St. Georgen 

  In November of 1944 drumbeats were heard throughout the streets of the village with the announcement that within half an hour all Danube Swabians were to report at the school. 

  One woman who was there reports: 

  “I went with my there children.  Elfrieda was five months old.  When I arrived at the school and its yard it was filled with people.  The rooms in the school were divided in such a way that you had no idea of what was going on in the other.  Because of what we had heard about what had been going on throughout the surrounding area, each of us prepared ourselves for death.  We were locked in the school for seven days.  During this time our houses were plundered.  We learned later that this was also happening in other Danube Swabian communities.  But matters for them were worse than for us.  The people were driven on foot from Tschesterek to Hatzfeld and then back again to Selesch.  There they remained for nine days.  Then they were allowed to return home to their plundered houses.

  About two weeks after Christmas the men were taken to the camp at Betscherek.  Eventually, it was my turn.  I was thrashed, beaten and imprisoned for some time and then released. 

  In March of 1945 I was imprisoned for nine days at the military barracks in Betscherek.  I was thrashed with whips so badly that the blood ran down my legs.  Then they separated and tore me away from my three little children and taken to Cernje to the “political” camp there.  There I was imprisoned with countless other men and women until my escape in the fall of 1945. 

  From among the Swabians from St. Georgen:  thirty-two were sent to the labor camp in Semlin, one hundred and eighty were deported to Russia, sixty were sent to Betscherek, fifty-three were imprisoned at Elisenheim and fourteen were sent to Cernje. 

  On April 17, 1945 all of the remaining Swabians in St. Georgen were placed in local housing that served as a camp.  Many of the young married and unmarried women were sent to Mitrowitz where very many of them perished." 

(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