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Compulsory Relocation to the Baragan
From the book "Grossjetscha im
Banat"
by Franz Josef Beisser
Translated by Diana Lambing
Published at
DVHH.org
by Jody McKim Pharr, 2003.
The compulsory relocation to the Baragan was
planned and prepared in secret long before June
18th 1951. On Whit Monday, 18th June 1951,
things were ready. Before this date, events in
the village and neighboring communities unfolded
thick and fast. On June 16th, a train with 30
wagons pulled into Billed railway station. In
every third wagon there were militia men or
soldiers. To begin with, what they saw triggered
off a huge guessing game amongst the villagers.
The following day around midday an announcement
was made to drum beats: ‘Nobody is to leave the
village; maneuvers are taking place.’ At the
same time, the whole area was already surrounded
by the afore-mentioned militia. The news hit
everyone like a bolt of lightning and made the
coming night one of despair and helplessness.
Behind drawn curtains and rolled-down blinds and
with the lights switched off, people peeped
through cracks onto the streets into the dark
night, full of fear of what was about to happen.
At 9 or 10 p.m. already, military boots
clattered up and down the streets and the dogs
began to bark loudly. Torches lit up the houses.
They were looking for particular house numbers.
Before dawn (4 a.m.), rifle butts pushed against
many doors, lights were switched on and ‘Deschideti!’
was shouted out, which means ‘open up!’ in
English. Cocked rifles were aimed at the
residents of the house. In each case, a civilian
(security service officer), a militia man and a
soldier entered. The officer curtly demanded
identity cards from the whole family, compared
them to his list and stuck them in. Now he read
from a sheet of white paper, ‘In accordance with
a Ministry decree, you no longer have any right
to live in this house. You must pack and leave
the house within two hours (this was later
extended to six or more hours). Wagons will take
your belongings to the station.’ An admonition
was added: ‘Anyone trying to escape will be shot
without warning.’ People felt paralyzed at this
announcement, couldn’t take it in. Our good,
honest, law-abiding Swabians just could not
believe this shocking threat. What crime had
they committed? But the soldier, who was now
standing guard in front of the house, showed,
and was proof enough, that they were serious.
No-one was allowed to leave their house any more
before evacuation took place and no villager was
allowed out on the street, so they could not see
what was about to happen.
Any
information about what was allowed to be taken
with them, i.e. to be packed, was varied and
inadequate and was given only very briefly:
furniture, clothes, bedding, household items,
food. All in all, just what could be loaded onto
two wagons. A feeling of helplessness and panic
now came over all concerned. One was simply lost
over the choice; what should they take, what
would be of most use or of most importance and
where was it all going anyway? No-one could,
would or dared to say.
Soon after
packing their belongings it became clear that
there was a certain intention behind the list of
things they were allowed to take; then
everything that was left behind, and even listed
on an inventory, was sold for peanuts and for
many people not even that. Anyone who had no
wagon of their own was given two carts to load
their possessions onto.
Around midday
(Monday 18th June 1951), the first people and
families regarded as unworthy and inconvenient,
began to leave their houses and homes with their
wagons laden with their few possessions and made
their way to Billed railway station. There was
indescribable grief, misery and countless tears
on saying goodbye to parents, children,
grandchildren, relatives, neighbors and
acquaintances as they left their yards and took
to the road. ‘Auf wiedersehen’, they called to
each other... but was there actually going to be
a ‘wiedersehen’?
Away they went, into
the unknown.
The cleared houses were
then sealed up. On the way to Billed railway
station only the children, old people and the
sick were allowed to have a seat on the wagons;
everyone else had to walk alongside the column
of wagons and carts (accompanied by the armed
guards who had earlier stood in front of the
houses). These wagons and carts and their
accompanying owners formed a column one
kilometre (half a mile) long. It gave the
impression of a traveling prison or of people
fleeing the ever-nearing enemy.
It was
only on the way to the station, or upon arrival,
that people saw who and which families had been
affected by this merciless and inhumane
treatment. They were mostly Germans but also
some Bessarabians and Buchenlanders.
Amongst the people concerned were one-time
farmers (large, medium and small), traders,
intellectuals such as doctors, apothecaries,
teachers, officials etc. and also amongst them
were those who had served in the German armed
forces and after their discharge from captivity
in prisoner of war camps had returned to their
country of birth, as well as families of those
who, after their discharge as German prisoners
of war, had not yet returned to their country of
birth, and also those marked politically. They
all belonged to the so-called ‘inconvenient and
unreliable’.
The choice of people who
were to be forcibly relocated was a despotic act
without the slightest trace of humanity.
Six widows who were completely alone - Katharina
Reiter (house number 11), Katharina Gimpel (18),
Katharina Ebner (19), Margarethe Puljer (352),
Margarethe Dohr (372) and Angela Birkenheuer
(390) - were deported to the Baragan. Also, the
two orphans Josef Stemper (15 years old) and
Katharina Stemper (13 years old and now with the
married name of Trendler) from house number 141,
whose mother had died in the Russian labour
camps and whose father had not returned after
the war, had to go to the Baragan with their
grandparents.
Arriving at Billed
railway station the wagons were unloaded into
the trenches along the tracks; this is where the
goods were stored. Consequently, there was an
unholy, indescribable muddle and chaos: old
people, children, toddlers, babies, livestock,
groceries, animal feed, furniture, household
equipment - everyone’s possessions lay
strewn around on the ground. Quite a few more
household items could have been brought with
them if they had been properly advised, so many
people called out to their relatives who had
followed them to the station from afar, to go
and fetch more things if possible. And so in
this way some people were able to get some sort
of inventory made.
The storage of
people’s possessions in the trenches was for
them the most degrading aspect of this immoral
act. Here, waiting for the deportation transport
which would take them away, they had to spend
their first night in the open.
The
allocation of people and their belongings into
the railway goods wagons was made as follows:
families with children got a whole wagon; small
families were put preferably two to a wagon. The
livestock: Right from the start the horses,
cattle and pigs were to be transported in the
same goods wagons as their owners. On hearing
this, many people quickly sold their horses and
carts; for two horses and a cart they got 15,000
Lei. After that, there was room for the large
livestock to be put into a separate wagon, but
for many it was already too late (their horse
and cart had already left).
The families
had to share their wagons with the smaller
animals (goats and chickens). There were also
individual cases where a family with a small
child would make room for their cow in their
wagon because of the milk. And so the deportee
Grossjetscha families, as with all the other
villages, were divided into several transport
carriages and were coupled with families from
other villages.
On 19th June 1951, the
first Grossjetscha families were ready in their
goods wagons and the first transport began. On
22nd June 1951, the last transport rain left
Billed railway station with families from
Grossjetscha.
Every transport was
heavily guarded from the West to the East. Fear
of the unknown grew more and more. The train
would often stop for hours at stations to
replenish with water and coal and to let the
passage of public trains run freely. The
deportees were also allowed to get out and fetch
water for themselves and their livestock when
the trains stopped. During these stops, people
secretly communicated with passing travelers,
unnoticed by the strict guards. But no-one could
tell them what was happening or where they were
going. The travelers were quite astonished and
could not grasp or understand what was
happening; no-one knew anything about this
action further inland.
In some railway
stations Red Cross sisters came and handed out
milk or tea. If anyone tried to run to a
letterbox in a station to post a card, it would
be confiscated by the strict and watchful
escorts and the person concerned would be given
a threatening admonition. In the evening, the
people in the wagons were checked and counted
and then locked up for the night in the dark
wagons with little air. Only at the light of day
were the wagons re-opened when a halt was made
at a station, and the people were checked and
counted again. At least they could breathe some
fresh air again.
During this unknown
journey there were also moving scenes of
humanity and pity. The train drivers (Romanians)
knew, of course, about the existence of both
large and small livestock in some of the wagons
on their trains and also that the necessary
animal feed was getting very low. So they
stopped alongside open spaces next to the fields
of maize. The owners of the livestock used the
opportunity to jump out and cut as much green
maize foliage as quickly as possible. Livestock
that had perished was also disposed of at this
opportunity. Then there would be a short whistle
and the train would carry on with increasing
speed to make up for the time they had lost.
Even when they reached Bucharest, no-one
knew yet where they were heading for. Would they
not be going to Russia? The growing uncertainty
gnawed away at people.
They passed
Bucharest and headed on the main line towards
Konstanza into the Baragan Steppes. Alongside
the tracks they saw only withered grass; no
trees, no knee-high fields of wheat, just a
miserable region with no villages to be seen
anywhere. When they reached Dalga they were
faced with a picture of utter desolation. At
Dalga railway station (100 km / 60 miles from
Bucharest) they saw to their left side, about a
mile in the distance, an unholy muddle. People,
horses, cattle, furniture etc. lay around the
open wheat and barley fields. The people were
trying to cut the half-grown wheat and barley
which had ripened in the drought in order to
make bundles of stalks to protect themselves
against the unfamiliar searing heat of these
treeless steppes. Seeing this scene brought
panic and fear to every face and now gave the
deportees some idea of what fate awaited them.
So they weren’t bound for another lesson in
the land of Socialism after all, which most of
them had feared they would be. It was their own
country. A tender plea went up: Just let us get
away from here and see some trees and green
fields again.
A transport train with
families from Grossjetscha, Billed,
Kleinbetschkerek and Neubeschenowa had also
stopped at this station in Dalga. After their
rest stop, the other trains carried on further
down the line to Ciulnita station. A train with
families from Grossjetscha and other Banat
villages stopped at this station, too. From
there they went on further until all the
families from the German villages were scattered
around and their original communities were torn
apart. That seemed to be the plan.
It
took three to four days for the deportees to
reach their final destination.
At every
pre-arranged station there were already small
farm carts and the occasional truck awaiting the
deportees. Every family had to load their
possessions onto these carts, causing much
turmoil and commotion. The many strange, dubious
faces of the drivers (mostly gypsies) were
frightening enough. Because their carts were so
small, people’s possessions had to be divided
amongst five or six carts. In their desperate
situation they couldn’t have enough eyes and
ears to keep track of who had loaded what onto
which cart. Only later did people realize that,
added to all this bitter misery, many of the
necessary items amongst their already meager
belongings had been lost. If anyone asked a
driver ‘where are we going to, is it far from
here?’, it was all in vain for they were given
no reply. It was as though they hadn’t even
heard the question. The drivers had had strict
instructions not to speak to any of the
deportees or make any kind of contact with them,
for these were all dangerous, bloodthirsty
Titoists! We only heard about all this
later from the locals.
The distance from
the railway stations to the pre-destined
unloading areas was between two and ten
kilometers (1 - 5 miles) and sometimes further.
The way from the station led through the
Steppes and prairie until they stopped at the
fields planted with wheat, barley, cotton or
prairie grass. Here, plots for each family had
already been marked out by small holes in the
ground and mounds of earth, some of them with 20
cm (8”) high posts, each with a small board with
a number, or even the name of the allocated
family, written on it. Every family had to
unload their possessions between two of these
mounds of earth, or posts, and this was now
their future home, beneath the stars, no trees
to be seen anywhere. Added to this, the searing
heat of the Baragan Steppes, no wells, only
wind, dust and drought.
This was the
inferno, the real beginning of the great tragedy
of all deportees which drove everyone, both
young and old, to despair.
Desperate
need of shelter forced everyone to build some
sort of cover against the sun and wind out of
the few pieces of furniture brought with them
and to cover them with any available doors or
tarpaulins right on the first day and for their
first night under the stars. After that, the
food, which had been hastily packed before the
long journey into the unknown, was unpacked. Any
stoves or cookers which had been taken along
were then set up, or else a fire was built in a
hastily dug hole in the ground so that a hot
meal could be prepared and eaten.
Any
surviving livestock which had been brought along
was also looked after and the chickens which had
survived the journey were let loose. From all
the fear experienced so far, everyone was
exhausted and soon fell into a deep sleep under
the Baragan sky.. Later, awakened by the early
morning sun and still half asleep, no-one could
really understand what had happened, where they
were - above us the blue sky and around us
everything dreary and desolate. Only now did it
dawn on people that this was to be their new
home, built out of absolutely nothing.
The main worry here, being almost like a desert,
was the need to find drinking water. It was
collected from far a field in buckets and
barrels on the carts, but in insufficient
quantities and not always in completely hygienic
conditions. This water also had to suffice for
washing, but unfortunately one could usually
only manage to wipe down with a damp cloth
because water was so scarce. Because there was
not a single source of water available on the
new settlement plots, people began to work
together digging wells right from the start, at
least one well in each marked out street. Only a
few of the new settlements were lucky enough to
find water not far from the surface; in most
cases water was only found around 10 meters
(30’) and often 20 - 30 meters (60 - 90’) deep.
The water in these wells was in most cases
unpalatable because of the high salt content,
but could be used for building the houses and
for the livestock. So, many people had to get
their drinking water from far a field.
As already mentioned, the first thing that was
done was to build the necessary shelter against
the wind and searing heat out of furniture
covered with all sorts of towels, covers,
tarpaulins, and then this was covered with
bundles of wheat or barley. This shelter,
however, was insufficient. Now, many families
began to dig themselves into the ground and to
build earthen dugouts. These measured, according
to need, 6m long, 2.5m wide and 1.80m deep (20’
x 8’ x 6’). These were covered with all sorts of
twigs or brushwood and then smeared over with a
mixture of clay and chopped up withered grass.
This accommodation could not withstand the rain
which caught everyone unawares a few days after
arriving. As soon as the straw covering, which
had been laid over the towels etc., became
saturated, the rain came through the roof. Now
people started looking for shelter under an
umbrella or a table top and the children even
found shelter in cupboards and wardrobes, as did
some adults, too. Those in the earthen dugouts
didn’t fare much better. They were protected
above, but the rainwater poured into the dugouts
around the sides and they were soon knee-high in
water. For better accommodation every family had
to begin at once to build a house out of mud. A
new village would be built here, a new Heimat.
Two types of houses were planned: A small one
measuring 7m long, 4.80m wide and 2.4m high (23’
x 15’ x 8’) with one room and a kitchen; for
larger families one measuring 11m x 5.5m x 2.4m
(36’ x 18’ x 8’) with two rooms and a kitchen.
Doors, windows and building timber, as well as
planks and slats, were distributed to every
family. Materials for the roof, however, had to
be found by the people themselves.
As
well as the job of building their own houses,
every family was obligated to work for a certain
number of hours, unpaid, building the public
buildings such as the town hall, police station,
school, dispensary, shops etc. At the end of
October 1951, three or four months after their
arrival, almost all the buildings were ready to
be inhabited. Moving into the houses they had
built so laboriously for themselves was at least
a small feeling of relief to all the deportees,
to not have to sleep out in the open any more,
or in the earthen dugouts.
The deportees
had no rights and only got their identity cards
back in the summer of 1953, with the remark
‘Zwangsaufenthalt’ (Compulsory / forced
stay) stamped on them. They were not allowed to
leave their village and were heavily guarded at
work, too. In December 1955 the deportees
received new identity cards without the previous
remark stamped on them and at the same time they
also received permission to return to their old
homes. Indescribable joy for everyone. Many were
not allowed, or could not leave until the spring
of 1956 and a few had to stay on doing hard
labor. They were the families of Adam Gilde
(house number 61), Adam Tix (165) and the widow
Magdalena Dohr (411).
157 families from
Grossjetscha were affected by this destiny and
the number of people in the Baragan totaled 452.
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