BALKANS-SOCIETY: Bitter Memories Cloud This Homecoming

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Sep 6 2005 (IPS) - “Death to fascism, freedom to the people”, they used to say for years after driving German occupying forces out of what was then Yugoslavia.

It was more than a slogan. That line was repeated in a secret document dated Nov. 29, 1944, signed by Gen. Ivan Rukavina, a leader among the partisans who liberated the land from German forces.

In that document, released only recently from Serbian archives, Gen Rukavina ordered three army corps to “urgently gather all the (ethnic) German male population aged 16-60 and to send them to the camps designed for collective stay” in the area under his jurisdiction.

That order sealed the destiny of some 480,000 ethnic German civilians living in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.

Earlier, on Nov. 11, 1944, the provisional Yugoslav partisan government ordered all (ethnic) Germans to be deprived of their citizens’ rights, real estate and other property. At the time there were more than 800,000 ethnic Germans in the country.

But it was not just men who were taken to camps in Vojvodina. Thousands of children, women and elderly people ended up in cramped facilities, where many died of typhoid and other diseases. Survivors were later transported to Bavaria in Germany by 1948.

Vojvodina Germans in Bavaria place the number of dead at 112,000. They provide names, dates of birth and the places and circumstances of the death of each victim.

In recent times many Germans, who grew up in the camps as children, have returned to Vojvodina to visit the places of their birth, small towns like Backi Brestovac, Vrsac, Kula, Vrbas, Bac and Apatin.

A memorial service was held recently Knicani village in Vojvodina where the largest camp existed from 1944 until 1948. Some 12,000 Germans died in this camp alone, mostly women, children and elderly people.

Hundreds of survivors and the relatives of the dead attended the service in Vojvodina. For most it was the first visit since the 1940s.

“This is a chance to remember, but also to forgive,” Herbert Heinz (77) told IPS in perfect, though a bit archaic Serbian. “We are happy to be able to come over here…it is no search for revenge or compensation, we’re too old for that.”

The property of the Germans went to the state and the poor. Factories and small firms were taken over by the communist state. The homeless from the war were housed in the Germans’ property. Hundreds of thousands acres of farms owned by Germans in the fertile Vojvodina region were divided into small lots and distributed to the poor. The ethnic structure of the province was transformed.

The moves ended a long German presence. Ethnic Germans were invited to settle in Vojvodina more than three centuries ago by the Austro-Hungarian empire that ruled at the time.. This was a border region with the Turkish empire, and few people settled here, because they feared incursions by Turks.

“World War II ended 300 years of one civilisation and culture,” historian Zoran Ziletic told IPS. “And no one ever said we’re sorry.”

The issue of ethnic Germans was taboo for six decades in Serbia, and in all regions of former Yugoslavia. An Association for Serb-German Cooperation was established after communists fell from power in 2000 here.

But the communist ideology still holds sway so far as ethnic Germans are concerned. Many historians recall the engagement of ethnic Germans in the war effort. “Thousands of young Germans joined the occupying troops,” historian Simo Kostic wrote in an article in the prominent daily Politika.

“The archive the occupying troops left behind showed that the evacuation of at least 90,000 men in the service of the Wermacht (the German army) was carried out meticulously in November 1944. So, the (ethnic) Germans decided to leave on their own. As for the collective camps where the others were put, the circumstances were as those prevailing in the rest of the economically devastated country.”

Other historians not under the pressure of any ideology have a more realistic approach. “This is not a matter of ideology, revenge or anything of the kind,” historian Todor Kuljic told IPS. “It’s historic justice that should be served.”