Germans escorting people from Kragujevac and its surrounding area to be executed.
Saturday October 18th was International Necktie Day, celebrated in Croatia, the home of the necktie and several cities around the world. As a result, I wrote a little about Croatia. Today is the 73 rd anniversary of a horrific event that occurred in Serbia, which lies east of Croatia, and like Croatia was part of the old Yugoslavia. The event that is known as the Kragujevac massacre was according to Wikipedia….
….the murder of Serbs, Jewish and Roma men and boys in Kragujevac, Serbia, by German Wehrmacht soldiers on 20 and 21 October 1941. All males from the town between the ages of sixteen and sixty were assembled by German troops and members of the collaborationist Serbian Volunteer Command (SDK)[1] and Serbian State Guard (SDS),[2] including high school students, and the victims were selected from amongst them. On 29 October 1941, Felix Benzler, the plenipotentiary of the German foreign ministry in Serbia, reported that 2,300 people were executed.[3] Later investigations by the post-war Yugoslavian government came up with between 5,000 and 7,000 people executed, although these figures were never proven reliable.[4] Subsequently, Serbian and German scholars have agreed on the figure of 2,778.[1]
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel had issued an order on 16 September 1941 (OKW-Befehl Nr. 888/41), applicable to all of occupied Europe, to kill 50 communists for every wounded German soldier and 100 for each German soldier killed. In early October Communist Partisans under Tito, and Serbian Chetniks under Draza Mihajlovic, attacked German forces near Gornji Milanovac, killing 10 and wounding 26. The massacre was a direct reprisal for the German losses in that battle.[5]
More Details about the Massacre…..
On 18 October 1941, all of the Jewish males in Kragujevac were arrested, and along with some alleged communists this group numbered about 70 men. As this number was insufficient to meet the quota, over the period of 18–21 October, the entire city was raided. Around 10,000 male civilians, aged 16–60, were arrested by German troops, members of the 5th Detachment of the Serbian Volunteer Command under the command of Marisav Petrović,[1][8] and the Serbian State Guard.[2]
The arrested were teachers, students, Jews, and any others who had been captured in the German round-up.[9] A whole generation of high school students was taken directly from their classes. The executions started at 6 pm on the following day. People were shot in groups of 400. The shootings continued into the next day, at a lesser pace. Read More
War is fought Army against Army soldier against soldier, not Army against civilians!! We as Americas are lucky and since no wars have been fought on American soil in the last 100 plus years, we can not really relate to a massacre like this. The attack on the World Trade Center comes close, but that attack was an isolated event, while this massacre is just one of many incidents that have occurred in this volatile area of the world. Since 1992 there have been six United Nations Peacekeeping Missions in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Let’s take a look again at the map of the area this time with Serbia highlighted…..
So to all those Serbians who may have lost a love one in the Kragujevac massacre, or any other violent confrontations, you have the sympathy from a resident of Riverside, NJ….the lose of a life no matter what side you are on is a tragedy!