A
German soldier was widely reported to have been executed along with the
partisans for refusing to take part in the action. However, in
actuality he died from wounds he suffered the previous day.
On
October 21,1941, Nazi soldiers killed about 4,000 people as part of an
"atonement exercise" in occupied Serbia. The victims came from all walks
of life. Children were among them.
Serbia does not play much of a
role in Germany's historical recollection of World War II. That is
despite the fact that from April 6, 1941, when the Nazis invaded the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, until their full retreat in 1945, hundreds of
thousands of German soldiers were stationed in the Balkan country. The
remains of more than 15,400 slain Germans are buried at 719 cemeteries
across Serbia.
Evidence of atrocities committed by occupying
German forces can be found in the countless graves that hold the remains
of Serbs, Jews and Roma. Most died as resistance fighters — but at
least 80,000 were killed as "atonement" for the relatives of dead German
soldiers and officers.
Shortly after invading Yugoslavia in 1941,
German commanders instructed soldiers to take hostages from all walks
of life "to hinder the formation of gangs," and as "preemptive
protection." As atonement for each German soldier killed by a resistance
fighter, soldiers were ordered to be "ruthless" and kill 100 Serbian
civilians; 50 were to be killed for each wounded soldier.
General Böhme: 'Take revenge'
A
disparate armed resistance had formed by the summer. The activities of
communist partisans and nationalist "Chetniks" only served to fuel the
fire of German terror.
In September 1941, Adolf Hitler appointed
the Austrian General Franz Böhme as the chief commander in Serbia.
Shortly after his arrival, Böhme reminded his largely Austrian units of
the events of the World War I: "You can take revenge for your dead
comrades, whose blood flowed here in rivers in 1914 because of Serbian
treachery."
In Two Faces of War, a documentary by Austrian public
broadcaster ORF, the historian Walter Manoschek says: "Most people
today are not aware of the crimes the Austro-Hungarian Army committed in
Serbia during the first World War. There was a Serb hanging from every
lamppost and every tree. And they still lost the war."
A Nazi massacre
On
October 21,1941, a particularly gruesome "atonement exercise" was
carried out in the central Serbian city of Kragujevac. As a result of a
firefight between German Wehrmacht soldiers and resistance fighters,
which left 10 Germans dead and 26 injured, occupying forces demanded
that 2,300 Serbs, Jews and Roma be killed in "atonement."
The
murdering began on October 19, 1941, in the villages around Kragujevac —
German soldiers called these villages "nests full of bandits." Although
415 people were killed, that was not nearly enough for the armed
forces, and they further arrested and detained another 5,000 people in
Kragujevac on October 20.
Victims were abducted from fields,
factories, the streets and from their homes. Some 300 schoolchildren and
their teachers were arrested in their classrooms. Roma children, mostly
shoe shiners who had refused to polish German soldiers' boots, were
rounded up as well.
Hardly anyone fled, either out fear for what
might happen to their families or because they actually believed
soldiers who told them they only wanted to collect and issue new
identity papers. The first 123 Serbs and Jews were shot at 6 p.m. on
October 20 — 10 of them survived. One of them testified about the crime
at the Nuremberg Trials in 1947.
In the face of death, detainees
who had anything to write with set their final thoughts to paper for
loved ones — 42 such notes survive today. One reads: "Mira, kiss the
children. Children, listen to your mother. Take care of yourselves. Your
Laza. Goodbye for eternity." Another simply reads, "Don't send bread
tomorrow."
On October 21, Wehrmacht soldiers began lining up and
shooting groups of prisoners at 7 a.m. By 2 p.m., it was over: 2,264
people had been killed. Roughly 200 of the remaining prisoners were
forced to bury the dead, an act that took days. The rest were sent home.
At
the same time, Nazi soldiers and Serbians cooperating with occupying
forces executed 1,700 civilians in Kraljevo, about 50 kilometers (30
miles) away. In her book Tito, the historian Marie-Janine Calic quotes a
survivor: "They dragged all of the men out onto the street — from
children 14 and older to the elderly, who were 60 or more. They were led
through the city streets with their hands above their heads and into
the storage facility at the wagon factory." Later, victims were shot as
they stood before freshly dug graves.
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