Rudolfsgnad Concentration Camp

Rudolsfgnad Concentration Camp was the largest of the eight liquidation camps for ethic Germans ('Donauschwaben' or Danube-Swabian), active from 1944-1948 in what is now modern-day northern Serbia. Officially, over 11,000 German lives were extinguished in the camp due to starvation, exhaustion and execution by the communists led by Josip Tito, who invaded the area after the Nazis were defeated at the end of World War II. However, the numbers of German victims was theoretically much higher due to the untold thousands that were sent to Soviet labor camps, murdered, or otherwise never heard from again. The ethnic cleansing of those living in the villages in the Banat region was quietly sanctioned by the Allies, and all ethic Germans were treated as war criminals, despite the fact that less than 10% of Donauschwabens in the area sympathized with the Nazi party. To this day, the Serbian capital, Belgrade, denies that many such atrocities took place, despite evidence of the camps still standing and the eyewitness testimony of thousands. On November 4, 2001, a memorial was erected near the main cemetery of Rudolfsgnad in Knicanin, Vojvodina, Serbia, with another honoring the dead in the nearby mass grave on the hill in Teletschka. A ceremony was held honoring the estimated 11,000 victims in both sites. Several signs are nearby in both German and Serbian, detailing the number of dead from specific villages. The official Danube-Swabian Totenbuchs, detailing the names of the deceased who died in the main camps in the Banat region are available online, from which the names who have been verified to have died at Rudolfsgnad Camp, have been uploaded to Find a Grave.