Deportation to the Bărăgan steppe

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The Bărăgan in Romania
The Romanian Banat

The deportation to the Bărăgan steppe or Bărăgan deportation was by the communist government of Romania in 1951 organized deportation of more than 40,000 people of different ethnic groups , of which about a quarter of Romania German , from the border area at that Yugoslavia into between the capital Bucharest and the Danube located Bărăgan Steppe . This affected the residents of the western Romanian Banat from an area 25–50 kilometers wide along the Romanian-Yugoslav border between Beba Veche in Timiș County and Gruia in Mehedinți County . The kidnapping ended in 1956.

prehistory

After the rift between communist leaders Stalin ( Soviet Union ) and Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia), triggered by different views on the economic and political development in the emerging Eastern Bloc and the resulting exclusion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform alliance in June 1948, tensions increased between Yugoslavia and Romania, who professed Stalin. The population of the western Romanian Banat in the area of ​​the Yugoslavian border has been classified by the Romanian government as a security risk. For this reason, the Romanian leadership drafted a plan to clear the border area "from politically unreliable elements".

The deportation

By means of a deportation, capitalists and other opponents of communism , the so-called class enemies , were to be rendered harmless. The Romanian leadership also aimed to break the resistance against the impending collectivization of agriculture in Romania , as well as the increased settlement of the sparsely populated areas of the Bărăgan and the reclamation of the unused steppe soil in order to win it over for agriculture.

The deportation took place on the basis of the decision No. 344 of March 15, 1951 of the Council of Ministers of the Romanian People's Republic:

The Ministry of Internal Affairs is empowered, on the basis of this decision, to order the resettlement of any person from overpopulated areas whose presence is not justified at this time, as well as the resettlement from any location of those persons who, through their attitude towards the working people Damage the building of socialism in the Romanian People's Republic. The resettled can be ordered to stay in any locality.

Members of the coordination commission were the deputy ministers Alexandru Drăghici , Marin Jianu , lieutenant general of the militia Pavel Cristeseu and the major general of the Securitate Vladimir Mazuru . The then Interior Minister Teohari Georgescu and the then Foreign Minister Ana Pauker , as members of the Politburo of the Romanian Workers' Party, were among the main initiators and organizers of the deportation.

On November 14, 1950, the Securitate secret service drew up a plan for the upcoming deportations to evacuate elements over a 25 km section, the presence of which posed a threat to the border area with Yugoslavia , which should be completed within three months. In contrast to the deportation of Romanian Germans to the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War, when only people of working age of German ethnicity were deported, from the Bărăgan deportation, besides Germans , Serbs , Hungarians and Bulgarians , Romanians were also Romanians , a total of 12,791 mostly complete families , affected, a total of 40,320 people from 297 villages. 33,446 people from the Banat ( Timiș and Caraș-Severin district ) and 6,874 from Oltenia ( Mehedinți district ) were affected. The target group of 40,320 people was divided as follows:

Of these people, 9410 had German ethnicity.

The deportees were settled in the Bărăgan plain in the area of ​​today's Călărași , Ialomița , Brăila and Galați districts. They built 18 new villages: Viișoara (first, provisional name: Mărculeștii Noi), Răchitoasa (Giurgenii Noi), Olaru (Roșeții Noi), Salcâmi (Jegălia Noua), Dâlga (Dâlgailoruui), Movila (Valeaulga Nouiu (Feteștii Noi), Fundata (Perieții Noi), Dropia (Dragalina Nouă), Pelican (Borcea Nouă), Ezeru (Cacomeanca Nouă), Lătești (Bordușanii Noi), Măzăreni (Urleasca Nouă), Zagna (Vădenii Noi.), Budeumbăcari (Tătaru Nou, Dudeștii Noi), Schei (Stăncuța Nouă), Brateșu-Frumușița (Borcea Nouă), Rubla-Valea Călmățuiului (Însurățeii Noi).

When rumors of an impending deportation leaked out, some of the victims tried to flee to Yugoslavia, while other families hid their children with friends or relatives outside the border zone.

Locations and people affected by the deportation to the Bărăgan steppe, regardless of ethnicity
Region / Raion Number of towns Number of people
Banat Region
Timiș County and Caraș-Severin County 		190 33,446
Raion Sânnicolau Mare 32 12,694
Timișoara Raion 23 9,095
Raion Deta 50 6,654
Oravița Raion 49 3,330
Reșița Raion 5 432
Raion Moldova Noua 22nd 670
Almăj region 9 571
Region Oltenia
county Mehedinti 		107 6,874
Baia de Aramă Raion 2 83
Raion Turnu Severin 25th 2,945
Vânju Mare Raion 60 2,699
Strehaia Raion 4th 182
Raion Plenița 16 965
Total
Banat and Oltenia		 297 40,320
     
Locations in the Banat affected by the deportation, selection
German village name Romanian village name Number of deportees of
German ethnicity
Driving weather Tomnatic 527
Billed Biled 506
Lenauheim Lenauheim 496
Hatzfeld Jimbolia 486
Easter Comloșu Mic 436
Großjetscha Iecea Mare 388
Perjamosh Periam 377
Varyash Variaș 341
Bogarosch Bulgăruș 295
Lowrin Lovrin 274
Johannisfeld Johannisfeld 253
Thank god Thank god 236
Ulmbach Peciu Nou 229
Grabatz Grabaț 224
Sackelhausen Săcălaz 224
Kleinbetschkerek Becicherecu Mic 184
Neubeschenowa Dudeștii Noi 170
Marienfeld Teremia Mare 160
Alexanderhausen Șandra 48

procedure

The deportations began on June 16, 1951 with the help of 10,229 members of the border troop academy in Oradea and representatives of a school for fire fighters. 1,964 soldiers formed an intervention reserve. The supreme command was the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Major General Mihai Burcă, and the Minister of the "Internal Security Troops" ( Romanian trupele de securitate ), Major General Eremia Popescu .

The affected villages were surrounded by troops and the people who were recorded on lists and who had been deported were woken up in the middle of the night and asked to be at the local train station within two hours. They were only allowed to take what they could carry. The rest of their belongings were bought up by specially set up commissions at a fraction of their value. 2,656 passenger coaches and 6,211 freight wagons were provided for the transport . Often two or three families had to share a wagon. They were not told the destination of their journey. The first trains left the area between June 16 and 20, 1951. Because of the lack of trains, many of those affected had to endure two or three days in the summer heat without protection. The trains, secured by troops, avoided stops at the regular stops to prevent communication with other citizens.

Upon arrival, a few “happy” deportees were assigned to special settlements with Soviet names such as Iosip Clisitch (here 859 people), where they were housed in makeshift mud huts with thatched roofs. The majority were abandoned on stubble fields , where they were allocated around 2,500 m² house and garden spaces marked out with stakes. Water and bread were only given out sporadically. Many children suffered from the heat.

Despite the omnipresent shortage and the inhospitable circumstances with hot summers and permafrost and snowstorms ( Crivăț ) in winter, the deportees managed to build simple houses out of mud and wood. At first, tarpaulin-covered pits served as housing. After that, mud bricks began to be hammered to build houses; The houses were often covered with reeds . It was essential to survive to develop wells and wrest a harvest from the soil.

The deportees were only allowed to move within a radius of 15 km from their place of residence and bore the note "DO" ( Romanian Domiciliu Obligatoriu , German forced residence ) above the photo on their identity cards . Visits from outside were forbidden. Around a quarter of those affected died during the deportation. Of the 9,413 German deportees from 64 villages, 629 died in deportation. About 1,600 deportees were buried in Bărăgan.  

return

It was not until 1956 that Romania had to dissolve the camps on the Bărăgan steppe when it entered the UN , after which the surviving displaced persons were allowed to return home. The Decree no. 2694 of December 7, 1955 regulated the return of the deportees, as well as the return of their field property and their homes. It stipulated that all persons who were allowed to return to their areas of origin on the basis of Council of Ministers Resolution No. 326 S of 1951 to secure the necessary labor in the state estates of the Ialomița and Galați regions will have their fields and houses reimbursed there. The resolution recommended that the agricultural production cooperatives , also known as collective farms , which had been established in the meantime, accept the returnees from Bărăgan as members. By means of the deportation to the Bărăgan, not only the “class enemy” but also resistance to the collectivization of agriculture in the border zone had been eliminated.

The agricultural land was not returned in 1956 because it had already become the property of the collective and state economy. The houses were occupied by immigrants or they were in ruins. For the German returnees, however, the Council of Ministers decision meant, with some restrictions, the return of their houses, which were expropriated in 1945. The proportion of employees of German ethnicity in agriculture, however, fell from 74 percent (1948) to 22 percent (1956).

The steppe settlements left behind in Bărăgan were largely destroyed by the Romanian authorities. Only some of the settlements were then used for the placement of political prisoners in labor camps. Political prisoners worked in the villages of Rubla , Fundulea or Latesti . The dissident and writer Paul Goma spent several years of political imprisonment here. The national liberal politician Petre Bejan remained under house arrest in the village of Măzăreni (Traian) until 1959.

Reactions

International protests

The Bavarian Parliament condemned on 25 September 1951, the deportation than the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of people from their homes as a mockery of human rights.

In its protest on October 17, 1951, the German Bundestag stated that the deportation to the Bărăgan steppe had taken place “under conditions that mock the laws of humanity and human dignity”. Parliament called on the federal government under the Adenauer I cabinet to submit its protest to the United Nations .

Reactions of those affected

After the kidnapping, many of those affected with German ethnicity decided to leave Romania as soon as possible and primarily to move to Germany or Austria. For most of them, this only became possible as a result of an agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Romania in 1978. Since then, an enormous resettlement process began, which intensified in the 1980s and which could not be stopped even after the Romanian Revolution in 1989 . The 2002 census showed only 25,244 people of German ethnicity in the Timiș , Arad and Caraș-Severin districts , other sources speak of around 19,000 Banat Swabians remaining in 2002.

Rehabilitation and reparation

In 1990 the Asociația Foştilor Deportați în Bărăgan Foundation ( German  Association of Former Bărăgan Deportees ) was founded in Timișoara . The main goals of the organization are the scientific processing of the deportation through the investigation of the Romanian archives and the publication of the research results in publications, films, lectures, etc. The foundation provides advice to the persons concerned and advocates their reparation.

In the same year, the Romanian government passed Law No. 118/1990, through which the time of forced labor and that of deportation are counted as years of service for the calculation of the pension , whereby each year of imprisonment and internment counts as one year and six months of service . These are times when a person had to live in a compulsory residence after March 6, 1945 for political reasons or was deported abroad after August 23, 1944.

On May 1, 1997, Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Severin apologized to German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel for the injustice inflicted on the German population during the communist dictatorship. In addition to the deportation of the Banat Swabians to the Bărăgan steppe, in this declaration he condemned both the suffering inflicted on the Germans in the post-war period and the deportation of the Germans for forced labor in Soviet labor camps and the degrading human trafficking in the 1970s and 1980s. He deeply condemned these traumatic practices and expressed his apology for what happened “as a gesture of moral reparation to those citizens of Germany who were formerly citizens of our country, whose fate is permanently shaped by such damnable acts”.

On June 2, 2009, the Romanian Parliament passed Law No. 221/2009 on convictions with a political character and administrative measures assimilated to them, taken between March 6, 1945 and December 22, 1989. “The law stipulates that every person who had to endure political convictions or who had to endure administrative measures with a political character within three years after this legal act came into force, the state is obliged to grant compensation to the court within the specified period of time can apply for the moral damage suffered as well as the material damage suffered as well as the restoration of the original rights, if the court ruling had decreed the withdrawal of rights or military demotion. "

Compensation decree 118/1990 was extended on July 2, 2013 with law 211/2013 to all affected persons who are no longer in possession of Romanian citizenship.

Commemoration

Memorial in honor of the deportees in the Bărăgan in the Timișoara Justice Park (2016)

As part of the work of the “Asociația Foştilor Deportați în Bărăgan”, the memorial in honor of the deportees to the Bărăgan in the justice park ( Parcul Justiṭiei in Romanian ) of Timişoara was erected on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the deportation .

Under the motto 50 years of Baragan's deportation , a memorial event took place on May 13, 2001 in the ballroom of the Pschorr-Keller on the Theresienhöhe in Munich under the patronage of the then Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber . In addition to lectures and panel discussions, the exhibition "50 years since the deportation to the Baragan Steppe" was opened, which was also shown in the Haus des Deutschen Ostens in Munich from May 17th.

As a reminder, on June 23, 2001 in Fundata (near Slobozia ) a memorial was inaugurated on marble slabs with the names of all displaced persons in alphabetical order.

In the Muzeul Satului Bucharest took place within the framework of the program initiated by the European Commission “Europe for the Citizens. The active memory of Europe ”between March 25 and May 1, 2011, the memorial exhibition Black Pentecost: The Deportation to the Bărăgan Steppe ( Romanian Rusaliile Negre: Deportarea în Bărăgan ) took place in memory of the deportees to the Bărăgan steppe. The exhibition was organized by the Civic Academy Foundation ( Romanian Fundaţia Academia Civică ). The objects on display were made available by the Memorialul Sighet, under the direction of Ana Blandiana .

At the initiative of the Association of Former Bărăgan Deportees (Romanian Asociația foştilor deportați în Bărăgan ), a deportation house was faithfully reconstructed in the Banat Village Museum ( Romanian Muzeul Satului Bănățean ) in Timișoara. The house is made of rammed earth, thatched with thatch, has two rooms, a room and a kitchen and is extremely sparsely furnished.

literature

  • Deportation of the Southeast Germans to the Soviet Union 1945-1949 . House of the German East, Munich 1999.
  • Walther Konschitzky , Peter-Dietmar Leber , Walter Wolf : Deported to the Bărăgan 1951 - 1956. Banat Swabians commemorate the deportation fifty years ago . House of the German East, Munich 2001, p. 186 .
  • Wilhelm Weber: And above us the endless blue sky. Deportation to the Baragan steppe . Landsmannschaft der Banater Schwaben, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-00-002932-X , p. 399 .
  • William Totok : The deportation to the Bărăgan. From the archival legacy of Romanian Stalinism . in: Half-yearly publication for Southeast European History, Literature and Politics 7, 1995, p. 11-23 .
  • Elena Spijavca: Munci și zile în Bărăgan . Asociatia LiterNet, 2004, ISBN 973-7893-50-6 , pp. 130 (Romanian).
  • Rafael Mirciov: Lagărul deportării - Pagini din lagărul Bărăganului . Editura Mirton, Timișoara 1998 (Romanian).
  • Silvestru Ștevin: Desculț prin propriul destin . Editura Mirton, Timișoara 2002, ISBN 973-585-684-0 , p. 262 (Romanian).
  • Silviu Sarafolean: Deportații în Bărăgan 1951-1956 . Editura Mirton, Timișoara 2001, ISBN 973-585-424-4 (Romanian).
  • Viorel Marineasa, Daniel Vighi, Viorel Screciu: Rusalii '51: fragments din deportarea în Bărăgan . Editura Marineasa, 1994, p. 240 (Romanian).
  • Viorel Marineasa, Daniel Vighi, Valentin Sămînță: Deportarea în Bărăgan - Destine, documente, reportaje . Timișoara 1996, p. 335 (Romanian).
  • Romulus Rusan (ed.): Morţi fără morminte în Bărăgan (1951–1956) . Academia Civică Foundation, Bucharest 2011, ISBN 978-973-8214-62-0 , p. 182 (Romanian).
  • Uwe Detemple: Banat in Southeast Romania 1951–1956. Deaths in the Baragan . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2012, ISBN 978-3-8482-0843-2 , pp. 92 .
  • Erika Vora: Silent no more - Personal Narratives of German Women who Survived WWII Expulsion and Deportation . Xlibris, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4771-3781-9 , pp. 434 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).

Video

  • youtube.com , Bărăgan Deportari, impressions of life during the deportation, 3:00 minutes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ingomar Senz : The Danube Swabians . Langen Müller, 1994, ISBN 3-7844-2522-4 , p. 240 .
  2. ↑ genealogy.ro , Banat's historical chronology for the last Millennium , in English
  3. ↑ a b c Wilhelm Weber: And above us the endless blue sky. Deportation to the Baragan steppe . Landsmannschaft der Banater Schwaben , Munich 1998, ISBN 3-00-002932-X , p. 399 .
  4. ↑ a b birda.de , HOG Birda: Deportation in the Baragansteppe
  5. ↑ banat.de , Wilhelm Weber : Who was abducted?
  6. ↑ a b dvhh.org ( Memento of December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Wilhelm Weber: The fate of the Germans in the Banat after the coup d'état on August 23, 1944 up until the deportation to the Bărăgan Steppes , in English language
  7. ↑ Hans Gehl : Dictionary of Danube Swabian Lifestyles, Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies - Edition 4 of the series “Donauschwäbische Fachwortschätze” and Edition 14 of the series of publications by the Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies . Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-515-08671-4 , pp. 97, here p. 31 .
  8. ↑ Uwe Detemple : Banater in Southeast Romania 1951-1956. Deaths in the Baragan . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2012, ISBN 978-3-8482-0843-2 , pp. 92, here pp. 9-10 .
  9. ^ Wilhelm Weber: The deportation to the Bărăgan steppe of Romania 1951. Documentation, Munich 1998
  10. ↑ neubeschenowa.de , HOG Neubeschenowa, history
  11. ↑ a b Dennis Deletant : Ceausescu and the Securitate: coercion and dissent in Romania, 1965-1989 . ME Sharpe, 1995, ISBN 1-56324-633-3 , pp. 424, here pp. 27-28 (English).
  12. ^ A b Dennis Deletant : Communist terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965 . C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-85065-386-0 , pp. 351, here pp. 143-144 (English).
  13. ↑ a b banater-schwaben.org  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ), Katharina Kilzer: Robbery of Freedom and Human Dignity , May 19, 2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.banater-schwaben.org
  14. ^ Horst G. Klein, Katja Göring: Romanian country studies . Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-8233-4149-9 , p. 179, here p. 44 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  15. ^ Wilhelm Weber: Legislation and Council of Ministers resolutions on the Bărăgan deportation , Munich, 1998
  16. ↑ hsozkult.geschichte.hu-Berlin.de , Humboldt University of Berlin , Hannelore Baier : The Germans in Romania 1953-1959 , from: Conference Report From Thaw to Frost. German and other minorities in Southeastern Europe 1953-1963 , November 2-3 , 2007, Klausenburg / Cluj, Romania, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, December 17, 2007
  17. ↑ dvhh.org ( Memento from December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Donauschwaben Villages Helping Hands, Jakob Laub : Introduction to "Deported to the Bărăgan 1951 - 1956"
  18. ↑ Negotiations of the German Bundestag. Shorthand reports, 1st electoral term, 169th session, October 17, 1951, pp. 6970 and 6971.
  19. ↑ spiegel.de , Der Spiegel , Wenzel Weigel: The action begins in the evening , November 17, 1951
  20. ^ Kulturraum-banat.de , Josef Wolf : Das Banat - The forgotten journey - A historical overview
  21. ↑ Hannelore Baier , Martin Bottesch , u. a .: History and traditions of the German minority in Romania (textbook for the 6th and 7th grade in schools with German as the language of instruction) . Mediaș 2007, p. here 19–36 .
  22. ↑ afdb.eprocom.org ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Asociația Foştilor Deportați în Bărăgan, German association of former Bărăgan deportees , Timișoara @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.afdb.eprocom.org 
  23. ↑ a b billed.de ( Memento from November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Elisabeth Packi et al .: Against forgetting - 60 years since the deportation to Russia
  24. ↑ pensiitimis.ro ( Memento of February 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), Legea no. 118/1990, March 30, 1990, in Romanian
  25. ↑ dreptonline.ro , Legea no. 221/2009 privind condamnarile cu caracter politic si masurile administrative asimilate acestora, pronuntate in perioada 6 martie 1945 - 22 decembrie 1989, in Romanian
  26. ↑ sevenbuerger.de , Siebenbürgische Zeitung, Wolfgang Wittstock: Moral and material compensation for victims of communist persecution , September 7, 2009
  27. ↑ sevenbuerger.de , Siebenbürgische Zeitung: Law on Compensation for Deported and Politically Persecuted Persons, Monitorul Oficial No. 398, Law 211/2013, July 2, 2013
  28. ↑ afdb.eprocom.org ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Asociația Foştilor Deportați în Bărăgan @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.afdb.eprocom.org
  29. ↑ sevenbuerger.de , Siebenbürgische Zeitung: Memorial event in Munich: '50 Years of Baragan Deportation ' , May 3, 2001
  30. ↑ nussbach.de ( Memento of 18 December 2009 at the Internet Archive ), an important message to the younger generation
  31. ↑ banater-schwaben.org , Katharina Kilzer: Robbery of Freedom and Human Dignity
  32. ↑ muzeul-satului.ro ( Memento of October 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Rusaliile Negre: Deportarea în Bărăgan