CIVIL-Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia: The official platform
of anti-fascist League of Southeastern Europe
The AVNOJ-Regulations and
the Genocide of the Germans
in Yugoslavia between
1944-1948
The AVNOJ-Regulations had
affected the German ethnic group in the national territory of the former Kingdom of
Yugoslavia, which, up to the beginning of the Second World War, had consisted of 540 000
people; 510 000 of these belonged to the Donauschwaben (Danube-Schwabians), who
primarily lived in the western Banat, the Batschka, Syrmia, Slavonia, the Baranja-Triangle,
and Croatia. The Danube-Schwabians had been resettled in this area by the Habsburgs
between 1689 and 1787 after Turkish rule.
[map of the Danube-Schwabian
settlement area]
About 30 000 people belonged
to the Deutsch-Untersteirer (German Lower-Styrians) and the Gottscheers. Since the
Middle Ages, the settlement area of the German Lower-Styrians had been part of the
Herzogtum Steiermark (Duchy of Styria). The Gotschee in the Herzogtum Krain (Duchy of
Krain) was settled from Kärnten (Carinthia) and Osttirol (East Tirol) in the 14th
century.
[map of the German Lower-Styrian
and Gotschee settlement area]
The Yugoslavian Kingdom joined
the Dreimächtepakt (Pact of Three Powers) between Germany, Italy and Japan on 25 March
1941. Consequently, Serbian officers carried out a coup d’etat against the Yugoslavian
government and pronounced the Prince Regent Peter, who was a minor at that time, as
Peter II Karadjordjević the new king; he appointed airforce general Dušan Simović prime
minister. Prince Regent Paul took care of the King's businesses. Peter was the son of
Alexander, who had been murdered. On 5 April 1941, the Yugoslavian Kingdom under Peter
II signed a friendship and non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. The German
Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler gave the direct order to “destroy the Yugoslavian state by
military force”. After the military capitulation of the Yugoslavian army on 17 April
1941, Yugoslavia was distributed between Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. The
German Reich incorporated Untersteiermark (Lower Styria), the Mießtal (Miess Valley)
and Oberkrain (Upper Krain), and made them part of the two Reichsgaus (Reich districts)
Carinthia and Styria under German civilian administration.
The Gottschee became an
Italian sovereign territory, however, the Gottscheers were resettled in the Brežice,
along the River Sava, during the war. On 10 April 1941, Croatia declared itself the
Independant State of Croatia (USK), under Ante Pavelić, the leader of the Ustaša-Movement.
The Germans of Slavonia, Sirmia and Bosnia fell under Croatia’s sphere of control. The
Western Banat remained within the Serbian state under German military rule. The Banat
Danube-Schwabians received an extensive self-government. The Serbian state, under the
leadership of General Milan Nedić, played the role, as far as it was able, to
successfully keep the cruel battles between the Partisans and the Czetnics away from the
Serbian homeland. The Batska, and the Baranja Triangle area including the Danube-Schwabians
fell to Hungary.
Yugoslavian Resistance
Opposition to the occupation
regime caused the formation of resistance movements, which, in their first phase,
stemmed from a wide vista of political and ideological backgrounds. On 26 April 1941,
the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People (Osvobodilna fronta slovenskega narodna,
OF) was established in Ljubljana, comprising both left-wing and right-wing political
activists. Soon the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), until then only active in the
underground, assumed the role of the leading force in the Yugoslavian resistance. On 4
June 1941, the Polit-buro of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia met in Belgrade in order to organise strategies for a large-scale partisan
movement in the occupied territories.
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)
[photo: SLO 2; title: the
extermination camp Tüchern]
Imprint
Editor: Felix Ermacora
Institut-
Forschungsstätte für die
Völker der Donaumonarchie
Copyright by Felix Ermacora
Institut
Text and Proofreading: Peter
Wassertheurer, M.A.
Translation: Simon Coles,
B.A.
Illustrations:
Donauschwäbische Arbeitsgemeinschaft
Production: Ertl-Druck.
Mollardgasse 85a,
A-1060 Vienna
