents and insects,
cockroaches and lice. In order to
wash or clean ourselves we had to go
to a nearby creek, but there was no
soap. We worked in the fields from
sun-up to sundown. And of course we
received very little food and what
we received provided little
nutrition. We were thrashed and
beaten on our way to work and on our
way home.
In
September 1945, along with twenty
other women I was sent to Elisenheim
to care for cattle there. We were
all accommodated in one house and
slept on straw on the floor. The
commander here was good to us. With
his own money he bought extra food
rations to help us survive since we
had to work so hard.
While I was here in Elisheim I
decided I had to try to escape in
order to find out where my daughter
was, but I was betrayed by a
Croatian woman and as punishment I
was to sent to work at the fish pond
in Etschka.
On
May 10, 1946 along with another
inmate I escaped and we headed for
Rudolfsgnad because I was told that
is where my seventeen year old
daughter was and that she had given
birth to a boy. When I got to
Rudolfsgnad I found out that my
daughter Maria and her twelve month
old child had both died of hunger on
April 8, 1946. I had to report to
the camp commander at Rudolfsgnad
and I was interned in a room with
about twenty adults and ten
children. Here we slept on straw
that lay strewn on the floor. Some
of the inmates suffered from dropsy
and were all bloated and swollen.
They died shortly afterwards. Food
was almost nonexistent. Those who
worked got a bit more.
As
a result I reported for work and I
was sent to work in the forest to
cut wood and reeds for the camp
bakery.
On
May 8, 1947 since my child had died,
there was nothing keeping me in
Rudolfsgnad so I escaped from the
camp and made my way to Molidorf to
search for my mother. There I was
to learn that both she and her
sister had died of hunger.
From among my extended family,
fifty-six of them either starved to
death or were victims of the mass
shootings. Upon my arrival in the
camp at Molidorf all of the camp
inmates were sick. They sat in the
yard under the trees or lay in the
yard. They whimpered from hunger
and pain. They were a fearful
sight. But even these poor dieing
people were beaten and kicked by the
Partisans whenever they passed by
them. On August 20, 1947 I escaped
from the camp at Molidorf because
life was becoming more and more
impossible there for me. I fled to
Romania. Here I found my uncle and
aunt with whom I traveled across
Hungary to Austria and from there to
Germany where I now live.”
(Following the First World
War the Banat was divided
between Yugoslavia &
Romania, with two thirds
going to Romania & one
third annexed to Yugoslavia)
Österreichische
Historiker-Arbeitsgemeinschaft Für Kärnten und Steiermark
(Austrian Historian Working
Group for Kärnten and Steiermark)
Translated & contributed by
Henry Fischer |
