The fatal year of l944 was the springboard to four years of the most unpublicized concentration camp in Southern Europe - namely, Gakowa.

In the early morning of November 25, l944, the towncrier announced that within a few hours we were all to assemble in the "City Hall".  Due to much confusion and fear in the country at that time,  we were terrified of what was to become of us.  The families gathered together and discussed our future existence.

At that time, Gakowa was flooded with Russian soldiers; also some "partisans" (soldiers of Tito).  As it was, we only expected to be held that day, and took no food, nor any more clothing than covered our bodies.  We had the surprise of our lives.  After taking our money and valuables, such as wedding rings, watches, etc., they put us up for the night in the homes of the surrounding area of the "City Hall".  The men and women were separated, leaving each to worry about the other.

At that time, my father had been drafted into the german army just a couple of months before.  My mother and sister, Erna, were with me in one of those crowded rooms, which served as our night's stay.

Meanwhile, the cows, pigs, horses and the fowl  were hungry and let themselves be heard.  A few of the men were allowed to feed all the livestock, and came back with the news that our homes had been robbed and vandalized.  While we were kept locked up and watched very closely, the partisans and their families had a party, helping themselves to anything they desired.  Clothing and furniture, food that was stored for winter, was taken and the things they did not want, were burned or torn so as to be useless to us.

Having heard of this, there was great despair.  Nobody knew why we were forced out of our homes to an assembly and never allowed to go back.  Why our hard earned belongings were taken by force.   Our prison sentence lasted one week.  Food supplies came from the houses we left filled with winter stock.  No one, however, seemed to be hungry for it is bad enough in a prison when you are worthily punished, but much worse, when your crime is unknown and your future in dark danger.  The uncertainty of what might happen next, drove one to deep despair .

Then, one day we were ordered to line up outside.  A few were picked out for work in the service of the soldiers; -- bakers, cooks and nurses.  My mother, sister and I were assigned  to the so-called "hospital" to care for the sick.  Actually a hospital was set up at our doctor's house.  Everyone else that could walk, was taken to the closest town about five miles away called "Kruschiwl".  With the exception of the soldiers and a few of the workers, Gakowa was now a ghost town.

Most of my relatives were taken to "Kruschiwl" and according to them, many died of worry or lack of medicines, others contracted severe colds and life-long diseases.

On or about December 15, 1944 we were released to go back into our homes.  The ones taken to "Kruschiwl", also returned.  We thought the nightmare was over and agreed that things could have been worse.

Then on December 28, l944, a never-to-be-forgotten day, men and women from the ages of l7 to 35 were supposedly taken for labor purposes in the surrounding cities.  A few days later, however, we found out that they were transported into Russian labor camps.  Our family was touched too.  My cousin, Tobias Brandt, who was just seventeen, was among those taken away.  A young boy, needing good food and education to help his physical and mental growth received instead very scarce food, no clothing, no medical care and no education.  His only education was "how to survive".  The only important thing was to work for the government - now and always.  Salt and coal mines, railway building and heavy work in forests, enslaved the under-nourished juveniles and made men out of them.  This information came only with the return of a 70 pound  21 year old boy, or should I say "man".  While there, no mail or word came from Russia informing families of the where-abouts of their loved ones.

Gakowa was to be the most dreaded camp in Yugoslavia.  In the early months of 1945, Donauschwaben from the Batschka and Banat, which is another german-speaking region in Yugoslavia, were driven out of their homes with belongings only their backs could carry.  The old and the sick came with the healthy.  Some did not make it, because they had to walk -- and walk fast.  Once they arrived in Gakowa, they were divided into groups and placed into homes.  As days passed, each house became more and more filled.

On April 24, 1945, my mother and I came down with the first case of typhoid fever.  No doctor nor medicine was available.  So our bodies fought with nature in the struggle between life and death.  Shortly after the attack of the fever, I became unconcious and remained so for 21 days, at which time the patient either survives or dies.    Evidently my resistance was stronger than my mother's, because she died while I am still here to tell about it.  My mother's burial had very few mourners because  only a few relatives were allowed to attend the funeral.  Luckily we could bury her in a coffin, which was later impossible.  The corpses outnumbered the graves and  burial was done in "mass graves".

My father was far away and the death of his wife was unknown to him.  My little sister, Erna, age 3 at the time, did not know whom they were burying.  She later asked for her mother time and time again.  I, myself half dead, missed the opportunity of the last right to accompany the greatest person to her resting place; -- one's mother.  She had an iron will to live.  Her love was not only for her family, but surpassed the worldly beings to honor our Blessed Mother.  A consoling thought has always kept me happy; - that our Blessed Mother, too, loved her so much that she ended her suffering and took her to heaven, where she is waiting and watching for us all.

As the months passed, I became well again, and our evacuated house filled rapidly.  Since typhoid fever is very contagious, no one was allowed to live there during our illness.  Both my sister and I went to live with our maternal aunt, Barbara Findeis and Anton Findeis.  Nine people slept in our room which was considered lucky, because usually 15 to 20 people occupied one.  Beds were made of straw and housed fleas and lice.  Food came from large kitchens, set up in each block.  Huge kettles were used to prepare soups and porridge.  Boiled cabbage leaves or potatoes mixed with hot water served as soup; corn and wheat were the ingredients of the porridge.  Bread was made from corn and water, sometimes without salt.  Meals without salt had even less taste and strength.  Due to under-nourishment and worry, death rates rose to a peak.

From the 20,000 people living in Gakowa (a town of 2500 inhabitants) at that time, approximately 75 to 100 died each day.  That was when the problems of burial arose.  Our small cemetery could not hold any more, so it was enlarged on the back.  Huges mass graves were dug, about half a block long, six feet deep and six feet wide.  Each morning the corpses were wrapped in sheets and laid in the yard.  A horse-dawn wagon came around and made the "pick-ups".

The ceremony was very short.  Once close to the grave, the wagon was turned to one side and the corpses buried themselves.  Several men stood at the bottom in order to file the bundles close together to make more room.  As each layer was filled, about one foot of ground covered it, and the next layer was started.  No one knew where their relatives or friends rested, only that they were "somewhere in that hole".  Gravestones or flowers were prohibited, only the grey, cold earth blanketed the poor unfortunate ones, whose epitaph might be: " Death came through hunger and sickness".

In 1945 the church and cemetery were closed.  The opportunity to honor the dead and attend church was cut off.  The spiritual side of life was urged to be forgotten.  Suicides became evident.  Women attempted  to jump into the 25 feet deep wells, which supplied each house with drinking, cooking and cleansing water.  This reduced the already low water supply.

The winter of l945 to 1946 was one of the hardest in the Schwabenland history.  Malaria broke out supplemented with lice, who spread it.  A case of such a harmful insect, is the one that cost my Grandfather Nickolaus' life.  An old man, who was willing to give his last warm coat for food, tried to bargain with my Grandfather.  As he tried it on, two lice transferred on his body.  These two did a lot of harm.  He became ill, suffered much and died on January 6, 1946.  A few days later, I brought my few belongings and came to live with Grandmother Julianna.

A few days later, surprise struck us again, and we both were driven out with what covered our bodies and one blanket.  What I remember most about that day was that I forgot my only pair of shoes.  I wore a pair of knit slippers in the house, and the sudden request to leave was a great shock.  Later I found that the shoes were left behind, but permission to return was not granted and thus I walked all winter long in knit slippers.  I could not go outside.

The reason for the evacuation of that area was that all malaria cases came into that section.  The disease spread so rapidly that nearly everyone became infected.  The "Commandant" (commander in charge) reached the decision that they must be exiled.  Without care and attention, nor doctors and medicine, the death wagon made many trips to that area.
Meanwhile, my Grandmother Julianna and I came to live with my aunt again.  A couple of weeks later, the latter part of January, the towncrier once more announced that everyone was to be divided into areas according to age.  The children, workers and old people were to live separately, each in a different block.  Once again I packed up my bag and prepared to leave with my sister.  In Yugoslavia, the winters are hard and snow falls often and stays on the ground.  That day, I would say, was among the coldest.  The partisans seemed to time it that way, for it was so much fun to see us freeze and suffer.

Everyone was ordered to stay inside and be ready to go anytime a soldier came to escort you to your designated area.  A man, who was trying to look after his daughter, was seen on the street by a partisan and shot down in cold blood.  After a few people were moved, the commandant ordered "halt" and everyone was allowed to return to their original places.  Fortunately, I was among those who were not yet moved and didn't freeze as much as some of those poor people with whom they played "cat and mouse".  That just goes to show the works of an insane and barbaric mind.  The great turmoil,  fear and worry that was caused by such an announcement, played a big part in running down one's resistance, and achieved their plan  to harass us.  They never really meant to separate us, but only wanted to sharpen our nerves and extinguish the flame of the little strength that was left.

In fact, we had regular assemblies about once or twice a month, sometimes even more often.  Everybody, sick and healthy, lame or blind, was forced to assemble in the designated spot.  The healthiest looking men and women were picked out and sent to labor camps.  Sometimes they only called the assemblies to frighten us even more.

I'll never forget that winter at my maternal aunt's house.  Due to limited housing, too many of us were forced to sleep in one room.  Rats and mice were so abundant, that we could not get rid of them.  They inhabited the whole wall, and when we closed up one hole, the next one would open up.  We slept on the floor, and I hate to think of those terrible nights, when those miserable rodents played "catch" with eachother.  Sometimes in dressing yourself in the morning, you would find a mouse in your shoe.  I am still plagued with nighmares of these nights and am terrified of mice.

Another episode in our fearful life was the fact that orphans were to be turned over to the government and brought up according to the ideals of Communism.  Being orphans, my sister and I lived in constant fear of that realization.  One time it was so bad, we had to hide for a week in a storage room and when things became so dangerous, we hid in an old icebox in tavern which my Grandmother's sister - Barbara Zorn, owned.  Due to two generous aunts and uncles, our chances of being taken away became slim because they cared for us and said we were their children.

The poor children who were taken to orphanages to parts of Serbia, lost their German heritage, their language, and knowledge of  parents and God.  The upbringing consisted of hammering into their minds that there was no God.  Stalin and Tito were their Gods and would take care of them.

The fact that Gakowa was only about seven or eight miles from the Hungarian border, provided a slim opportunity to escape to freedom.  Many tried, some made it, others were either captured and brought back or shot right away.  The runaways, who were brought back, found a cellar for a prison.  Each house had a cellar in order to keep food from spoiling.  It was usually dark, damp, and underground.  The two biggest ones were chosen as the prison.  Both men and women were thrown in those ugly housings after their capture.  It was very dark and you could not see how many and who was there.  Facilities for lavoratories were impossible, and the smell made it even more nauseating.

A case of severe brutality befell a family from Gakowa, who tried to escape.  After their capture, the mother was sent home, and the father and daughter thrown into one of the cellars.  During the day, the man was frequently beaten with a pitchfork.  The girl suffered not physically but mentally, hearing the beastly cries of her father.  One morning they were found hanged and their wrists slashed.  The story was one of suicide.  We all failed to believe this.  For how could one cut his own wrists and then hang himself,  It points to cold blooded murder.

Not only those who tried to escape landed in prison, but also people who stole out of town at night to beg for food.  They went into the neighboring villages, inhabited by the natives, hoping to get some food for the hungry children.

Gakowa was completely surrounded by soldiers.  And yet, some people got through.  It is amazing how a hungry child or a hungry parent will drive you to do the almost impossible.  Whenever there was one way out - we found it.

Growing children, who need wholesome food, had a hard struggle to keep physically normal.  Their heads and stomachs were too big in proportion to the bony arms and legs.  Two large bones resembled a pair of wings growing out of the meager backs and did not help their posture.  Each scrap of food the mother was able to get her hands on went to her children.  Just like a bird goes out to seek food for  her young and meets unexpected danger on her way, so the mother of the waiting children often did not  return from her dangerous journey; and like the orphaned feathered friends fall prey to more powerful fiends of nature, the motherless children lost their nest to the eagles of men == the partisans.

The young and innocent children, whom our Lord loved so much, had to suffer the most.  Too many were orphaned and lost the priceless possession of parents.  All suffered hunger, and thus failed to grow up normally.  Another normal thing for the young is school.  There was no school in the concentration camp.  In a classroom, children are taught the fundamentals of social living and the difference between right and wrong.  In the camp, idle hours and hungry stomachs naturally were workshops of many mischievious deeds.  A place where reverence of God and love of your neighbor is the key to heaven, is of course the church, which was locked up and prohibited anyone to enter it.  Again, an important stone in a child's life was thrown into abyss.

The future, when looked into by the eyes of those young people, failed to show any signs of prosperity and peace.  Despair drove many to grow careless in habits of prayer, faith and trust in the word of their fellow man.  Our future, we thought, could only bring a lasting bondage with a destructive concentration camp.  A place where we would have to remain until death relieved our unending sentence of slavery under a communist regime.

Every normal phase of a child's life, which is taken so much for granted, was something in the past, for those young people certainly grew up in bad conditions.  There were a few teachers in the camp who felt it their obligation to teach some of the growing children the principles of our religion, as the few priests present in Gakowa were very closely watched.  At that time, the church was not yet closed completely, although no Masses could be celebrated.  So in the Spring of 1946, I attended a secret class of First Communicants, where preparation for the event was made.  On May 19, 1946, I received Our Lord in my First Communion.  The partisans surely failed to see what it meant to us, or they would have refused to let us proceed.  Shortly  thereafter, our church and cemetery were closed to the public and guards posted around the premises.  We couldn't even visit the dead anymore.  What could be gained from that, -- but to exercise purely selfish motives.  That refusal made us even more bitter, as we all had deceased members of our family.

In the Spring of 1946, one of my uncles (Michael Brandt) was ordered to go home from the work he was doing, pack a few things and be back in an hour.  To ascertain his speedy return, a partisan followed him home.  They thought it unnecessary to give reasons for their actions, so we knew nothing until he was gone.  We heard that he was taken to a village, inhabited only by natives, where he, among others, had to make bricks.  Almost every town had a place where bricks and shingles were made to build houses.  It is hard work.  First of all, the substance, dirt and water, has to be prepared, then the heavy mud carried to the designated place where others formed the bricks.  Molds were used in order to assure unity in size and circumference.  The formations were baked in a giant oven.  After their return from the oven, the bricks were ready to be used.

My uncle worked there during the hot summer months of 1946.  During his absence, my aunt (Justina Brandt) feared being alone and asked me to come and live with her.  So I left my grandmother Julianna and maternal aunt and moved to the lonesome aunt.  At that time, my aunt's house was changed from a house full of people to a place packed with furniture.  All the furniture had been confiscated from their owners and was stored in these rooms.  All but one room was filled to capacity.

In those summer months of 1946, a daily threat was assembly.  We knew what would happen, as each time some of the people were taken away, -- mostly the ones that were still able to work.  Once, my aunt and another family hid in one of the rooms packed with furniture.  Since it was my aunt's house, she had a spare key to get in the room.  For one bitter afternoon, we sat in agony.  The partisans went from house to house looking for people just like us, who failed to congregate with the rest of the people.  About the middle afternoon a partisan entered our yard, looking in the windows, searching for captives.  We snuggled in the corners beside dressers and tables so as not to show any signs of life.  He knocked fiercely on our door and called out, but the only movement we showed was our hearts beating louder and faster by the minute.  If he would have found us, heaven only knows where they would have taken us to endure punishment for disobedience to the rulers.  After the congregation was dissolved and we heard our own people again, our hearts became lighter and our nerves relaxed.  We all came out and once again a crisis had passed.

The reason for this fear of assembly increased each time because the thought that next time it might be you, bothered us constantly.  We knew all too well some of the horrible things that befell those unfortunate men and women.

One of my uncles (Anton Findeis) took part in such a merciless trial.  The best men had been picked out to work in the forests.  My uncle was among them.  He was strong, but a man can take only so much.  They lived in shacks crowded together like new born kittens, but huddled like that was the only way to keep warm.  Most of the warm clothes were taken from us in the beginning and the rest that was left naturally was not made of iron and became worn out.

One of the policies of the merciless partisans was that anyone too sick or weak to work was useless to the government, so they killed him.  Before the poor man died, however, he suffered unbearable pain.  For to die with a bullet in the back might have relieved his illness and anymore suffering.  Those partisans knew that and took advantage of it.  One morning all the men were ordered to come out in the nearby field.  The sick man had to dig a hole, which was to be his grave.  All the others had to stand and watch.  Evidently, it was to be the lesson of the day.  The death sweat ran down the haggard face of one, who knew he was digging his own grave.  The spectators held their breath wishing they would not have to watch, and praying this cold-blooded murder would not  befall them.  After having dug his grave, he was told to lie in it.  The on-lookers were then ordered to shovel the ground on him that he just finished throwing up.  Burying someone alive must be a terrible nightmare for the men.  The cries that arose from the grave were all one last plea:  "Tell my wife and children good-by and give them my love . . ."  Even when the grave was filled with dirt, cries emerged from a man who was buried alive.

I think something like that is the cruelest form of torture to witness and to endure.  Days and weeks later, the atmosphere was still haunted with the ghostly memories.  With things like that in mind, no wonder we were so frightened when the time came to assemble.

When we were disowned and imprisoned, one and only one goal was to be reached by our enemies and that was to extinguish the Donauschwaben in the Batschka and all other German regions in Yugoslavia.  The success of that plan became more evident as our days in camp progressed.  Population decreased rapidly with the help of hunger and disease.  A medical opinion tells us that a will to live and get well in the patient's mind sometimes proves more effective than drugs and a doctor's care.  Having nobody and nothing to live for, the resistance of our people could not survive and therefore, the body was completely in the hands of death.  If those victims are all saints, which they certainly should be, the eternal home welcomed an army of defenseless and guiltless "Schwaben".

In our three years of imprisonment, not one piece of clothing or for that matter, any article was bought.  The thought of it produces a vague impossibility.  Every day needs, like combs, toothpaste, soap, etc. were as scarce as stars on a cloudy night.  How we managed to get on for three years without once going "shopping", even for necessities, seems now almost impossible.

Children could not be taught the three "R's because of the lack of books and supplies.  One pair of shoes, if you had one, served as footwear on all occasions.  Clothes closets would have been superfluous inasmuch as you wore most of your belongings.  The only way that anyone received a piece of clothing was through the death of a relative, just like the heirs to a fortune.

The approaching winter of 1946, presented a severe problem of heating materials.  There were no stores or warehouses where you could buy or trade supplies.  So the only thing left to keep from freezing was to tear down stables and after those were gone the destruction of houses began.  Trees became scarce, because wood was essential.  So we can say that the self-destruction of Gakowa began.  The winter was cold and many died as a result of lack of food, clothing and warm shelter.  How many winters could we stand . . . when was this massacre going to end . . . who was going to stop all this???

As people wondered, no answer could be found, so they decided to take a chance and try to escape.  During that winter, many escaped and many died trying so that a decreasing amount of Schwaben became evident.  The partisans didn't care how they got rid of us.  As long as we were no longer in Yugoslavia.

Another winter had passed and time to sow the fields was here.  Everyone who could work was forced to go out and help in the care of the year's harvest.  The soil, which had no proper rotation and lack of fertilizer,  produced less and less each year, and there was a decreasing food supply for the camp.  The Spring and Summer of 1947, was much like the years before.  Assemblies, deaths, births.  The monotony of every day camp life presented a problem to the adults and even more to the children, who were growing up uneducated.  They lacked the responsibility that normal school children have and the devil played on their  idle minds and promoted mischief.

Another year was in the passing and once more the poor harvest was brought in to feed the people during the coming Fall and Winter.  We saw no relief in sight from this camp of ever vanishing Schwaben.  The thought of leaving our home, or should I say, what was left of it, came deeper and deeper into our minds and encouraged us day by day to try to escape.  Should we wait to die here, or shall we encounter a perilous journey during  which we might perish.
A decision of such a nature was neither easy nor hastily made.