"Völkermord der Tito-Partisanen" 1944-1948
"Genocide Carried out by the Tito Partisans"
 Chapter one

     Among the German speaking population of Yugoslavia the vast majority of them can be counted as the descendants of those commonly known as the Danube Swabians.  German colonists who had been settled by the Hapsburg Monarchy some two centuries before in the area that lay between the Danube, Tisza, Drava, Sava and Morash Rivers after the expulsion of the Turks who left an unpopulated wilderness and wasteland behind them. 

     In addition to them, there were also the Germans in Lower Steiermark, the descendants of Bavarian and Franconian colonists who migrated in the 9th century to resettle the unpopulated area left after the Avars were driven out.  There were also the Gottscheer Germans, who were the descendants of Franconian, Swabian, Tyrolian and Carinthian peasant farmers who were settled in the area and were subsequently scattered from there.  Above all, many of them moved into the towns and were known as ethnic Germans in Croatia and Slovenia.

     The Danube Swabians to a great degree originated in the hereditary Hapsburg lands, from Alsace and Lorraine and the Palatinate, and a portion from Austria as well and many others from the south-western German principalities.  With the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Danube Swabian settlement areas and populations found themselves divided up into the various successor states of Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia.  As a result, some 600,000 now belonged to Yugoslavia.  The major settlement areas in Yugoslavia were the Batschka, where one third of them resided, in addition to a portion of the Banat, plus Syrmien (Srem), Slavonia and Lower Baranya. 

     The Lower Steiermark was annexed to the new Yugoslavian state after the First World War. 

     During the Second World War Yugoslavia was occupied by the German Army and their allies.  As the German Army and their allies in Yugoslavia began to retreat, a portion of the German speaking population was evacuated.  But about one half of the German population, who had lived in peace and friendship with their various Slavic neighbors for almost two centuries were not prepared to abandon what for them was their homeland and remained behind. 

     At the beginning of October 1944 the first Russian troops entered Yugoslavia and in a few day’s time they first occupied the Banat, and then the Batschka, and completed the occupation of Syrmien and Slavonia by the war’s end.  In those areas occupied by the Russian troops, the Military Governments of the Serbian Partisans were quickly installed in every region, and were in power until the third of March of the following year.  Attempts by their political opponents, other nationalists and royalists to share in government were denied and they were eventually liquidated.

     Immediately with the setting up of Military Government by Tito’s Partisans a systematic program of liquidation of the remaining German-speaking population was put into effect.  It was a field day for individual revenge and sadism.  The vast majority of the survivors of Tito’s death camps managed to escape to West Germany in the 1950s, while a few thousand remained in Yugoslavia scattered throughout the country and who no longer constitute a “German minority.” 

Estimates of the numbers of Danube Swabians in Yugoslavia who were victims of mass shootings, starvation, and the diseases which raged in the camps and other causes, have been set at about 175,000 persons, which is 32.7% of the population reported in 1939.  Included in that number are men killed or missing in action in the military, some 40,000 who constitute 7.5% of the population, which indicates that 135,800 civilians lost their lives (25.3%).  The vast majority of the civilian casualties occurred after the occupation by the Red Army, during the reign of the Partisan’s “military government”.  There were mass shootings and executions, but also a planned systematic liquidation program in effect. 

(The authors digress about variations in the estimated numbers and are not included) 

     The purpose of this documentation is not simply to put blame or guilt on individuals who were involved, but to raise our voices in condemnation over what occurred, and how it occurred.  These are the crimes of Tito and his henchmen, which are centered on the following charges and issues:

1. The November 21, 1944 “National Decree” that all persons of German origin were outside of the law with no legal recourse or standing and were to be dispossessed of all property and possessions.
2. The systematic mass shootings of men in all areas and districts.
3. The carrying off of all able bodied men and younger women for slave labor in Russia.
4. The internment of all other civilians regardless of age or sex into concentration camps where massive numbers died from beatings, malnutrition, epidemics, cold and brutality.
5. Those released from the camps had to provide three years of slave labor.
6. The “kidnapping” of children without parents from the internment camps and their placement in state children’s homes to be made to forget their identities and be raised as Communists and speak only Serbo-Croatian.

     We raise these complaints not only against individual Partisans but also many who were not Partisans who committed crimes against innocent people, killed, tortured, murdered, beat and sexually abused them.  We know only too well, that these kinds of acts were not looked upon as crimes because they were done to Danube Swabians who were outside of the law and there could be no consequences for the perpetrator.  Nor could the Danube Swabians call upon any of the state institutions to plead their case.  These acts were not crimes, for there was no law against them nor was it forbidden to do, and no court would have convicted them. 

(The authors engage in questions of complex legal considerations and niceties.  In its place I offer this summary that capsulate the situation in which the Danube Swabian civilian population would find itself)

1. All persons of German origin living in Yugoslavia automatically lose their Yugoslavian citizenship and rights, privileges and protection of such citizenship.

2. The entire property of all persons of German origin can be confiscated by the state and claim ownership of it.

3. All persons of German origin cannot appeal to their rights of citizenship in the courts or state institutions, nor could they seek legal defense. 

     With this law in effect the 250,000 Danube Swabians were robbed of their property and possessions and declared to be outlaws.  Confiscation meant more than loss of property or money.  It meant the very clothes on your back.  Everything now belonged to the State, even their lives and their bodies.  Danube Swabian labor was only for the benefit of the State.  No one had a right to live with their family nor any rights to their children who were taken away from them.  No right to come and go anywhere on one’s own.  The Danube Swabian had no rights but that of a beast of burden.  They were in effect reduced to slavery.

     There is no question now that the liquidation program that followed was systematic and planned from the top.  Tito and his Partisan leadership were at the helm and in control throughout.  There were three basic methods and phases of the liquidation: 

1. Mass liquidations through execution and mass shootings

2. Deportations of the able bodied to Russia

3. Mass liquidation through starvation & slave labor in the concentration camps & the labor camps

All three of these methods were already set in motion prior to November 21st, but not entirely everywhere at the time.  But from this point onward the three methods would affect all persons of German origin and would eventually lead to their extermination.

Next: The Mass Liquidations

[Published at www.dvhh.org, Sept. 2006]