Tibor Cseres: Serbian Vendetta in Bacska

The recollections of T.K.:

"Jani Bosnyak, when he heard that the partisans had taken some people out to Isterbac, put on his Serbian reserve officer's uniform and hurried after them. He got there when the first ten men were led up from the cellar. He spoke perfect Serbian and he asked Julka to set these people free, because they were innocent and never did any harm to the Serbs. Julka told him to go home, but he stepped among the others voluntarily and he was the first to be shot dead."

The recollections of Gy.M.:

"The partisans went from house to house and said that the bridge at Kigyosi had been blown up and they had to repair it, but the people were taken to Isterbac, not there. The nicest house in Isterbac was that of the Major's. They were locked up in the cellar of that house and the partisans brought them up in groups of ten. They had an old gramophone with handcrank and they played partisan marches. My brother-in-law, Pista Magyar, was also there. One of his eyes had been plucked out when very young, so he looked kind of miserable. They told him to go away but never look back.

"Well, he said later, I couldn't run more than a hundred steps when I heard: bang, bang, bang! The folks of Isterbac were watching it from the attics: the gramophone was playing: they were drinking brandy from bottles: and Julka and two men mowed people down with machine guns."

"Rudi Nyarai came home from Budapest where he was working as a weaver. His father was also a weaver in Bezdan. They were shot down together, embracing each other. Joska Braun, died at Isterbac: he was a cripple. He married a Jewish girl and worked as a furrier. He was also taken away when he said that his wife was a Jew.

"No, you are just another Swabian!"

He didn't die right away, he crawled on to a straw-stack and cried for help. The partisans had already left, but no one dared to go there and so he bled to death."

November 5, Sunday. The Russian army is moving toward Bezdan on the main road just half a mile from us, car after car: wagon after wagon: batteries of artillery, tanks, trucks full of soldiers. The advance started yesterday. It seems that the Russian army wants to cross the Danube at Bezdan.

Old Libis came back from Isterbac. He buried his son temporarily at the site of the execution. The rest of them still lay there unburied: the relatives don't dare to go there since they are afraid that they themselves would be shot. He told us that there lay teacher Csepe, Pista Amrein, Peter Lang, Janos Lang, Imre Balla, Janos Horvath, Janos Kiss, Imre Kiss, Jozsef Mari, Jozsef Sipos, Janos Pocz, Sandor Turi, Istvan Midlinszky with his two sons, Janos Gyorfi, Gyorgy Kisberi, Pali Major, Janos Mazak, Jozsi Szanto, Feri Varga, Jani Kedves, Feri Jankovics.

In the evening, we all came together in the big room of the farmhouse, lit some candles and prayed for them until late at night."

The recollections of T.K.:

"The mother of Jani Bosnyak was the first who dared to go out to Isterbac. She pulled Jani, her son-in-law, and her grandson out from under the dead bodies. She laid them side by side, threw some earth on them, then brought twigs from the forest and made a temporary cross on the graves. She came to the farms crying and wailing. Her pain must have been unbearable: the Virgin Mary couldn't have suffered more than her."

"November 24. After a two-week long battle, the Russian army managed to cross the Danube. Troops are moving along the road

from dawn to dusk, but the more people cross the river, the more arrive from Zombor, Gy.L. writes.

December 6. While the inhabitants were away on the farms, the Serbian folks from Monostor came to plunder with wagons. They took away everything, bedding, furniture, valuables.

There were some people who, in spite of the orders, hadn't left for the farms, because they didn't want to leave their houses unattended. Uncle Pista Kedves stayed at home as well. When the partisans found him, they beat him up with rifle butts so brutally that he passed out several times. Then they locked him up in the cellar of Sandor Horvath, but that cellar was full of people. Every morning they were driven out but each time he was pushed back.

"You are stary (old), you can go back!"

The young people were executed in the yard (all he heard were the shots), later they were found buried in the dunghill.

December 8. There was a mass again in the church. Chaplain Lajos Vajda, who had been taken to Zombor on November 3, by the partisans, returned. He was given food and accommodation at the Gyorfis'. The women were cleaning the church for days. They carried out several loads of garbage and dung, because the soldiers had put themselves up in the church and kept their horses there too. They had even made a fire in the middle of the church: the place where it was can still be seen.

December 10. Life slowly starts again, people gather and bring news. There is no village in Bacska where the partisans didn't take a deadly toll. They executed twenty-eight of the Catholic priests, among them the abbot of Becse, who was beaten to death, and Balint Dupp, the parish priest of Csurog, who was executed in Becse. In Topolya they threw the hundreds of corpses into the lake behind the council house. In Temerin, Peterreve and Bajmok, they made the victims dig their own graves. In Novi Sad they shot thousands of Hungarians dead on the soccer field. In the villages near the Tisza river, they shot them into the water. The Swabians of Bacska were taken to the camp of Gakovo, which was surrounded with barbed wire. They slept there in the open and were kept there until they starved to death. I also heard about men who were buried alive, impaled or quartered. In Zombor they buried their victims into the ground up to their necks and then crushed them with tanks."

"The executions in the villages of Bacska were directed by a woman called Julka. She made a bloodbath wherever the 12th Brigade went. This Julka said that each executed Serbian must be avenged with the death of ten Hungarians. She kept mentioning seven thousand executed Serbs, so she wanted the death of seventy thousand Hungarians. She died at the Battle of Batina when they crossed the Danube. A shell tore her hand off and then she was taken to Bezdan for first aid. Ilus, whose husband was also executed at Isterbac, worked at the first-aid station and saw her die. On the hill of Batina, it is her statue on the top of the thirty-yard high granite monument. It can be seen on the side of the column how they crossed the Danube."

The recollections of F.R.:

"I was looking for Laci, my brother-in-law, and I was going around everywhere in the village. We picked up seven dead bodies in the big mill, seven at Miklos Stein' on the main street, five in the Knipp-school, five at Miska Flesz'. There were also seven corpses at Pista Szecsenyi's house on Puszta Street. Then another two, one, three were dug in yards and dunghill or thrown into wells.

There was a long ditch along New Street. The partisans told the people: if you run away, you can escape. Poor fellows, they were wired to one another. Instead of running together, they tugged one another right and left till they all were shot into the ditch from behind, there were seven of them.

At Uncle Jozsi Tallosi's, the well was dug on the corridor. They drew the water from there and poured it right into the kitchen. In April he wanted to put the pub in order and open it. He tried to draw some water but couldn't. They opened the well, it was covered with planks. They found it full of dead bodies almost up to the top. When he reported it, he was told:

"They can't be taken out, fill it up."

Then there was one, I can't understand that, who was dug into the ground, and his head was crushed totally flat. I saw another who was slashed open from neck downwards and his heart was cut out. We found him like that when we dug him out.

December 16. I met the forester of Topolya in Zombor. In Topolya they executed people on the hillside at dusk. They made them dig their graves, undress to underpants, and then shot them

into the pit. Early next morning, when he found the place, the earth that had been thrown on them was still moving. They spoke of about 1,600 executed people in Zombor.

March 12, 1945. The relatives of the executed asked the Serb leaders several times to let them bury the dead, but they were refused. "Let the dogs carry their bones away", answered the commander each time. They were only allowed to throw a little earth on the bodies, legs and hands stuck out here and there. It turned warmer and the stench of the decomposing corpses at Isterbac grew more unbearable every day. After the intercession of the Bulgarian troops, the Serb leaders at last consented to their proper burial in the cemetery.

"May God give them eternal rest and us peaceful hearts to live in this country without anger and hate", as our fathers and grandfathers did. The earth of Isterbac has soaked up the blood of the victims.

4.

Having examined the history of the parishes in Bacska and searched the country clergymen's consciences, Marton Szucs, retired parson of Bacsszolos, and Jozsef Kovacs, retired parson of Martonos, wrote "The Silence Of The Dead", a comprehensive work, which serves as a requiem for the 40,000 innocent Hungarian victims in Bacska.

Though registering war crimes is considered a bold courageous step in itself, living in Bacska, they did not dare publish the book during their lifetime. The requiem could only be made public by other daring men after the death of the authors.

In October and November 1944, wrote the courageous parsons, a murderous thunderstorm blew in on the gentle plains of Bacska, and demanded at least 40,000 Hungarian victims. The overwhelming majority of them were innocent and were killed without a just cause in bloody revenge. Those who were guilty of assaulting the Serbs between 1941-44 had fled in time, thus the cruel vengeance came upon completely innocent people at home. Some Serb politicians and Yugoslav pseudo-historians claim that the massacred Hungarians were all fascists, and therefore war criminals. However, this statement lacks any basis and is completely false. This work attempts to reveal the innocence of 99% of the Hungarian victims. It also points out the fact that legal proceedings should have been taken against the guilty, as was done in Hungary following the atrocities in Novi Sad and its surroundings. The authors protest against the probable

accusations, that this account was written to incite revenge, this would make no sense at all. Its sole purpose is to demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of the massacred were innocent, guiltless of any wrong deeds deserving retaliation.

The minority Serbs in the village of Bezdan did not have to endure any persecution or discrimination in 1941-42.

At the end of October, Russian troops marched into the village. A few days later, on November 3, partisans followed the Russians. At about nine in the morning, the villagers, men, women, children alike, were summoned to a general meeting on the soccer-field. 122 men were picked out from the crowd and ordered to bring a spade or a hoe with them. The partisans drove these 122 men under armed guard to a farm near the Isterbac woods. They locked most of the men up in barns, and forced some to dig pits. On the farm a kind-hearted partisan guard asked the housewife, "Do you have any relatives in the barn," She answered, "My nephew is there." The guard kindly shook his head, saying, "Unfortunately there is no back door in the barn. I would have let him out, but I cannot."

When the digging men finished working, the guards sent away the residents of the farm, saying, "Leave for an hour, we have some work to do here." Then the partisans led the men in the barn to the edge of the pits, and fired rounds of bullets at the unsuspecting victims.

There was a 13 year-old boy among the slaughtered, the son of the poundmaster. The partisans wanted to separate him from his father, but the affectionate child did not want to leave him.

The ferocious, bloodthirsty partisan heading the executions was a woman called Boyka. Upon seeing the child, who was so strongly attached to his father, she told the soldiers, "Kill the kid too! You have to strike at the root of the evil!" Then she had the boy killed.

Boyka took her accordion out and started to sing triumphant marching songs at the unburied corpses of the innocent Hungarians. Having done that, she sent a dispatch rider on a white horse to the partisans on the soccer field, with the message "Gotovo ye!", which means "Done!".

The partisans on the soccer field sent the parson with the women and the children to the farms, and escorted the remaining 500 men and the two chaplains to the Kronich Palace in Zombor. All this occurred at around two in the afternoon.

Later on, the partisans were relieved by Bulgarian soldiers. The Bulgarian commander allowed the exhumation of the slaughtered

men. The common grave was opened on March 28th. It was discovered that the victims had been tied together in groups of 15 while marching toward the pits. They had been murdered at the edge of the common grave, with their hands roped together.

Previously, on November 18, the villagers had found other corpses in the cellar of the parish hall and in the streets, mutilated beyond recognition. There were 20 more corpses in the Ferenc Canal.

Gyorgy Prolich had been forced to get off his wagon in the outskirts, and was executed then and there.

In order to save his father, Jozsef Schmidt had said that if his father was released, he would reveal the place in the woods where the enemy's radio transmitter was hidden. All this had been invented by him just to play for time. As the partisans could not find a trace of the transmitter, they tortured and finally executed the dreadfully mutilated Schmidt.

While the executions were going on in the vacated village, the Serbs of Monostorszeg continued to plunder Bezdan and rob the unattended houses. It is possible that these Serbs were the murderers of the elderly who stayed at home, disregarding the order of the partisans proclamation.

In the winter of 1944-45, the executed were registered in the death roll of the Roman Catholic Parsonage in Bezdan, pp.242-254. There was a slight hint that the local Serbs were not to be blamed for massacring the 183 innocent victims, but rather the partisan commanders, and foremost the partisan woman called Boyka.

This is the list of the executed men from Bezdan, in order of registration and age:

Ferenc Csapo, 33	Mihaly Miovacs, 18
Sandor Ferenc, 35	Sandor Zezula, 20
Janos Kanizsay, 16	Jozsef Midlinszki, 19
Istvan Midlinszki, 40	Imre Szkerlesz, 38
Janos Kedves, 46	Ferenc Varga, 33
Sandor Molnar, 37	Peter Lang, 28
Karoly Macskal, 52	Istvan Kiss, 18
Janos Bosnyak, 35	Gyorgy Oberreiter,19
Peter Kalmar, 29	Janos Virag, 28
Kalman Szakacs, 30	Janos Kiss, 30
Mihaly Hettyei, 25	Jozsef Nagy, 42
Mihaly Knoll, 37	Janos Balla, 44
Jozsef Limberger, 48	Istvan Kartalis, 45

Tibor Cseres: Serbian Vendetta in Bacska