The Russian Army reached Apatin in October of 1944.  For weeks battles raged in the streets of the town.  The Russians were determined to cross the Danube here and as a result they suffered huge casualties.  It is estimated that up to sixty thousand Russians fell or drowned in the crossing.  While the battle raged to cross the Danube the Partisans arrived to set up their Military Government in the town and district.  Their first act was the arrest of large numbers of the leading citizens.  Almost daily men were taken from their homes and imprisoned in different parts of the town and beaten, tortured and killed.  Others were put in a recently established camp and were sent to slave labor from there.  Many were sent to Sombor and then imprisoned at Zupanija and Kronic-Palais or remained in Sombor.  None of these men were ever heard from again.  There were at least sixty-four documented victims of this action and many of them died a rather painful gruesome death.

  (The bestiality and sadism perpetrated against certain individuals is described but I decline to translate that out of consideration of the sensitivities of the reader and my own.)

  Arrests were still taking place in the first months of 1945.  Apatin had been the key center of Roman Catholicism in the Batschka and the most anti-Nazi region in the Batschka and yet the Partisans were determined to liquidate the Danube Swabian people en masse.  The western Batschka would witness the greatest numbers of victims and the most gruesome deaths in the region.  Apatin was the first of the Danube Swabian communities in western Batschka to be cleansed of its Danube Swabian population.  Countless numbers of labor work parties were sent from Apatin to Syrmien by forced marches on foot.  Men and women from Apatin were sent to various labor camps.  These labor battalions had a high death rate.  One forced labor unit of five hundred men, lost twenty-seven of their number on the way who died of exhaustion and beatings.  Within a few weeks only forty-three survivors who were barely alive returned to Apatin.

  Not much better was the destiny of the labor transports in the spring of 1945 which were sent to Semlin and Mitrowitz to work in the swamps, from where only a few from among every hundred managed to survive.

  March 11, 1945 was a black day in the life of Apatin.  On that day, the entire remaining Danube Swabian population of the town were driven from their homes and forced to walk to Gakowa and Kruschevlje as the first victims of those concentration camps.  They were the first to feed the death mill.  After only a few months seven hundred of them had died from hunger.  On the march to the camps those who could not keep up, were forced on by beatings.  Those who collapsed were simply left to die where they lay.  No one was permitted to help them in any way regardless of their relationship to the unfortunate person.

  Because of the long term presence of the Russian military and units of the Partisans led to the rape of countless women and young girls.  The number that took place cannot even be estimated.  The extent to which it occurred is reflected in the fact that not even a ninety-two year old grandmother was spared and was gang-raped.  But along with rape they also perpetrated all kinds of torture including electrical shock treatments to the breasts and vaginas of their victims.

  Shortly after the establishment of Military Government by the Partisans a census of the community was undertaken.  A few hundred families with non-German sounding names registered as Hungarians or Slavs.  Those whose registration was validated were not included in the expulsion of March 11^th.  Approximately two thousand people were excluded in this way.  It was estimated that about two thousand had left with the retreating Hungarian Army when they abandoned the city.  In the neighborhood of two thousand and four hundred single and married young women along with some men had been deported to the Soviet Union between Christmas 1944 and New Years 1945.  As a result not quite eight thousand were sent to Gakowa and Kruschevlje.

  Those who remained at home had no peace either.  There were raids and arrests, and a pogrom on Easter Monday that was unleashed against many leading citizens of the town resulting in horrendous deaths for many of them.

  When the first expellees from Apatin arrived at Sombor on their way to Gakowa there was not enough room for all of them in the barracks of the camp, and about four thousand women and children, including nursing infants had to spend the night out in the open in the bitter cold, while others were allowed to huddle together in the streets.  When Bulgarian troops who were stationed in Sombor heard the crying and whimpering of the children, they invited their Partisan “allies” into their barracks for a drink.  They got them drunk and let the women and children into their own barracks.  In the early morning hours of March 12^th the expellees went on to Gakowa and Kruschevlje by foot.  The group that had found refuge in the Sombor camp had everything they had taken away from them except the clothes they wore.

  A few days after arriving, women who were able bodied were separated from their children, most of them were infants and toddlers and the mothers were taken to Baranya to dig trenches for the Russians.  This work was completed on March 21^st and the women were taken to Sombor and from there they were sent to various labor camps throughout western Batschka .  Labor units of men were from time to time sent to Syrmien to work in the swamps and marshes.  Most of them died or were killed there.

  For a long time the inmates at Gakowa and Kruschevlje came from Apatin, Kernei and Sentiwan.  All of those who could work were taken out of the two concentration camps and were taken to various labor camps in western Batschka .  In a few weeks, only children and the elderly remained in the camps.  There were only a few parents if any.  A large number of younger married women were assigned to the Hodschag district, from among which months and years later were able to return to Gakowa and Kruschevlje in search of their children.  Most of them perished working in the swamps in the Hodschag district.  What the extermination camps in Semlin and Mitrowitz meant for hundreds of the men from Apatin, the Hodschag camp meant for the women which became the last station of their way of sorrows and the cross for both of them.

  In later months as the former industries in Apatin went back into production many of the tradesmen and craftsmen from Apatin had the good fortune to return there as slave laborers in their trained field.  This change in circumstances saved many of their lives.