List of Concentration and Internment Camps - Yugoslavia - Communist Camps

Communist Camps

In 1931, 499,969 citizens of Yugoslavia listed their native language as German and they comprised 3.59% of population of the country. In 1944, an unknown and disputed number of the Danube Swabians left the country, together with the defeated German army. As a result of the decisions of the Anti-fascist Council of national liberation of Yugoslavia ("Antifašističko veće narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije" - AVNOJ) in Jajce on 21 November 1943 and on 21 November 1944 in Belgrade all legal rights and citizenship were collectively canceled for at least 195,000 civilian members of the Danube Swabian minority who remained in Yugoslavia (mostly in the Bačka and Banat regions) after military defeat of the German army. Furthermore they were fully dispossessed of all property. About 7,000 German-speaking citizens were killed by the local Yugoslav partisans in the autumn of 1944. Most of the other Danube Swabian civilians were interned and driven into numerous labor and at least eight prison camps, which had been built for those unable to work: the old, sick, children under the age of 14 and mothers with small children under age 2 or 3.

These camps for the sick, elderly, children, and those unable to work were:

In the Bačka:

• Bački Jarak with 7,000 deaths
• Gakovo with 8,500 deaths
• Kruševlje with 3,000 to 3,500 deaths

In the Banat:

• Molin with 3,000 deaths
• Knićanin with 11,000 deaths

In Syrmia:

• "Svilara", silk factory in Sremska Mitrovica with 2,000 deaths

In Slavonia:

• Valpovo with 1,000 to 2,000 deaths
• Krndija with 500 to 1,500 deaths

A total of 48,447 of the interned Danube Swabians died over three years from starvation, cold, and disease in the labor and prison camps. Nearly 35,000 succeeded in risking the escape routes from the camps into nearby Hungary and Romania. Beginning in the summer of 1946, thousands of orphaned children were taken forcibly from the camps into children's homes and brought up as Serbs with no memory of their Danube Swabian heritage. In addition more than 8,000 women between 18 and 35 years and over 4,000 men between 16 and 45 years were deported to forced labor in the USSR at the end of the year 1944 and the beginning of 1945 from the Bačka and Banat regions of Yugoslavia.

Camps were disbanded in 1948 and Yugoslav citizenship was returned to the Danube Swabians. In 1948, 57,180 Germans lived in Yugoslavia. In the next decades, most of them emigrated to Germany because of economic reasons.