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"Völkermord der Tito-Partisanen" 1944-1948
"Genocide Carried out by the Tito Partisans"
Österreichische Historiker-Arbeitsgemeinschaft Für Kärnten und Steiermark, 1992
(Austrian Historian Working Group for Kärnten & Steiermark) 
Translated & Contributed by Henry Fischer. Edited & Published at dvhh.org by Jody McKim, Sep. 2006
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Syrem, Slavonia, Baranya: The Cauldron

Baranya
Tito's Starvation Camps


Belmonoschtor

     The small portion of Baranya that was at first part of the Wojwodina, was annexed to Croatia in the spring of 1945.  In the fall of 1944, the Partisans allied with the Red Army had gone far beyond the Yugoslavian border and had taken not only the Hungarian part of the Batschka as far as Baja, but also the Hungarian County of Baranya up to Pecs.  While they co-operated with the Red Army in the rounding up of the able bodied among the German population for slave labour in Russia in the Hungarian Batschka, in the Baranya the Partisans began with the arrests and internment of German civilians in concentration and slave labour camps.  This herding of the German population into camps in the Baranya resulted mostly after they had finished working on fortifying defensive positions for the Russian army, which had involved some 14,000 laborers from the Batschka.  Those from the Baranya, both men and women in these brigades were not released, but interned in slave labour camps in the Batschka, overwhelmingly in Sombor.  Those who were not fit for work from among the German population from the vicinity of Bezdan on the other side of the Danube and the German villages and mixed villages in its vicinity were all taken to Gakowa.  In the Baranya the Hungarian assimilation process had been most effective and many of the families involved no longer spoke German and considered themselves to be Hungarians with German names.  The vast majority of the German population of Baranya were taken to the camp at Belmonoschtor (Beli Manastir).  There in its vicinity, close to Grabowatz, in the spring of 1945, thirty-six German persons, both men and women, who were too sick to work were shot. 

     In Belmonoschtor itself the Partisans carried out a reign of terror from the point that they set up their military government there.  Countless German men, mostly intellectuals, including the local priest, Theodor Klein, the mayor Johann Seller, the innkeeper Franz Gunter, the merchant Wittmayer and his father-in-law Jakob Binder were all shot and were buried out in the fields.  They cut off pieces of Father Klein’s body while he was still alive and rubbed salt in his wounds.  They left him lying there in pain until he finally died.  The camp in Belmonoschtor was closed in the fall of 1946 and the surviving inmates were transferred to Tenje by Esseg.  On January 20th the camp in Tenje was also closed and the rest of the survivors were sent to Rudolfsgnad.


Last Updated: 04 Feb 2020

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