Prior to World War II there were about 650,000 Danube Swabians
(ethnic Germans) in Yugoslavia. By 1948, a few years after the Tito
regime took power, there were practically none!
Many managed to flee to safety in the West, but the majority of
those who remained in their homeland perished. Loathsome, heavily
armed partisan bands who followed the Red Army into neat German
villages, towns and cities wreaked havoc among the utterly
defenseless populace.
People were driven from their homes, knifed, bludgeoned and shot to
death. The able-bodied of both sexes were deported to slave labor
camps in Russia and Yugoslavia. The physically handicapped, mothers
with young children, the aged and others who were unable or
unwilling to flee, were herded into partisan concentration camps
where they died by the tens of thousands from summary executions,
maltreatment, disease and denial of medical aid.
The final irony for a providential rural people was to die a slow
death from deliberate state-enforced starvation. When the regime
closed the camps in 1948 for lack of potential victims, the Tito
regime had effectively wiped out the largest non-Slavic ethnic
community in the country.
This, despite the fact that the Danube Swabians had harmed no one,
had been among the first settlers in this former Hapsburg territory
at least 200 years before the Yugoslav state even existed, had lived
in peace and harmony among some of the most diverse and volatile
peoples in Europe, and were invariably regarded by these as
moderate, industrious, law-abiding people!
by Frank Schmidt
Copyright: Heimat Publishers
Reprinted with permission of the author
Lest We
Forget!