Tales of Family,
culture, history, and in depth knowledge
PART 2-
By: David
Alan-Peter Witte.
taught to our
children and grandchildren and for American and
Canadians to
have been shielded from out eyes from our own
governments. The
following quotes and stories are from a
compilation of
family members and from others who went through
the horrors that
we all must know while reading the good times
and bad in our
history. Family histories are just not about family
lineage’s and births
and deaths and marriages but also about
social,
political, and cultural events that took place during our
ancestors
lifetimes which should shape the next generation
values and
memories.
THE BEGINNING of
the Migration of the lineage of our families
will start at
this point.
THE FOLLOWING
CHART SHOWS THE MIGRATION OF THE PEOPLE FROM GERMANY/LORRAINE HEADING TO THE
NEW PROMISED LANDS. IT LISTS THE NUMBER OF FAMILIES AND THE NUMBER OF PERSONS.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
YEAR # of
FAMILIES PERSONS
1768 462 1888
1769 815 3124
1770 3215 10292
1771 387 1585
TOTALS 4879
16,889
The following
migration lists indicate where the people migrated
to and from
where they immigrated from during the years of
1766-1772.
Cities of:
Mainz, Trier, Bamberg the areas of Lorraine, Alsace,
Schwarzwald,
Wurtemberg to Hatzfeld, Heufeld, Mastort,
Albrechtsflor,
Bluementahal, and Sergenthau.
In 1771 in St.
Hubert Franzosen Deutsche angesidelt. Die
Franzosen kamen
aus Lothringen und awar der Gegned von
Metz, Besancon,
Comte and Luxemborg, The Germans from
Trier, Nassaue,
Wurburg, Ingolstadadt and the other regions. IN
Soltur the
Franzosen aus Lorthringen, spa Deutsche von der
Rheingegend. In
Scharwei( der name kommt von der franzo"
sischen Stadt
nordlich von Metz Franzosen aus Lorthingen und
spater Deutsche
was Lothringen Wisenhaid, Kreuzsttten,
LICHTENWALD,
BUCHBERG NEUHOF(Deutsche Tirol),
Greifenthat,
Konigshof, Triebswetter (Franzosen aus Lothringen,
Deutsche aus
Luxembeorg and Wurzburg, Gottlob, Ostern
(Franzosen aus
Lothringen)
.
It is been
evident for a long time that, of all members of all
the Germanic
tribes, the Swabian is the most difficult to
understand and
the most mysterious. In him the most
intense
contradiction are found. Often, in one individual,
meet extreme
boldness and amazing timidity,
rebelliousness
and philistines, winning kindness and
resentful
standoffishness, skillfulness and awkwardness,
firmness and instability,
mistrust and friendliness,
high-flying mind
and outlooks.
.......
As time past in
Ernsthausen, the family remained; Mathais,
Margaret, Kate,
Mathais Tessling. Mathias Tessling was a
solider in the
Hungarian army during the World WAR I just like
Anton Dekold and
the other men in the family . Mathais Furo
over the years
acquired more land from the “ranchers” so he
was able to
expand the wealth he did have. The ranchers were
people who owned
plenty of farmland. A brick sidewalk was
placed in front
of the house out of the bricks from one of the
rancher’s
buildings. With this added landed Mathais no longer
had to sell and
buy tobacco on the black market. He would buy
the tobacco, and
Kate and her mother would chop it to make
cigarette
tobacco. As this would be done, he would walk into
Gross
Betschkerek after all the trains would pass for the night,
and he would
have his “customers” waiting for him. The tobacco
that he sold was
in l/2 and 1-kilo quantities.
One time on his
way home from Gross Betschkerek, some
watchdogs of a
shepherd ran after him. He would stop running
and so would the
dogs. When they got too close for comfort he
climbed a
telegraph pole and stayed there until the dogs left, and
then he walked
home.
Mathais used
knives to cut the hogs snouts so they would not
dig in the yard
anymore with their snouts.
Chapter 4
LATER YEARS
In l936 Mary
came home for the first and last time. She was the
only one of the
three children to come back home. A few years
earlier, Peter and
his wife, Katherine, were told not to return to
Europe because
his parents were afraid that he would be sent to
the Army. This
would be disastrous after deserting in l907.
Mathais knew
that the boys would never come home, but he was
glad that his
daughter came back for a visit. He said: “I did not
have to bury my
children alive.” These means they all left and
are making a
good life for themselves. Mary brought gifts from
America for the
family--a table cloth and a set of flatware for her
mother and a set
of flatware for her sister’s family. As the
summer season of
l936 was drawing to a close, Mary went back
home to Chicago
and her family. Hitler was already gaining
power in
Germany.
Peter and
Katharina (Kati) never knew that Mary was going to
visit her
parents in l936. They heard about it much later.
Therefore they
were unable to send money over with her.
Occasionally
they did send money.
1930 saw the
construction of a building to house the cooperative
(agrarian), with
offices, meeting, large storage room and employee
housing. It was
very large, and much did of the work themselves. This
place was used
for numerous purposes and events. The grains,
wheat, corn,
etc. was sold through the co-op, and bulk purchases at
reduced costs
were made to be used by the farmers.
The political
situation was always critical for the Germans in
Yugoslavia since
the Serbs hatred for the industrious Germans knew
no boundaries.
They were extremely jealous of and could not tolerate
or endure the
diligence, perseverance and cleanliness that the
Germans
exhibited wherever they were located. They devised a plan
to expropriated
and divide the possessions that the Germans had so
laboriously
acquired after the Defeat of Germany in 1944. This plan
called for the
annihilation of the Germans because allegiance to a
Language.
The people of
Danube-Swabians descent had to disappear from the
face of the
earth. These are the same people who made Yugoslavia
strong and had
created a blooming and fruitful land that was the
breadbasket for
the Southeastern Europe was now useless people
according to the
Serbs and the partisans.
After the
beginning of the war as decried in a previous chapter, the
government in
Berlin arranged with the powers in Banat to organize a
voluntary SS
Division to be called “Prince Eugen” and this occurred in
1941 by 1942 the
many men did not go voluntarily into the Division.
The Serbs used
the so-called “voluntary” association with the SS
division as an excuse
to expropriate and destroy our ancestors and
our family
members. IT IS TO BE STRESSED, VERY CLEARLY,
THAT THE
CONSCRIPTION TO THE S. “ PRINCE EUGENE”
DIVISION WAS, IN
NO WAY, VOLUNTARY, BUT A BRUTALLY
FORCED
RECRUITMENT. If there had been an option 905 would
have chosen the
Wehrmacht!
Chapter 10
7th Waffen SS
Division -- VII SS Frei Willige-Gebirgsdivision
“ PRINZ Eugen”
The style of
title conferred on the Waffen SS division varied
depending on the
racial composition:
German
Volunteers...SS Divison “Racial”
Germans or
Germanic Volunteers or consciption. SS FREIWILLIGEN
DIVISON
East
Europeans...Divison de Waffen SS
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Definitions of
Terms of Divisions;
Gebirgsdivision
= Mountain Division
Grenadierdivision
= Infantry Divison
Panzergrendadierdivision
= Motorized infantry Division
_____________________________________________________________
Prinz Eugen
Division
Formed:
1942--Divisional
Composition =
Formed from Serbs, Romanians, Yugoslavians of
German Stock
(Volkdeutsch)
Short History:
Montenegro, Croatia 1942-1943 Italy 1943, Bosnia
1944, then
Yugoslavia until 1945
Fate:
Capitulated
Background of
the SS and the Prinz Eugen Division
-----------------------------------------------
Based on the
past performances of the SS’s field units and the
growing need of
more and more men and equipment for the Eastern
Front and
additional Waffen-SS formations were organized. A severe
manpower shortage
forced Himmler to include other nationalities
within the ranks
of the Waffen-SS to meet these needs. As will be
discussed later
the VOLKDEUTSCHE, ethnic Germans and west
Europeans served
as replacements in the elite SS divisions or were
organized into
SS Freiwillgen Division (SS Volunteer Divisions*)
Eastern
Europeans were separated into national formations and bore
the distinctive
title “Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS”. The fighting
capability of
these units ranged from excellent, almost identical to the
crack SS
divisions, for the west Europeans, to useless, the case with
the majority of
east European units. Volkdeustche rate between these
limits and the
measure of ability would be based on the proportion of
Germans to
non-Germans
The
establishment of the seventh Waffen-SS division fulfilled two
important
requirements. First of all, Himmler wanted another SS
division and
Gottlob Berger,
Chief of the SS
Main Office and consequently the man in charge of
Waffen-SS
recruiting, had his eye on a new and virtually untapped
pool of
manpower. Secondly, German troops desperately needed on
the Russian
front were being tied down by extensive partisan activity.
Gottlob Berger
quest for fresh and suitable recruits for the Waffen-SS
was running into
serious difficulties. Germans were being drafted into
the Army, Navy
and Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht paid little heed to
the requirements
of what they considered to be Himmler’s upstart
private army.
Men were needed not only to establish new SS
divisions, but also
to bring the existing ones back up to strength after
extremely high
casualties.
Beyond the
German frontiers lived a large number of so-called ethnic
Germans. The
VOLKDEUTSCHE.. Who were of Germanic heritage or
ancestors, and
therefore eligible for SS membership. Berger,
whose-son-in-law,
Andrea Schmidt was the political leader
(Volkgruppenfuhrer)
of the Ethnic German Group (Volksgruppe) in
Romania, as well
aware of the fact the he could make use of these
ethnic Germans
then the manpower problems of the Waffen-SS would
be alleviated.
The beauty in this plan that would later lead the
disaster and the
destruction of the Volkdeutsch would be not only
were these
ethnic Germans eligible for SS membership, but also they
fell beyond the
jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht recruiters.
Berger’s
problems were obtaining permission to recruit from these
ethnic Germans,
and once that was secured, actually getting the men
to VOLUNTEER. It
was not an easy task at all. On August 7, 1940,
Bergers put his
plans into action and drew up a memo for Himmler
suggesting the
recruitment of this ethnic Germans from the Balkans
for the
Waffen-SS. Himmler immediately was delighted and gave his
approval.
Bergers recruiting officers then went to work. In late 1940
and early 1941,
Yugoslavia was not under AXIS control and
consequently
recruiting was illegal/ But on April 6, 1941, The German
invaded
Yugoslavia from Hungary after the Serbs and Croats in
Belgrade had
demonstrated in front of their government offices stating
that they wanted
WAR with Germany not a pact of Peace. The
Germans invaded
from Hungary, Bulgaria and Rumania. The poorly
led and
organized Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated and the
troops fled
through Banat and within a few days the country fell into
the hands of the
German army. The recruiting was then made official
and a minor
drive in Serbia and Banat produced only a handful of
ethnic German
Volunteers, who found their way into the SS Division
“Reich”
This rather
disappointing result did not satisfy Berger, who had
visions of a
Waffen-SS greatly expanded thanks to the Ethnic
Germans and a
completely divisions composed of such volunteers
from YUGOSLAVIA
alone. Once again he spoke with Himmler who in
turned made his
plan known to Hitler. The Fu”hrer was still wary of
upsetting the
Wehrmacht by allowing the Waffen-SS grow to rapidly,
but at the same
time appreciated the value of having such a formation
to take care of
the increasingly troublesome PARTISIANS in Serbia,
Croatia, Banat
and Vojvidina. Having a new Waffen-SS division to
combat these
guerrillas would release the German and prized men for
front line duty.
Hitler gave his blessing to the creation of the seventh
division of the
Waffen-SS
The Division was
intended to consist of two regiments, trained and
equipped to
anti-partisans warfare. The partisans was destroying the
ethnic bounds
that had kept the country unified for over 100 years by
the guerrillas
killing neighbors and friends who spoke any German at
all or had
traded with any Germans. Raping, killing, burning villages
was how the
partisans were breaking the will and the ties of the area.
The Division was
to have been reported to be well equipped, but a
large number of
weapons and vehicles came from captured stock.
Resort was made to
the PPS for small arms as well as machine guns,
anti tank guns
and French and Yugoslav weapons. A Ss controlled
Protection Force
had been formed by the ethnic Germans living in
Serbia. This
protection force together with the Einsatz-Staffel from
Croatia was used
as a basis to build the new division. The first
volunteers were
ethnic Germans from the SERBIAN BANAT, these
having been
supplemented by others from Romania.
The Waffen-SS
now had its new Division, but the ethnic Germans
were reluctant
to join created severe problems. In-spite of Berger’s
confidence and
intensive propaganda campaigns in the spring and
summer of 1942,
the men simply did not step forward to volunteer.
The men stayed
in their villages and did not want to take part in a war
that did not
affect them and wanted to be excluded and go on with
their daily
lives. Remember this part of Yugoslavia was not exposed to
the heavy
propaganda of Germany that was occurring from
1937-1942. Only
very little communication of Germany reach this far
to the south and
east. Resort was made to conscription, and thus
shortly after
its creation the Division’s volunteer status come under
suspicion. It
was to happen again in 1943, when Himmler introduced
compulsory
military service for ETHNIC Germans in German occupied
Serbia.
Conscription for this “volunteer” Division was then on a legal
footing and
produced some drastic results. Serbia eventually yielded
some 22,000
ethnic Germans for service in the Waffen-SS
So it was the
Division formed with considerable difficulty in Serbia and
Croatia between
April and October 1942. During which time its staff
was located at
Pancevo and the 1st Regiment at Weisskirchen in
Austria.
“Prinz Eugen”
was created for anti-partisan warfare, and this was to
wage or fight within
the borders of Yugoslavia almost without
interruption
between October 1942 and 1945 when it capitulated.
No discussion
should be made without point out that the military
movement of the
Wehrmacht and the SS was fighting not only military
battle units but
also Tito’s Partisian movement, which resulted in
fighting
guerrilla warfare. In guerrilla warfare you do not know who the
enemy is and
what normal constraints that are in a battle zone has to
be removed or
twisted that what is “legality” under which actions must
and be carried
out. The Yugoslavian government after the war
implicates that
the Prinz Eugen Divison was the most ruthless of any
Divison or army
group throughout all of Europe. Remember that these
are the same
people who fought as guerrillas during the war and even
though it may
seem I am deflecting the blame back to the
Yugoslavians I
am not but rather in this area of the War the war was
ruthlessly
fought. It was a conflict between National Socialism and
Bolshevism. The
fact those atrocities were carried out, but
implemented by
only a small number of almost 159,000 men who
passed through
the Waffen-SS and the German Army in this area
WORLD WAR II
---Genocide, Evacuation, extermination but the Will to
SURVIVE
I would like to emphasize
again: the men had to enlist in the Austrian
and Hungarian
military; then the Serbian (Yugoslavian) army. Then
the Germans
invades in 1941, the men of Ernsthausen and Klek,
Sartcha, Neusin,
and surrounding towns were also drafted into their
armed services
to serve in the Second World War. They had to serve
three NATIONS!
Not only did our ancestors lose our and their
homeland, nobody
wanted us, and so we were scattered into the Four
Corners of the
world if we were lucky enough to live.
During the Second
World War, the women discarded their long outfits
and dressed more
fashionably in shorter dresser, since those long
outfits required
a lot of material, which was in short supply, as well as
being expensive.
Also, each of those e long outfits gave us two
dresses. We were
not allowed to wear bathing suits made by the local
seamstress.
These consisted of short sleeves, and the skirt had to be
mid-thigh
length. The older people in these towns were very critical of
the new
generation and of this fashion and stated many times that our
ancestors would
turn over in their graves if they could see the
children of the
1930-1940s NOW.
Looking back and
hearing stories of my great-grandparents and of
others in the
Communities of Ernsthausen, Sartcha, Klek, Neusin, and
others I feel,
and have heard, that they were very serious and strict
people. Their
children remember that they knew their parents loved
them BUT they
were very stingy in demonstrating this love with the
exception of
ANTON Dekold who was different after coming back from
the United
States in 1904. The adults never showed loved for each
other i.e.
embrace in children’s presence, let alone a kiss. You had to
respect their
wishes and orders and obey.
Before the Second
World War, there were a few radios in the villages,
but only shortly
before the war broke out, so that contact with the
outside world
was limited.
The political
situation was always critical for the German speaking
people in
Yugoslavia since the Serbs’ hatred for the industrious
Germans and
Hungarians knew no boundaries. They were extremely
jealous of, and
could not tolerate or endure the diligence,
perseverance and
cleanliness that the Swabians exhibited wherever
they were
located. They devised a plan to expropriate and divide the
possessions that
the Danube-Swabians had so laboriously acquired.
The people who
turned the marshland into a blooming and fruitful
land now they
were being told that they had to disappear from the
face of the
earth.
On March 27,
19141, two days after the pact was made between
Germany and
Yugoslavia in Vienna, the extreme factions of the
Serbian people
marched in protest against the pacts, especially in
Belgrade. they
shouted” “BETTER WAY THAN PACT!” IT COULD
BE SAID THAT THE
SERBS STARTED BOTH WORLD WARS.
Worrisome days
followed. The men received order to enlist. Worried
eyes asked if
there would be war. Then, very early on the morning of
APRIL 6th, 1941
Palm Sunday, the first bombs fell on Belgrade.
Without a formal
declaration of war, Germany’s army attacked
Yugoslavia. Our
German people from 3,4,5 generations before now
became the
scapegoats for all the hatred of the Serb people. The
Serbian troops
came marching in from Gross Betschkerek (Zrenjanin)
to the Romanian border.
Fear gripped all those in the area wondered
what would
happen to those Swabians or those who spoke German.
On this day, the
Serbian police came marching through with bayonets
at the ready and
took hostages from all the German villages - women
as well as men.
In Ernsthausen, they took away 25 men and three
women.
Then the people
in the area began to realize that the powers were not
so much
concerned with the political attitudes of the individuals, but
rather that all
Swabians and anyone who spoke German were
collectively
guilty.
Initially, the
hostages were taken to the jail in Gross-Betschkerek,
from there to
Peterwardein near Nuesatz. This was the procedure
used in all the
villages. Many of these hostages were killed.
On Easter
Monday, April 14, 1941, The German troops came into
many of the
towns around Gross Betschkerek heading for that same
town. The
passage of these troops lasted for 48 hours. The people of
the neighboring
villages all offered the Germany Wehrmacht the best
hospitality
possible, since their appearance eased the fear and
uncertainty of
the prior few days.
After a few
weeks, conditions returned to normal. The German militia
now occupied
Serbia, Banat again regained its own administrative
powers. Soon,
rules were instated that required so much of all the
produce to be
delivered to the administration.
On June 22, 1941
the Russian campaign began. The German troops
in our town were
well looked after. There was plenty of food so they
were often invited
into the homes of our families for meals. In the latter
part of the
summer, the first enrollment of men into the SS begun (
That was
voluntary enrollment)
At the end of
that year. The Swabians people (Volkdeutsch) were
elevated in all
of Yugoslavia. The trade’s people produced
photocopies of
our settlement from Banat’s church registers. The
government in
Berlin arranged with the administrative in Banat to
organize a
voluntary division to be called Prinz Eugen (See Footnotes
on this SS
Division) there were many who volunteered but many
others over 60%
who did not go voluntarily.
The sad fate of
the people from Bessarabia, Bukovina, Siebenburgen,
Hungary,
Romania, and the Danube-Swabians from Yugoslavia was
beginning. The
young men, in the prime, had to join the military; the
“NOBLE RACE”
instructors who were often brutal toward them often
trained them.
They were humbled and made the butt of jokes because
they were “only
the lower caste of German. They had to endure being
called “Speck
Fresser, pigs and stupid. The war marched on - our
men usually
fought against the partisans ( a group of guerrilla fighters
thus had to use
guerrilla warfare to try and kill off the secretive
members and
going after Tito’s forces.) Soon afterwards, the people
who remained in
Ernsthausen and the surrounding villages learned of
the casualties
running up towards 50%. However, life had to go on,
and the women
and the old men carried on the best they could do
with their own
work
Chapter 5
Here is a reason
why the non-resident Germans and Swabians
became involved
in the SS The dependence of our unsuspecting
people on the
governing powers only became evident to our ruling
councils after
the occupation of BANAT, but by then, it was to late for
protests. So, the
men became the organs of the SS and this is a great
tragedy of the
foreign Swabians/Germans
The area that
the family lived in was completely German speaking
Catholics and
had taken a Pro-Hitler stand when Germany occupied
the land.
Towards the end of the war, Russia and the Partisan armies
came into the
area, banished the Germans, and seized their property.
In the middle of
September, 1944, the last ferry evacuating Germans
from the
province of Vojvodina in Northern Yugoslavia had crossed
the Tisa River.
Many people in Banat and Banatska had questioned
the wisdom of
staying behind, but so many of the educated men and
teachers said
after the this conflict that the borders might be redrawn
just like after
World War II and they might have to brush up on their
Hungarian.
Mathias Tessling and Johann Weber Agreed with the
learned men that
the country needed them and the new regime would
need them to
continue with their trades like they had done for the
previous 200
years.
During the first
part of October 1944, the dogs were still running
around the
villages, young trimmed were being trimmed into topiary
shapes of round
balls at the top of their branches, children played in
the street with
the rumble of Thunder in the background (War), old
men and old
women walked down the street gossiping, cows were
being milked,
the fields still being tended and the fields were ready to
come in for
harvest. It was a very good time even though a war was
being fought and
loved ones were away, but life continued.
As Klek was
fleeing to the Northwest, the towns to the east and south
was being
invaded by the Russian troops and following them were the
guerrilla forces
the partisan’s. Mathias Tessling was in his house
eating a cold
meal of smoked ham (henchen) and dark bread when
Margarete heard
a loud banging on their wooden door. Mathias
pushed backed
his chair and rushed to the door just like what was
happening all
across this portion of Banat. Mathias pulled Margarete
back from the
door, a s a Russian soldier kicked in the door. The
soldier had his
pistol drawn and standing behind him was a young
Serbian woman
from the next street over.
Just like in so
many mixed ethnic villages the Tesslings, Dekolds,
Valeri’s and
other German/Hungarian families and been betrayed. No
Serb, let alone
Russian could have found a flaw in these people
Serbian. They
had been raised and living in a Serbian controlled
country for the
last twenty-three years before the war. The Russian
waved a pistol
in front of Mathias, motioning him to the door.
The German
speaking men of Ernsthausen and Sartscha were
divided into two
groups, each guarded by Yugoslav partisans wearing
ragged pants,
British military jackets, German army boots; carrying
Italian guns. In
one group were the tradesman and the other the
disabled,
farmers and old men. A woman saw Margarete run back into
her house to get
Mathias his jacket.
A young partisan
about fifteen to sixteen years old grabbed the jacket
from her and put
it own his own shoulder. “Germans do not need
coats and he put
it on to his back and shoulders., as he said he a
strange-accented
Serbian. The women of ERSTHAUSEN remember
seeing a blaze
of light in the sky that got brighter and brighter and
they knew that
this was nothing like they had ever seen. The women
of Ernsthausen
and Klek and the neighboring towns saw their men
marched away and
most of them never saw them returned.
As the fleeing
was occurring in front of the Russian line Russian and
allied planes
were bombing the wagons. “I was told you could tell by
the sound of the
plane if it was Allied or Russian. When you heard the
Russian planes
you could stay on the road and continue walking but if
it was an Allied
plane you had to take cover along the sides of the
road. The allied
planes just used their machine guns to fire on and at
us. The people
who had their wagons filled with their belongings were
running for
their lives but most of them thought they would return.
Most of the
people just had the clothes on their back and their
belongs in the
wagons. One woman tells the story of “I was walking
and walking in
an old pair of shoes when the sole of the shoe wore
out but I had to
keep walking or fall behind. I found an old piece of
paper laying on
the road so I put it in my shoe to make a new sole.
this only lasted
about two hours, I then ripped a piece of cotton from
my dress and
tied it around the shoe to stop the gravel digging into
my foot, but it
did not stop the rain or snow from getting in. Every step
these people took
they knew that they were future away from their
homes and they
did not know how long they would be away. Was it
going to be
days, weeks, months, but not years because this was our
HOME.
The following is
an account of a group of people who stayed behind
or could not
escape the wrath of the partisan’s who enslaved them to
the lagers.
Have you heard
of Rudolfsgnad, Molidorf, Gakows, or JAREK?
These are all
towns in Yugoslavia and they were all the
same-slightly-different
layouts but the partisan’s turned them into
misplaced person
camps (concentration camps, killing camps).
The partisian
force placed twenty Germans in each room of the
houses in each
village and forty to sixth to each house. When all
the houses were
full, barbed wire was stretched down the main
street to divide
the town in half, then more barbed wire was
rolled around
the entire town. Old people and children to young
to work were
segregated to one part and the larger, stronger
children and
young adults in the other.
“We allowed to
bring nothing to these camps, only the clothes
that we were
wearing when they found or caught up to us. “I was
sixteen one
woman told me at the Treffen when my dress wore
out. We would
steal potato sacks from the villagers on our way
home from the Serbian
fields, but the Serbian boys would tease
us. “Are you
boys or girls? they yelled. Our potato sacks didn’t
cover much, and
some of the girls didn’t have even a potato sack
.........................................................................................................
<Taken from
the Jarek Heimatbuch “Zammegetraa” the following
is a list of the
number of people who where (HUMANELY
tortured,
starved or worked to death from 1944-1949 in Jarek
and the towns
they came from>
From Persons
from Persons
Altker 70 Apatin
27
Banoschtor 1
Batsch Sentivan 18
Beschka 1
Budisava 18
Bukin 391 Bulkes
655
Batscka Novo
Selo 373 Charville 1
Neu Futog 76 Alt
Futog 163
Feketitch 12
Gajobra 332
Newu Gajobra 186
Gospodjinci 7
Indija 10 Jarak
31
Kernei 1
Kischker 182
Kulpin 10
Kutzura 76
Kula 96 Miletich
6
Nadalj 1 Neu
Pazua 3
Obrovac 127 Neu
Palanka 218
Deutsch Palanka
376 Schabalj 62
Sajkasch SV Ivan
24 Sekitsch 46
Setschan 1 Sonta
2
Schowe 507 Titel
48
Tscherwenka 135
Towarisch 1
Vukowar 28
Weprowatz 103
Werbas (alt
& neu) 601 Petrovardin 12
Tschib/Cib 144
---------- -----
Total from this
listing of known residents 5,800
The listing from
Rudolfsgnad lists over 25,000 deaths attributed
from 1944 to
1948.
The following is
the number of people from Ernsthausen who
died in the
camps.
Camps Placement
# of deaths
Pantschevo 2
Russia 16
Mitrovitza 6
(Including Susanna Dekold)
Gakovo 2
Karlsdorf 3
Subotica 1
Berlin 1
Crepaja 1
Betschkerek 43 (
Including Lorenz Dekold )
Kathreinfeld 50
(including Mathias Tessling-born
1898 and Johann
Kray-born 1897)
Rudolfgsnad
265(including: Kathrina Tessling-born
1893, Susanna
Tessling born 1937
Maria Tessling
born 1874, Margarete
Furo born 1861
Mathais died
from natural causes in l944, (exact date unknown),
but in
Ernsthausen. He was born 1860; he was about 84 when
he died)
Soldiers who
died during the war or missing in Action from
Ernsthausen: 296
including the following
Name born
Parents
Franz Tessling
1922 Mathias Tessling and Majorette Furo
Franz Tessling
1912 Maria and Franz Tessling
Ludwig Krutsch
1920
Johann Dekold
1907
Johann Kray 1921
............................................................................................................
GOKOWA LAGER
In the workers
part of the camp the people were given in the
morning only a
small piece of cornmeal bred as big as the palm
of your hand.
Once had to decide to eat it all at once or to save
small pieces of
it for the rest of the day. This was the only time
we were feed
unless a member of the International Red Cross
was coming for a
visit. The little children under the age of 6 and
people to old to
work were given the same amount of corn meal
every two or
three days. In the camps no child under the age of
three survived.
Rudolfgsnad,
Subotica, and other camps the young working
boys would leave
the camps at night and forge the surrounding
fields and barns
looking for food. Kaspar Dekold tells the story of
tunneling under
the barbed wire fence at night to steal potatoes
and other foods
from the Serbian workers and if they were
caught they
would be beaten. After being beaten they would be
placed in
cellars filled with water with rats and other vermin and
feces and have
to stay like that for days if not weeks. The
guards were
Partisians, Russian, and Mongolians. Many were
able to sustain
life by stealing food and also escaping from the
camp at night
and risk their lives. They begged for food from
local SERBS or
HUNGARIANS, former neighbors who were
sympathetic and
compassionate people. Had these people not
been so daring
to risk their lives, no one would have survived the
camps.
Many of the
people where taken to Russia to work in the field,
coal and ore
mines as forced laborers. Over eighty percent
never returned.
some infants and young children were taken to
Russia to be
adopted and absorbed into the Russian society to
punish the men
and women of Banat and all Volkdeutsch. The
women were raped
and sold for their services to make the
soldiers and the
men back in Russia to have a stock of girls to
breed (girls
ranging from 12-16). As soon as the Partisans had
taken over a
town they would select young Danube Swabian
women (age 15
and up), preferably blondes who were from that
village or town
and were taken to a compound at Pancevo
across from
Belgrade. There they were kept like caged animals
to satisfy the
sexual lusts of Tito’s elite troops. The inevitable
happened’ they
all had gotten 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
the women were
forced to strip, and were shot to death. The
reason why they
had to take off their clothes was that the
Partisans
intended to sell them on the black market. In
Yugoslavia at the
time used clothing was at a premium, but
would not be
salable if riddled with bullet holes and blood
In between the
houses in the camps where the people slept
(remember 20
people per room -- 60 to 80 people per house)
would be a grave
house. A grave house was a house that would
have nine to ten
layers of bodies piled in it, covered by twenty to
thirty
centimeters of earth. People were always buried at night,
usually inside
the main room of a house, so local farmers would
not be frightened
of the partisans, Their LIBERATORS. One
woman I spoke to
said that the guards would get her and a few
other women up
during the night and all the women were given
spears and bags
of lime. We were instructed to walk over into
the grave house
in our barefeet and to stab our spears into the
earth. Then we
each had to put lime into each hole. She
remembered that
with each step she took it was like standing on
a bowl of jelly.
If they children
were not able to work it was quite bad. One
woman said “It
was not much better for us as older children but I
was lucky at the
age of twelve. The collective farm that I was
sold to rented
out my services out each day to a farmer or man, I
was his
shepherdess, in charge of seventeen sheep two mares,
and five goats.
Out in the fields, where no one could watch me I
would drink milk
from the sheep and the goats. If caught I would
have been sent
to Russia or shot.
Less than thirty
percent of the our people who were still alive
when world
public opinion finally forced the Yugoslavs to end the
camp system in
1949. By 1950 the Red Cross determined that
over 30,000
children from the Ethnic Germans/Hungarians were
still alive in
state homes or in Russian, but with few or incorrect
papers. The
Yugoslavs not wanting to give up THEIR children
either destroyed
the papers on the children or changed the
children’s names
to Slavic or Serbian/Croatian names. In 1951,
the Yugoslav
government told the families that without an
original birth certificate,
type in Serbian, they where powerless to
help. How many
people would have had birth certificates after six
or seven years
of camps, on the run, or settled in different
countries?
DID THE
AMERICANS, CANADIANS, AND THE BRITISH HAVE
ANYTHING TO DO
WITH THIS TREATMENT OF THESE
PEOPLE FROM
YUGOSLAVIA?...........
The answer is
yes; it was done at Posdam and Yalta. The
actions carried
out by the Yugoslavian partisans but the British
and the
Americans signed the articles that allowed it. Who ever
decided that OUR
FAMILIES living their were NATIONALISTIC
GERMANS-Ethnic
Yes, Nationalistic NO. Our families and the
other people
living there was never asked what they considered
themselves it
was decided just like after World War I. Our
families had
lived in what had become Yugoslavia (1918) for
over 230 years.
Most of the families had as much French, Gypsy
and Hungarian
blood as German. And then look at the
Baltic...and in
the parts of Germany given to the Poles....
Germans lived
there eight hundred, a thousand years. Even the
French Huguenot
ancestors had lived in Prussia since the
sixteenth
century....”They were all expelled”
HUMANE
EVACUATION! Ask your grandmother, great-aunts
and
great-uncles, grandfathers, cousins on how human it was:
Two million dead
from 1944 to 1948 and this after the WAR.
During this
period a man calling himself “Menage Kidkif” was
trying to get
American support for the expulsion of Palestinians
from the Holy
Land. He cited as a precedent for his grand IDEA
that the
Anglo-American backed expulsion of Germans from
Eastern Europe
which he said was human and orderly without a
single instance
of loss of human life. The people who died must
not have been
human, just like Dred Scott in American history
A piece of paper
labels everyone there a German and took
everything from
homes, families, and nobody in the world gave a
DAMN. Punish
Hitler, his followers and any sympathizers with
the German
people. The people living in Banat did not even
have radios,
newspapers until the conflict had started but they
wanted and tried
to go on living just like their ancestors had
done before. Not
wanting to get into the political tension but to
live their own
lives and that of their COMMUNITY.
NINETEEN MILLION
PEOPLE evacuated. Fourteen Million at
gunpoint! This
was the largest forced exodus in the world, and
where is it
taught in the schools-United States, Canada, and
Great Britain?
NO! Nowhere! Just swept under the rug.
Chapter
7-Insights back and more Details
As the Russians
moved into the Banat province, the Serbs and
Partisans use
our ‘forced’ association with the SS division as an
excuse to
expropriate and destroy us. They moved everyone out.
The men were
separated from the women. The women,
including Margaret
Furo and Kate Tessling, were taken to
Rudolfsgnad,
Yugoslavia, which was an internment camp in
which Germs were
relocated. To get everyone there every
woman had to
walk, but the aged or disable or the sick were able
to ride on a
wagon part of the way. The women were put into
camps with 40-60
women to a room. That room was filled with
straw to lie on,
and human waste filled the rooms. Living
conditions were
very poor and over 90,000 were killed there
between l944 and
l950. As the women would die the
Yugoslavians
would come in and throw the bodies into the
muddy streets.
Whenever they would get enough bodies to bury,
they dug a large
hole and had a mass grave. This is where
Margaret Furo
and Kate Tessling died and were buried.
The men from
Ernsthausen (30 to 40) were taken to Katrinfeld
where they were
asked what types of jobs they wanted to do as
prisoners. After
choosing work the Yugoslavians fed the men a
large meal.
During the night, the men started getting sick to their
stomachs, and in
the morning 36 of the 40 men who had eaten
the food were
dead from deliberate poisoning. This is where
Mathais Tessling
died. At the Trefen that David Witte attended in
the spring of
1997, David met a man Michael Antis who was in
the same room
and besides Mathias Tessling on the night of the
poisoning. He
remembers the night very well and remembers
that he gave
some of his food to a hungry and sick Mathias and
then in the
morning finding Mathias dead next to him.
Presently, as this
history is being recorded, many residents of
Ernsthausen are
living in the United States, Canada, Australia
and Germany.
The present day
habitants (Serbo-Croatians and Dalmatians)
despise the
memory of the German speaking Catholics. When
the Russians
moved into the area the Catholic Church in
Ernsthausen was
destroyed (see picture) and so was the
government
office that had the birth, marriage, and the land
records for the
area.
The following
provided very valuable help and remembered the Furo’s and the
Heh’s while
living in Ernsthausen: Antis, Mulršth, Friedlein Tessling, and the
Remolling
families. Carl Remolling visited with Mathias Tessling and Kate and
grew up with
Frank Tessling and remembers being with and in Mathias’s Furo
home on various
occasions he lived just down the street.