FOREWARD

This is the draft of the article I intend to write. Feel free to make contributions before its unveiling, but most importantly, discuss. More discussion to be carried out at Talk:Danube_Swabians, or right HERE if you like.

Right now I am just laying out the structure, and then I will fill it in (yes, I am a programmer). The chapter scopes borrow much from Genocide of the Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia 1944-1948 (see book list below), but I tried to reorder them to be chronological. I will give a suggestion for the German translation of every header in parentheses.

ARTICLE

Introduction...

Interbellum

(Zwischenkriegszeit)

Result of the First World War

Though the ostensible reason for the First World War was Serbian opposition to Austro-Hungarian imperialism, there was no notable anti-Danube Swabian activity surrounding that conflict. At the end of the First World War, and for the duration of the interwar period, the Vojvodina became part of the newly-formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia, obviously a predicament for those Hungarians and Germans who had just become a minority. However, being Swabians rather than Austrians, and having been settled in the area for as many as a couple hundred years, the Danube Swabians decided to make do, continuing to work the land, and sending their sons to learn Serbo-Croatian at boarding schools in places like Novi Sad, and to serve as (what's the Serbian word?) in the Royal Army of Yugoslavia.

=Before the Second World War Population centers Degree of assimilation, relations with other groups Political climate, political tendencies

The complicated territorial situation of the Vojvodina is often summed up with the anecdote of the woman who never left her village but lived in 6 different countries.

The Second World War

Danube Swabian role/participation in (many served in RAY, even being made POWs by the Germans, others served for the Hungarians, others for the Germans. Because Hitler could not draft Germans outside of Germany, he (oxymoronically) made them voluntarily become SS, including tatoos). Most served in Russia, especially as translators, as they knew a Slavic language well. German VOMI government under Dr. Sepp Janko

Tito's Partisans

Rise to Power

with help of British, Soviets Tito

Pretexts

AVNOJ Withdrawal of Citizenship Declaration of Collective Guilt Collectivization Ethnically-clean Greater Serbia

Initial Carnage

Executors: Partisans and revengeful or opportunistic civilian groups moving with the Red Army, OZNA, local "People's Liberation Committees", "People's Courts", Military Courts, Aktion Intelligenzia, Anton Heller (i.e., a Danube Swabian) from Neuwerbass was the leader of the Partisan murders in Werbass of 22 German and Hungarian sugar factory workers, and 150 Germans (including Jakob Lotz, director of the Werbass Serbian School) and 150 Hungarians

Victims:Rape and murder of people of all ages - also: German groups in Slovenia and Croatia Special Targets: Clergy, Political and Cultural Leaders, Hungarians, Croats, Serbs who pled for mercy, in some cases Serbian monarchists, members of the "Serbian bourgeoisie, "capitalists", school directors

pleas of German communists orgy of violence Machtrausch alcohol's role sent to Sombor

Democratic Federal Yugoslavia

Internment camps in Yugoslavia

I could bring in some information from Rudolfsgnad/ Knicanin but i am deeply fucked up cause i wrote it down in the german wikipedia several times and it gets deleted within minutes. Germans dont want to read that there where other germans that had a harder time than their own family - thats why you cant find anything about it in the internet.

I could translate a passage from a book my grandfather wrote and some more passages from other books about Rudolfsgnad if at least 1 person wants 2 read it.

Don`t wanna work for the trashcan ;);)

Korrigator 16:54, 17 Nov 2006 (CET)

Liquidation camps in Yugoslavia

Deportation to Russia

Resettlement of Refugees

Swiss Red Cross those who fled before the carnage those who fled after the carnager those who expelled after time in Yugoslav camps those who expelled after time in Russian camps those who were returned to Yugoslavia and held or drafted those who stayed permanently

BOOKS TO BE USED

There's lots of books written on the subject, some of the better known English language works even having been authored by Serbs. I've heard plenty of eyewitness accounts and been to mass graves (for example, Rudolfsgnad/Knicanin) and heard of more (Gakowo) which now have memorials erected in Serbian, albeit only with toothless mentions of disease and starvation as causes of death.

Here are the lists of some books:

Jedan svet na Dunavu - Razgovori i komentari (German (I'll translate) One/A people on the Danube - The fate/destiny of the Germans in Yugoslavia under the communist Tito regime) - by Nenad Stefanovic, published 1997 in Beograd
Geschichte der Donauschwaben (Story/History of the Danube Swabians) - 1989 from the Donauschwaebische Kulturstiftung, Munich, Germany by Josef Volkmar Senz
Genocide of the Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia 1944-1948 - 2001 from the Donauschwaebische Kulturstiftung, Munich, Germany with foreward by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 (german title is somewhat less descriptive: Anmerkungen zur Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten (Notes/observations on the driving-out of the Germans of the East)- from St. Martin's Press, New York, USA by Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

De Zayas is a fairly famous historian, whose most well-known work is probably Nemesis at Potsdam, followed by The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. I'm not sure if Stefanovic is an ethnic Serb (maybe somebody could confirm that for me, if it's one of those names where it's easy to tell - I've only seen Croats with the name Nenad, and I think Serbs spell Stefan as Stepan?), but the work was written and published in Serbian originally.

In any case, all the sources say that "soviet/russian troops and bands of partisans" carried out the executions, looting, rape, internment, and killing, and usually break it down as the Soviet troops who provided the support/cover, the cattle cars (for deportations), and the official reason ("to pay the debt induced by them graciously liberating us"), and the partisans who did most of the raping and killing and abduction of children ("for reeducation").