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The Swabians - This is the largely unknown story of the peaceful settlement of German pioneers on the crown lands of Hapsburg Hungary from 1683 to 1790, their incalculable contribution to the development of the region, the dismemberment of their settlement areas after World War I and their expulsion and genocide in the years 1945 to 1948. By Frank Schmidt Among the vast literature of World War II related events, the awful and highly consequential saga of the Danube Swabians has been relegated to oblivion. Not having a country to call their own, Danube Swabians have an identity problem. They are descendants of German pioneers who settled in Hapsburg Hungary (and subsequently Romania and Yugoslavia) after the territory was recovered from 150 years of Turkish rule in the 17th and 18th centuries by German troops commanded by the legendary Prince Eugene of Savoy, a Frenchman in the service of the Hapsburg dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. This took place decades before the United States became an independent republic and the English took Canada from the French, and some 200 years before Romania and Yugoslavia even existed. The fact that 1.6 million decent Danube Swabian people could be uprooted from their native soil, to be deported or massacred - not because of any guilt or wrongdoing - but solely because of their German ancestry is, in the parlance of today, a crime against humanity. One finds it incredible that the cruelty and enormity of these crimes, which greatly altered the demographic make-up of Europe, have been allowed to evaporate; a virtual historical nonentity! Danube Swabians are sometimes referred to as the newest German ethnic group. That's probably because they did not exist as an identifiable ethnocultural community before the latter half of the 17th century - just as there were no Canadians prior to that period. Only about a third of Danube Swabians can trace their ancestry to Swabia (Baden-Wurttemberg). But, because the earliest German settlers in Hungary were indeed Swabians, this term was applied to all Germans who settled in that country after the Turkish occupation. The settlers soon lost contact with their places of origin and adapted to the new surroundings. In their long sojourn on the Danubian Plain, far from the contiguous German-speaking areas of Europe, the Danube Swabians became a recognizable ethnocultural entity with its own unique customs, culture, traditions and distinctive speech; an amalgam of southwestern German dialects, akin to Pennsylvania Dutch. That is not as incongruous as it may seem, since both groups stem from the same German-speaking area of Europe. They created such classic edifices as the Parliament Buildings, the National Theater, the Opera, the Bourse, the Millenium Monument and the beautiful bridges that spanned the Danube. Royal Hungary's pre-eminence in mathematics, education and the sciences was largely due to the German element in the population. Franz Liszt, the composer and Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, "the Savior of Mothers," (who introduced the concept of disease-carrying microbes and whose insistence on sterile conditions saved many newborns) were both German-Hungarians who achieved lasting international renown. There were many others in every imaginable field of endeavor whose achievements brought great honor to Hungary. Up to 1918 the story of the Danube Swabians was entwined with the history of Hungary. However, Hungary was on the losing side in World War I and consequently lost two-thirds of its territory, awarded by the victors in the newly created successor states; Romania and a royal dictatorship called Yugoslavia after 1929. The partitioning of Hungary dealt a severe blow to the Danube Swabians. It split their settlements into three parts and delivered them to three chauvinistic, mutually antagonistic states. Only 700,000 Danube Swabians remained in Hungary, 350,000 became "Romanian" and the remaining 550,000 became the German national minority in Yugoslavia. Despite the fact that Danube Swabians had practically no contact with Germany over the centuries, after World War II they became the scapegoats who bore the brunt of the hatred against all things German caused by the behavior of the Reich Germans in the eastern occupied countries. The biggest blow to the existence of the Danube Swabians came during the latter part of, and in the aftermath of, World War II. In the summer of 1945 the leading statesmen of the victorious powers of World War II met at Potsdam to divide Europe into "spheres of influence." They sanctioned the cruel expropriation and expulsion of the entire German ethnic group of Hungary, with the sanctimonious proviso that it be "orderly and humane." The expulsion was anything but humane. Innocent people were driven from their hereditary homelands at gun point with but a few minutes notice. Why was this inhumane expulsion approved at Potsdam? The sad fact is that it was based solely on racial extraction. Those who were responsible for it were - in today's terminology - racists. During World War II Hungary sided with Germany to recover its lost territories in the fight against Communism. Without consulting the Danube Swabians, the governments of Royal Hungary, a kingdom without a king, and the German Reich signed an agreement whereby Hungary's Germans had the option of being drafted into the Hungarian army or joining German battle groups. Since both countries were fighting the same enemy, it was not a hard choice to make. Most opted for the Germans, because ethnically, culturally and linguistically they had more in common with them. After the war they would be classified as "traitors" by the communists, and were not allowed to return home. Though they were Hungarian citizens, the 700,000 Danube Swabians in the country were classed as Germans, not Magyars, or ethnic Hungarians. In a census taken before the war, they classed themselves as "German," as their ancestors had done before them. This was to be their undoing. The communist puppet regime used the census as a basis for their expropriation and deportation from Hungary. After two-thirds of the Danube Swabians bad been deported to refugee camps in war-torn Germany, where everything was in short supply, the Americans would not accept any more. When the deportation stopped only about 250,000 Danube Swabians remained in Hungary. For them, the uncertainty did not end until 1949, at which point they were granted some civil rights; just enough to allow them to remain anonymous while working for the benefit of the communist regime. Since the overthrow of the communists in Hungary and the consequent liberalization, there has been a complete about-face in the country's treatment of its German minority. Danube Swabians may now buy back their expropriated property. Their children, of whom only about 15% still speak German, may learn German as a second language in school. The German language is again the lingua franca of Eastern Europe; a role it has played for a thousand years in peaceful trade and the spread of Western culture and values. Knowledge of German is considered a great asset in dealing with the West. Today, after so many years of fear and repression, people are again proud to speak the tongue of their heritage. A German cultural center has been established at Pecs (Fünfkirchen) with the aid of former countrymen who had emigrated to Germany. It has become a mecca of German culture. In pre-war Yugoslavia the Danube Swabians were the largest non-Slavic national minority in the country. They made up only four percent of the country's total population. But in regions in which they formed a large part of the population they produced 67 percent of the country's total agricultural exports. Hemp, an important foreign exchange producing commodity in pre-war Yugoslavia was 94 percent in Danube Swabian hands, as was a disproportionate share of the locally manufactured goods, such as articles for the home, wagons and farm implements. In the spring of 1941 German and Hungarian forces broke into Yugoslavia and the Royal Yugoslav army disintegrated in a matter of days. Yugoslavia (and today's basically Serbian "rump Yugosiavia") was and is an artificial country. The majority of its diverse people had no wish to be included in a country where they had no say. Between the wars the government did nothing to earn their loyalty. Still, when the country mobilized for war just prior to the German/Hungarian invasion 85 percent of the Danube Swabians answered the call to arms. Only 35 percent of the Serbs in the same region showed up at recruiting centers. The main reason for their low turnout was due to the Hitler/Stalin pact. Tito, who was hiding in Zagreb under an assumed name, urged his Communist followers not to fight against the Germans since they were "allies" of Moscow. After the war, the same man had the gall to call the Danube Swabians enemies of the state for not resisting the aggressors. After Hitler's invasion of Russia the Yugoslav Communists, now on the side of the Soviet Union, entered the war they had rejected just a couple of months before. There were no less than six major resistance groups in the unoccupied mountains of Bosnia who made sorties against German supply lines to Greece. But mostly they fought each other. The Partisans, due to Churchill's support, soon gained the upper hand. They attacked isolated bases, and when the outnumbered Germans surrendered they were killed on the spot. Their bodies were mutilated in a manner utterly revolting to civilized people. The Germans retaliated by burning the villages that harbored Partisans, shooting 10 hostages for every German that was killed. These practices only intensified the struggle. There were so many forces fighting in the mountains the Germans didn't know who was who. It was a battle fought with the utmost cruelty by all sides. This struggle took place far from Danube Swabian settlements, and they were not involved in the conflict. In the fall of 1944, Tito's Anti-Fascist Council gathered at Jajce in Bosnia and passed a resolution which consisted of three main points. When the Yugoslav state was reestablished, those of "German" nationality (650,000 people, the largest non-Slavic ethnic group in prewar Yugoslavia) were to be dispossessed and deprived of all human rights, including the right to life. Their property was to be distributed among Tito's rough, unlettered fighters who were his main support. This was to be achieved through: 1. Mass liquidations. 2. Mass deportation. 3. Extermination through starvation and forced labor in concentration or labor camps. The Partisans would acquire the best homes in the country, as well as the farms and livestock of the dispossessed. Tito, the great benefactor, was indeed a man who gave his minions and peasant fighters something worth fighting for. They didn't have to work for that which fell into their hands. All they were required to do was to kill - and kill. When the Red Army drove through the neat Danube Swabian villages and towns in what was then the Hungarian Batschka and Baranya, Serbian Banat and Croatian Syrmia and Slavonia, Partisan bands followed in its wake. In this manner they took possession of their promised land. But first they had to liquidate the Swabians. The methods varied from place to place, but the result was the same; death, often by way of unspeakable torture. It happened so often that it was the rule rather than the exception. Their first victims were usually the mayor, the town council, priests, teachers, merchants, or anyone some Partisan took an exception to. The victims' hands were tied with wire and they were taken into a building where they were slaughtered by bloodthirsty Partisans who had long ago lost any sense of humanity. With victims lying helpless in the center, thoroughly inebriated butchers danced the kola in a circle and sang Partisan songs. From time to time they would break off, and in a frenzy of bloodletting took turns stabbing their prisoners to death, while relishing their screams and moans. Hefty Partizankas (female Partisans) took particular delight in cutting off the genitals of the victims while they still showed signs of life. When all the men in a community had been rounded up, those who appeared to be better off than the others, the hated "capitalists," were selected. They were marched out of town. At some point they were forced to dig their graves, and were then shot and buried. The others were deported to slave labor camps in Yugoslavia and Russia, where they were worked to death. Young women between the ages of 16 and 30 were rounded up and sent to Russia in cattle cars, where they slaved away at hard labor in ancient coal mines and building sites. When they were released after five years, one in four was never to see her home or family again. Broken and ailing women were transported to Germany. Some found family members and resumed normal lives. Practically all of these women bore physical and mental scars from which they would suffer for the rest of their lives. Others, the handicapped, women with young children, and the aged were forced out of their homes by coarse, well-armed Partisans. One can imagine the tears and wailing of utterly defenseless women with small children whose husbands were away, who were probably also caring for parents or grandparents, when they were given but a few minutes to leave their home forever. House, furniture, photo albums, gardens, domestic animals and a thousand memories had to be left behind. They were marched along dusty roads in columns of four, accompanied by an armed escort. A dozen Danube Swabian towns like Gakowa and Rudolfsgnad had been designated as concentration camps by Tito's henchman and closest advisor, Moise Pijade. He is said to be primarily responsible for the planned extermination of the Danube Swabians. The available houses in these towns had all been stripped of furniture and the "internees," as they were officially called, had to sleep on a straw covered floor, 30 to a room. Others slept in barns or stables. There was no fuel for heat and no cleaning materials. Since the intention was to starve them to death, the only food they obtained in camp was swill. Many were able to sustain life by stealing out of camp at night at the risk of their lives. They begged for food from the local Serbs or Hungarians, former neighbors who were mostly sympathetic and compassionate people. Had they not been so, no one would have survived in the camps. The Tito regime closed the camps in the spring of 1948. Those who perished from maltreatment, starvation and disease are buried in nearby mass graves, where no marker is placed to remind passers-by of the atrocities committed there. The emaciated few who remained alive did so by escaping into nearby Hungary and making their way to the West. As soon as the Partisans had taken over a town they selected young Danube Swabian women, preferably blondes, who were torn from families and taken to a compound at Pancevo (Pantschowa), across the river from Belgrade. There, they were kept like caged animals to satisfy the sexual lusts of Tito's elite troops. The inevitable happened; they all became infected with syphilis. To prevent it from spreading, the local army commander ordered the remaining 150 women to be taken to a remote pasture. There they were forced to strip, and were then summarily shot to death. The reason they had to take their clothes off was that the Partisans intended to sell them on the black market. In Yugoslavia at that time used clothing was at a premium, but would not be salable if riddled with bullet holes. About 40,000 orphaned Danube Swabian children were left behind in the camps after their mothers, grandparents and good neighbors had died of starvation or typhoid. There was no one left to care for them. They were taken to Communist children's homes in other parts of Yugoslavia and were given Slavic names. Consequently, they soon lost their language and German identity. As the Turks had done in past centuries with their enemies' children, they were raised as janissaries, fighters for Tito. However some 5,000 of the older children, aged eight to 12, who remembered their German ancestry, were sent to deportation centers such as Derventa Doboj-Usora. Every one of them was put to death. A Croatian prisoner, Ivan Baras, who now lives in Germany, was an eyewitness to this atrocity. He, along with other prisoners, had to take the children from railway cars to the killing site. In doing so had a chance to speak with the confused and crying children. He memorized some of their names and the places they came from. All were from Danube Swabian communities in the Batschka, Banat, Syrmia, Baranya and Slavonia. After the war, 5,000 of the orphaned children were located. With the aid of the German Red Cross these survivors were eventually reunited with relatives in the West. What happened to the other 30,000? No one seems to know. If they survived, it appears certain that they were raised as janissaries and know nothing of their German background. From those who were released to the West we know that they were led to believe that it was the Germans who had killed their parents. With its best workers gone, Yugoslavia soon became a beggar nation and received massive foreign aid from the U.S. to keep it going. When Willy Brandt was Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Tito received millions in reparations. Little if any of this money benefited the people. It was squandered by Tito on high living. The Danube Swabians were robbed of billions in property, but Brandt and Tito never discussed that. Ironically, many Yugoslavs have had to migrate to Germany to earn a living, including some who were involved in atrocities. Incredible as it may seem, many boasted of their "exploits." Those surviving can't be brought to trial, because only Germans can be tried for war crimes. The morally bankrupt Bonn government had even cooperated with the Yugoslav Secret Police in hunting down enemies of the regime. Mostly, these were Croats on German soll. The German government also subsidized (Communist) Yugoslav radio programs and Serbo-Croatian language schools in which, during Tito's lifetime, children were taught to sing such heroic songs as "Over German corpses we shall march to victory. " When Glasnost swept the East, both Croatia and Slovenia held free elections, in which the people opted overwhelmingly to secede from Serbian-controlled Yugoslavia. Will the Yugoslav federation, which save for the Serbs has few friends within its borders, long exist? It should admit that within its borders some of the worst crimes in European history were committed in our lifetime. Since the perpetrators have reaped great benefits from their crimes, and have gone unpunished, it is a travesty for those who know to remain silent. A recent book about the Danube Swabians is titled Strangers In The Fatherland. That's exactly what they have become in former homelands. The gentle, orderly, industrious, tolerant, peaceful, religious, albeit naively apolitical people, are all gone. Since the bees (Danube Swabian workers) have left, the Danubian Basin is no longer a land of milk and honey. In Hungary, the land granted them by a former king, was taken away by the Communist regime. In Romania their beautiful villages were bulldozed, the farms collectivized, and they were treated as virtual slaves. Danube Swabians, then known as German-Hungarians, settled in Canada and the USA over 100 years ago. They were among the earliest European colonists in the North-West Territories, (i.e. the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta), as well as North Dakota and various midwestern States. The majority however settled in big cities such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc. The descendants of those early immigrants have been thoroughly assimilated, have lost their German language, and the younger generation know practically nothing of their heritage. The second "wave" of Danube Swabians came in the 1920s, after the partition of their homeland. In part this was to escape military service in foreign armies, but mostly for economic betterment. They, too, had to first settle in the western provinces. But many migrated to Ontario and Quebec during the Depression to find work. Those who were allowed into the U.S. settled in major cities from New York to Milwaukee as well as in California. They stayed, and eventually prospered. The third and by far the largest group came in the early 1950s. These were expellees from their homeland and survivors of Tito's death camps. Although stateless and penniless on arrival they, too, have been absorbed into North American society without causing a ripple of resentment. Counting the descendants of the original Danube Swabian immigrants, all of whom are native-born Americans or Canadians, (as well as post-World War II immigrants) the Danube Swabian community in North America numbers somewhat over 500,000. Since their homeland no longer exists, it has not been a source of immigration for half a century. With the vast majority of Danube Swabians in North America being native-born, the older generation struggles to keep the language and customs alive. But it appears a losing battle. Danube Swabians now live on four continents and constitute a sound portion of the citizenry in at least a dozen countries. Sadly, the day is bound to come early in the 21st century when one of their descendants will ask, "Just who were the Danube Swabians?" And there won't be anyone around well enough informed to offer an extensive answer. Through both ignorance and design, the proud, tragic and historically significant story of the Danube Swabians has been suppressed. Thus every nugget of saved knowledge is of immense value.
Source: The Barnes Review, June 1996 Additional
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