South Western Banat
"Wholesale Murder"

Jabuka 

  The Partisans arrested twenty-one of the leading Danube Swabian men and women in early October of 1944, including Dr. Pete Weinz and his wife.  For quite some time there was no trace of them.  In January a “commission” arrived in Jabuka in search of the graves of fallen Partisans who had engaged the German occupation forces in battle in the vicinity of the village.  They brought along thirty Swabian men from the prison camp in Pantschowa who were forced to dig all over the place in search of such graves.  Left to the road that led to Pantschowa they stumbled on twenty-one corpses with fresh evidence of each of them having been shot in the nape of the neck.  Among the bodies was one that was a woman.  It became obvious that the corpses were those of the local Swabians who had been arrested and had disappeared months before.  Especially recognizable were the bodies of the doctor and his wife.  The body of the woman wore only underpants and there was still one earring in one ear.   One of the commission members noticed that and stepped down into the grave and tore off the remaining earring and stuck it into his pocket.  Not only the camp inmates who were involved but also the commission members were convinced that the bodies had nothing to do with the Partisans they were searching for because they would not have fallen in battle naked and tied to one another.  They then ordered a halt to further digging and ordered that the grave be covered again.

(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