Novi Sad raid
Novi Sad Raid | |
---|---|
Part of summary executions | |
Deaths | 3,000–4,000 |
Perpetrators | Royal Hungarian Army |
The Novi Sad raid (Serbian Cyrillic: Рација) also known as the Raid in southern Bačka, the Novi Sad massacre, the Újvidék massacre, (or simply The Raid) was a massacre carried out by the Királyi Honvédség, the armed forces of Hungary, during World War II, after the Hungarian occupation and annexation of former Yugoslav territories. It resulted in the deaths of 3,000–4,000 civilians in the southern Bačka (Bácska) region.
The Hungarian occupational authorities began raiding towns and villages in southern Bačka as early as 4 January 1942, ostensibly as a means of suppressing Partisan resistance, though the historical record shows that the Hungarian Government was attempting to improve its geopolitical standing vis-à-vis Germany. The first town to be raided was Čurug, followed by Gospođinci, Titel, Temerin, Đurđevo and Žabalj. The victims were seemingly detained at random while conducting everyday activities. On 20 January, the city of Novi Sad (Hungarian: Újvidék) was surrounded and placed on curfew; its telephone lines were cut. Over the next several days, the occupational authorities went about arresting "suspicious" individuals. More than 1,000 of the city's residents were killed by the time the raid ended. The victims in both Novi Sad and the wider region were mostly Serbs and Jews, though several Romani, Rusyns, Russians and Hungarians were killed as well. In Novi Sad, victims were forced to march across the frozen Danube, only to perish when the ice sheet was shattered by shelling from the shore. Some were pushed into holes in the ice sheet, causing them to drown or succumb to hypothermia, while others were shot in the street.
The Hungarian government and news media condemned the raid, calling for an immediate investigation. In 1943, the Hungarians conducted a mass trial of those suspected of organizing the raid, handing down prison terms ranging from 10 to 15 years. The convicts escaped to Germany. After the war, several trials were held in
The raid has been fictionalized in literature and film in both
Background
The Hungarian occupational authorities resolved to "rebalance" the ethnic makeup of Bačka while the invasion was still underway. Within days of the invasion,
A policy of "systematic magyarization" was implemented within the occupied territories.[13] "Less-desirable elements" of the population, such as Serbs, Croats and Jews, were discriminated against in matters of communication and education. Hungarian and German were the only languages permitted in almost all secondary schools, and Serbo-Croatian books, newspapers and periodicals were virtually banned.[15] Despite this, most Serbs and Croats that had lived in the Hungarian-occupied territories prior to 1918 retained their citizenship rights as Hungarians, and some lower-level non-Hungarian public employees retained their jobs.[12] On 14 December 1941, Bačka, along with the other Hungarian-occupied areas of Yugoslavia, referred to by Hungary as the "Recovered Southern Territories" (Hungarian: Délvidék),[16][17] were officially annexed and formally incorporated into Hungary.[11]
Prelude
Initial resistance
Small-scale armed resistance broke out in Bačka in the second half of 1941 and the Hungarian military reacted with heavy repressive measures.
Before the war, Bačka had been home to around 15,000 Jews.[21] This constituted more than one-fifth of Yugoslavia's pre-war Jewish population. Moreover, more than 90 percent of the Jews living in the Hungarian-occupied territories of Yugoslavia hailed from the region.[22] The Hungarian government had passed anti-Semitic laws in 1939, and following the outbreak of the war, these were applied in the occupied and annexed territories.[9] After the violence of the initial occupation, no further massacres of Jews occurred in Bačka for the remainder of 1941,[9] though the Jewish community was subjected to a string of discriminatory measures, such as the confiscation of property, arbitrary detention and forced labour.[21]
Escalation
By early 1942, the Hungarian military estimated that there were no more than 110 Partisans operating in all of Vojvodina, though in reality, the true figure was closer to 40.[23] On 4 January 1942, several dozen Partisans from the Šajkaška Partisan detachment were found hiding at a farm near Žabalj. They were engaged by the Hungary military, and in the ensuing clash, 10 Hungarian soldiers and seven Partisans were killed.[24] The remaining Partisans were arrested and deported to German-occupied Serbia. The Hungarian General Staff seized on the incident, using it as a pretext for launching attacks throughout the region that were intended to deter non-Hungarians from joining the resistance.[23]
On 5 January, Ferenc Szombathelyi, the Chief of the Hungarian General Staff, ordered punitive raids against the Partisans of Bačka. The order coincided with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's visit to Budapest on 6 January. Several days later, Generalfeldmarschall (Field marshal) Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, arrived in Budapest requesting that the entire Royal Hungarian Army be moved to the Eastern Front. Hungarian Prime Minister László Bárdossy declined, and in order to justify this decision, sought to demonstrate that Hungarian troops were desperately needed in the occupied territories. The Hungarian General Staff requested that the occupational authorities provide proof of an imminent, large-scale Partisan revolt in Bačka to show the Germans.[23] Hungary's leaders may also have been motivated to pursue a harsh response to demonstrate that they were strong enough to deal with Serb resistance and Jewish "subversion", and thus convince Germany that Hungary was competent enough to control the Banat, which had been part of the country before World War I.[25] According to the Holocaust scholar Mark Levene, the raid "may well have been intended as a dread signal from Budapest that Hungarian rule over non-Hungarians in the Balkans ... would be every bit as brutal as that of ... other occupying powers, or, for that matter, as it had previously been in Hungarian-occupied Serbia during the Great War."[17] Accordingly, further guerrilla attacks were orchestrated by the occupational authorities in order to magnify the size of the Partisan resistance. Bandages were distributed to gendarmes, and they were instructed to wear them on their heads and hands to simulate the effects of being wounded. These events were staged primarily for public consumption.[26]
Timeline
Killings commence
More than 8,000 Hungarian soldiers, gendarmes and border guards participated in the raid.[23] It began in the town of Čurug on 6 January, with suspected Partisans, including women and children, being removed to barns, storage buildings, and municipal buildings. Although some suspects were released, between 500 and 1,000 people were killed and their bodies stripped of all valuables. The raid moved onto other local settlements such as Gospođinci and Titel the same day and continued the day after. Over the next three days, additional killings took place in the towns of Temerin and Žabalj.[27] Civilians were rounded up at random and taken from their homes and businesses during their workday and while they were engaged in regular activities, even weddings.[28]
Novi Sad massacre
On 20 January, Novi Sad was completely surrounded and placed on curfew. Its telephone and telegraph lines were cut.[29] The city was divided into multiple areas of responsibility, with a different officer tasked with organizing the round-ups in each.[30] Placards sprang up on buildings, warning citizens against going outdoors, except to buy food. Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner summoned the local authorities and announced that the Royal Hungary Army would "take charge and clean things up" over the next three days. The raid began the following day. Between 6,000 and 7,000 people that were considered "suspicious" were arrested and taken to have their papers examined.[31] Others were detained on account that they had no papers.[23] Most were released, but at least 40 were taken to the banks of the Danube and shot.[31]
"The massacre was conducted systematically," the historian Leni Yahil writes, "street by street."[26] Many of the soldiers were visibly intoxicated.[26][31] Survivor accounts, delivered after the war, attest to the brutality of the killings. A woman recalled how, on 23 April, a soldier entered her apartment, demanding to know her family's religious affiliation. The woman told him that she and her family were Orthodox Christians. Infuriated, the soldier called her a "stinking Serb" and killed her five sons.[32] Thousands of men, women and children were imprisoned and interrogated at the Sokolski Dom, one of the city's main cultural centres. Many died during their interrogation.[30]
Temperatures reached −29 °C (−20 °F).[26] Victims were brought to an area known as the Štrand, along the Danube, and shot with machine guns. Their killers then broke up the frozen river's ice sheets with artillery fire and tossed the bodies into the water. According to another account, the victims were forced to tread the ice sheets, which were then shattered by shelling from the shore, causing them to fall into the freezing water and drown.[33] The killings only ceased after four days, when the city's Lord Lieutenant, László Deák, bypassed the curfew and alerted the authorities in Budapest.[26][31] He returned with orders that the massacre was to come to an immediate halt. Feketehalmy-Czeydner ordered that all executions be stopped by 9:00 p.m. Deák's mother was among the victims.[31] "The randomness and senselessness of the operation were evident especially by the fact that it hit not one single functionary of the Yugoslav Communist Party," the historian Krisztián Ungváry writes.[23]
Aftermath
In
Casualties
In a contemporary correspondence, Hungary's
Place | Total | Men |
Women |
Children |
Elderly |
Serbs | Jews | Romani | Rusyns | Hungarians | Russians |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bečej | 215 | 111 | 72 | 13 | 19 | 102 | 110 | - | - | - | - |
Vilovo |
64 | 44 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 64 | - | - | - | - | - |
Gardinovci | 37 | 32 | 3 | - | 2 | 37 | - | - | - | - | - |
Gospođinci | 85 | 47 | 19 | 15 | 4 | 73 | 10 | - | 2 | - | - |
Đurđevo | 223 | 107 | 60 | 41 | 15 | 173 | 22 | - | 27 | - | - |
Žabalj | 666 | 355 | 141 | 101 | 69 | 614 | 28 | 23 | - | 1 | - |
Lok |
47 | 46 | - | - | 1 | 46 | - | - | - | 1 | - |
Mošorin | 205 | 94 | 41 | 44 | 26 | 170 | - | 34 | - | 1 | - |
Novi Sad | 1,246 | 489 | 415 | 165 | 177 | 375 | 809 | - | 2 | 18 | 15 |
Srbobran | 3 | 3 | - | - | - | 2 | 2 | - | - | - | - |
Temerin | 48 | 14 | 15 | 7 | 12 | 6 | 42 | - | - | - | - |
Titel | 51 | 45 | - | 1 | 5 | 49 | 1 | - | - | - | - |
Čurug | 893 | 554 | 153 | 82 | 104 | 842 | 44 | 7 | - | - | - |
Šajkaš | 26 | 24 | 2 | - | - | 25 | 1 | - | - | - | - |
All places | 3,809 | 1,965 | 927 | 477 | 440 | 2,578 | 1,068 | 64 | 31 | 21 | 15 |
Legal proceedings
In 1943, Regent of Hungary Miklós Horthy ordered an investigation into the massacres and charges were brought against some of those that had conducted them.[37] Those charged fled to Nazi Germany and returned only after German forces occupied Hungary in 1944.[38] Horthy used the investigation as a method of distinguishing his regime from that of Nazi Germany.[39]
Some Serbian historians, such as Golubović and Aleksandar Veljić, have claimed that Horthy himself was aware of the raids and approved them being carried out.
After questions were raised in the Hungarian parliament the prime minister László Bárdossy sent a commission of inquiry to investigate. That investigation supported the story that the army had been battling partisans. A further investigation by Bárdossy's successor Miklós Kállay came to similar conclusions.[26]
In 1943, Hungary organized a trial of several officers who were among those responsible for the raids leading to prison terms ranging from 10 to 15 years.
Retribution and formal apologies
Mass killings targeting Jews, such as those that occurred during the raid, were relatively uncommon in Hungary-proper and the occupied areas until October 1944, when the Germans
In June 2013, Hungarian President János Áder apologised in Belgrade for the war crimes committed against civilian Serbs and Jewish people during the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslav territories. Some days earlier members of the Serbian Parliament adopted a declaration, which condemned the massacres and application of the principle of collective guilt against Hungarians in Vojvodina at the end of the Second World War.[49]
Legacy
Of the massacres perpetrated by the Hungarian occupational authorities in Yugoslavia, the raid in southern Bačka remains the most infamous.
In its aftermath, the historian Deborah S. Cornelius writes, "relations between Hungary and Serbia have never been the same." Decades hence, the raid continues to feature prominently in the Hungarian popular imagination, more so than most events from the war.
The Yugoslav writer
In 1971, a commemorative statue by the sculptor Jovan Soldatović was erected in Novi Sad, on the spot where the bodies of victims were tossed into the Danube.[62] The inscription at the base of the statue reads:[33][63]
Sećanje je spomenik tvrđi od kamena. |
Memory is a monument harder than stone. |
Similar statues, also created by Soldatović, exist in Žabalj and Čurug.[62] Commemorative ceremonies are held annually in Novi Sad and the other massacre sites.[64]
In 2022, the Serbian Orthodox Church canonized the Orthodox Christian victims of the raid along with the victims of other Axis crimes committed in Bačka between 1941 and 1942 as the "Holy Martyrs of Bačka".[65][66]
See also
Endnotes
- Salonika volunteers), mainly Serbs, were settled in the region.[10]
References
- ^ Roberts 1973, p. 15.
- ^ Pavlowitch 2007, p. 49.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 63–64.
- ^ Lemkin 2008, pp. 251–252.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 272.
- ^ Lemkin 2008, pp. 261–262.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 62.
- ^ Ungváry 2011, p. 70.
- ^ a b c d Mojzes 2011, p. 87.
- ^ Ungváry 2011, p. 75.
- ^ a b c Tomasevich 2001, p. 170.
- ^ a b c Pavlowitch 2007, p. 84.
- ^ a b Tomasevich 2001, p. 171.
- ^ Ramet 2006, p. 138.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 170–171.
- ^ Lemkin 2008, p. 631.
- ^ a b Levene 2013, p. 179.
- ^ a b c Tomasevich 2001, pp. 172–173.
- ^ Ungváry 2011, p. 73.
- ^ Banac 1988, p. 107.
- ^ a b Byford 2011, p. 114.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 583.
- ^ a b c d e f Ungváry 2011, pp. 77–78.
- ^ Sajti 2003, pp. 347–349.
- ^ a b c Patai 1996, p. 550.
- ^ a b c d e f g Yahil 1991, p. 503.
- ^ Mojzes 2011, p. 88.
- ^ a b c d Golubović 1992, pp. 43–44, 147, 194.
- ^ Yahil 1991, p. 503; Cornelius 2011, p. 189; Ungváry 2011, pp. 77–78.
- ^ a b Zuroff 2009, p. 209.
- ^ a b c d e Cornelius 2011, p. 189.
- ^ Klajn 2007, p. 132.
- ^ a b Cymet 2010, p. 355.
- ^ Mojzes 2011, pp. 88–89.
- ^ Rummel 1998, p. 176.
- ^ Bauer 1996, p. 149.
- ^ Mazower 2008, p. 329.
- ^ a b Golubović 1992, p. 187.
- ^ Szinai, M. & L. Szücs (eds; 1965), The Confidential Papers of Admiral Horthy (1919-1944), Corvina Press, Budapest, pp. 269-672
- ^ Veljić, Aleksandar. Mikloš Horti - Nekažnjeni zločinac, Belgrade, 2009.
- ISBN 0820304697
- ISBN 978-3-902494-14-6.
- ^ Yahil 1991, p. 504.
- ^ Wood, Nicholas"Nazi hunters identify convicted war criminal", International Herald Tribune, 28 September 2006.
- ^ ""97-year-old Hungarian Sandor Kepiro on trial for Nazi war crimes"".
- ^ "Hungary Nazi war crimes suspect Sandor Kepiro dead". BBC News. 3 September 2011. Retrieved 30 April 2017.
- ^ Bloxham & Moses 2011, p. 109.
- ^ Byford 2013, pp. 520–521.
- ^ "Hungarian president in Belgrade visit apologizes for crimes against innocent Serbs in World War II". Politics.hu. Archived from the original on 8 October 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
- ^ Byford 2011, p. 520.
- ^ a b Patai 1996, p. 590.
- ^ Thomas & Szabo 2012, p. 14.
- ^ Mojzes 2011, p. 121.
- ^ a b Cornelius 2011, p. 191.
- ^ Burns 1996, p. 73.
- ^ Iordanova 2003, pp. 76–79.
- ^ Thompson 2013, pp. 3, 44–45.
- ^ Mazower 2008, pp. 329–330.
- ^ Thompson 2013, p. 3.
- ^ a b Neubauer 2006, p. 231.
- ^ Thompson 2013, p. 80, note 25.
- ^ a b "Napukao spomenik žrtvama Novosadske racije". Radio Televizija Vojvodine. 3 April 2013. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
- ^ Mojzes 2011, p. 52.
- ^ Byford 2013, p. 525.
- ^ Serbian Orthodox Church 2 October 2022.
- ^ "New saints canonized by Serbian Church with hierarchs from 6 Local Churches". OrthoChristian.Com. Retrieved 2023-03-25.
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- Byford, Jovan (2011). "The Collaborationist Administration and the Treatment of the Jews in German-Occupied Serbia". In Ramet, Sabrina P.; Listhaug, Ola (eds.). Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 109–127. ISBN 978-0-230-27830-1.
- Byford, Jovan (2013). Himka, John-Paul; Michlic, Joanna Beata (eds.). Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. Lincoln, Nebraska: Nebraska University Press. pp. 516–548. ISBN 978-0-8032-4647-8.
- Cornelius, Deborah S. (2011). Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron. New York, New York: Fordham University Press. ISBN 978-0-82323-773-9.
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- Golubović, Zvonimir (1992). Racija u Južnoj Bačkoj 1942. godine [The Raid in Southern Bačka in 1942] (in Serbo-Croatian). Novi Sad, Yugoslavia: Istorijski muzej Vojvodine. ISBN 978-8-68207-701-5.
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Further reading
- Zvonimir Golubović, Racija 1942, Enciklopedija Novog Sada, knjiga 23, Novi Sad, 2004.
- Aleksandar Veljić, Racija - Zaboravljen genocid, Beograd, 2007.
- Aleksandar Veljić, Istina o Novosadskoj raciji, Sremska Kamenica, 2010.
- Aleksandar Veljić, Mikloš Horti - Nekažnjeni zločinac, Beograd, 2009.
- Jovan Pejin, Velikomađarski kapric, Zrenjanin, 2007.
- Dimitrije Boarov, Politička istorija Vojvodine, Novi Sad, 2001.
- Đorđe M. Srbulović, Kratka istorija Novog Sada, Novi Sad, 2011.
- Peter Rokai - Zoltan Đere - Tibor Pal - Aleksandar Kasaš, Istorija Mađara, Beograd, 2002.
- Enike A. Šajti, Mađari u Vojvodini 1918-1947, Novi Sad, 2010.
External links
- Godišnjica Novosadske racije (Commemoration dedicated to the raid victims) in Serbian); accessed 9 November 2015.
- Partial list of victims of the raid in Novi Sad, in the area that was under command of Sandor Kepiro (in Serbian); accessed 9 November 2015.
- Media related to 1942 raid in southern Bačka at Wikimedia Commons