Knićanin

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The main street of Knićanin

Knićanin ( Книћанин , German Rudolfsgnad , Hungarian Rezsőháza ) is a village with 1753 inhabitants in the Okrug Srednji Banat in Vojvodina , Serbia .

Surname

The place is named after the voivode Stevan Knićanin , the commander of the Serbian volunteer troops in the revolution of 1848/1849 .

The German place name was chosen in honor of the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince Rudolf . The village was founded by Germans in the floodplain of the Tisza . The founding festival took place on April 2, 1866. One of the first tasks of the local residents was to build dams against the floods of the Tisza. The flood of 1867 almost cut off the residents' efforts. Then the dams were raised so that the flood of 1876 could be dealt with by taking out a loan of 24,000 guilders. After a flood in 1907, a more powerful pump was installed in the dam system in the same year.

In 1911, as part of the Magyarization , the community was given the name Rezsöháza ( dt. Rudolf House ) because it was in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary . From 1918 to 1924 the administration returned to the German place name. In 1924 the place was called Knićanin. After the German occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, the German name was reintroduced. Since October 1944 he has been called Knićanin again.

Danube Swabia

Former Catholic Church of the Resurrection of Jesus in Rudolfsgnad from 1877
Park in the center of the village, former location of the church that was demolished in 1948.
Monument on the edge of the German cemetery

Before the end of the Second World War , the place was predominantly populated by ethnic Germans ( Danube Swabians ) who were expelled or murdered from 1944 onwards. The population averaged around 3,000 people from around 1890.

The escape of the Germans from the advancing Red Army and the communist-dominated partisans began on October 3, 1944. The German Wehrmacht blew up the steeple of the Rudolfsgnad Church on their retreat to prevent the persecutors from observing points.

Rudolfsgnad camp

From 1945 to 1948 there was a so-called "labor camp" in Knićanin, in which mainly ethnic German women, children and the elderly were housed. The camp recorded a total of around 33,000 inmates during this period, of whom 9,500 are known to have died there, although there are also unconfirmed estimates of up to 13,000 deaths. The main causes of death were hunger and diseases such as typhus and typhus . Fourteen shootings are documented, according to eyewitness reports the actual number is said to be far higher. Rape and other ill-treatment are also reported. On the "Teletschka", a small field on the outskirts, around 9,000 dead are buried in a mass grave that has since been consecrated as a cemetery. Another 3,000 victims are said to be resting in the former village cemetery. In 1998 the Belgrade "Society for Serbian-German Cooperation" erected two memorial plaques there as a memorial. The Rudolfsgnad camp was disbanded in 1948 under pressure from the Red Cross and the Vatican.

One of the few autobiographical descriptions of the Rudolfsgnad camp comes from Maria Horwath-Tenz . There is also a radio feature by Heide Schwochow that was broadcast on Deutschlandfunk in 1993.

Rudolfsgnad is the sponsor community of the German community Leutenbach , in which many former residents and prisoners of Rudolfsgnad have found a new home. The majority of the population in Knićanin are now Serbs .

supporting documents

  1. Popis stanovništva 2011 god. , P. 112
  2. Baron, Lorenz: Rudolfsgnad - the village of my youth . Eugen-Verlag, Munich, 1995.
  3. a b c Genocide of the Tito Partisans 1944-1948 , Austrian Historians Working Group for Carinthia and Styria, Graz, 1990, ISBN 3-925921-08-7 , pp. 169ff
  4. a b c The suffering of the Germans in communist Yugoslavia , Volume 3, Donauschwäbisches Archiv Munich, 1995, ISBN 3-926276-21-5 , p. 234ff
  5. a b Stefanovic, Nenad, Ein Volk an der Donau , Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung, Munich, 1999, ISBN 3-926276-41-X , p. 84ff
  6. Sper, Darko: Vojvodina Germans Seek Moral and Cultural Rehabilitation (DOC file; 43 kB)
  7. ^ Owen, Luisa Lang: Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered . Texas A&M University Press, 2003, ISBN 1-58544-212-7
  8. Danube Swabians hope for the Pope to visit graves ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2014 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. (PDF; 1.46 MB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ooe.donauschwaben.net
  9. Horwath-Tenz, Maria: Marias Mädchenjahre . Oswald-Hartmann-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-925921-58-3
  10. Schwochow, Heide: Bitter Silence . Deutschlandfunk, 1993
  11. ^ Municipality of Leutenbach

Web links

Coordinates: 45 ° 11 ′  N , 20 ° 19 ′  E