Atrocities
"Genocide Carried out by the Tito Partisans"
Österreichische
Historiker-Arbeitsgemeinschaft Für Kärnten und Steiermark
(Austrian Historian Working
Group for Kärnten and Steiermark)
Translated by
Henry Fischer
Published at www.dvhh.org,
Sept. 2006 by Jody McKim Pharr
Chapter
Four: Syrem, Slavonia,
Baranya: The Cauldron
Baranya
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 Gakovo. 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.
