Lipa massacre

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Two destroyed houses in Lipa, commemorating the massacre

The Lipa massacre took place on April 30, 1944 in Lippa ( Italian ), in a village in the municipality of Elsane in the province of Fiume, which has been part of the Kingdom of Italy since 1924 . The place, which is now in Croatia , was at the time in the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone , in which the Wehrmacht and the SS subordinate police of the Reich, together with a German-Italian civil administration, exercised power. 269 ​​people were killed in the massacre .

prehistory

Operation Zone Adreatic Coastal Land (red)

The Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone was created when the Badoglio government announced the armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943 and the fall of the Axis and the occupation of Italy by German troops began. The German Empire established Benito Mussolini in northern Italy the Italian Social Republic (RSI) as a fascist satellite state . From this puppet state, the German Reich separated two operational zones in the north-east of what was then Italy, the borders of which were not based on states, but on military requirements. The Adreatic Coastal Operation Zone extended roughly from Udine to Laibach .

Since October 10, 1943, the general of the mountain troops Ludwig Kübler , who was executed as a war criminal in 1947, was the military commander in the operational zone . All German military units there were subordinate to him, the police and the SS commanded by SS-Standartenführer Odilo Globocnik .

massacre

Military situation

There were strong partisan organizations in the Ariat Coastal Operation Zone , which inflicted numerous losses on the military. For example, Kübler's units lost 501 men from January 1 to February 15, 1944, either by death or wounding. General Kübler reacted to this on February 24, 1944 with corps order No. 9 with brutal and inhuman severity. The measures ordered amounted to covering relentless looting, arson of civilian property and the killing of the civilian population as an effective means of combating the "partisan gangs" and that those soldiers who did not obey these orders were subjected to severe punishment.

Operation Braunschweig

From April 24 to May 6 found in the southeast of present-day Istria , the operation Braunschweig place, which was to serve a so-called anti-partisan and was led by Globocnik. The operation first took place in the area of Sappiane , Ciceria , Mattuglie and towards the end between Pisino and Rovinj . The following took part in the military measure: Units of the 278th Infantry Division , the SS Karstwehr Battalion , III. Battalion / SS Police Regiment 15, 1st Battalion of the SS Police Regiment “Bozen”, a department of the Police Regiment zbV “Alpenvorland”, an EGr under the leadership of SS Sturmbannführer Ernst Weimann , a 150-man militia and a unit of the SiPo - and SD branch Pola under the command of SS-Obersturmführer Helmut Prasch .

Lipa

As part of Operation Braunschweig, the village of Lipa was surrounded on the afternoon of April 30, 1944. It is no longer possible to determine which units were involved in the Lipa massacre; the largest share is attributed to the SS Karstwehr battalion. After the village was surrounded, the units penetrated, looted and relentlessly killed 269 residents, mostly women, children and the elderly. Among the 269 people, 96 were children between the ages of 7 months and 18 years. The soldiers and militiamen burned the bodies, looted and demolished the houses. A total of 87 houses and 85 stables in the village were burned down and 367 head of cattle were stolen. Only two women survived the massacre because they brought milk to the partisans who were hiding in the surrounding mountains. The destroyed village was uninhabitable for a long time, today (2018) 125 people live there again.

  • Pictures from the military operation in Lipa

  • Deployed military in Lipa

  • Military operation in Lipa (left: SS-Obersturmführer Josef Oberhauser )

  • The burning lipa

  • House demolition in Lipa

Museum and commemoration

An interior of the museum in Lipa
The memorial with the names of the victims in Lipa

In April 2015 a museum was built in Lipa , the Memorijalni Lipa Pamti (German: Lipa History Museum ), which is dedicated to the history of the Liburnian Karst with a focus on the events of Lipa. The new museum emerged from the history museum that existed from 1968 to 1989. Today's museum is operated as a branch of the Pomorski i povijesni muzej Hrvatskog primorja Rijeka (German: History and Maritime Museum Rijeka ) in Rijeka , Croatia .

A memorial was set up for the victims.

literature

Web links

Commons : Lipa Massacre  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The tragedy of Lipa (English), in Ipapamti. Retrieved November 3, 2019
  2. ^ Gerhard Schreiber : German war crimes in Italy. Perpetrator, victim, prosecution (= Beck'sche series. 1168). Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39268-7 . P. 98/99.
  3. ↑ Lipa (Lipa), Elsane, Bistrica (Bisterza) April 30, 1944 , on Straginazifasciste. Retrieved November 4, 2019
  4. ↑ About the Center , on Ipapamti. Retrieved November 3, 2019

Coordinates: 45 ° 28 ′ 6.1 ″  N , 14 ° 18 ′ 5.6 ″  E