The wine harvest slowly came to an end in 1944, and the grape juice lay well kept in the cellars.  Already during the harvest time one heard the frequent dull thunder in the east, the radio reported about the fierce battles in the Banat where the German troops were in alleged victorious battles with the Russians, blocking them from crossing over the Theiß.  It spoke of the ignorance and honesty of the Sekitsch people, that the speaker on the radio believed that the cannon thunder should be ignored.  How could this speaker tell such a lie!  At least the cautious citizens of Sekitsch disreguarded him.  On the 9th of October 1944 about a hundred people with about 100 horse wagons fled Sekitsch early in the morning.

           The people staying back encountered two very unpleasant surprises at the same time on the 18th of October 1944.

           Bright and early in the morning a cavalry of SS (about 30 to 40 men) came to Sekitsch to displace the community.  They were mainly Bosnian Muslims led by some German non-commissioned officers and a German lieutenant colonel.  The lieutenant colonel called them together for a meeting in the community house in the early morning, explained the reason for his presence, spoke of the Communist atrocities of which they had no idea and asked the population to leave as quickly as possible. 

           Whoever decided to flee had to say so immediately and register.  In the meantime his soldiers confiscated all the horses and wagons from the village and the area and ordered the resettlement.  This was bitter news for the inhabitants of Sekitsch,  After all the fanfare of victory one now had to leave his homeland so suddenly, perhaps forever.  What they wanted least of all was to be turned upside down.  So very few people announced they would resettle and these few would be transported out with a last glance.

           Around the middle of the same day news spread that at the upper end of Hahnen Street, to the “hollow”, two Rissian riders were seen.  The German lieutenant colonel did not want to believe it.  He got on a bicycle and rode accompanied by some local men to meet the Russians.  When he arrived at his destination armed with only a revolver to meet the Russians, but they were shot and quickly incapacitated by their automatic weapons.  It did not last even half an hour.  The lieutenant colonel was brought groaning to consult with the only remaining doctor in the village, Dr. Hartmann, who cared for him made him able to be travel.  He had a slug in his femur, a grazing shot on the forehead, and one in the chest.  On one of the doctor’s stretchers the lieutenant colonel was tansported out in a truck.  He was accompanied by two young girls who voluntarily went with him.  On the one hand the injured lieutenant colonel was to supervise, on the other hand he himself had to be saved from the danger zone.  These girls were Margarethe Leibersperger and Lieschen Gerber, both from Feketitsch.  The truck did not reach its destination.  It fell into the hands of the Batschka Partisans near Petrovac and all passengers were shot dead.  A short time after the evacuation of the wounded lieutenant colonel several rows of riders moved down Main Street, coming from the north, with two officers at its head.  To the inhabitants of Sekitsch who had assembled at the community house, these riders were mistakenly viewed as German soldiers until suddenly screams were heard and “everyone take cover” was called.  The few German soldiers ran into the nearest homes and opened fire.  The first shot, from the house of Wilhelm Haug at 659 Main Street, killed one of the Russian officers.  As it turned out later, it was dealt with by a lieutenant colonel.  The Sekitsch inhabitants fled from the shooting into the cellar of the community house, parsonage, and the surrounding homes in whose feared expectation should now come.

           The Russians, surprised by the resistance of a few German soldiers, moved immediately to the northern end of the village and now the wider front gripped the village.  Now the people heard the smaller shots.  The resistance did not last long and Sekitsch was definitely in Russian hands.  Nobody else died in this battle.  Besides the Russian lieutenant colonel.  He was buried in front of the school, opposite the church.

           What was worse was what followed.  The next day all of the homes were thoroughly searched, exchanged many objects of value, especially cocks, the possessions, and the laments of the girls and women towards the administration was ever louder and never ceased. 

           The house of the community doctor, Dr. Hartmann, was confiscated for the erection of a military hospital.  The Hartmann family was left with one room and the kitchen.  Dr. Hartmann was allowed to use the operating rooms for his own purposes, but he had to examine the X-rays of the wounded Russian soldiers in front of a Russian commission.  The hospital furnishings and equipment such as beds, bed linens, etc. the local resident population carried together.  The relationship of the Hartmann family to the Russian medical personnel was very good.  The Russians protected the family where they could.

           The Russian hospital remained in Sekitsch for about a month.  Then the troops moved on.

           After the withdrawal of the Russians, the Partisans moved in.  They had a bad reputation with everyone in the area and didn’t like to work.  Slovenly lives, slave driving, robbing, and expropriating were activities which the “Partisans” liked very much which was understood very quickly.  The nationality hatred knew no boundary.

           The Sekitsch people are faithful to the victims who fell.  They, who would not harm a hair on anybody, wanted to stay in their homeland.  They had trusted that the ones who had done something wrong would take responsibility for it as this was usual with cultivated people.  They expected the same treatment as the Yugoslavian minorities during the Hungarian occupation.  The author of this book remembered himself that his father hid the Serbian neighbor who had the Sekitsch chief of police after the Hungarians marched into Sekitsch in 1941 and protected him from lynching at the moment of the coup.  For this lifesaving act he found no advocate after the Partisans marched in, yet not one saved him.  What use was a good conscience, no wrong done, when one was German!

           The whole male population between 15 and 60 years old had to turn up in the large schoolyard of the new school as soon as morning came.  All non-Germans were separated, and the German men and boys were, without being able to say goodbye to their families, brought to Batschka-Topola 17 kilometers away on foot under Partisan guard.  On this march Franz Becker from 660 Main Street was shot because he could not keep in step.  Also Phillip Thomas from 980 Nußbaum Street died during this trek because of his heart condition.

           How could one lack responsibility to care for people’s lives when it came to the treatment of “Swabians.”  It showed killing without reason in Sekitsch when the very well-respected barber Jakob Müller at 819 Schwaben Street was shot in his belly by someone “to pass the time”, and then refused to send him to the hospital.  The deathly ill man died in horrible agony due to a stomach inflammation. 

           The memorable party congress of the Yugoslavian Communists in Jajce on 11/29/1943 (probably the most shameful), one of the most diligent branches of the people, the Germans, who had been declared to be free as a bird, made the decision for the total extermination and displacement of these people.  All that they had, their lives, their homeland, possessions, house and yard, cattle, money, food, and clothing were taken away from them.  So ended the fate of a minority, because the powerful claim all rights for themselves! 

           The village of Sekitsch was declared a concentration camp and received the name “Logor Sekić pod naročitim režimom”, which means “Camp Sekitsch under special administration.”

           Now the harassment began.  At first the inhabitants had to move from the west half of the village to the east half.  They were allowed to take with them what they could carry, yet the Partisans said to them that it made little sense because later everything would be taken away anyway.  After the move happened, the western half of the village was plundered.  Furniture, grain, cattle, poultry, underwear, and all food supplies were taken away.  Then the inhabitants were moved back to their empty homes in the western half of the village and the eastern half of the village was plundered as well.  The work was carried out by the people living in the homes themselves.  The supervising Partisans thought of providing themselves with the best things where they could get it.  Fortunately the work commandos also understood this, to create a diversion, as nothing was ready in the camp the first week and people had to starve or freeze to death. 

           On New Year’s Eve of 1944 the population was called together.  A glimmer of hope overcame the camp inmates, although each had to know that nothing good was to be expected.  Some skeptics feared the worse, yet these fears were unfounded.  The head of the Partisans said his wish for the new year was merely to transfer the inhabitants.  He actually did this because he wished the worst that heaven could give.  The inmates should move forward in their future in the new year as a result.

           So began the year 1945.  Things turned out as the commandant wished.  Humiliation, annoyance, and beatings were the accompanying music on the way of many camp inmates to their death.  The Partisans robbing them of their manliness competed with each other in the use of barbaric methods when they went around to accomplish “heroic deeds” on a defenseless population.  There the predominant majority of the Yugoslavian population, including our former Serbian neighbors, distanced themselves from these deeds, must have been treated as the waste of the dregs of the Yugoslavian people by these Partisans.  The newly settled people from Montenegro came from the Yugoslavian state to a kind of camp at the time and complained about the bad board and lodging of the German inmates.  The doctor was served bread that was inedible.  Instead of grain and salt this bread contained coarse meal, clay, and sand.  While the population starved about 40 to 50 Partisans butchered a fattened pig which they could not eat up themselves, only to throw it away.  They did not miss the pigs because the “Swabians” cared for them, and that was sufficient reason.  Only they did not permit any butchering for themselves.  And so these German people who could work themselves was visibly less, which they worried about themselves, and with them the “prosperity” of the Partisans dwindled because they didn’t want to work.

           As the new colonists arrived in Sekitsch rooms and larders were empty.  The new citizens of Sekitsch had to content themselves with the little that the Partisans had left behind.  The Partisans, who had each settled down in a full German house, vacated the homes again and left the village.  They did not admit to all the stolen goods they had taken with them.  Especially in Mileševo homes were later found full of furniture from Sekitsch.

           From the highest Yugoslavian position instructions were given on how the new colonists were to be received.  Most of the people spend the rest of their lives in woods and on poor strips of land, many of them physically drained and neglected.  They should be disinfected before they move into their homes.  Across from the train station on a Sallasch a model disinfection station was erected.  All of the hairdressers still present in the village were brought together to cut hair.  While the new citizens should take a bath, one wanted to delouse their clothes so they would arrive completely clean in their new homeland.  Everyone was prepared for the best, but it turned out completely different.  The colonists showed no need to be clean.  “We are fighters,” they cried.  “We do not let anyone order us around!”  Not a single one went into the disinfection station, all ran to the village.  Most of these people came from primitive circumstances.  They had never come into contact with civilization.  For example, they knew nothing about electric current, they laid next to the beds to sleep, and they didn’t know what a stove was for.  From their habit of spitting in the area, one soon no longer knew where to step.  Two days after their arrival the living quarters were dirty and filled with lice.  It was really a lamentable beginning!  If one were to visit these people today, they would not be recognized.  Their homes are orderly, their clothing is good.  There are no lice today.  Lasting work in educating them by the state and their new surroundings have laid the foundation for change.

            The Sekitsch Camp inmates were brought over to the western half of the village in 1945.  There was no longer any furniture in these homes, so the people lived on straw.  Everyone on Main Street went to the cross street, the so-called Kreuz Street, because the Main Street was cordoned off with barbed wire, however the camp inmates were not prevented from occasionally slipping through to get food from Feketitsch or Hegyesch.  If someone was caught during such wanderings trying to slip away, he was beaten and thrown in the cellar for the night.  Yet the unauthorized excursions continue as hunger drove people to danger.  It speaks volumes for the great imagination of the people of Sekitsch that nobody in their camp died of hunger.  Nor was anyone in the camp shot or beaten to death.  Eighty year old Wilhelm Burger  from 861 Leiter Street died as a result of being forbidden access to a hospital.  A boy fell ill of acute appendicitis on 5/26/1945.  He would have been saved by an operation.  Yet on orders from the senior commander of the APV (Autonomous Province of Vojvodina) he was not allowed in the hospital.  The appendix burst and the boy died of a festering peritoneal infection on 5/29/1945.

           So began the tragedies.  Beginning in March 1945 the camp commandant (a Hungarian from Subotica) and the camp doctor, Dr. Hartmann, made a phone call in Banalpalast (Banovina) to Neusatz.  When both of them met there they were received by the thunderous scream of an employee.  Both were accused of permitting a “Swabian” to be referred to a hospital.  He had a lot of gall when there were not enough places for “naši ljudi” (our people) in the hospitals.  He wanted to know what right did the camp commandant have to approve such a referral.  The camp doctor carried out the referral, defended the commandant, and there was no appropriate contrary determination to deny his approving the referral.  The camp doctor for his part followed his oath to help all the sick regardless of nation or religion, so he had to transfer the sick there where he could help them.

           Between Christmas 1944 and January 1945 all of the girls and women between 18 and 35 years of age capable of working were brought together and escorted to the Kula Train Station where they were loaded in a truck.  These young girls and women were escorted by the Russians to be deported to the Ukraine to work in the coalmines and the stone quarries in the Donetsk region.  The same happened to the boys and men between the ages of 18 and 45 capable of working who were in Subotica at the time.  Through the years there they had to perform the most difficult work.  Many of them did not return.  The people remaining in the Sekitsch Camp were sent in large and small groups as work colonies at work sites in the interior of the land.

           In August 1945 a dispatch came to the camp which urgently demanded the erection of an isolation ward for about 500 people.  Many of these people were ill with typhus and it had to be prevented by all means so they came in contact with all colonists.  The homes on Geisenberg and Churchyard (Jerusalem) Streets were planned by the camp commandant and the camp doctor to be the isolation wards.  Both streets were closed off with barbed wire.

           The people to be treated were Germans from the whole settlement region who had fled from the Russians but now wanted to return to their homeland again.  Their transport between Budapest and back to Subotica lasted three months.  At Subotica they were denied entry into Yugoslavia because they were Germans and in Budapest they were always deported by the Hungarian authorities because they were

            Yugoslavian.  During the trip there and back and epidemic broke out and it was thought to be typhus.  The dead were simply thrown from the train.  None of the living grieved themselves. It was accepted that the recent intervention of the International Red Cross was to be thanked for finally bringing this to an end.  The people came to Sekitsch and were sent to an isolation ward.  Yet a new problem occurred here.  Due to the unhappiness many of the poor had to submit to, they no longer trusted in their fellow man.  They hid their sick for fear that they would always be separated from them. 

            Vainly one persuaded them that the isolation of the sick in special rooms in the interest of all is absolutely necessary.  It did not help that the medical personnel of the camp were forced to track down each nook and cranny to find all the sick people.  For cases that needed to be isolated the home of Friedrich Weingärtner at 969 Nußbaum Street was prepared.  The sick people already found in the camp were put up in the neighboring homes.  No more beds existed, so they had to lay on straw.  It is typical under the circumstance of the plundering of the Partisans that almost every house in a village no longer had beds in its “extra room” for the sick.  After laboratory examinations of blood, stool, and urine it was established that the isolated cases were to be treated for the stomach typhus epidemic.  The camp doctor did not need to employ a special therapy to treat it because the most important means of treatment in such cases, the scant nourishment, was given in the camp.  Most of the ill starved themselves to health.  Besides that the people had very little money (Groschen) put together to buy the least cardiac agents from the Hegyesh pharmacy through an intermediary.  What devoted care was allocated to the most critically ill by the camp doctor and the medical personnel is also evident from the fact that of the 135 cases of stomach typhus, only 27 people died.  Besides the camp doctor, Dr. Hartmann, the medical personnel of the camp hospital included Béla Scherer who came from Feketitsch, the son of deceased doctor from there, as well as Heinrich Klos, the pharmacist who also came from Feketitsch, and fellow Sekitsch citizen Christian Hunsinger from 618 Main Street.  These collaborators took in the sick in such a way that trained medical personnel could not have done any better.  Dr. Hartmann and the assistants named helped the poorest of the poor in the name of humanity.  This was often the situation where they themselves had nothing to gain.  With the mention of their names in connection with this we therefore also thank them for their beneficial work.

           In the meantime a delivery institute was opened in the Sekitsch Camp which was set up in the home of Ludwig Becker at 919 Kula Street.  It consisted of two rooms with two beds each for the women in labor and a delivery room.  The leading midwife, Philippine Leibersperger, who came from Feketitsch, was a very diligent and orderly woman who knew her trade.  Besides her at her side there was Lenke Hellermann, the head of the orphanage in Feketitsch, and the assistants Gretchen Klaus, Gretchen Bensinger, Veronika Hellermann born Gebel, and Sofia Lehr.  The cooks were Salomea Becker born Christ and her sister-in-law Katharina Fetzer born Becker.  The delivery ward worked very well.  There were very many births which treated almost exclusively the children of the colonists.  The delivery ward was also not spared of complications, yet cases of death did not occur.

           In the Kinkel’s house at 759 Schwaben Street the camp authorities erected an outpatient clinic to look after the camp inmates.  The camp doctor also had his office hours here.  The sick colonists were treated at the doctor’s private office at 623 Main Street.  This treatment was free at first.  First an ambulatory first aid station was opened by the community administration at the home of Philipp Becker at 658 Main Street and the community had no interest in that very possibly all of the sick would be treated at this station, but then the people started to pay a fee to see the doctor during private hours.

           At the end of World War II there was a great lack of doctors in the Batschka.  Doctors from Hungary who were called in during the Hungarian occupation went back to Hungary, while others, especially German doctors, were shot, and there were no young doctors.  So there were at times only five doctors in the whole Topola District.  Of them, only two doctors were residents of Sekitsch (Dr. Hartmann), one in Moravica, and one in Čantavir.  They all had smaller and larger communities to care for.  The Sekitsch doctor also looked after Feketitsch, and for one year Hegyesch after the doctor from Macedonia was transferred, and to Milesevo 12 kilometers away where many Partisans themselves moved back after the influx of new colonists.  The Sekitsch doctor ordinarily was in Sekitsch twice a week, in Feketitsch twice a week, one a week in Hegyesch, and once a week in Milesevo.

           The outlook was almost as sad for the pharmacists.  As a German in Feketitsch Jakob Häuser had to go into the camp, and his pharmacy was confiscated.  The Seketitsch pharmacist Béla Toth was inducted into the military and did not return to the community.  His pharmacy was also expropriated.  So of the three neighboring communities only the Hegyesch pharmacy remained.

           The year 1945 was the most difficult year in the camp overall.  This is shown by the sumber who died this year.  While the number of deaths in normal years was 70 to 80, the number climbed to 345 in 1945 in the Sekitsch Camp.  Of these deaths 180 alone were people from Sekitsch.  From the records available from the Sekitsch Camp we also owe the knowledge about the causes of death.  According to these records the deaths in the Sekitsch Camp in 1945 can be attributed to: