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GENOCIDE of the Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia 1944-1948 Retired Professor Michael
Bresser, an immigrant to the USA after the Second
World War who was born in the former Yugoslavia,
has compiled a short history of the Danube Swabians
in the USA, of which the following is an edited
excerpt: The first Danube Swabians
arrived in the United States at the turn of the
20th century. The credit of the initial emigration
obviously belongs to the travel agents. These
representatives of the steamship companies visited
Eastern and Southern Europe with the encouragement
of the American government and of private
enterprise, recruiting industrious laborers to fill
the demands of the rapidly expanding factories,
mills and mines in the USA. The influx of Danube
Swabians lasted for 30 years. How many thousands
came is anybody's guess. But we can distinguish
three periods of emigration, each one of them
characterized by different
circumstances. For generations only the
fittest, the strongest, and most persistent
colonists had survived famine, plague and war in
the Danube plain. With the achievement of relative
prosperity and the improvement of hygiene toward
the end of the 19th century, this hardy race,
raising six to eight children per family found
itself in a population explosion. Since there was
no virgin arable land left to settle, the family
property was divided among the children, which led
within two generations to tiny holdings and rapid
impoverishment. There were no factories in the area
to hire the landless. The Hungarian government did
not promote industrialization, therefore the only
remedies left were birth control and emigration.
Fortunately for these
disadvantaged people the political and economic
situation in Western Europe had stabilized and the
lot of the poor in the Anglo-Saxon countries -
England, Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia had
improved. No longer did they emigrate to America to
open up the West and build the factories, they
preferred to stay at home. It was this
socio-political fact which sent the steamship
agents into the villages of Austro-Hungary, Russia
and Italy in search of new reservoirs of human
muscle with promises of one dollar a day wages in
America, a fortune by the standards of the
money-poor farm people. A few adventurous farmhands
signed up first and then more and more as favorable
stories from the land of opportunity reached the
anxious waiting families and friends at home.
In Hungary, emigration was
illegal until 1903. But it was simple enough to
travel illegally to the ports in Western Europe.
There were no passports and one could sail to
America, if one had the money and passed medical
inspection. In that year Hungary entered an
agreement with the British Cunard Line and
emigrants could now sail from Fiume (Rijeka) on the
Adriatic Sea. This was an expensive and arduous
journey and most of the Danube Swabian people
preferred the illegal route to the west. After a
few years it also became legal to depart from
Germany, Holland, Belgium and France. The ensuing
competition between steamship companies lowered the
one-way fare in 1908 to $8.00 - less than two weeks
wages for a laborer in the USA - that is steerage:
100 cubic feet space per passenger, including the
iron berth with straw mattress, the life preserver
as a pillow, no privacy, salt water for washing,
men and women separated, steep narrow ladders up to
the deck, up to 5,000 persons on one ship.
Guaranteed meals: salt pork, dry peas and beans,
gruel, rice, noodles, sauerkraut, potatoes,
hardtack, tea or coffee for breakfast and supper
during 3 weeks on an unfriendly, sometimes violent
sea amid a vile smell. Danube Swabians usually
landed in New York, Philadelphia or Baltimore.
After these naive villagers passed inspection and
were admitted, they encountered the sweatshops, the
robberbarons, the loan sharks and cut throats, the
dishonest politicians, a host of natives (or
recently arrived ones) ready to pounce on the
"greenhorns" and take advantage of them. Not
knowing the language, the laws, the mores, the
customs of the land, they invariably had to learn
the hard way how to survive. That did not
discourage them. They were used to hardship and
they did not intend to stay. Until 1910, seventy-five
percent of the immigrants were males: none of them
thought of going to work on a farm. Their intention
was to make money quickly, to live frugally and
save as much as possible in the shortest time and
then return to the "Heimat," to the tranquil
villages of their ancestors. They found work in the
cities, in the shops, factories, in the mills. A
few worked as barbers, carpenters, and bricklayers.
Single men and women, some not older than 14 (had
to be accompanied by an adult), stayed longer;
family men worked from 6 in the morning till 7 at
night, six days a week, earning as much as $10.00
weekly and returned home after two to three years
to buy land with their savings. Many made the trip
several times. By 1913 half of the
immigrants were females: women with children coming
to join their husbands. How many Danube Swabians
came during this period? How many stayed? How many
returned, encouraged by the steamship companies?
Legislation was proposed in Washington at the time
"to halt the stream of 'migrate birds,' those who
come to work here and take their earnings out of
the country." (Fifty million dollars in one year to
Hungary). The List of Alien Passengers
for the Commissioner of Immigration shows
"Nationality" (country of which the immigrant is a
subject) - which for Danube Swabians was Hungary.
The next entry establishes "Race of People,"
meaning ethnic affiliation. The Danube Swabian
people chose either German or Magyar. For those, 80
years later, it is confusing and difficult to
evaluate these records. Many German-sounding names
are followed by the entry "Magyar." Did these
people consider themselves ethnic Hungarians or
were they misinformed? There are no US Immigration
statistics breaking down the Hungarian immigrants
into Magyar, German, Slovak, Romanian, Hebrew, etc.
How many of the 193,460 Hungarian nationals who
came to the USA in 1907 were Danube Swabians and
how many of them went home again, successful or
disillusioned, we shall never know. The Danube Swabians who
stayed in the USA identified themselves as German
Hungarians. They usually derived strength and
solace from each other. At that time there was no
social security, no unemployment benefits, no
welfare, no health insurance available. Out of
necessity, the "greenhorns" joined together in
benevolent and relief associations, in societies
promoting social life, cultural experiences and
physical fitness. The First World War stopped
the two-way traffic between Hungary and America. At
the peace conference following the defeat of
Austro-Hungary, President Wilson approved, among
other measures, the partition of the Danube Swabian
settlement area between Yugoslavia, Romania and
Hungary, apparently in order to ensure everlasting
peace in Europe. As a result of the huge losses
incurred through the war and the chaotic disruption
of production and distribution of agricultural
goods caused by the drawing of new borders, the
economic future for the farmers looked bleak. In
addition, the Danube Swabians as a minority in
their newly assigned fatherlands had to contend
with the antagonistic sentiments of their new
masters and their restrictive legislation
infringing on the traditional German cultural
heritage. This gave impetus to the second wave of
emigrants who, feeling alienated in their own
homeland, resolved to leave for good. Several things had changed in
the meantime in the U.S. In 1917, over the veto of
President Wilson, the Literacy Test for Immigrants
became law in order to exclude undesirable
immigrants from certain countries. The Danube
Swabians had no problem reading the required "30-80
words in any language." By this time the quota system
was also introduced in order to stabilize the
racial structure of the U.S. The number of aliens
of any nationality admitted into the U.S. in any
year was limited to three percent of foreign-born
persons of that nationality (country of birth)
residing in the U.S., registered by the 1910
census. In the case of the newly defined Romania,
Yugoslavia and Hungary an estimate was made of the
number of people to be admitted. In any case, the
number never reached the pre-war figures. The
combined total, for instance, for Romania,
Yugoslavia and Hungary in 1924, counting all ethnic
groups, was a mere 1,747. From here on it is
impossible to know how many of the Danube Swabians
came to America. That information lies buried in
the records of Ellis Island, where it would have to
be culled from individual registration forms.
Those who came after WWI had
it easier: they found well-established enclaves of
Germans, Hungarians, Banater, Batschkaer, Apatiner,
etc. in many cities; relatives, compatriots,
organizations which helped them overcome the
initial culture shock. Only a small minority
returned home during the Great Depression. Most
stayed and became citizens, bought property, raised
their families, became Americans. Their social life
revolved around their clubs and the parishes with
German-language services. They stayed apart from
the "German" Germans (German nationals) and from
politics. In the meantime, an
unprecedented development took place in Europe. The
Weimar Government in Germany acknowledged the
German origin of the Danube Swabians, to which the
Austrian and German Empire before had shown 200
years of benign neglect. The Germans realized that,
left unassisted and divided among Romanians,
Yugoslavs and Hungarians, the Danube Swabians (the
name was then coined) would not be able to resist
assimilation attempts and as an ethnic group would
disappear and with them a culture and values worth
preserving. The Weimar Republic provided cultural
contacts and eventually, assisted with economic
development. The Danube Swabians, clerics and
intellectuals gladly reached for the helping hand.
With the coming to power of
the National Socialists in Germany in 1933, the
emphasis of the German government shifted. It still
emphasized culture and economics, but also
political utility. As the Third Reich grew in
power, its attitudes and those of its Danube
Swabian representatives grew more aggressive toward
their host countries. It all ended with Danube
Swabians fighting WWII in the uniforms of the
German Armed Forces. Of course, after the defeat of
Germany, the Danube Swabians found themselves on
the losing side becoming scapegoats for the
injustices, calamities, war crimes, real and
imagined, blamed on the German military by Romania,
Hungary and especially Yugoslavia. As punishment,
the Danube Swabians were disenfranchised; their
property confiscated; they lost their human rights;
their citizenship; they were expelled from the very
homeland they had created out of a wilderness. They
were sent to forced labor in Russia, and worse yet,
annihilated in liquidation camps. It is this
background that describes their subsequent
emigration to the United States. Regular immigration of
Germans into the United States after World War II
was forbidden. That law also applied to
"Volksdeutsche" (ethnic Germans), the designation
used by the National Socialists and adopted by the
Allies in order to identify people of German
descent living outside the borders of the Third
Reich, Danube Swabians included. There were
millions of German refugees from Soviet-occupied
lands languishing in the overcrowded barrack
compounds scattered throughout British and American
occupied Germany and Austria, homeless, hungry,
without a job, vegetating from day to day, without
hope for the future. Many refugees remembered the
addresses of relatives and friends overseas and
wrote to them for help. The Danube Swabians in
America, for their part, also had fallen upon bad
times during WWII. Anything German was suspect and
a sentiment of hatred, fueled by the war
propaganda, was openly expressed by native
Americans toward German individuals and
associations alike. It took great courage and
material sacrifices on the part of the compatriots
in the USA to show concern for, and try to
alleviate the plight of, their brothers in Europe.
It is to their credit that they took action. They
sent thousands of food packages to the suffering in
the camps and they initiated political action in
order to have the Immigration Law amended. The
arguments of those who now pleaded before the
Senate for the admittance of the Volksdeutsche to
the USA found sympathetic minds and in 1950 the
Immigration Law was changed, assigning to the
Volksdeutsche fifty percent of the German and the
Austrian immigration quotas. The International Refugee
Organization (IRO), several religious organizations
and American consulates in Salzburg and Hamburg
started with the registering, screening and
dispatching of ethnic German refugees, the Danube
Swabians among them. Every person had to pass a
rigid medical examination, get political clearance
and have a sponsor in the States, guaranteeing
lodging and a paying job. Those accepted left on
troop transports, on luxury liners or by airplane,
glad to escape the hopeless oppressiveness of
war-ravaged Europe. It is estimated that 40,000
Danube Swabians came, definitely came to stay, to
start life anew with nothing but their willingness
to work hard, to secure a living for themselves and
their families, to learn the language and to become
proud citizens of this country. Once established, the
immigrants of the 1950s searched for their
identity. The experience of the last 30 years had
shaped them; they could not readily identify with
the old-timers, the German-Hungarians. Neither did
they accept the second-class label "Volksdeutsche."
Rebuffed by the "German" Germans (Reichsdeutsche)
in their regional clubs, they chose to be known as
the "Donauschwaben," (Danube Swabians) and as such
affirmed their oneness with their brothers and
sisters all over the world. By the early 1960s,
emmigration of Danube Swabians to the United States
had come to an end. Those Danube Swabians belatedly
leaving Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia, due to the
economic and social support they received,
preferred to settle in the now prosperous West
Germany. A few American Danube
Swabians also have returned to Germany and Austria,
(never to Romania, Hungary or Yugoslavia), only to
come back again to the United States with the
realization that they have found here a new
homeland for themselves and their descendants.
The post-war history for the
Danube Swabians in the USA began with the help of
their brave countrymen. There were three men, who,
in response to the catastrophy, not only initiated
aid in the form of Care packages to the refugees in
Germany and Austria, but also were instrumental in
abolishing the discriminatory immigration laws of
the United States and assisted in the integration
of the immigrants into their new homeland.
They represent the thousands
of Danube Swabian countrymen who helped to create
the enormous welfare system which allowed tens of
thousands of Danube Swabians to immigrate and live
in the United States. The three men who
distinguished themselves with outstanding merits in
working for the welfare of the Danube Swabian
Refugees were Peter Max Wagner, formerly from the
Batschka Region in Yugoslavia and President of the
Danube Swabian Aid Society of New York, Nikolaus
Pesch, formerly from the Banat Region in Romania
and founder of the American Aid Society of German
Descendants in Chicago, and Father Mathias Lani
from the Yugoslavian Banat, founder of the St.
Emmerich Organization in Los Angeles. It is to
their credit that the immigration of the refugees
after the Second World War into the United States
of America was made possible, giving aid together
with other religious and governmental agencies, and
helping with sponsors, jobs and housing once the
immigrants arrived on the shores of America.
Their lives and deeds have
been retold in numerous publications and books and
they shall be remembered in the history of the
Danube Swabians as great benefactors in the time of
the greatest horror of these displaced people.
The history of the Danube
Swabians in Canada runs parallel to that of the
United States. Although fewer immigrants were
settled from the Pannonia Basin before the First
World War, considerable numbers immigrated after
the collapse of the Austrian Hungarian Empire in
1918. However, after the Second World War,
immigration to Canada was also made possible for
those refugees of German descent and a very
impressive number of Danube Swabians settled mainly
in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Those
newcomers formed organizations, clubs and religious
groups. They can be found mainly in Ontario in the
cities of Windsor, Leamington, German Village,
Niagra, Kitchner, Toronto, Newmarket, Scarbourough,
Etobicoke, West Hill, Waterloo, Bradford,
Willowdale, New Hamburg, Queensville, Preston,
Cambridge, Brampton and West Dowsview. In the
Province of Quebec many settled in Quebec City,
Laval-Des-Rapides and Montreal. In many places of Canada and
the United States, population pockets of Danube
Swabians are found which were begun by countrymen
who had arrived before the two World Wars and who
later helped immigrants settle in the same areas of
the New World. The energy and honesty of the
Danube Swabians made them a sought after work
force. They took advantage of the freedom provided
in their new homeland and many have gained
prominence in business and public service
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