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South Western Banat
"Wholesale Murder"
Pantschowa
The
largest community in the southern
Yugoslavian Banat is located where the
Tisza and Danube Rivers meet, the site
of the city of Pantschowa (Pancevo). It
is the oldest settlement in the Banat.
Along with the Danube Swabian
inhabitants there were numerous other
nationalities: Serbians, Romanians,
Slovaks and Hungarians that lived
together in peace and harmony for two
hundred years. Because of their almost
inborn sense of the value of work and
industriousness the Danube Swabian
population secured for themselves a high
standard of living, even though they
lived under various forms of government
during that history with different
attitudes toward them. Up to the
beginning of the Second World War the
city of Pantschowa had a population of
twenty-five thousand, among whom the
Danube Swabians numbered twelve thousand
persons. The Swabians were the mainstay
of the local economy and industry and
several thousand other Danube Swabians
lived in the numerous villages that
surrounded or were in the vicinity of
the city.
The
Russian army arrived in this region in
the first days of the month of October
1944. Under their protection communist
Partisans seized power and inaugurated a
gruesome reign of terror. All of those
who appeared to be opponents or a threat
to communism were meant for
extermination. This meant not only the
followers of General Nedic, but the
Royalist Serbians the Chetniks of
Drascha Michailowitz not to mention the
Danube Swabians who were to be totally
and systematically liquidated. Of the
approximately forty thousand Danube
Swabians in Pantoschowa and its
vicinity, only a few thousand had fled
or been evacuated by the German forces.
The others remained with a clear
conscience and did so without fear.
They had absolutely no idea of what lay
ahead for them. They were all to be
exterminated, simply because they were
of German origin, and today not a single
Danube Swabian lives in this region or
has possession of his home and property
there.
As soon
as they came to power the Partisans
began the arrest and liquidation of the
leading and most esteemed Swabian men.
The first victims were the well-to-do
whose property and possessions the
Partisans wanted for themselves. All of
these Swabians were imprisoned in the
so-called “old stockade” which was part
of the district prison complex. But in
addition, thousands of Swabians from the
surrounding vicinity, both men and women
of “standing” were brought here and were
tortured unmercifully for days.
Whenever the Partisans had a thirst for
blood, desired sadistic pleasure or were
drunk they would call for victims from
among the innocent, defenseless, chained
and fettered Swabians in order to kill
them and watch them die. They would be
dragged out of the packed cells of the
prison as individuals or in groups for
no reason at all and be subjected to
unimaginable cruelties until the
Partisans had their fill or grew tired
of it. Just as in other regions of the
Banat, the victims were thrown to the
floor and the Partisans would use their
rifle butts on their backs always aiming
for their kidneys, and turned them over
and did the same against their chest to
break their ribs, bash in their teeth
with their revolvers and break their
nose. Many, many Swabians never
recovered from this personal abuse.
Only
after several days were the Partisans
satisfied with their efforts at
torturing their victims and believed
that this method of liquidation would
take too long, so they began to form the
Swabians into groups and fetter them and
drive them on foot out of the prison to
be shot in groups. But beforehand the
victims had to give up all of their
clothes and underwear until they were
naked. In this way one thousand six
hundred and sixty-six fettered Danube
Swabians were led away from this camp
prison, usually at night and vanished
without a trace. Most of them were led
out on to the road that led the way to
the village of Jabuka or they were shot
at the airport. Nearby a factory close
to the airport there were twelve huge
mounds still visible in 1946. They are
the mass graves of large groups of
Danube Swabian victims who were shot and
buried here. All of these groups
consisted of one hundred or more
victims. But many others also died in
the prison camp itself.
One of
the first victims of the bloody People’s
Democratic regime was a young school boy
Franz Maierhoefer. A Serbian woman
wanted to revenge herself on the boy’s
parents who had offended her in some
way. When the Partisans came to power
in Pantschowa she believed she could
achieve her goal. She did not ask for
the death of the parents, but she
requested that the almighty Partisans to
kill their only innocent and unwary
child. The Partisans immediately acted
on her request and tore the child from
his parent’s arms and in a short time
afterwards shot him. The first of those
who died as a result of ongoing brutal
and gruesome torture in the prison camp
was the Lutheran pastor and Dean of the
Pantschowa Lutheran Church District
Wilhelm Kund. Following the martyrdom
of the Lutheran bishop, Philipp Popp who
was hanged by the Partisans in Agram,
Wilhelm Kund was the leading Lutheran
pastor in Yugoslavia. The Partisans
tortured him for two hours in the
punishment cell in the prison camp
simply because he was a pastor. He too
endured punches and rifle butts in the
area of his kidneys on his back. The
struck him across the face with canes
and steel rods and broke the bridge of
his nose. Then they threw him to the
floor. They took turns jumping on his
stomach with all of their might and
broke three of his ribs. Through this
abuse and torture he was a bloody mess
and covered with blood everywhere and
had severe internal injuries when they
were finished. Later he died of his
injuries. The well known lawyer, Dr.
Hans Leitner from Kowatschitza was also
brought here to the prison camp and
after enduring much torture he later
died as a result of it.
As time
went on, the Partisans brought more and
more Swabian men as well as many leading
Swabian women from the city of
Pantschowa and the numerous communities
in the vicinity to the prison camp and
after most of them survived untold
cruelties and abuse at the hands of the
Partisans, the mass shootings began.
The first mass shooting took place on
October 16, 1944. On that day, one
hundred and eighty Swabian men were
bound and led from the camp and they
were forced to undress and when they
were naked they were shot on the road to
Jabuka. During this action,
particularly new versions of
gruesomeness were inaugurated by the
Partisans and Gypsies. The Swabians were
pushed forward towards the mass grave in
groups by the Partisans or had to
immediately lie down naked in the pit
and were then shot. Whoever resisted
was badly beaten or simply shot standing
there. Anton Geier, just after he had
undressed was run through with one of
the spades used to dig the grave by a
Gypsy and his entrails hung out and he
lay there in great pain until he was
thrown into the grave while still
alive. The Partisans also killed the
watchmaker Michael Eichart in the most
gruesome way. They threw him to the
ground and proceeded to cut out three of
his ribs while he was alive and then
tossed him down into the grave with the
other Swabians and left him there to
suffer for a long time.
Equally
gruesome things were done on October 18th
when another one hundred and eighty
Swabians who were driven out of the camp
with their hands bound were shot. This
was followed by three hundred more on
October 20th among them were
some German prisoners of war. On
October 22nd they killed
thirty men and one woman. So it went on
and on to mid November. On November 9th
the former member of parliament and
lawyer Dr. Simon Bartmann whom everyone
knew was a convinced Yugoslavian patriot
and never a Nazi was shot along with
eighty-three other Swabians. Among
these victims were included eleven women
and the dentist Dr. Hauber and the
lawyer Dr. Bartosch. The others were
members of the intelligentsia and
prosperous people. There was a
procedure that was followed by the
Partisans with regard to the shootings.
On the day of the planned execution the
Partisans went from cell to cell with a
list and called out the victim’s name.
The victim had to step forward out of
the cell. In this way the eighty-four
Swabian men and women were assembled in
the yard. They were immediately
surrounded by Partisans and were beaten
with rifles and wooden stakes. Then
they were bound with rope or wire to one
another and were driven out of the camp
and were thrashed and beaten on their
way to execution. These victims like
the others before them were forced to
the mass grave after undressing and met
their deaths either by shooting or some
other gruesome invention of individual
Partisans.
On
November 11, 1944 the Partisans drove
out all of the Danube Swabians still
living in Pantschowa from their homes
including the women and children and
brought them to the prison camp.
Everything that the Swabians possessed
was to be left behind or anything they
still had was taken away from them.
Three thousand and twenty-four of them
were then brought to the camp at
Brestowatz where there were already over
seven thousand inmates. There, in a
very short period of time, four hundred
of them died. The Swabian women here
were driven to do forced hard labor
during the winter. Here large numbers
of Swabians were put to death or
terribly abused and tortured. About one
thousand of the younger women and
teenage girls were delivered to the
Russians for slave labor in the Soviet
Union with the compliments of the
Yugoslavian government at the end of
1944. Not a single one of them was
healthy when they returned home, if they
returned. The Partisans also dragged
off women and teenage girls from the
camp in Brestowatz and to this day no
trace of any has ever been found. The
father of one of the abducted girls,
Suchi Dominik demanded to know what
became of her. The Partisans punished
him gruesomely for his audacity. The
held a burning candle directly beneath
his nostrils and under his tongue that
they pulled out and then crushed his
genitals.
In the
fall of 1945, three thousand seven
hundred and eighty-four Swabians, mostly
women and children who had lived in
Pantschowa who were in the camp at
Brestowatz were shipped to large
concentration camp at Rudolfsgnad. For
the Swabians from Pantschowa this meant
another mass extermination. By the
summer of 1946 only one thousand eight
hundred and eighty-four of them had
survived. More than half of them, one
thousand nine hundred starved to death
that first winter. But the Swabian men
and women from Pantschowa who were not
sent to Brestowatz and Rudolfsgnad, but
had been kept back in the camp in
Pantschowa continued to be
exterminated. They were constantly
undernourished and forced to do hard
labor. Those who became weak or sick or
injured were shot by the Partisans or
bludgeoned to death. The sick, frail
and those others unable to work were
often executed in large groups. On
December 11, 1944 sixty-eight sick
Swabians along with invalid war veterans
from the entire district of whom
thirty-two were from the community of
Brestowatz were shot. They were
liquidated because one could not expect
any labor out of their broken bodies nor
were they then of any value. The
cheapest way to deal with the burden
they posed was to shoot them. The
invalids also lie buried on the road
that still leads to Jabuka.
Many of
the inmates at the camp in Pantschowa
were taken to other camps to do heavy
labor and were liquidated there. Many
of them were sent to the camp in Semlin,
the so-called show place camp erected
for the Danube Swabians. Many thousands
of Swabian men and women met their
deaths there.
(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 |
