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The Northern Banat
"Where the lust for murder raged"
Heufeld
Heufeld
was a Danube Swabian community in the
northern Banat almost on the Romanian
border. In the early days of October in
1944 the Partisans took control of the
area after the Russian Army had moved
through and the leading Swabian men in
the Heufeld and Mastort, seventeen in
all were taken from their homes and
after gruesome torture in neighboring
Kikinda were put to death.
On
November 2, 1944 the Partisans arrested
all of the Swabian men and eighty-six of
them were brought to the town hall.
They also wanted to take Adam
Stiegerwald, a seventy-five year old
retired Roman Catholic priest who had
returned to the village where he had
been born. He protested and refused to
the leave rectory. The Partisans beat
him with their rifles and forced him out
of the rectory yard. The Partisans
continued to brutally assault the old
man in one of the rooms in the town
hall. The other Swabian men who were
standing in the courtyard of the town
hall both saw and heard how the old
priest was being manhandled. The
Partisans knocked him down and jumped on
his stomach breaking countless ribs in
the process. Because of his internal
injuries he was unable to rise from the
floor. They tossed him down the stairs
so that he landed at the feet of the men
in the courtyard. Not even now was he
able to raise himself. The Partisans
shot him from the stairs in disgust.
This was the morning of November 2,
1944. In the afternoon the priest’s
body still lay there. Finally, the
Partisans called the Gypsies to take the
body for burial. They stripped him of
his clothes and buried him naked along
with some dead animals.
On the
same day the remaining Swabian men in
Heufeld were driven on foot to Kikinda
where after brutal torture by the
Partisans most of them were killed.
Only three men from Heufeld survived.
Anna
Klein of Heufeld remembers:
“My
father was reported missing in
action from the German army in 1944,
and then in the same year at
Christmas, the Russians dragged off
our mother to go to forced labor.
With hefty sobs we cried after her,
“Momma stay with us! Don’t leave
us!” It was only years later that
we discovered she had been taken to
Ukraine where she along with many
other Swabian women were working on
construction projects.
I
remained behind with my older sister
and younger brother. We lived with
our great Aunt until the spring of
1945 when all of us Swabians were
forced to report at the town hall in
the neighboring village. She got us
already to go and sent the three of
us on our own, because she felt it
was her duty to remain behind with
her mother who was unable to walk.
My sister, who was nine years old at
the time, took us two younger
siblings by the hand and we followed
close behind the rest of the people
from Heufeld.
A
huge crowd of people had already
assembled at the front of town hall
by the time we arrived there.
Because we were terrified and we
were beyond crying we witnessed what
was happening all around us. How
fortunate we were, to be able to
find our grandmother in the midst of
all the weeping and fearful people
who immediately grasped us into her
arms as we clutched her body in
every way we could. We were taken
to the internment camp in Molidorf
where hunger, poverty, fear and need
became greater and greater every
day. We lay on straw with many
other people all packed together.
Many people began to die because of
hunger, exhaustion and mistreatment
and abuse. As children we watched
many people around us starve and
die.
One
day our grandmother was to be among
the victims. In the early morning
she slept longer than usual, and we
did not want to waken her, but she
never woke up, she lay dead there
beside us on the straw. She was
wrapped up in a blanket, and a wagon
that came by every morning to pick
up all of the dead, arrived and took
her along. We were not allowed to
go with her and we watched from a
distance and saw the place where she
was buried in a mass grave. We now
faced everything alone among
strangers. After two years the
Communists took the surviving
children who had escaped death into
their State Homes. This included
the three of us who they considered
to be orphans and put us in the
Children’s Home in Debeljaca. Here
we found ourselves treated like
human beings again, we could even
sleep in beds. But what was most
important to us was the fact that we
could eat to our heart’s content.
During this early period away from
the camp I lived in constant fear of
the future and what it might hold
for me and my brother and sister.
Because of everything we had gone
through I was mistrustful and kept
everything to myself and distant.
Shortly after we had been able to be
rehabilitated physically we were all
sent to different State Homes. We
had all been Swabian children in the
first home but now we were placed
among Serbian orphans. At the age
of nine I entered the Serbian public
school. We had already had a
working knowledge of the Serbian
language but now we were forbidden
to speak German and I could only
speak a few words to my sister in
German secretly in the hiding places
we found. If we had been discovered
doing so we would be severely
punished and have our eating
privilege suspended for a day or we
received a beating.
Slowly but surely I began to lose my
ability to speak in German or even
remember it, until I could only
speak Serbian. But now we were well
treated. They took a special
interest in the state of our health
and children who were still weak
were sent to special
rehabilitation. As a result I spent
some time with a Serbian farm family
and on one occasion I was taken to
the Adriatic coast to Split. The
first letter we received was from my
uncle and for the first time we had
news of our mother and this filled
us with a rising sense of hope.
After years, there was hope and joy
once more after our abandonment.
After what seemed like forever for
us children who held on to our hope
on October 12th in 1950 I
arrived in Germany to meet my mother
for the first time after six long
years.”
(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 |
