DSFoundation - Katharina  Nysten

The Danube Swabian Foundation of the U.S.A., Inc. Die Donauschwaebische Stiftung der USA, Inc.

On Thursday September 1, 2005 this article by Katharina Nysten was published in the German World Magazine

Thursday September 1, 2005

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On the Anniversary of the Donauschwaben

A German People on The Danube: Denied Their Rights, Persecuted, and Betrayed

By Katharina Nysten

The Donauschwaben are a people of German descent from the former Yugoslavia,  Romania, and Hungary, who were settled in the central Danube basin. A people  whose service as much as their suffering is immeasurable.

After the Turks were ousted from the Danube environs in 1717, the inhabitants  of the Habsburg Empire needed a work force, to make the war torn country  productive again. They sought settlers from all over Germany, with promises of  freedom, land, and assistance. Most came from Württemburg, from the Pfalz, and  Alsace-Lorraine. The establishment occurred in three stages, from 1683 to 1780,  chiefly during the forty year reign of the Empress Maria-Theresia. The settling  of the country with farmers and craftsmen was painstakingly planned out.

The Germans with their pioneer spirit came on the "Little Ulmer Boxes", a  sort of barge, down the Danube from Ulm, and were set down in a landscape that  was still mostly wilderness. The greatest benefit they brought with them was  their skills, their work ethic, their stamina, and their strength of will. These  settlers were the forefathers of the Donauschwaben.

They needed every bit of their strength and staying power to to able to  cultivate this country again. After years of the hardest work, deprivation, and  death, there were finally signs of success. The work ethic and modesty of this  people had made them prosperous and well-regarded.

However, in 1914 the Austrian crown prince fell victim to an assassin?s  bullet in Sarajevo and the First World War begins. In 1918 the Austro-Hungarian  Empire is one of the war?s losers. The kingdom of the Serbs, the Croats, and the  Slovenians, inclusive of some half-million German inhabitants, is proclaimed,  and in 1929 arises the new kingdom of Yugoslavia, a dictatorship. There are many  disputes, revolts, and assassinations between the Croats and Serbs, which puts  the Donauschwaben in a very delicate situation.

On the sixth of April 1941 the Second World War begins in Yugoslavia with  German air raids on Belgrade. The kingdom was dissolved and occupied by Germany,  Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria. After the breakup of Yugoslavia the Germans rely  on the people of their own

heritage, as all ethnic groups of southeastern Europe  have done in every conflict in history. Those of draft age among the  Donauschwaben, depending on whose rule they fell under, were required to perform  military service, whether to the Hungarian Honveds, the Croatian army, the  Serbian National Defense, or the German Defense forces. This war service cost  the Donauschwaben their Yugoslavian citizenship, all their human rights, and  everything they owned. Thousands starved. They were denied their rights by the  Avnoj (Antifaschist Council of The Yugoslavian National Liberation), whose  president was Josip Tito, who seized power under communist leadership at the end  of 1944. They were Germans, and were allowed to be persecuted and annihilated.

In 1944, of the 550,000 Donauschwaben, some were in the military, but the  greatest number fled. 200,000 stayed in their homes, of which 170,000 were  interned in concentrations camp. 60,000 died there of hunger. 30,000 able-bodied  were taken to the Soviet Union as conscript labor, of which 2000 died. 11,000  died in partisan attacks, 9500 by being shot. There were also 28,000 dead  soldiers.

After more than sixty years, there is never any mention of this attempted  annihilation of an ethnic people, the world has no idea.

Communist Hungary expelled 100,000 Germans by 1948. By 1980 the Romanian  Dictator Ceausecscu had sold the remaining Germans then living in Romania to the Bonn  government for 8,000 to 14,000 marks per person, thus freeing them.

Today the Donauschwaben are a free people! They are to be found on every  continent. They are good citizens of their new countries. They came with nothing, but they never let their capacity for work and their virtue be taken from  them. It is estimated that 400,000 live in America, the majority of which were born here. Many of them make an attempt to adhere to the traditions of their  forefathers.

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