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Erika Daniels
Sean Rody
English 102
Final Paper
The Holocaust in Yugoslavia
Death camps in Yugoslavia were terribly brutal and ruthless. After World War II,
when Josip Tito became the dictator of Yugoslavia, he conducted an ethnic cleansing of
the ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia in revenge of what the Nazi army did to his people.
Tito and his Partisan army imprisoned the Germans and other civilians of Yugoslav
villages into death camps where prisoners endured massive torture and suffering. Guards
were extremely abusive and the prisoners were treated as inhuman. For no reason,
innocent people were abused, starved to death, and tortured by the Partisans. Even
children had to endure the hardships. Most of the people who were imprisoned in the
camps were exterminated.
The genocide was carried out by mass executions, torture, severe physical and
mental abuse, internment in both extermination and concentration camps, and ethnic
cleansing (Mojzes, 121). The act of revenge exterminated both the guilty and the
innocent Germans and other civilians from Yugoslavia. The treatment of prisoners in the
death camps was horrendously brutal and tragic.
Although the camps in Yugoslavia were similar to the camps created by the Nazi
army, what happened in Yugoslavia remains unspoken. In fear of what the Partisans
would do, nobody in Yugoslavia dared to speak about the genocide. Thousands of people
died in death camps in Yugoslavia and the truth about the brutality, ruthlessness, and
endurances of the death camps remain with the survivors. One can only truly understand
what it was like to be a prisoner of the Yugoslav death camps if they themselves endured
and experienced the hardships and torture.
The History of an Unknown Genocide

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Many are unaware of the genocide that took place in Yugoslavia after World War
II because it is a period of time that has been erased from history. The genocide began
during the Serbian uprising when German invaders were attacking the Jews in
Yugoslavia. At the time of the genocide, Yugoslavia was also in the midst of their own
Civil War with the German army where 1,500,000 Yugoslavs were killed. After World
War II, in Yugoslavia alone, there were 540,000 ethnic Germans (Gutman, 1722).
Josip Tito, the dictator of Yugoslavia wanted revenge against the German army, so
he conducted an ethnic cleansing of the Germans in the Yugoslav villages. However,
the Germans were not the only ones who were put into death camps. Every village in
Yugoslavia, German or not, was walled in and the majority of the population was taken to
death camps. Upon Titos revenge, the Germans were deprived of civil rights, forced out
of their homes, put into death camps, and endured forced labor (Totenbuch der
Donauschwaben).
Confinement in the death camps began in 1944 and lasted until 1948. Of the
Germans alone, 170,000 were confined, and 51,000 died in the camps due to abuse,
starvation, or disease (Totenbuch der Donauschwaben). Tito wanted to ensure that every
German person was taken to a death camp:
When Tito came to power in Yugoslavia in 1944, he established eight
concentration camps: Gakowa, Jarek, Kruschiwl, Krndija, Mitrowitz, Molidorf,
Rudolfsgnad, and Valpovo. These became known as death camps. There was
one and only one criterion for internment. If your last name was considered to be
German, you were in. (Zettl)
Not only the ethnic Germans, but anyone who lived in the villages in Yugoslavia was
forced into the death camps. The death camps were extraordinarily cruel and the people
confined were treated as animals. Children were taken from their parents; people for no

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apparent reason were whipped, beaten, shot, and killed. Those who remained alive were
especially lucky.
If you research, you dont find Rudolfsgnad on the map anymore because what
happened is they erased it, because it was the worst death camp in Yugoslavia.
They say Rudolfsgnad was an imagination and that it never happened. I was
there. Nobody knows but the people involved. They claim that in Rudolfsgnad
alone, 26,000 people were killed. (Till)
Life in the Rudolfsgnad death camp was so brutal that it is no longer addressed in history.
It is history that has been erased. The only people who know the true suffering that went
on in the camps were the people who endured it, the survivors.
The Genocide and Torture Within The Camps
Upon Titos revenge, Germans were deprived of civil rights, forced out of their
homes, and put into death camps. The prisoners were treated as inhuman. They were
starved to death, abused by guards, and the living conditions were horrendous. The
guards in the death camps treated the prisoners with severe abuse and cruelty.
A typical roundup proceeded as follows: German nationals were collected usually
in a warehouse by Partisan armed units and marched to a village that had been
turned into a concentration camp, or they were transported by cattle trains. When
someone came too close to the edge of a village, a warning shot was fired,
followed by shots aimed to kill. Adults received no food at all during the first
week, and many, especially the elderly, died of hunger, cold, and disease. Adults
were forced to labor in the fields. More than half of the people who were taken to
labor camps died. Parents were mercilessly separated from their children and
other members of their families, usually never to see them again, even if some of
them survived. (Mojzes, 116)

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The conditions of the death camps were surreal. The prisoners had no choice but to
follow the Partisans into the death camp, because if they refused, they would be shot and
killed. Every day prisoners saw the people around them die, and endured massive
suffering. The prisoners were treated as inhuman and were brutally abused. The guards
were absolutely merciless.
As a result of the death camps being established in the early winter, many people
died in the first few months from freezing to death. The prisoners were not fed and had
no clothes. The suffering the prisoners endured was inhuman. Families were torn apart,
parents were separated from their children, and spouses were separated from each other.
Some mothers got to stay with their children, and lived in grave houses with 40-60 other
women and children, while the men were sent off to labor camps. In the grave houses
during the cold nights, the only thing that kept the children from freezing to death was
each others body heat. The children had nothing but each other. The women and
children made the best of what they had, even though the living conditions were
gruesome.
Picture a room the size of a small guest bedroom, now pack twenty children in
there, and everyone is lying on straw. We lay on the straw to sleep and when one
child turns, all the rest turn as well, and that is how you keep warm. There were
rats there, and the rats were scared because the children killed and ate them. That
was food. We may only catch one rat, but we share it with all the kids, because
that is what we do. (Till)
As you can see, children were desperate for food, so desperate that they resorted to eating
rats. Although the children were starving, they still shared the minimal amount of food

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they did get with one another. Because children were rarely fed, many died from
malnourishment and starvation. Most children under the age of three did not survive.
Prisoners were given nothing. No clothes, no food, and because there were no restroom
facilities, many died from disease. The grave houses were full of bodily waste and many
people died from contagious diseases like typhoid and diarrhea. The inhabitants of the
camp were treated as if they were inhuman.
Even the innocent children were tortured and were left to fend for themselves.
Many children died from freezing to death, hunger, disease, and neglect, while others
were murdered by the commanders and guards of the death camps (Mojzes, 116). Guards
for no apparent reason murdered innocent children. In larger camps, there were
designated places specifically for children, where they were tortured and killed. Children
were also taken away from their parents and adopted into Communist families who
would educate them to become loyal to the Communist system (Mojzes, 117).
There were two different types of camps. There were general camps and labor
camps. The general camps were intended to be extermination and liquidation camps and
were located in abandoned warehouses and factories (Mojzes, 114). General camps were
populated with young children, some women, elders, and people who were too sick to
work. The general camps were a place for people to die. People were killed in the
general camps by beatings, torture, and execution. They also died from starvation and
disease. Of the people who were being sent to the labor camps, many were killed on the
way by being tortured to death in makeshift torture chambers located in the woods or
fields (Mojzes, 114). The prisoners of the camps were treated as inhuman by the guards
and were brutally tortured.

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The list of woes endured by the German minority is endless; it includes beating
with chains, sticks, and planks; knocking out teeth; bashing in heads; cutting off various
body parts; and carving and crushing bodies (Mojzes, 117). Women were raped and
sometimes women even killed their own children so they wouldnt have to endure the
suffering, and then they would commit suicide shortly after. The guards at the camps
were ruthless, and purposelessly tortured the inmates. Guards would inflict massive pain
on prisoners and leave them to suffer and die. They beat prisoners without reason and
completely abused their power. The deceased bodies were usually in the streets for days
before somebody would clean them up. The bodies were then piled up and thrown into
massive graves. Everywhere the prisoners looked, there would be dead bodies lying
around. They watched their friends and family pass every day, and still had to endure the
hardships of the camps. Many children were orphaned. The inhuman treatment of the
prisoners was unbelievable.
Rudolfsgnad was the largest death camp in all of Yugoslavia. Peter Till, who
lived in the Rudolfsgnad death camp for 18 months, explained to me what it was like to
endure the grave conditions of the death camp. Peter was lucky enough that his mother
was not murdered, and was able to live with her and many others in a grave house.
In the death camp of Rudolfsgnad, our mother was with us. In the house [grave
house] there were about three rooms, with about 50-60 kids who lived there. At
night we used to crawl over the outside of the perimeter of the village and there
was barbed wire, and we used to crawl through there and go begging on some of
the streets over in the next village. That is what we did. (Till)

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It was extremely risky to go begging in the middle of the night. If the guards caught the
children crawling under the barbed wire to steal potatoes from the workers of bordering
villages they would either be executed or beaten, and after they were beaten, they would
be thrown into cellars full of water rats and wouldnt be let out for weeks (Gokawa
Lager). Children went begging on the streets searching for food even though there was
the chance of being executed because they had no other choice. If they didnt attempt to
beg, they would die from starvation. Children learned at a very young age how to fend
for themselves. Although children were innocent, the guards treated them with the same
brutality as the adults. The conditions of the death camps were horrendous.
The prisoners of the camp were slowly being killed by starvation. In the workers
part of the Rudolfsgnad camp, in the morning people were given only a small piece of
cornmeal bread as small as the palm of their hand (Gokowa Lager). They could either eat
it all at once, or save it to eat throughout the day, but that was all they received. Children
were not as fortunate because they were not workers and according to guards; children
did not necessarily need food because they were useless to the camps. Children under the
age of six and people who were too elderly to work were given cornmeal bread the size
of their hand every two to three days (Gokowa Lager). The amount of food provided
shows that the prisoners in the camps were treated horrendously.
The prisoners of the camps were tortured. For no reason, prisoners were punished
and beaten. Guards would beat the innocent people just because they wanted to. I
remember a guard walking along and suddenly, for no apparent reason, taking out a whip
and whipping an old lady (Zettl). Even the elderly were treated as if they were not

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human. Whether they did something wrong or not, the prisoners of the camp would be
punished. Guards treated the prisoners with severe cruelty and abused their power.
Many men between the ages of 16-35 were taken to Russian Labor camps by
cattle trains. They were separated from their families and they never saw them again.
The conditions in the labor camps were horrendous. Some did not remove their shoes
for two years. People in these labor camps slept in their clothes, including shoes for
warmth (Zettl). Men worked in the fields and coalmines, infants were taken for
adoption, and women were raped and sold for their services. 80% of these people never
returned (Gokowa Lager). The women of Rudolfsgnad were piled on top of one another
in grave houses, and were living in straw and bodily waste. As soon as there were
enough deceased inhabitants, they were buried in mass graves. Within the grave houses
there was no restroom facilities, so there was a manure pile located in the back of each
house. Many died from exposure to the toxins and epidemic disease. The living
conditions in the camps were atrocious.
Prisoners were treated as if they were inhuman. The guards were merciless. Men
were interrogated, shot, executed in makeshift torture chambers, or put into separate labor
camps. However, some men were privileged and got to choose their job. Those men
were fed an abnormally large meal before being sent off to work. Although they may
have thought they were receiving better treatment, and felt lucky to finally receive a true
meal, the majority of the men would die the next morning from the poisoning that was
put in their food. They were not being sent off to work; they were being tricked into
death.

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Overpopulation was an excuse for the Tito Partisans to exterminate the prisoners
and clear out the camps as much as possible. People died every day from being shot,
abused, malnourished, and disease. Prisoners were exterminated in unethical ways. The
brutalities of the death camps were unreal, and the prisoners were fooled into death traps.
They were told that they were being taken to a better place, but in reality they were being
taken to extermination. The camps entailed some of the most gruesome deaths. Nobody
died peacefully. People were either shot, abused and tortured to death, starved to death, or
died of disease.
The women, preferably blondes were taken to a compound and were treated as
caged animals in order to satisfy the sexual lusts of Titos elite group (Gokawa Lager).
Velibor Gligoric, who spend almost 18 months in a Yugoslav death camp, stated, the
children were collected in steel nets like chickens and were sent to be machined gunned
or killed with poisonous gases (Byford). Not only were the prisoners in the death camps
treated as inhuman and killed, they were tortured prior to their death. Even the innocent
children were tortured prior to their death. That alone shows the severity of the needless
punishment in the death camps and the torture prisoners had to endure.

A Prisoners Only Hope: Escape

Most people who were put into death camps did not make it out alive. Peter Till
was extremely lucky to survive the Rudolfsgnad death camp. He was only nine years old
at the time. When I asked him how he managed to get out, he told me that there was only

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one way out of the death camps. You break out (Till). When I proceeded to ask him
how he managed to escape he replied with the story of his horrendous journey:
We had young kids along because you have women who are, or were pregnant
because they got raped by the people and guards at the camp. We had a sixmonth-old baby along with us and the biggest thing you have to think about is
how to keep him from crying through all this. What women did, was they got the
green shell of walnuts and used it as dope. You give it to the baby and they sleep.
We broke out one night and there was about eight of us, my brother, my mother,
myself, and five other people. The only thing that helped us was that my mother
had a gold ring that she hid because you dont have any money in these death
camps. We sold her ring because there was an organization outside the walls that
for money gets you started. We gave them money and they put is on a train that
took us all the way to Hungary. We broke out the beginning of December, and on
the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, we were in Budapest in Hungary, and went
through Danube at night and we got wet. It was very cold. Then on New Years
Eve, we crawled from Hungary to Austria and that is where everybody was drunk
and shooting in the air because it was the New Year, and we crawled on all fours
in the mud so they wouldnt see us. There is one kilometer between Hungary and
Austria and that is called no mans land because it doesnt belong to either
Hungary or Austria. If you are seen crossing no mans land, they shoot you
down like a bird. We crawled in the mud for the whole kilometer. From there
you have to try and make it to the American zone. Austria was divided into three

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zones, the French, Russian, and American zones. We had to make it to the
American zone because that is where we would be safe. (Till)
The only way to get out of the death camps was to escape, and that was not easy. Peter
was very lucky to escape Rudolfsgnad. Escape was highly risky, if a person were caught
attempting to escape, they would be shot down immediately. However, escape was a risk
many people were willing to take, because there was no other way out of the camp.
Many people died trying to escape, and few made it out alive.
Yugoslav Genocide
Tito and his Partisans would conduct mass murders in order to clear out the
camps. The death camps entailed some of the most gruesome deaths. Nobody died
peacefully. People were shot, tortured, starved to death, frozen to death, or died from
disease. Even the innocent children were tortured prior to their death.
The genocide was carried out by mass executions, torture, severe physical and
mental abuse, internment in both extermination and concentration camps, and ethnic
cleansing (Mojzes, 121). The act of revenge exterminated both the guilty and the
innocent Germans and other civilians from Yugoslavia. The treatment of inmates in the
death camps was horrendously brutal, tragic, and unethical. Guards abused their powers
with severe torture. Thousands of people died in camps from the gruesome abuse and
torture. The treatment was inhuman and the endurances seem surreal because the
prisoners were treated so viciously. Although the Partisans were conducting an ethnic
cleansing, it is no excuse for the profound amount of abuse and unnecessary torture.
Thousands of people died in the death camps in Yugoslavia and the truth about the
brutality, ruthlessness, and endurances of the death camps remain with the survivors.

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Works Cited

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Byford, Jovan. Shortly Afterwards, We Heard the Sound of the Gas Van: Survivor
Testimony and the Writing of History in Socialist Yugoslavia. History and
Memory 22.1 (2010): 5,47,169. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 20 February
2013.

Gokawa Lager. Web. 14 Feb. 2013.

Gutman, Israel. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Vol. IV. New York: Macmillan Pub.,
1990. 1716-22. Print.

Mojzes, Paul. Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth
Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 109-21. Print.

Till, Peter. Your Experience in the Rudolfsgnad Death Camp. Personal Interview.

Totenbuch der Donauschwaben The genocide of the Germans in Yugoslavia between

1944 and 1948. Web. 14. Feb. 2013.

Zettl, Anton. Dachau / Buchenwald / Gakowa: Reminiscences of a World War II

Survivor. Journal of Political and Military Sociology 33.2 (2005): 267-0_6 ProQuest
Research Library. Web. 21. Feb. 2013.