German mass grave sheds new light on close of World War Two

[Supreme American]

German mass grave sheds new light on close of World War Two (http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/features/article_1619890.php/German-mass-grave-sheds-new-light-on-close-of-World-War-Two-Feature)

Zagreb - Croatian police have completed the exhumation of remains from mass grave in a Zagreb suburb, on one of more than 200 known sites where thousands of Germans, both soldiers and civilians, were buried in the closing days of the Second World War.

Yugoslav communist partisans carried out executions across the c country as the Nazi regime crumbled and fell in 1945. So far the Croatian interior ministry has compiled a list of the sites more than

200 German mass graves.

Yet just a handful of the sites have so far been investigated.

One was discovered two years ago at Harmica, where an estimated 5,000 soldiers of the German Wehrmacht were shot and buried, including 500 officers.

'We don`t know exactly how many Wehrmacht soldiers were executed here,' said Vladimir Geiger of the Croatian Institute for History. 'A mass grave must hold at least three corpses, but there can also be 15,000.'

'The remains must be exhumed and analysed and only then can we discuss concrete figures. But even then we can never be sure of the nationality of the victim, because not only Germans, but also Croats and Poles and others served in Wehrmacht,' he said.

Of course, it was not only soldiers who were buried in mass graves. And the sites are not only in Croatia, but also in Serbia, Slovenia and elsewhere in former Yugoslavia. Geiger's institute is attempting to assemble a list of ethnic German civilians who also perished in the war.

'The list of German victims includes 26,000 women and 5,800 children who died in Yugoslav camps,' Geiger said.

These victims were from the around 500,000 ethnic Germans who lived in former Yugoslavia who did not flee ahead of the Soviet Red Army advancing from the east. Of the 200,000 who came under the Communist authorities, just a few thousands survived.

Thousands were killed and tens of thousands died of malnutrition and disease amid horrendous conditions in the camps between 1944 and 1948. After that, most survivors were driven out of the country.

In Croatia, at least 18,000-20,000 ethnic Germans were brought to the camps, where at least several thousand of them died. In Serbia, where the majority of the Germans lived, the figures were several times larger.

When the grave at Harmica, 50 kilometres northwest of Zagreb, was unearthed in April 2009, Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko gave an even grimmer estimate - saying that there were 840 mass graves in Croatia alone and 'who knows how many more' across the region.

And Karamarko has again promised an investigation of crimes committed by Communists partisans six and a half decades ago.

The authorities were meanwhile sharply criticized by the former president Stjepan Mesic, who recently suggested that the mass graves are being opened and investigations promised only because elections are due.

'I welcome (his) pledge, but it comes 20 years too late,' he said in an interview. 'All other post-communist countries investigated and condemned the communist crimes.'

[Supreme American]

WAUlwTqCYXI

[sturmwalkure]

So sad... the real Holocaust had happened to the Germans. :(:(:mad:

[Imgermanic]

I wished Germany had won WWII.

[Supreme American]

I don't post this thread as a booster of Nazism, I do it because my mother's side, what of them that survived, were among those ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia who were evacuated by the German military before the Partisan and Red Army butchers came. I don't know how many I lost, but I do know through online research at a Donauschwaben death book collection that people with my family's surnames were killed in action, perished in Communist concentration camps, or simply "disappeared."

[Supreme American]

And another particularly noxious one. It made me cry the first few times I read it:

Vojvodina Germans Seek Moral and Cultural Rehabilitation (http://www.media-diversity.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=996:vojvodina-germans-seek-moral-and-cultural-rehabilitation) (Word document)

ZRENJANIN - Franz Jerger, 72, holds firmly a snapshot of his family while standing in front of a monument to Germans who died in a communist camp in Knicanin, Vojvodina. Almost all his brothers and sisters were killed in the camp immediately after World War II. As he remembers these events, his eyes begin filling with tears. In fluent Serbian the old man, a German born in the Vojvodina town of Pancevo, recounts how in 1945, from a camp in Banatski Brestovac, he was transferred to the camp in Knicanin, formerly Rudolfzgnad, near Titel. The same fate was shared by thousands of his fellow Vojvodina Germans at the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, when the German occupiers of Yugoslavia were defeated and forced to withdraw.

In the years that followed, Jerger lost almost his entire family in the communist camps in the province.

"Before that my father was shot dead near Knicanin, having been forced to join the German army during the war," says Jerger, wiping away the tears with his sleeve. He adds that only he and his sister, three years his senior, survived the horrors of the Knicanin camp.

"I was 14 then. I was the first to get sick in the winter of 1945. Later that winter and in 1946, I lost my mother, three sisters and two brothers. I recovered towards the middle of 1946," he continues. At about that time "some Americans" came in and powdered them against lice. "They gave us some cornmeal to improve our diet. I told myself that as soon as I recovered I would flee," Jerger says.

Yet he was so weak that he couldn't even walk; his only mode of transportation was crawling around on his knees and his bottom. The recovery took very long, and in the summer of 1946, he fled to the town of Centa, where he hid for about one month. The partisans discovered him and sent him back to the camp. Only three days later, however, he fled again.
"In Centa I found shelter with a man named Uncle Vasa, whom everybody called Dinar. He took me in and protected me. I took care of his sheep. Several times armed partisans in civilian clothes called on him to get me, but each time Uncle Vasa said he wouldn't hand his Francika over to them. This is what he called me. He protected me each time," Jerger says.

He has been living in Germany since 1964. Remembering gets harder every time and Jerger says that he hasn't met anyone who survived "the communist terror" in the Knicanin camp. The pre-war photographs he holds are the only things he has left from that period.

"I remember one boy my age and who also fled the camp, with 12 or 16 other inmates. They tried to swim the Tisa River, but everybody except him drowned," says Jerger.

The communist government of Yugoslavia issued a decree in 1944 stripping the Germans in Yugoslavia of their citizenship, voting rights and all property because of German atrocities during WWII. Persecution and assimilation followed. The few who survived this had their citizenship and property taken away, though this was never confirmed by law. Most of their property was granted to migrants from poverty stricken parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia, whom the communist government resettled in Vojvodina.

Jerger survived the persecution and returned to his native Pancevo, where he completed a course at a trade school. He says he is proud that in 1953 he did his military service in the Yugoslav People's Army, and afterward married a Serb woman, Vera. Then in 1964, for financial reasons, he left to live with relatives in Germany. He now lives in the German city of Mannheim.
"I was born in Pancevo, and I still feel deep nostalgia for it. Every year I come here to Knicanin. I do not feel hate; if I felt it, I wouldn't have kept returning. I was a child then and I don't know why did they do that to us," he says. He adds that he was aware that the German soldiers did many atrocities in Vojvodina and Serbia, but that Germans born in Yugoslavia shouldn't have been punished for that.

Every year on November 1, All Souls Day, he arrives to visit the monument to German victims, built only a decade ago.

There are two mass grave near Knicanin in which about 12,500 people were buried. When he is in Knicanin, Jerger visits the graves at least a couple of times. "I always say: 'Vera, I would buy a lawn mower to take care of the graves. After all, that's why I visit'," he goes on to say.

Jerger adds that he did not forget Uncle Vasa. As long as he was alive, he kept visiting him. "I used to bring him suits, shirts, shoes as a gift. Once he asked for shears so that he could shear his sheep. I brought them as well. Uncle Vasa was a good man."

Jerger believes that after the war, about 70,000 children, women and old people perished in the communist camps. Their only crime was that they were Germans.

The chairman of the German National Alliance of Subotica, Rudolf Vajs, who also lost family in Knicanin, says inmates were killed, raped, and left to die without medical or other help.

Vajs says that because of the large number of victims, the communists buried the bodies quickly in shallow graves, and that when Tisa flooded its banks, underground streams would put the bodies out into the river.

"Eyewitnesses say it was horrible -- there would be heads, legs, arms floating in the water. They would then line up German children and force them to push the bodies into the ground with spades. Imagine how horrible it was for the children. All human, civilised and Christian laws were breached when they treated the children and the victims that way," Vajs adds.
He also says there are very few survivors, mostly those who managed to escape from the camps. Once they sneaked out, they frequently received help from Serbs living nearby.

"They would give them food and medicine. They also gave them salt, because they weren't given any, which causes nervous disorders and death," says Vajs. He adds that well-off Serbs who openly opposed the communists, were also killed.

Vajs goes on to recount how in Knicanin a "slave labour market" was set up.
"When they were finally satisfied with the number they killed, they would lease the inmates to local Serbs to work their land. The Serbs paid a so-called head tax and took the tortured people home. There they would feed and clothe them," Vajs said.

"They tried to take as many girls and women with children, allegedly to do some female chores, but in fact to save them from starvation, the cold, and certain death. As human beings, they did what they could," says Vajs and adds that a part of his family survived thanks to Serbs.

Vajs also says that during the German occupation his family protected their Serb neighbours, and that they in turn, in 1944, took in the female members of the family "to protect them from being raped by the partisans and soldiers of the Russian Red Army."

"This is why my family has an almost genetic understanding with our neighbours, that we should protect and help each other. I owe the fact that I, as a German, am alive and standing here to the Serbs from Banat," Vajs concluded.

Witnesses say that not even after the Knicanin camp was closed down in 1948, were the imprisoned Germans set free. They were forced to work for the next three years and only then, with the money they had collected, could they buy their freedom if they wanted to emigrate.

Vajs says it shouldn't be difficult to determine how many bodies were buried in mass graves in Vojvodina. He says technology has become so advanced that satellite photographs can be used to find locations containing human remains because they emit small quantities of caesium.

"But let's not boast of the number of victims. We aren't mentioning them to collect war damages, because that is not in the spirit of the German people. We only want people to know of these events, for the sake of future generations so that it doesn't happen again," says Vajs firmly.

The chairman of the Association of Danube Germans, Hans Supric, says Vojvodina Germans are seeking complete "moral and cultural rehabilitation." "We want the Germans recognised as one of the nations that used to live and still live in this territory. There is no collective responsibility, and we do not want to suffer collective punishment," says Supric.

A new Yugoslav minority protection act granted the Germans the right to present themselves as an ethnic minority. Representatives of their associations claim that what is most important for them is to obtain moral satisfaction from Yugoslavia. They don't care about their confiscated property. Even if they could get their Yugoslav citizenship back, they would be unlikely to accept it, because German laws don't allow for dual citizenship.

It is estimated that almost half a million Germans lived in Vojvodina before the war. Today, there are several thousand.

[Imgermanic]

I was not talking about Nazis' I am honest in my speech' that Germany was fighting for Europe's survival.
Under the Zionists there is no holocausts apart from the 'Jew Holocaust'. I believe that there is many holocausts including against the Germans.

[Supreme American]

I was not talking about Nazis' I am honest in my speech' that Germany was fighting for Europe's survival.
Under the Zionists there is no holocausts apart from the 'Jew Holocaust'. I believe that there is many holocausts including against the Germans.

I understand that, but I thought my motive for posting this thread should be known.

I don't see it as Germany fighting for Europe's survival. He shot us square in the ass by his aggressive and stupid - especially foreign - policy. Invading was inexcusable, and one of the consequences of it is that preservationists like us are demonized as Nazis simply by being preservationists.

[poiuytrewq0987]

Fucking ridiculous for you all to "pity" the Germans who oppressed and killed many of us. If they didn't want anything to happen to their precious Germans then they shouldn't have invaded Yugoslavia! Revenge's a bitch ain't it?

[poiuytrewq0987]

I was not talking about Nazis' I am honest in my speech' that Germany was fighting for Europe's survival.
Under the Zionists there is no holocausts apart from the 'Jew Holocaust'. I believe that there is many holocausts including against the Germans.

For Europe's survival? How is scorching Europe and causing the deaths of 80 million Europeans saving Europe?

[Supreme American]

Fucking ridiculous for you all to "pity" the Germans who oppressed and killed many of us. If they didn't want anything to happen to their precious Germans then they shouldn't have invaded Yugoslavia! Revenge's a bitch ain't it?

If you can't separate an invading foreign military and locals who happened to have the same ethnicity and many of whom were conscripted on threat of death...

You might be an asshole.

[poiuytrewq0987]

If you can't separate an invading foreign military and locals who happened to have the same ethnicity and many of whom were conscripted on threat of death...

You might be an asshole.

Most Germans in Yugoslavia collaborated with Nazi Germany and Bulgaria. Those who didn't, are the few thousands who survived.

[Supreme American]

Most Germans in Yugoslavia collaborated with Nazi Germany and Bulgaria. Those who didn't, are the few thousands who survived.

Is there a specific reason why I should accept your unsourced, hostility-driven assertions?

[heathen_son]

Is there a specific reason why I should accept your unsourced, hostility-driven assertions?

No.

Thanks for posting.

[poiuytrewq0987]

Is there a specific reason why I should accept your unsourced, hostility-driven assertions?

Sure, I'll post a source, even from a pro-German website. :coffee:


By 1939, the Nazified Kulturbund had become the most salient political representative of the German minourity in Yugoslavia. By the time of the Axis invasion, there were over 300,000 Kulturbund members, or over 60% of the total Yugoslav German population (Sretenovic 2002, 50). In 1939, the Kulturbund was absorbed into the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle network of Heinrich Himmler, the director of the SS and the prime architect of the Holocaust. As a result, the Yugoslav Germans were subsequently represented, organised, and subsidised by the Third Reich and the SS. Dr. Sepp Janko of the Kulturbund became the "Führer" of the Yugoslav Swabians prior to the Axis invasion. The broad membership of the Swabians in Nazi movements contributed to the exaggerated post-war identification of Swabians as being universally involved in the Nazi atrocities committed by the foreign Axis armies. Despite the fact that the Kulturbund and most Germans adopted pan-Germanic and even racist rhetoric, the universalised assumption by the Yugoslavs that the entire German ethnicity was collectively guilty of genocide and should therefore be imprisoned was vastly exaggerated.

http://expelledgermans.org/danubegermans.htm

[Supreme American]

Sure, I'll post a source, even from a pro-German website. :coffee:

I'd only wish you'd have read the entirety of your own quote. What were the last two sentences, again?


The broad membership of the Swabians in Nazi movements contributed to the exaggerated post-war identification of Swabians as being universally involved in the Nazi atrocities committed by the foreign Axis armies. Despite the fact that the Kulturbund and most Germans adopted pan-Germanic and even racist rhetoric, the universalised assumption by the Yugoslavs that the entire German ethnicity was collectively guilty of genocide and should therefore be imprisoned was vastly exaggerated.


And another part you chose to leave out:


What followed was a tragic fracas of ethnic cleansings and genocide committed by each ethnic group of the dismantled Yugoslavia, as each identity violently seized the opportunity to struggle for the independence and cultural franchise that were increasingly denied to them by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav monarchy. Serbs, Albanians, Croats, Bosnians, Muslims, Orthodox, Catholics, Swabians, Hungarians, Communists, monarchist Četnik militias, and Nazis all participated in a maelstrom of some of the bloodiest atrocities of World War II. Dormant ethnic hatred between Croats and Serbs decimated the Balkans, whilst Communist brigades and Serb nationalists engaged in mutual massacres all across the despoiled Yugoslav territories. The Swabian Germans and Croats, however, were blamed for all of them after the war and subjected to great reprisal and universal imprisonment.

Your conclusions are based on your own ethnic hatreds and nothing more. This thread was not made to whip up or stoke ethnic hatreds... Nor is it about political opportunism.

Btw, if you're really concerned about a correlation of butchery and political memberships, what was the percentage of membership among non-German Yugoslavs with the Communist and related parties?

[poiuytrewq0987]

I'd only wish you'd have read the entirety of your own quote. What were the last two sentences, again?


The broad membership of the Swabians in Nazi movements contributed to the exaggerated post-war identification of Swabians as being universally involved in the Nazi atrocities committed by the foreign Axis armies. Despite the fact that the Kulturbund and most Germans adopted pan-Germanic and even racist rhetoric, the universalised assumption by the Yugoslavs that the entire German ethnicity was collectively guilty of genocide and should therefore be imprisoned was vastly exaggerated.


And another part you chose to leave out:


What followed was a tragic fracas of ethnic cleansings and genocide committed by each ethnic group of the dismantled Yugoslavia, as each identity violently seized the opportunity to struggle for the independence and cultural franchise that were increasingly denied to them by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav monarchy. Serbs, Albanians, Croats, Bosnians, Muslims, Orthodox, Catholics, Swabians, Hungarians, Communists, monarchist Četnik militias, and Nazis all participated in a maelstrom of some of the bloodiest atrocities of World War II. Dormant ethnic hatred between Croats and Serbs decimated the Balkans, whilst Communist brigades and Serb nationalists engaged in mutual massacres all across the despoiled Yugoslav territories. The Swabian Germans and Croats, however, were blamed for all of them after the war and subjected to great reprisal and universal imprisonment.

Your conclusions are based on your own ethnic hatreds and nothing more. This thread was not made to whip up or stoke ethnic hatreds... Nor is it about political opportunism.

Btw, if you're really concerned about a correlation of butchery and political memberships, what was the percentage of membership among non-German Yugoslavs with the Communist and related parties?

What part of pro-German source didn't you understand? I CONFIRMED with your fluffy source that Germans DID collaborate with the Nazi state. That is the end of the discussion.

[Hess]

LOL at colonials who think Hitler is good for Europe

[Supreme American]

What part of pro-German source didn't you understand? I CONFIRMED with your fluffy source that Germans DID collaborate with the Nazi state. That is the end of the discussion.

Yes, it is the end of the discussion when you selectively quote things to demonize one group involved in a multi-group affair of slaughter. Membership in a Nazi or Nazi-controlled organization does not mean you are pro-genocide or are even so much aware as such a thing is going on. This should be obvious to the most simple adult. Thank you.

[Supreme American]

LOL at colonials who think Hitler is good for Europe

I may have given that post a thumbs up if such a stupid invective like "colonials" wasn't invoked.

[poiuytrewq0987]

Yes, it is the end of the discussion when you selectively quote things to demonize one group involved in a multi-group affair of slaughter. Membership in a Nazi or Nazi-controlled organization does not mean you are pro-genocide or are even so much aware as such a thing is going on. This should be obvious to the most simple adult. Thank you.

Please describe Hitler's views, oh wait, it's all laid out in Mein Kampf which is Nazism's bible. The organisation of 300,000 joined the SS, for me, that is enough evidence of collaboration. As for internal ethnic conflict, it's no secret Hitler incited conflict between Croats and Serbs to destabilize Yugoslavia. Germans and Croats also set up camps like Jasenovac to massacre hundreds of thousands of Jews and Serbs.

[Supreme American]

Please describe Hitler's views, oh wait, it's all laid out in Mein Kampf which is Nazism's bible. The organisation of 300,000 joined the SS, for me, that is enough evidence of collaboration. As for internal ethnic conflict, it's no secret Hitler incited conflict between Croats and Serbs to destabilize Yugoslavia. Germans and Croats also set up camps like Jasenovac to massacre hundreds of thousands of Jews and Serbs.

Ignoring my points (especially that about Serb and other membership in the CP and other Marxist-oriented organizations) and cherrypicking history is derailing this thread. Putting aside your Serb nationalist-generated Jasenovac numbers, my points in regard with a political and ethnic free-for-all have been intentionally avoided by you here. All you've offered on this thread is thinly-veiled ethnic and political hostility and the very unrealistic, one-sided blame that your own historical source spoke about which reveals nothing but your own biases.

If you have an issue with ethnic Germans talking about their experience and their war dead, which you clearly do, that's your problem.

Perhaps next you'll claim that the Germans, all in lockstep behind Hitler, caused the Yugoslavian civil wars and ethnic cleansings in the 1990s, five decades after being expelled en masse.

:rolleyes2:

[poiuytrewq0987]

Ignoring my points (especially that about Serb and other membership in the CP and other Marxist-oriented organizations) and cherrypicking history is derailing this thread. Putting aside your Serb nationalist-generated Jasenovac numbers, my points in regard with a political and ethnic free-for-all have been intentionally avoided by you here. All you've offered on this thread is thinly-veiled ethnic and political hostility and the very unrealistic, one-sided blame that your own historical source spoke about which reveals nothing but your own biases.

If you have an issue with ethnic Germans talking about their experience and their war dead, which you clearly do, that's your problem.

Perhaps next you'll claim that the Germans, all in lockstep behind Hitler, caused the Yugoslavian civil wars and ethnic cleansings in the 1990s, five decades after being expelled en masse.

:rolleyes2:

Your sugarcoating of collaborators is also derailing this thread. Anyhoo, I think I've had my fill of this sort of discussion. Have fun. :thumbs up

[Supreme American]

Your sugarcoating of collaborators is also derailing this thread. Anyhoo, I think I've had my fill of this sort of discussion. Have fun. :thumbs up

Must be why you're so up in arms against Communist collaborators.

[Phil75231]

Amazing how greed and inconsideration of others can backfire - and hurt the very people you are trying to help. In this case, "Lebensraum" land grabs destroyed German communities all over Eastern Europe.

[Beorn]

^ Yuhuh! Innit!

[Svarog]

Yes, Hitler was great for Europe. He directely halved white population of Europe and set entire Continent 50 years backwards - awesome. I don't think it is fair to whine about victims that got killed after you invaded foreign territory, destroyed their towns and shot half of the population first.

[Beorn]

I don't think it is fair to whine about victims that got killed after you invaded foreign territory, destroyed their towns and shot half of the population first.

True, just like Katyn. :)

[poiuytrewq0987]

Must be why you're so up in arms against Communist collaborators.

What communist collaborators? We were freedom fighters against German and Bulgarian occupation. Communism was only a political tool to achieve that goal.

[Supreme American]

Amazing how greed and inconsideration of others can backfire - and hurt the very people you are trying to help. In this case, "Lebensraum" land grabs destroyed German communities all over Eastern Europe.

Invading and roughing up other white people is no way to settle a land dispute.

Ultimately, it was a matter of whoever had the most military power taking what they want. We saw the same again in the 1990s in Yugoslavia, with yet another round of white-on-white ethnic cleansing.

[Supreme American]

What communist collaborators? We were freedom fighters against German and Bulgarian occupation. Communism was only a political tool to achieve that goal.

Your own source. Are you now going to say Communists weren't engaging in massacres? Please, don't...

Bitching about the evil Nazis and calling Communists "freedom fighters" only undermines your argument further. Just... stop.

[Supreme American]

The AVNOJ-Regulations and the Genocide of the Germans (http://www2.dvhh.org/history/genocide/AVNOJ.htm)

Foundation of the AVNOJ

On 26 Nov. 1942, in Bihač in the northwest of Bosnia, under Communist presidency, the Antifašističko veće narodnog oslobodjenja Jugoslavije (Anti-fascist Council of People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia; AVNOJ) was founded as the superior legislative body responsible for the liberation of the peoples of Yugoslavia.

In its second conference in the Bosnian town of Jajce, from 21 to 29 Nov. 1943, the AVNOJ also declared itself the superior executive authority, which had decided on the creation of a federal Yugoslavia, based on the right of self-determination, in which the south-Slavic peoples of the Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins were planned to live in constituent republics with equal rights.

Furthermore, the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia (Nacionalni komite osvoboditve Jugoslavije, NKOJ) was founded in Jajce; the Yugoslavian exile government was revoked; and Peter II was denied return to Yugoslavia.

The head of the National Committee was Tito, who had been appointed Marshal of Yugoslavia by the AVNOJ.

Provisions of the AVNOJ in Jajce, 1943

On 21 Nov. 1943, the AVNOJ decided on the following provisions ‘On the Deprivation of Civil Rights’, which, in the years to come, formed the legal basis for the treatment of the Germans in Yugoslavia:

1. All persons of German nationality living in Yugoslavia automatically lose their

Yugoslavian citizenship as well as all civil rights.

2. The entire movable and immovable possessions of all persons of German nationality are

confiscated by the state and henceforth its property.

3. Persons of German nationality are neither allowed to claim or exercise any rights, nor to

use courts or other institutions for their personal or legal protection.

Provisions of the AVNOJ in Belgrade, 1944

The provisions from Jajce formed the basis for the stipulations of the third meeting of the AVNOJ in Belgrade on 21 Nov. 1944, which dealt with the ‘Transfer of Enemy Property into State Property’ and the deprivation of civil rights of persons of German nationality. The provisions of 21 Nov. 1944 were as follows:

Upon this time onwards, that this resolution comes into force, the following will become state property:

1. the entire property of the German Reich and its citizens situated in Yugoslavian territory;

2. the entire property of persons belonging to the German people, with the exeption of those Germans who have fought in the National Liberation Army, and the Yugoslavian Partisan units or those who are citizens of neutral states, who have not shown any hostility during the occupation.

3. the entire property of war criminals and their accomplicies, without any consideration to their citizenship and the property of each person, who have been condemned to give up their property in favour of the state by civil or military law courts.

(Art. 1)

Property, in the sense of this act, is seen as: immovable goods, movable goods and rights such as the possession of land, house, furniture, forests, mining rights, enterprises with all fixtures and fittings and stock, bonds, jewelery, shares, companies, societies of all types, funds, beneficiary rights, modes of payment of all types, claims, shares of businesses and enterprises, copyright laws, industrial property rights, and all rights from the items mentioned above.

(Art. 3)

Article 1, Clause 2 was interpreted by AVNOJ according to the law from the 8 June 1945, as following:

1. The decision of the Anti-fascist Council of the National Liberation of Yugoslavia of 21

Nov. 1944 (article 1, point 1) concerns those Yugoslavian citizens of German nationality

who, during the occupation, declared themselves as Germans, or were known as such,

disregarding if they had acted as such before the war, or had been considered assimilated

Croats, Slovenians, or Serbs.

2. Not deprived of their civil rights or their property are Yugoslavian citizens of German

nationality or German descent or with German surnames:


a. who, as partisans or soldiers, took part in the national fight for liberation or were active

in the national liberation movement;


b. who, before the war, had been assimilated as Croats, Slovenians, or Serbs, and had

neither joined the Cultural Union (Kulturbund) nor acted as members of the German

ethnic group during the war.

c. who, during the occupation, refused to declare themselves members of the German ethnic

group, even when demanded by the occupation or collaborator authorities.


c. who (be it man or woman), despite their German nationality, contracted a mixed

marriage with a person of one of the Yugoslavian nationalities or a person of Jewish,

Slovak,Ukrainian, Magyar, Romanian, or any other recognized nationality.

3. Persons who, during the occupation, offended against the fight for liberation of the

Yugoslavian peoples through their behaviour and who were helpers of the occupation

forces, are not entitled to the protection provided by the previous article, points a), b), c),

and d).

In the so-called Interpretation Law of 8 June 1945, mistakes “in the execution of the deprivation of the civil rights of persons of German nationality” through the local authorities in Vojvodina and in Slavonia were pointed out.

Further Laws Against the German Population

.) Law Concerning the Agrarian Fund of the Agrarian Reform and the Colonisation of 9 Aug. 1945. According to Yugoslavian sources, this law accounts for the confiscation of 96,874 farming enterprises, comprising a total of 636,847 hectares of land. Yugoslavian and Danube-Schwabian experts reliably estimated the loss of property - corresponding to the value of the German Mark (DM) in the ‘90s - at 100 billion DM.

.) Law Concerning Criminal Actions Against the People and the State of 25. Aug. 1945. As early as 29. Nov. 1943, the foundation of a “National Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Committed by the Occupiers and their Helpers” had been determined.

.) Law Concerning the Degree of Punishment in Civil and Military Courts, whose stipulations ranged from the deprivation of civil rights, the sentence to forced labour, and the loss of private property, to the death penalty.

.) Law Concerning the Voters’ Lists of 10 Aug. 1945, which deprived “members of the military forces of the occupiers and their local accomplices who continuously and actively fought the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, or the Yugoslavian Army, or the armies of the allies of Yugoslavia”, and members of the Cultural Union of their active right to vote.

Deprivation of Citizenship

Based on the provisions of the AVNOJ, the Provisional Plenary Assembly of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia passed a citizenship law on 23 Aug. 1945 which stipulated in article 16 that members of those nationalities “whose states had taken part in the war against the peoples of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, and who, during or before the war, by disloyal behaviour, had violated the national and public interests of the peoples of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, and hence their duty as citizens thereof”, could be deprived of their Yugoslavian citizenship.

Thus, as a first step, all Germans who, since the autumn of 1943, had fled or had been driven away were deprived of their Yugoslavian citizenship. The collective deprivation of the Yugoslavian citizenship was then based on the Amendment of 1 Dec. 1948, which, in article 35, stipulated as follows:

“All persons who, according to the valid regulations, were citizens of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia on 28 Aug. 1945 are considered citizens of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. Not considered citizens of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia are (…) persons of German nationality who live abroad and who, during or before the war, violated their civic duties through disloyal behavior towards the national or public interests of the peoples of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia.

Those Germans, however, who were kept in Yugoslavian camps until 1948 could be deprived of their Yugoslavian citizenship through decisions made by the Belgrade Ministry of the Interior or according to the Amendment to the Yugoslavian Citizenship Act of 1 July 1946.

Violence against the German Population

In May 1944, a centralized secret service, OZNA (Odjeljenje zaštite naroda), with its military “Corps for the National Defence of Yugoslavia” (KNOJ) was created in order to protect the people. The chairpersons of the OZNA were members of the Communist Party. As early as in the summer of 1944, the London-based Yugoslavian exile government, led by Ivan Šubašic, and Marshal Tito, representing the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia, agreed on co-operation and concerted action against the occupation forces. On 1 March 1945, the troops of the Yugoslavian Army were primarily recruited from the various partisan groups.

Fate of the Danube-Schwabians after Autumn 1944

In the autumn of 1944, before the invasion of the Red Army and the takeover of power by the partisans, the civilian Danube-Schwabian population either escaped or were evacuated from Syrmia and Slavonia (more than 90 %), from the Batschka and the Baranja-Triangle (about half), and from the western Banat (only about 15 %).

[photo: DAG 4, title: “Danube-Schwabians fleeing from the terror of the Red Army and the Tito-Partisans”]

“The 5th of October was a warm, sunny autumn day, as we experienced it on the plain of the old homeland. The fields displayed their gorgeous autumn colours, the corn fields showing their ripe, golden cobs and already dry leaves, and in the vineyards the grapes were ripening on the vines. The streets of Franztal (Franz Valley) were teeming with terrified and desperate people; among them school children with irritated faces in front of the school building, which refused to admit them. One neighbour was hurrying to the other, seeking advice which he couldn’t give him, because he was at a loss himself. The thought of having to leave home and to head towards the country roads, without possessions and destination, was so unthinkable that one was led to believe that a bad dream had befallen the people. But in the harshness of reality time was running short. The church bell incessantly tolled the hours, mercilessly reminding everybody that the time of parting was drawing nearer and nearer.”

Except for the 90,000 soldiers, there were at least 195,000 Danube-Schwabians in their native lands at the time of the Communist takeover, and they were dispossessed and deprived of their rights through the decisions of the AVNOJ.

In the Banat, in the Batschka and in Syrmia more than 7000 civilians had been murdered by local Communist groups, the state police (OZNA), and partisan commando units during the “Bloody Autumn of 1944” in the course of the Operation Intelligenzija. The majority of the remaining 170,000 Danube-Schwabian civilians were imprisoned in numerous labour and – in total – eight concentration camps, which had been built for old-aged and sick people as well as for children under 14 years of age and mothers with little children. The concentration camps soon turned out to be extermination camps. In the Batschka, there were camps at Jarek (Backi Jarak), totalling 7000 deaths, Gakowa (Gakovo), totalling 8500 deaths, and Kruschiwl (Krusevlje), totalling 3000 – 3500 deaths.

[photo: DAG 5; title: “mass grave for the dead at Gakowa”]

“At five o’clock in the morning we were all rounded up. At the camp and also during our work we were heavily beaten by the warders and the guards. I was beaten three times; one time so badly I could not sit down for a month. The partisan who hit me used a thick stick for it.”

(report from the extermination camp Gakowa)

In the Banat, there were the camps Molidorf (Molin), totalling 3000 deaths, and Rudolfsgnad (Knicanin), totalling 11000 deaths; in Syrmia the camp Seidenfabrik (Silk Factory) in Syrmisch Mitrowitz (Sremska Mitrovica), totalling 2000 deaths. In Slavonia, there were the camps Walpach (Valpovo), totalling 1000 – 2000 deaths, and Kerndia (Krndija), totalling 500 – 1500 deaths.

“The sick and the dying were lying on the ground on a thin layer of straw, like everywhere else in the camp, close together, only separated by loosely set bricks. Between the sick people stood and lay dirty bowls, broken dishes with disgusting leftovers, pots serving as cuspidors, uncleaned chamber pots, dry slices of inedible corn bread, filthy rags, and similar things. Amidst all this misery, there were the dying, in dirty clothes, in filthy rags, in their own faeces. Smells and odours were almost unbearable. Here, the final tragedy of our people took place. I never saw my people as miserable and beaten as here, and at the same time never so proud and brave.”

(report from the extermination camp Rudolfsgnad)

In total, 50,000 of the imprisoned Danube-Schwabians had perished through hunger, epidemics and shootings in the labour and concentration camps within three years. About 35,000 had succeeded in escaping from the camps, at the risk of their own lives, across the near borders to Hungary and Romania. From 1946 on, thousands of orphaned children were transferred from the camps to children’s homes and had to undergo radical slavicization.

[photo: Walp; title: “the extermination camp Walpach after its closure”]

Additionally, around the turn of the year 1944/45, more than 8000 women between 18 and 35 years of age and more than 4000 men between 16 and 45 years of age were deported from the Batschka and the Banat to the USSR to do forced labour. 2000 of them had perished miserabley by 1949.

The genocide of the Danube-Schwabians resulted in more than 60,000 civilian victims. In 1948, the camps were dissolved. The approx. 80,000 survivors of the genocide had to accept three-year labour contracts and were only able to buy themselves out of these, depositing a high “ransom”, in the 50s, and then could leave for Germany or Austria; usually destitute.

Gorges and Karst Caves in Slovenia

The chairman of the first Slovenian government after 1945, Boris Kidrič, publicly announced at the town square in Maribor:

“The remainders of ‘Germanness’ in the northern territories have to disappear. It is unbearable that these remainders still go for walks on Slovenian and Yugoslavian soil. Those people, who have sucked the sweat off our nation, those people, who have helped to enslave our nation, are no longer allowed to stay here. It cannot be that in our kolkhoz there are still people who once lived off the diligence and sweat of our winegrowers and exploited them.”

The majority of the German Lower-Styrians and Gottscheers was only allowed to flee from the approaching front beginning on 6 May 1945, which resulted in a part of the German civilian population being helplessly exposed to Tito-Partisan terror. Atrocious mass executions had, for example, occurred in Bachern/Pohorje, where more than 2000 German civilians had been killed. A similar tragedy took place in the Gottscheer Hornwald (Gottschee Horn Forest). According to estimates, more than 6000 civilian Germans fell victim to outbreaks of violence and the Communist execution units of the OZNA on Slovenian territory.

After the English occupation force had closed the borders to Carinthia and Styria for German refugees, labour and concentration camps were erected for the Germans, among which the camps in Sterntal (Strnisce) and Tüchern (Teharje) with 7000 deaths were most notorious.

“Part of the refugees were loaded onto lorries, and it was those who were killed at Tüchern. The majority, however, were murdered right away, or rather at the Gottscheer Hornwald. Tüchern was horrible. It was not only the camp where the refugees were shot; the greatest part of the dissidents were also killed here, as well as those who had been found to be traitors, and especially the wealthy locals. The shootings only took place in the evening hours. Soon the ground around the camp was filled with bodies. From day to day more people were put on the death list. The were transported to different places in the vicinity of Cilli, especially to the mine Huda jama near Laško/Tüffer, the natural cave near Hrastnik, to the Košnica, and probably to some other places too.”

(report from the extermination camp Tüchern)

[Hevneren]

I was not talking about Nazis' I am honest in my speech' that Germany was fighting for Europe's survival.

No it wasn't. :rolleyes2:

[mymy]

1) Germany (or better say Hitler) wasn't fighting for survival of Europe, that war should never happen and we can't deny victims. Those are real people, not only a number. And if you don't remember, in World War the Second, European countries fought against each others. That was was insanity and it caused death of millions people all over the Europe, not only Jews and Romas, but also Europeans. And that's not all. People all over Europe suffered for years after the war because of it's consequences. And pollution is another aspect what many of you ignore.

2) Even so, after the war, communists in Serbia (Yugoslavia in that time) are responsible for destiny of German population in Vojvodina. Those people there were ordinary normal people who lived peacefully on that land for years. But, only because they were Germans, they had to live the country or to pay with life. Some of them unfortunately lost lives and their houses and land were given to people from poor regions in the country in that time, specifically Macedonia and Montenegro. Our history teacher told us that even names of villages where German population was majority were changed to sound more Slavic. Historical fact, nobody can deny it.

[sturmwalkure]

Amazing how greed and inconsideration of others can backfire - and hurt the very people you are trying to help. In this case, "Lebensraum" land grabs destroyed German communities all over Eastern Europe.

I agree... Hitler was a great politician but a POOR military commander. All in all there were terrible losses on both sides, but worst thing it was a brother's war. :(:mad:

[Supreme American]

2) Even so, after the war, communists in Serbia (Yugoslavia in that time) are responsible for destiny of German population in Vojvodina. Those people there were ordinary normal people who lived peacefully on that land for years. But, only because they were Germans, they had to live the country or to pay with life. Some of them unfortunately lost lives and their houses and land were given to people from poor regions in the country in that time, specifically Macedonia and Montenegro. Our history teacher told us that even names of villages where German population was majority were changed to sound more Slavic. Historical fact, nobody can deny it.

What is more sad about this situation is that German Catholics were settled there to help protect Europe from being invaded again by the Turks.

[Supreme American]

I agree... Hitler was a great politician but a POOR military commander. All in all there were terrible losses on both sides, but worst thing it was a brother's war. :(:mad:

I don't see how he can be called anything but an asshole on foreign policy. His domestic policy was also excessive yet not to such a degree.

[Artek]

I wished Germany had won WWII.
:rofl_002::jump0000:
You don't even have a law to make statements like that.

[Smaland]

19)Yet you say, ‘Why should the son not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity?’ When the son has practiced justice and righteousness and has observed all My statutes and done them, he shall surely live.

20) The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.

Ezekiel 18:19-20, New American Standard Bible

[Supreme American]

19)Yet you say, ‘Why should the son not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity?’ When the son has practiced justice and righteousness and has observed all My statutes and done them, he shall surely live.

20) The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.

Ezekiel 18:19-20, New American Standard Bible

This isn't even about children bearing the sins of the fathers. The only relation was ethnic. They lived hundreds of miles apart for a good 200 years.

[poiuytrewq0987]

Your own source. Are you now going to say Communists weren't engaging in massacres? Please, don't...

Bitching about the evil Nazis and calling Communists "freedom fighters" only undermines your argument further. Just... stop.

You are ridiculous. The partizans formed in Yugoslavia with only one sole goal. That goal was to throw off the Nazi yoke and ensure the freedom of Yugoslavia from German and Bulgarian occupation. If a whole fucking lot of Germans got killed in the process. Not my fucking fault, deal with the fact that Germans tried to occupy our country and FAILED miserably.

[Supreme American]

You are ridiculous. The partizans formed in Yugoslavia with only one sole goal. That goal was to throw off the Nazi yoke and ensure the freedom of Yugoslavia from German and Bulgarian occupation. If a whole fucking lot of Germans got killed in the process. Not my fucking fault, deal with the fact that Germans tried to occupy our country and FAILED miserably.

Quit trolling the thread with your political and ethnic hatreds, please.

[poiuytrewq0987]

Quit trolling the thread with your political and ethnic hatreds, please.

I'm not trolling, I'm being honest with my opinion. If you can't agree with me, fine, but don't call me a troll just because you can't counter the fact Germans DID occupy Yugoslavia, and as a result, that got a lot of Germans killed in the process.

[Leliana]

We have paid our prize and now it's on the others to pay theirs for the mass killing of civilians. :( Accepting reality and saying sorry would be a fine and gentleman-like step. Our war against others doesn't excuse everything, that's a cheap and transparent face-saver.

[Supreme American]

We have paid our prize and now it's on the others to pay theirs for the mass killing of civilians. :( Accepting reality and saying sorry would be a fine and gentleman-like step. Our war against others doesn't excuse everything, that's a cheap and transparent face-saver.

Why do that when you can play innocent, deny history, and sweep the bodies under the rug?

Certainly not a way for white folks to bury the hatchet and move forward, that's for sure.

[poiuytrewq0987]

Why do that when you can play innocent, deny history, and sweep the bodies under the rug?

Certainly not a way for white folks to bury the hatchet and move forward, that's for sure.

Like how you're denying Yugoslav Germans collaborated with Nazi Germany? lol.

[NaziMick]

It is Sad when People die in War,But WW2 was for the benefit of the jews as they did not like Germans waking up to the fact that Jews were ruining there Country as they are doing now to America!
http://i.imgur.com/Ub5aD.gif
Jews are the Cause of all the Worlds Problems, even now they want all White Nations to fight their wars!They have Hijacked the US gvt.
http://i.imgur.com/F38Gj.jpg
And Demonized a Great man!!
http://i.imgur.com/wEw6p.jpg

[LastManOnEarth]

German mass grave sheds new light on close of World War Two (http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/features/article_1619890.php/German-mass-grave-sheds-new-light-on-close-of-World-War-Two-Feature)

Zagreb - Croatian police have completed the exhumation of remains from mass grave in a Zagreb suburb, on one of more than 200 known sites where thousands of Germans, both soldiers and civilians, were buried in the closing days of the Second World War.

Yugoslav communist partisans carried out executions across the c country as the Nazi regime crumbled and fell in 1945. So far the Croatian interior ministry has compiled a list of the sites more than

200 German mass graves.

Yet just a handful of the sites have so far been investigated.

One was discovered two years ago at Harmica, where an estimated 5,000 soldiers of the German Wehrmacht were shot and buried, including 500 officers.

'We don`t know exactly how many Wehrmacht soldiers were executed here,' said Vladimir Geiger of the Croatian Institute for History. 'A mass grave must hold at least three corpses, but there can also be 15,000.'

'The remains must be exhumed and analysed and only then can we discuss concrete figures. But even then we can never be sure of the nationality of the victim, because not only Germans, but also Croats and Poles and others served in Wehrmacht,' he said.

Of course, it was not only soldiers who were buried in mass graves. And the sites are not only in Croatia, but also in Serbia, Slovenia and elsewhere in former Yugoslavia. Geiger's institute is attempting to assemble a list of ethnic German civilians who also perished in the war.

'The list of German victims includes 26,000 women and 5,800 children who died in Yugoslav camps,' Geiger said.

These victims were from the around 500,000 ethnic Germans who lived in former Yugoslavia who did not flee ahead of the Soviet Red Army advancing from the east. Of the 200,000 who came under the Communist authorities, just a few thousands survived.

Thousands were killed and tens of thousands died of malnutrition and disease amid horrendous conditions in the camps between 1944 and 1948. After that, most survivors were driven out of the country.

In Croatia, at least 18,000-20,000 ethnic Germans were brought to the camps, where at least several thousand of them died. In Serbia, where the majority of the Germans lived, the figures were several times larger.

When the grave at Harmica, 50 kilometres northwest of Zagreb, was unearthed in April 2009, Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko gave an even grimmer estimate - saying that there were 840 mass graves in Croatia alone and 'who knows how many more' across the region.

And Karamarko has again promised an investigation of crimes committed by Communists partisans six and a half decades ago.

The authorities were meanwhile sharply criticized by the former president Stjepan Mesic, who recently suggested that the mass graves are being opened and investigations promised only because elections are due.

'I welcome (his) pledge, but it comes 20 years too late,' he said in an interview. 'All other post-communist countries investigated and condemned the communist crimes.'

Interesting highlight of history...

However I thought the most significant issue regarding genocide in that region during that time was the organized extermination of up to 700.000 thousand people by the Roman Catholic militia Ustase.
Most victims were Orthodox Christian Serbs but also a smaller percentage Jews. None of them necessarily Communist.

Of course you may correct me if I´m wrong.