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Below is the German text translation of the
suffering of the Germans in the city of
Pantschowa
as outlined in the documentation VÖLKERMORD
DER TITO-PARTISANEN 1944-1948. Why did I
pick this particular city to translate? The simple
fact is that I was born there in December of 1937 -
and together with my mother and very young sister
were imprisoned in the camp facilities
mentioned. --Erwin E. Maruna Pantschowa The largest settlement in
the southern part of the Banat, located at the
estuary of the rivers Temesch and
Donau, lies the city of Pantschowa.
It is one of the oldest settlements in the area.
Together with the Germans, other nationalities had
made their homes there, i.e. Serbs, Romanians,
Hungarians, Slovaks, and others. For over 200 years
they all had co-existed in peace. Due to their efficiency and
inborn diligence, albeit living under a foreign
government, most of the Germans were able to
prosper quite nicely, and managed to accumulate a
fair amount of personal wealth, primarily in
agricultural endeavors. Pantschowa had by
the beginning of Second World War over 25,000
residents. Besides the already mentioned other
ethnicities over 12,000 of them were Germans. The
town's prestige and economic boom was primarily
owed to these Germans. It grew to an economic
center, from where goods were transported via
hundreds of Donauschleppern (large, flat
bottom boats) up and down the Donau to many
other countries. Thousands of Germans, as well as
men from other ethnic backgrounds, were employed in
this profitable undertaking, residing either in
Pantschowa itself, or in any of the smaller
communities surrounding the town. The Russian Army entered
these areas already during the first days of
October 1944. Under their protection - the Yugoslav
Partisans, under the command of the notorious Josip
Broz Tito, immediately usurped all local control,
and established their brutal authority. Every one
who they considered being opposed to Communism was
liquidated. Not only supporters of the Serb General
Neditsch, but also the Serbs loyal to the king, the
Tschetnici Drascha Michailowitschs, but especially
the Germans were completely annihilated. From the
nearly 40,000 Germans in Pantschowa and it's
environ, only a few thousand were able to leave the
country. The remaining, not having a guilty
concience of any wrongdoings, feared no reprisals.
They could not have forseen in their wildest dreams
what fate awaited them under the new regime. They
were all liquidated and their properties
confiscated. Today the entire area is completely
cleansed of all Germans. Shortly after their
takeover the Partisans began the imprisonment of
the most prominent and affluent men among the
German community. The first victims were the ones
whose possessions and homes were most appealing to
them, moving into the houses immediately and
confiscating everything in sight. All Germans,
rounded up in Pantschowa, were incarcerated
first in the Stockhaus, an old prison
facility which was part of the district court
annex. From the surrounding areas many more men and
women were brought here, resulting in an overflow
capacity. Therefore a camp, surrounded by barbed
wire and omnipresent rifle-toting guards, had to be
constructed. When the Partisans,
primarily after extensive alcohol consumption, felt
like entertainment, they dragged Germans, hands
tied, from the overcrowded areas of the prison
facility - either single or in groups - and
brutally tortured them until they were either dead
or the tormentors were too tired to continue the
cruelty. The torture technique, typical for other
areas in Yugoslavia, consisted of brutally throwing
the victims to the ground facedown and ramming with
full force the rifle butts into the kidney areas.
Thrusting them on their backs, they used their
heavy boots to stomp on these helpless victims,
breaking ribs and inflicting other internal
injuries. Another favorite was breaking teeth and
the bridge of the nose with vicious blows with
pistol grips. Many, many of the incarcerated
Germans died from the inflicted
mutilations. After a few days, when this
form of savagery lost its inititial appeal,
Partisans began to round up groups within the camp,
and marched them outside the confines and shot
them. Before this took place, however, they were
ordered to strip down naked, because the clothes of
the victims were a highly treasured booty. From the
camp in Pantschowa alone a total of 1,666
Germans were taken outside the confines, mostly at
night, and nobody ever saw them again! The road
leading to the township Jabuka was used as a
favorite place for executions; also the airport was
selected for this gruesome handiwork. In 1946,
close to the starch producing plant near the
airport, twelve mounds were still visible. These
were mass graves of larger groups of victims,
killed there and covered with dirt. Most of these
groups consisted of about one hundred victims. Many
Germans who had died in the prison facilities were
also buried there. One of the first victims in
this new regime was a boy, the student Franz
Maierhöfer. A Serbian woman, who was not on
friendly terms with the boys parents, wanted to
cause them grief and suffering. When the Partisans
assumed power in Pantschowa, her opportunity
for revenge had finally arrived! The parents of the
boy she left alone, but demanded from the
all-powerful Partisans that the innocent and
unsuspecting boy be killed. They readily complied,
viciously grabbed the only child of these people,
and shot him. Another one who was
brutally tortured, and subsequently died as a
result of his injuries, was Wilhelm Kund, a
lutheran clergyman. He was, after the Partisans
murdered by hanging the German lutheran bishop Dr.
Philipp Popp, the oldest priest in Yugoslavia. They
abused him in his cell in the prison facility for
two hours just because he was a priest. He received
numerous blows with riflebutts in the kidneys, they
used clubs to beat him in the face and broke the
bridge of his nose. He was then thrown to the
ground. They stomped on his stomach and chest,
breaking three ribs. When it finally ended he was
bleeding all over and died shortly after due to
internal injuries. Another victim was the
well-known attorney Dr. Hans Leitner, who was
brought here from Kowatschitza and subjected
to atrocious savageries until he was
dead. After a while, many German
men and most of the better known and revered women
of Pantschowa and surrounding areas were
brought into the camp, and after surviving the
initial brutalities - the mass executions began.
The first one took place on October 16, 1944. On
this day 180 men, their hands tied, were taken
outside the camp. After they were forced to strip
naked they were shot near the aforementioned road
leading to Jabuka. Many atrocities enroute
to the places of execution were perpetrated not
only by the serbian Partisans, but also with eager
help from the gypsies in the area. In groups they
were to either stand before the mass grave, or
pushed and forced to lie down in them, and then the
shootings began. Any hesitations within the ranks
of the condemned was treated with additional
cruelty by the executioners before suffering the
same fate as the others. The machinist Anton Geier,
after being already naked, was repeatedly gored
with a pointed shovel in the chest area by gypsies,
and then while still alive, thrown into the open
grave. The watchmaker Michael Eichart suffered a
most gruesome death. Several of his ribs were cut
out before being pushed, still alive, into the mass
grave. Two days later, on October
18, another group of 180 Germans with their hands
tied where marched from the camp and executed
similarily as before. On October 20, the number was
increased to 300. Included in this group were
German prisoners of war. On October 22 they killed
30 men and one woman. So it went until the middle
of November. On November 9, the former
representative and lawyer, Dr. Simon Bartmann, who
was known as a Yugoslavian patriot and opponent of
fascism, was shot with a group of 84. Among the
victims were also 11 women, including the dentist
Dr. Hauber and the attorney Dr. Bartosch. The rest
of this group consisted primarily of
Pantschowa's intelligentsia and relatively
affluent members of the community. The selection
procedure on that particular day was such that the
Partisans went from cell to cell, calling out names
on a list. These people had to step out. In this
manner 84 German men and women were assembled. They
were immediately surrounded and beaten with clubs
and rifle butts. Then they were tied with ropes and
wires to each other, and driven under constant
abuse outside of the camp. They were, just like the
ones before them, ordered to shed their clothes,
stand next to the mass grave, and
murdered. On November 11, 1944 the
rest of the Germans still remaining in
Pantschowa - including all women and
children - were rounded up and placed in the in the
camp. All their posessions had to be left behind,
or were forcefully taken from them. A total of
3,024 were taken to the village of
Brestowatz, where 7,000 Germans were already
languishing in the makeshift holding camps. 400
died within a short period. Throughout the winter
months forced labor was mandatory for all women,
interupted frequently by numerous abuses, rapes and
sadistic savageries. About 1,000 girls and young
women were handed over to the Russian military at
the end of 1944 and extradited to the Russian
"killing fields" to perform heavy labor. Many died
there. The ones who managed to return had lifelong
illnesses to cope with. From the camp in
Brestowatz women and girls were routinely
taken away. They vanished without a trace. The
father of Suchi Dominik, one of the missing girls,
attempted to question the Partisans concerning the
whereabouts of his daughter. He was brutally
tortured. A burning candle was inserted into his
nostrils and protruded tongue and his genitals were
smashed. From the camp in
Brestowatz, 3,784 Germans from
Pantschowa, mostly women and children, were
transfered to the large extermination camp in
Rudolfsgnad during the fall of 1945. This
amounted to a new cycle of widespread dying for the
remaining Germans from Pantschowa. From the
3,784, who were brought here - only 1,884 were
still alive in the summer of 1946. More than half,
namely 1,900, either starved to death or died from
illnesses during one winter alone! The men and
women who still remained in the camp in
Pantschowa and were not transfered to
Brestowatz or Rudolfsgnad, were
slowly exterminated. They were starved, constantly
pushed to do heavy labor, and whoever got sick or
injured and therefore unable to work was beaten to
death or shot, either individually or in larger
groups. On December 11, 1944, a
group of 68 sick Germans and all the disabled war
veterans were rounded up and shot, including 32 who
came from the township Brestowatz. They were
killed because of their physical handicap no hard
labor could be gained. The cheapest way to dispose
of them was liquidation. They were also thrown into
ditches along the road to Jabuka. Many
Germans from the camp in Pantschowa were
shipped to other camps in the area to perform hard
labor, and were then shot. Another group was
shipped to the camp in Semlin, which was
created on the former fairground. Several thousand
Germans were murdered there. Following identical
patterns as in Pantschowa, many in the
surrounding communities were killed during these
round-ups. Most of the time the highly respected
and well-off Germans were the first ones to be
annihilated since their possessions were sought by
the Partisans. (Translated by Erwin E.
Maruna) |