|
The North Eastern Banat
"The Hunt for Danube Swabians"
Grossbetscherek
~ Betscherek
Grossbetscherek was the capital of the
Yugoslavian Banat. It had a population
of thirty-five thousand. The Danube
Swabians made up about one third of the
inhabitants. The rest of the population
consisted of Serbians, Hungarians,
Slovaks, Romanians and Bulgarians. The
most prosperous landowners were the
Danube Swabians. They were also the
most industrious and had purchased the
most and the best land.
A local
Serbian government was constituted here
on the day the Russian Army arrived on
October 2, 1944. It was discarded only
ten days later. Communist Partisan
bands arrived from Syrmien and took over
control. On the first day of their
coming to power, it was a Tuesday,
October 10th the new
authorities closed off the western
sector of the city early in the morning,
effectively cutting off the Danube
Swabian population that lived in this
section of the city. Armed groups of
Partisans, including uniformed women,
went from house to house. They checked
the credentials of all of the population
in this sector of the city, and any man
or male youth who was believed to be
“German” was driven out of their
houses.
“Are
you German?” was the only question that
they asked. If the man was, the command
that followed consisted of three words.
“Chain and shoot!”
All of
those Danube Swabians thus apprehended
were subjected to cruel abuse, butted
with rifles and dragged off to the
Serbian part of the city. They arrested
about three hundred men in this way.
They were assembled on Takovska Street.
In the yard of one of the houses they
were forced to take off their clothes.
In groups of ten they were driven out
into the streets. There was a long
brick wall on one side of the street and
the men had to kneel in front of the
wall and were shot in the nape of the
neck. The Partisans brought wagons and
dumped the bodies into them. They had
had a great pit dug on the site of the
shooting range of the former Hungarian
military installation from the First
World War located in the east end of the
city. All three hundred dead were
dumped there. Among the victims was one
fourteen year old boy. A few days
later, his father and brother-in-law
were also shot. A few days later and
following, most of the Danube Swabians
were driven out of their homes. They
were taken to various camps. One of
them was a former old mill in the north
end of the city. But thousands of
Danube Swabians from the vicinity were
also forced into the “mill” camp. There
were also sixty German prisoners of war,
and hundreds of Danube Swabian men,
women and children from the Romanian
Banat who had fled westward from the
advancing Russian Army, but were unable
to continue on their trek from here and
were imprisoned with the Swabians of
Betscherek.
At the
entrance into the mill there was a small
room. The Partisans set it up as a
torture chamber. Every night, whenever
the Partisans felt the urge to shed
Swabian blood they would round up
individuals or groups and take them to
this room. In the first night alone
they slaughtered twenty-five men, one
after another. At first they knocked
out their teeth, used their rifle butts
on their backs around their kidneys,
smashed and shattered their shins with
logs, threw them to the ground, jumped
with all their might on their stomachs,
broke their ribs and let them die
slowly. If they were still alive they
bashed in their heads with their rifles
or pieces of lumber. The louder the
victims screamed the Partisans sang
louder and played their harmonicas and
accordions to drown out the noise of
their pain afflicted victims.
The
sixty German prisoners of war imprisoned
with the Danube Swabians were also
subject to the same fate, and except for
twenty-six men were killed by the
Partisans. In addition most of the men
among the Danube Swabian refugees from
Romania met their deaths at the hands of
the Partisans including a very young boy
from Detta, in the full knowledge of the
fact that they were not Yugoslavian
citizens. The murder of the child
Minges Walter was orchestrated by the
Partisans in the courtyard that was set
up like a circus ring and all of the
inmates of the camp, especially the
women, some four hundred persons in all
had to witness and watch how Swabian
children were liquidated.
Very
often there were mass shootings in this
camp consisting of groups of up to one
hundred fifty men and women, and
sometimes even more. Those who were
chosen for execution were often the
owners of the homes and possessions
taken over by the Partisans. The
victims were always handpicked. In the
camp courtyard, once chosen they had to
step forward and were then bound to one
another by wire and then were brutally
beaten by the Partisans. They were
driven on foot to the shooting range and
were forced to dig a hug hole. On other
occasions other inmates had dug the
grave a few days earlier. They had to
undress and ten to twenty naked persons
had to walk to the edge of the pit, or
down into the grave and were then shot.
Anyone who resisted was beaten or
stabbed to death with a bayonet. The
graves afterwards were covered with only
a bit of earth to hide them from sight.
The Partisans took the clothes away in a
wagon and traded them in the city or
wore them themselves with great pride
all around town.
The
first official shootings took place on
October 12, 1944 when seventy-five
Danube Swabian civilians were taken out
of the camp and were killed. On October
14th another shooting took
place with as many victims. It went on
like this every other day. On October
20th a group of seventy men
from Grossbetscherek were shot. On
October 29th in two separate
actions the Partisans shot one hundred
and fifty-four more men.
On
another day all of the camp inmates had
to report for roll call. All of these
who had gone one to high school were to
step forward. They were promised
lighter work. Those who reported had no
idea that anything bad could come of
it. The sixty men were bound with wire,
whipped, beaten, stripped naked and
shot.
In the
face of all of the torture he had
endured one young Swabian who was
terrified of what more was to come
decided on suicide. On the way home
from doing forced labor all day he
jumped off of the bridge across the Bega
River and drowned right away. It was in
the middle of winter. The Partisans
used this to good effect. As soon as
the slave laborers entered the camp,
they chose thirty of the men to shoot as
punishment for the suicide.
On
November 17th, 1944 the
Partisans carried out a gruesome
atrocity involving the killing of sixty
ill persons. On that day all those who
were sick or unable to work were to
report to the “hospital” as quickly as
possible. Those unable to walk were
separated from the others and locked in
a room. In the night they were ordered
to take off their clothes and in groups
of ten they were driven out into the
camp courtyard. There they were awaited
by a large group of Partisans in the
darkness who slugged them on their heads
with their shovels. Italian prisoners
of war had to take the dead beaten
bodies and toss them into a wagon and
take the wagon out of the camp and bury
them. The next day the courtyard was
still splattered with blood.
The
killing of the sick became a regular
feature of the life of the camp. But
these actions were always in groups.
November 25, 1944 there were fifty-four
who were killed. Another time it was
seventy, while another time there were
only thirty-five and so on.
But a
large number of inmates in the camp met
death individually. On the night of
November 29, 1944 there was one such
case because the man was eighty-five and
could not do heavy work and was taken
from his quarters out into the courtyard
and murdered by the Partisans. He was
buried in the courtyard in a grave the
old man had to dig himself. Victims
like him were not always dead but badly
wounded when the Partisans got through
with them and were buried alive even
when the victim begged them to shoot
him. On one occasion a Swabian man had
been part of a mass shooting and was
only wounded but thrown into the grave
with the dead. During the night he came
back to consciousness and crawled out of
the shallowly covered grave and made his
way to the edge of the mass grave. He
was stark naked. He called out to a
passerby to help him. The man in turn
informed the camp commander instead. He
immediately sent a squad of Partisans
who brutally murdered the badly wounded
man.
Large
groups of inmates from the
Grossbetscherek camp were sent to do
forced labor outside of the camp. Even
in these situations there were many of
them who were beaten or shot to death by
the Partisans while on these labor
details. On May 20, 1945 seventy-five
men for example were sent to the rock
quarries in Beotschin in Syrmien who
were accompanied by a large number of
heavily armed Partisans. The march was
accompanied by constant beatings and
abuse. On turning over their prisoners
to the officials at the Beotschin quarry
where they were to work, they reported
that twenty of them were totally
incapable of work due to the injuries
suffered by them on the march. All of
them soon died after their arrival.
If
Partisans in other villages had the
desire to murder some Swabians they
could order some from the camp in Grossbetscherek or have them delivered
to them. They were gladly sent on the
part of the camp officials. On October
25, 1944 the Partisans in the Serbian
villages of Melentzi and Baschaid were
holding a special celebration. The high
point of the festival was to be the
public massacre of some Danube
Swabians. For that purpose thirty
Danube Swabians from the Grossbetscherek
camp were sent to the festival. There
they were programmatically shot and
beaten to death at the festival.
On
December 27, 1944 the commander of the
Grossbetscherek camp sent thirty-nine
sick persons, thirty-five men and four
women by wagon to Ernsthausen. They
were all slaughtered in gruesome ways as
the high point of a Partisan
celebration.
An
escapee from the camp in Betscherek
reports:
“I
was familiar with the internal
operations of the camp. I had to
inform the commander of the camp of
the number of inmates every
evening. Because of that I can
realistically estimate that in the
winter of 1944/1945 more than four
thousand persons simply
“disappeared” who were listed in the
camp log as having died of typhus.
In truth, like the gravediggers
reported to me, the dead were beaten
or shot to death. I saw the entries
myself. The old school teacher
Koller from Elemir was thrashed
three times in our room one night
for no apparent reason. I counted
two hundred and eighty-five gashes.
The old man did not make a sound.
In the morning he was dead. One of
the favorite methods of abuse by the
women Partisans was to pull away at
people’s tongues. Our own women who
were kept in another building had
all of their hair shaven off, even
in terms of their private parts.
Our own barbers had to do it. Many
women were raped, including my own
daughter…
Life in the Betscherek camp was
worse than death could possibly be.
Wake-up call was at 3:00 am. The
camp was divided into numerous
groups. After being awakened the
thrashings and ridicule began. The
men had to go out into the camp
courtyard with their upper torso
naked while it was still dark to do
“free sport activities”. There was
a well in the yard with a wooden
trough attached to it. Water
collected from the frequent rain,
and the water had not been run off
and because the yard was packed with
so many people it was usually a sea
of mud. With curses and swearing
the early morning “sport” began with
the Partisan guards using rubber
hoses and clubs on the men. These
half starved men had the wind
knocked out of them and then had to
walk around in the cold dampness of
late autumn for half to a full hour
in the dark, then forced to kneel,
lie down and then crawl in the mud.
Only when the “free sport” was ended
did they allow the mud encrusted
people—there were seventeen thousand
men, women and children—to use the
wash trough. But because there were
so many people most could not even
get close to it to make themselves
wet. There was no such thing as
soap.
On
some occasions when the inmates were
sprawled in the mud the Partisans
would begin to “dance” on their
bodies. A band of musicians would
accompany them to drown out the
screams. During the dance they used
clubs and whips on the people as
well as wearing heavy boots with
cleats. This usually lasted for
half an hour. Five to ten people
would be left dead in the mud.
After the “dance of death” everyone
was driven back into their quarters,
but because it was not yet dawn the
Partisans had to fill in their time,
so that the inmates were thrashed
and tortured by the guards until
5:30 am.
Then came breakfast: a thin watery
soup and fifty grams of bread.
After breakfast the groups were sent
out to work. There were various
work groups. The work at the
railway stations and boat yards was
hard labor, as was the task to empty
and load goods at the warehouses.
They worked without stop from 6:00am
to 6:00pm. Often there was no food
at noon. At 6:00pm they were
marched back to the camp and often
some of them just simply could not
go on. These victims would be
forced to rise and continue with
beatings, whippings and kicks to
vulnerable parts of their bodies.
If they could not get up, others
would have to drag them, when they
themselves could hardly go on as it
was. As they entered the camp the
guards and sentries who had rested
all day for this, now once again got
into the act and welcomed them with
beatings and all kinds of physical
abuse. The inmates were given their
rations of their way to their
quarters, watery soup and fifty
grams of bread. After supper there
was no further official work. They
cowered in their so-called beds,
only a very few managed to sleep,
because the guards entered the
barracks, and called the names of
various prisoners and in front of
all of the other prisoners they beat
and abused them. Very often they
thrashed those who were asleep for
no reason and with no warning.
During these evening hours the
sentries were usually drunk and
carried out two or three roll
calls. All of the prisoners had to
stand. The roll call consisted of a
smack to the head or face or a jab
against the chest of every tenth
prisoner. Often some prisoners were
taken into the punishment cell and
were beaten and tortured for hours.
The local Serbian civilian
population was also given a free
hand and could have access to the
camp to beat and punish the Swabian
inmates. Near the end of 1945 the
surviving children and the elderly
Swabians from Betscherek and the
surrounding vicinity were taken to
the larger concentration camp at
Rudolfsgnad on the Tisza River.
The
concentration camp at Betscherek was
closed and dismantled on May 22,
1947 when only a small number of
prisoners had survived and were
still able to work. These survivors
were first taken to St. Georgen and
from there they were sent as slave
laborers to the Serbian coal mines
and to work on collective farms.
But in Betscherek not a single
Danube Swabian lived in any of their
former homes. Their houses were now
occupied by Slavic colonists and the
families of the locally stationed
Partisan units.
Dr.
Wilhelm Neuner who had once been a
member of parliament in Belgrade
reports:
“These Communist Partisans carried
out mass shootings from the very
first days of their Military
dictatorship and ruled throughout
the whole country. In the capital
city of Grossbetscherek, in which
twelve thousand Danube Swabians
lived, the western sector of the
city was cut off from the rest of
the city and this is where the vast
majority of the Swabian inhabitants
who were mostly farmers lived. They
broke into every home and liquidated
all of the men they could find.
Only a small portion of the men was
left unmolested. I myself was led
away to be executed. But only by a
fortunate set of circumstances I was
able to get away. But my
father-in-law and five other
relatives all of whom were farmers
were taken and shot with countless
others. In the whole of the Banat,
during these first days of Partisan
rule the total number of Danube
Swabian civilian victims who were
killed in mass shootings and
liquidations numbered close to ten
thousand persons, including both men
and women.”
Hans Diewald from Betscherek writes:
“On
October 10th the
so-called German quarter of the city
was blockaded by armed Partisans
where the majority of the Swabians
lived. The Partisans went through
the German quarter with a fine tooth
comb and dragged off all of the
Swabian men from their homes. They
were bound to one another in groups
under heavy guard and led to the
former Honved (Hungarian National
Army) barracks. Other Partisan
units began to arrest Hungarians and
Swabian women as well and brought
them to the barracks. The women and
the Hungarians were later released
after several hours of
imprisonment. Some two hundred and
fifty Swabian men were shot that day
including youngsters from thirteen
to seventeen years of age.
On
October 12th the German
Quarter was once again blockaded
only this time the Partisans arrived
at 5:00am because during the first
blockade at 8:00 am on the 10th
many of the men were not at home,
but had been in the city on various
errands or were out working in their
fields or had gone to a nearby
village for some purpose. During
this second blockade they captured
almost all of the Swabian men
including myself. All of us were
taken to the so-called concentration
camp a former jail, which had
originally been a mill and were
locked up in there.
In
the following days newly arrested
Swabian men arrived each day at the
camp. The men were caught in
groups, had been taken off of the
streets or taken from their homes.
Day after day Swabians were
delivered to the camp. By November
all of the Swabian men were in the
camp.
The
women of the city, especially the
Danube Swabians were the victims of
rape and sexual violation by the
Russian troops. The number of rape
victims increased daily. The Serbs
sent the Russian soldiers to the
Swabian houses where there were
women. A friend of mine, sixteen
year old Otto Tarillion told me that
he was forced to watch while his
mother was being raped repeatedly,
while one soldier held a loaded gun
aimed at him.
On
October 12th the Swabians
from the surrounding vicinity were
brought to the camp in Betscherek
from Rudolfsgnad, Perles, Sartscha,
Modosch and Stefansfeld. At the end
of the week, on Friday or Saturday,
the mass shootings began. The first
mass shooting took place on October
10th. At that time two
hundred and fifty men were shot.
The second shooting to place on
October 20th and about
two hundred persons were shot at
that time. The third shootings took
place on October 23rd
with thirty victims and the fourth
on October 18th involving
one hundred and fifty-two persons.
Before the shooting took place on
October 23rd it was
announced that all lawyers and
professors were to report. Because
only a few did so, the Partisans
threatened to shoot every tenth
man. As a result twenty-three men
reported including merchants and
officials that also included
thirteen to seventeen year old high
school students. On October 19th
at 7:00am several of my friends and
I were taken to the execution place
in the forest. We were ordered to
dig a mass grave. As we did our
work we were all convinced that we
would be shot. But as it turned out
it was meant for the two hundred who
were executed on October 20th.
In
the camp we were awakened at 2:00 or
2:30am in the morning. We had to
perform “free sports”. We were
driven on foot through the camp and
every time we passed a Partisan
sentry we were beaten or thrashed,
but that was also true while we ate
or worked as well. We worked on
bridge construction and erecting
silos. We also had to load food
stuffs and provisions to be sent to
the Russian troops. The Partisans
who were our guards were seventeen
to twenty years of age. These were
the ones who carried out the mass
shootings But, there were also
women Partisans (often teenage
girls) who participated in the
execution squads. Italian prisoners
were often called upon to bury the
victims of the shootings. An
Italian told me that often people
who were badly wounded were thrown
into the mass grave. He often heard
their groans as he had to throw
earth upon them and buried them
alive.
Each day in the camp we were fed
twice. In the morning there was
clear soup and in the evening pea
soup. We received a small piece of
bread in the morning and evening.
In November of 1944 all of the
Swabians in the Banat were confined
in camps. There were forced labor
camps in Lazarfeld, Kathreinfeld,
Klek and Ernsthausen. Before the
entry of the Russian troops
Betscherek had approximately fifteen
thousand Danube Swabian inhabitants,
but some eight thousand of them had
fled with the retreating German
army.
I
was in the camp to the end of
February or the beginning of March
1945. Then I was sent to the camp
hospital to work. It went much
better for me there. I had better
rations, but I had to work under
constant guard. At the end of May I
was back in the camp and from there
I went to work at the silos. While
working there I escaped. It was on
September 7, 1945. I first fled
over the border into Romania. I
worked there for some farmers. On
December 27th I returned
to Betscherek by way of Johannisfeld
der Bega. I hid out at my uncle’s
who was a Serb.
At
the end of November 1944 there were
forty-nine sick inmates in the
Betscherek camp who were promised
they were going to rehabilitation
but were taken to Ernsthausen
instead. They were marched off
early in the morning under heavy
guard and remained under guard on
their arrival in Ernsthausen. The
commander of the camp there was a
Serb from St. Georgen. He
recognized the young nineteen year
old Georg Saal from St. Georgen. On
the order of the commander young
Saal was tied to a stake in the dung
pile that was set on fire and Saal
was burned to death. The remaining
forty-eight others from Betscherek
were beaten with clubs, whips, pipes
and stabbed with knives and
butchered by the Partisans. Later
one could see the results of their
work along the street. Brains were
splattered on walls, and streams of
blood filled the street. A young
girl from Ernsthausen witnessed this
and told me about it. Her family
name was Kramer I had met her in
Johannisfeld in Romania.
On
January 1, 1946 I left Betscherk and
returned to Romania again. I left
there on January 10th for
Hungary. I arrived in Vienna on
January 17th.”
Michael Kristof a high school student recalls:
“The Russians moved into Betscherek
on Monday, the 2nd of
October, 1944 and with them came the
Tito Partisans. The behaviour of
the Russians was in some measure
bearable. They took what they
wanted and occupied themselves with
raping women. In the city of
Betscherek the first Danube Swabians
were arrested and imprisoned in a
camp on Ocotber 5th. At
first it was the Swabians from
Betscherek who were on the agenda of
the Partisans, but there were also
groups of Danube Swabians from the
surrounding communities who were
also brought here.
The
numbers of prisoners who were
brought to Betscherek were at the
behest of the local Serb and
Partisan leaders. As an example,
the commander at Betscherek
requested sixty men from Lazarfeld.
The
local commander there, a local Serb,
had the courage, to send only half
of the men he was ordered to send
for which the commander in
Betscherek was more than satisfied.
Of these thirty who were sent,
fourteen of them were shot. Those
Swabians who were not delivered to
the camps remained in their
community, and then another group
was taken to the camp. A portion of
them being sent to Betscherek at
Christmas were sent to Russia
instead. All of the rest came to
the camp in April 1945 as the total
Swabian population was imprisoned in
the camp.
It
was at night when it was worste in
the camp, with the hearings and
selections and the shootings. Those
selected for the shootings at first
were those who were well dressed,
were physically strong or who
through sickness were too weak to do
any work. There were not real rules
or a pattern to the selections, it
was a matter of filling the quota
that had been set. Those who were
chosen were taken to a separate
room, where they had to undress and
were then tied to one another with
wire in groups of four and taken to
the old military firing range on the
outskirts of Betscherek to be shot.
None of the Partisans had any
measure of education and were
determined to exterminate the
“intelligentsia” of the Danube
Swabians. They would ask, Who
happens to be a doctor? A
physician? Druggist? Merchant?
Teacher? And so on. People who had
these professions were to report for
lighter work because they were not
suited for hard heavy work. This
trick often worked and many men fell
victim to it.
Records were kept at the camp but
the shootings in the protocols were
simply identified as “died” after
the person’s name along with the
date. This was a function of the
camp administration office and
carried out by Swabian inmates and
they made the entries in the book of
protocols under the direction of the
Partisans. I was assigned to the
office for one week in mid-February
1945, but then the political
commissar a woman Partisan had me
removed. But during that week I
leafed through this book of
protocols because I wanted to find
out what had happened to my friends
and family members, where they were,
if they were still alive or if they
had been sent to another camp, or
had been shot or had died. My own
number in this book of protocols was
3214. Through this glimpse in the
book of protocols I learned that
those I had been searching for who
were well known to me and those of
whom I had heard had all been shot
and had simply “died” according to
the recorder.
From this glimpse into the book of
protocols it was obvious that very
many people who were listed as
having died had in fact been
executed and shot. For instance, on
October 28, 1944 one hundred and
fifty inmates had been shot, but in
the protocol each one was listed as
having simply died. This was also
true on other days in terms of
smaller groups such as the thirty
who were shot previously to that.
The shootings were always justified
as reprisals. Each day we had to
assemble, sometimes more often and
stand in the yard in the three
columns. We never knew the reason
beforehand. Sometimes it dealt with
sending some of us to another
community to work or some kind of
detail the Partisans had in mind for
us. At such assemblies there were
individuals chosen for the next
shooting, and we would be told it
was done “in reprisal”.
Through discussion with others in
other camps I learned later that
these shootings also took place at
that time for the same reason, which
indicates that the central
leadership of the Partisans had set
it in motion everywhere.
On
Tuesday October 10th 1944
the German quarter of Betscherek was
surrounded by the Partisans. Groups
of Partisans went from house to
house, searched them and asked each
person for their Legitimation (an
official document of identity).
These documents were in both German
and Serbian, that everyone had to
have in which the nationality of the
individual was stipulated which had
been filled out during the German
occupation.
All
of the Swabian men, who were not yet
in the camp and were found at home
were led together in one of the side
streets of the Market Place and
mowed down by machine gun fire. An
eye witness shared this with me, who
had been saved from the massacre by
a Serb whom he had befriended for
years and indicated that the victims
had to undress their upper torsos,
kneel down and where then shot.
The
treatment the inmates received in
the camp were as follows: Reception
into the camp was mostly by hefty
kicks, boxing their ears and body
punches. Few were able to escape
this. Then the man was robbed of
everything and anything of value and
usually all he had left was the
clothes he wore. If he had good
footwear of clothing it was either
taken from him or it became a reason
for him to be selected for a
shooting. It was assumed the man
was rich and capitalist who needed
to be liquidated. With reception
completed the inmate was then led to
his quarters.
The
cental camp at Betscherek was a
burned down mill, two stories high.
A second camp was erected in
November to accommodate the greater
portion of the civilian population
as women now were also imprisoned
and interned.
In
the three large rooms filled with
machine parts the inmates were
packed together in two story high
bunks. In each room there were
about three hundred men
accommodated, so that in all there
were up to two thousand in the camp
at all times. In the smaller rooms
in the mill were the women and
children and the so-called
ambulance, kitchen, storage area and
office, and one room four the
privileged inmates who worked in the
kitchen and office or in other
places in the camp.
No
one was allowed outside of the room
at night. Because so many of them
had dysentery, in each of the
machine rooms there were two large
barrels, and two people had to watch
out that no spills took place. On
one occasion, all of the inmates had
dysentery and the barrels overflowed
and the two people who were called
upon to make sure this did not
happen were forced to lick it up in
the morning for allowing it to
happen.
At
night when the people were exhausted
and tired coming from work began the
uncertainty whether one would live
through the night or not in the face
of the interrogations, tortures,
beatings that always occurred at
night. For that reason the inmates
in spite of their bodily weakness
went to work in the morning with a
sense of relief just to get out of
the “nut house” in which they
lived. But with feelings of despair
they returned once again in the
evening to face it all over again.
On
entering or leaving the camp there
were always Partisans on the
stockade around the courtyard
standing on the stairs with ox hide
belts with which they lit into in
the inmates passing by them. The
inmates called this their normal
dues.
Shootings occurred for all kinds
unreasonable things. The following
is an example. A tradesman from
Betscherek who had to work privately
in the city, usually came home later
from his workplace by the time his
comrades were all asleep. Not
wanting to awaken them from sleep,
he lit a match in order to find his
spot on the upper bunk. A Partisan
on the street outside noticed this
light and came up to the room and
asked, who had lit a match. The
tradesman acknowledged that he had
and was made to come down off of his
bunk and lie down on his stomach on
the floor and the Partisan shot him
in the nape of his neck right there
in the room. I witnessed this
myself because I was in that room.
The
report of a friend of Michael Kristof
who wishes to remain anonymous:
“I
come from Grossbetscherek, Banat,
Yugoslavia and on 04.10.1944 I was
placed in the central camp in
Grossbetscherek. At that time we
were only a few men in the camp. I
was placed in room number three. In
the afternoons I had to gather the
horse manure in my hands and clean
up the horse and stall. In the
night of October 4/5 I was awakened
and called out to the yard and was
forced to press my face up against
the wall and was beaten and my head
was banged against the wall, so that
the bones in my nose were broken.
Some time later they brought two of
my comrades, Anton Hufnagel and I do
not want to disclose the name of the
other for good reasons. Anton
Hufnagel had been informed he had to
go down into the courtyard. He was
so badly beaten that he was in a
mental fog and he repeated all of
the rude names that Partisans flung
at him, and as a result they kept
hitting him with their rifle butts.
After we were beaten and abused so
badly we were led to the police in
the city in a farmer’s wagon. There
we met other Swabian men from the
city that we knew.
Hufnagel Anton was immediately taken
into a room where his torture and
mistreatment would continue, while a
radio blared, harmonicas were
playing along with violins so that
his cries and screams could not be
heard outside. After a short period
of time I was brought into the
room. I found Hufnagel lying on the
floor totally motionless. Now I had
to completely undress. Me feet were
tied together and my hands were tied
behind my back. In this way I had
to stand on a stool. I was whipped
with ox hide belts by the Partisans
until I fainted. My flesh hung like
pieces of rags from my body they
poured cold water from a pail all
over me. As I came to I had to
stand on the stool again. At first
I knelt on the stool and then I
tried to stand up as my feet were
still tied to one another.
The
thrashing went into motion once more
until I fainted and collapsed once
again. Cold water was poured all
over me once again and then they
rubbed salt into my wounds and I
just lay there in my pain. Now our
third comrade came into the room he
was put through the same torture I
had endured. During his torture,
the hairs on my chest and between my
legs were burned off by apply a
burning kerosene soaked rag that
they threw at me. In my
unconsciousness I felt the burning
searing pain and saw the burning
rags on me and turned on my side, so
that the burning rag fell off of my
chest onto my arm and burned my left
arm.
In
the meanwhile Anton Hufnagel was
beaten to death with their rifle
butts. Later worms infested my
wounds that I healed through rubbing
my own urine into my wounds for
months, and also in Russia I did the
same, because I was determined not
to report sick because that would
have meant that I would be shot.
This torment lasted two to three
hours. Afterwards our hands and
feet were freed and we had to get
dressed, and then our hands and feet
were bound again, but in such a way
that our hands were behind our backs
tied to our feet with a rope. We
were trussed up like that for around
eighteen hours until midnight with
our open wounds that had been rubbed
with salt, without being able to
move to alleviate the terrible
pain.
Around midnight our feet were untied
and the three of us without Anton
Hufnagel who was now dead were lead
out of the room and had to climb on
board a wagon with our hands still
bound and were taken to the
courtyard and headquarters of the
Secret Police and handed over to
them. On arriving inside the three
of us were tossed into a cell
together. Every night we were
interrogated and beaten for several
weeks. For food we received two
pieces of bread daily and some
water. Once a week we were shaved
but it was hardly a pleasant
experience. After about three weeks
all three of us were taken back to
the central camp because they could
not find prove we had done anything
wrong that was worthy of further
punishment.
At
the Secret Police headquarters we
were witnesses of the abuse of a
woman named Zita by the Partisans
and saw what happened to her through
the window of our cell. We saw how
she had to dance naked on a table
and then lie down on the table and
part her legs for the Partisans who
stuck the barrel of a revolver into
her vagina and made her stand up and
keep it inside of her. She was then
shot. Through the window we also
saw a young man of about
twenty-eight years, whom none of us
knew, whose penis they cut off while
he was still alive and stuffed it
into his mouth. What happened to
him after that we have no idea. On
being returned to central camp we
were once again interrogated and
beaten and tortured and we were
constantly threatened with
shooting. I was put in a single
cell in which three men lay
unconscious. My teeth were knocked
in by the commander’s revolver and I
was forced to swallow them, and the
injuries I sustained killed the
nerves. One night we were locked
into a very small cell for twelve
hours so that none of us could find
rest or move about and it became
harder and harder for us to breathe
and we were afraid of suffocation
and we could not attempt to even
fall down to find release because we
were packed so tightly against each
other.
After this night we were divided up
in various cells. After six days we
were locked into a room with about
thirty men, given a piece of bread
and water and were not allowed to
the leave the room. We had to
relieve ourselves in a barrel.
After eight days we were driven on
foot to do labor. We had to get up
at 4:00am. Then we received some
warm soup and now a larger piece of
bread and when we returned from work
in the evening we received another
piece of bread and warm soup.
During the three weeks that my
companions and I had been in the
Secret Police prison and later
imprisoned in the various cells in
the central camp many men had been
shot. On December 28th
1944 I was taken along in the large
transport of about one thousand
eight hundred persons of which the
vast majority were young women both
married and single and sent to
Russia. There were no more than
three hundred men among them. In
Russia I worked mostly in the coal
mines until my release in 1949.”
(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 |
