---Greetings from Oregon, U.S.A.! This newsletter will continue with the second half of a laypersons general history of the Germans in the Vojvodina. The faint-hearted may choose to skip this newsletter as it contains little-publicized information about Gakowa - Tito's concentration camp in the Batschka.
The previous newsletter ended the historical account in 1920 at the end of World War I when the Treaty of Trianon officially broke Banat up into parts of Romania, Yugoslavia and Hungary. My historical information comes from excerpts of Bela Pomogats' book "A Short History of Hungarians and Serbs - Past and Present." My information about Gakowa comes mainly from the autobiography of Katherine Flotz.
Large numbers of South Slavs - Serbs, Macedonians, and Montenegrins - were settled in the Vojvodina in the inter- war period. The end of the Second World War saw a huge influx again, and the population grew to over 2 million. The Serbs quadrupled in number while the number of Hungarians fell to nearly half of the 1910 figure. At the end of the Second World War, when the Wehrmacht withdrew from Yugoslav territories, almost all the Vojvodina Germans fled with the retreating troops. Those remaining behind were largely massacred by Tito's Partisans.
Some members of the Seibert and Bergman families, and Katherine Flotz and her family (see the Katherine Flotz homepage listing in the links section) were among those Germans who remained in Gakowa after Tito's forces arrived. After the end of the war Tito and his supporters, after massacring not only Germans and Hungarians, but also Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians, simply turned over a new leaf and forbade any public mention of the blood-stained past. The Germans were practically wiped off the map of the Vojvodina. No mention was made of the tens of thousands of Serbs in the Krajina either, whom Ante Pavelic's Ustasha had massacred.
For those who have an interest in the ethnic cleansing during this period, "Barefoot In The Rubble" by Elizabeth B. Walter, Pannonia Press, is a story of those Donauschwaben who stayed on in Yugoslavia. It is the true story of "surviving the detention camps, the hunger, the forced labor, the destruction of villages, and the attempt by a brutal Communist regime to erase all ethnic Germans as a people, to scatter them to the winds.")
Gakowa was a small farming town on the Hungarian border. On a current map the area can be located in Yugoslavia or Serbia, just Northwest of Sombor, but the town exists no more. Prior to World War II, life in Gakowa was filled with tradition and custom. The Seiberts were Roman Catholic and feast days such as Corpus Christi, Epiphany, and also elaborate weddings and feasts held to honor the Saints and Mary, were traditionally celebrated. According to second-hand accounts the town of Gakowa is in ruins at this time but up to about 5 or so years ago the local cemetery still contained the headstones of Seibert ancestors.
My mother, when reminiscing of her childhood, spoke about the farm once owned by her family and the prosperity they enjoyed. She told us of her religious family life there and taught us how to cook the traditional German and Hungarian food she was accustomed to eating as a child in Gakowa. She also told of a lake near her home in Gakowa, between the Tisa and the Danube Rivers. According to Magdelene (Lenchi) Erg, my mother's second cousin, this was a small man-made lake near Gakowa. It was formerly a sand and gravel pit and all of the children of Gakowa went there to swim. Life was filled with hard work and rich rewards.
Circa 1918, one branch of the Seibert family emigrated to America; Gertrude Bergman, Matthias Seibert his wife Katherine Bergman, and their children Helen, (my Mother) Katherine, Thomas and Martin. Later, Gertrude was to marry Martin and raise a family in New York. Other relatives, including the family of Magdelena Seibert, my Mother's first cousin, and Barbara Seibert, who married a son of Stefan Seibert, Matthias' brother, remained in Gakowa. Prior to 1944, the town was prosperous and harmonious.
In 1944 the Russians along with some of Tito's Partisans arrived in Gakowa and the town soon became one of the most inhumane yet unpublicized concentration camps in the history of Southern Europe. In December of the same year, all men and women from the ages of 17 to 35 were transported to Russian labor camps, leaving the children and elderly at the mercy of the Partisans in the newly formed concentration camp in Gakowa. In the early months of 1945 Donauschwaben from the Batschka and Banat were driven out of their homes into Gakowa like herds of animals with only the belongings they could carry on their backs. The once-peaceful town of 2,500 inhabitants soon grew to 20,000 or more.
As the town became filled with more and more people, Typhoid Fever struck and soon the corpses outnumbered the available gravesites and burial was done in mass graves, about a half a block long, six feet deep and six feet wide. Every morning corpses were wrapped in sheets and laid in the yard until a horse-drawn wagon came around to make its collections. During this time 75-100 people died each day. Eventually the cemetery could not hold any more so it was enlarged. Soon afterward, filled to capacity, the cemetery was closed. Church services were not allowed and religious life was discouraged although some services were held in private. Suicides abounded with women attempting to commit suicide by jumping into the 25' wells. Rats and mice were prevalent and malaria soon swept through the area. There were no doctors for the Donauschwaben and no medicines were available.
In August 1947, a group of approximately 100 people, including Katherine Flotz and her family, gathered to make their successful escape into Hungary. There, thousands of other refugees were also attempting to travel into Austria and Germany. Some of the previously detained Donauschwaben, including Barbara Seibert who had been sent to a Russian prison camp, were eventually allowed to go back home, but "home" was not there anymore. The Seiberts who did survive found refuge in the United States, Germany, Austria, and other countries. The Donnauschauben would never return to the Vojvodina. Tito's liquidation was complete, however the ethnic cleansing continues today.
This ends the historical portion about the Vojvodina. If you would like to read more about the history of the Batschka and Banat please e-mail me and I will be glad to forward internet sites and other recommended reading material. Also, if you have a topic you would like me to publish on this site send it to may attention.
Until the next newsletter!
Caroline
For this summer newsletter, I thought I would provide some general information on the history of the Germans in the Batschka and Banat.
The Banat is a region in southeastern Europe, which includes the Batschka region where our Seibert ancestors lived, and extends over an area that is present day western Romania, northeastern Serbia, and southern Hungary. It is approximately 100 miles by 100 miles. The name "Banat" is derived from the word "ban", the local name for a provincial governor.
The Banat is bordered by the Danube River on the South, the Marosch River on the North, the Thiesse River on the West, and by the Carpathian foothills on the East.
Because the Banat was a vast plain, and because it was bordered by the Danube River, the primary river of central Europe, the Banat has had the misfortune of being a primary route of transportation, and as a result, has been historically a cultural crossroads. From it's complex history, we find that even before the region was known as Banat, this plain was known as a place of long-vanished people.
The earliest unrecorded history is imagined to be a wave of nomadic tribes first settling and then being pushed off the plain by other nomadic tribes that were either greater in number or stronger in battle. The Romans used Banat as a staging area to launch attacks against the Dacian Empire. The Romans were forced to leave by an influx of Germanic tribes, who themselves were never able to establish permanent residence.
In 100 AD, the Hungarian King Saint Stephen established dominion over Banat making it a part of the Hungarian monarchy; however, after approximately two hundred years of relative peace in the area, Banat was invaded by Ghengis Kahn and the towns and villages were destroyed. The region barely had time to recover before it came under the threat of the expanding Ottoman Empire.
The rest of Europe thought of Banat as a defensive wall of Christianity against the warring Turks, however, in 1526 it fell to the Turks in the battle of Mohacs and remained under Turkish control until freed by Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1718. The rebuilding of the land was then entrusted to the Imperial General Count Claudius Foorimund Mercy.
Mercy executed a plan developed by Prince Eugene to transport German Catholics into the invasion corridors and establish Banat as a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Between 1722 and 1726, 15,000 settlers were transplanted into 46 German villages. Those people who chose to migrate to Banat did so because of the extreme taxes imposed by Germany to support the frivolities of the nobility. Also, the benefits of the move were exaggerated to the people. But by far the strongest incentive to migrate was the promise of a free homestead, free passage, and three years free of taxes and assessments.
It was during this time frame, probably early in the 1700's according to family oral history, that the Seiberts migrated from Alsace Lorraine in Germany to Gakova in the Batschka region of Banat. During the next decade the Germans in the Banat established a thriving civilization; however, in 1738 the Turks returned to the area, setting off yet another siege of terror. The non-German populations joined the Turks in pillaging the German towns along the Danube during a period of time when the settlers were already experiencing an epidemic of the plague that reaped additional devastation upon the settlers. Following this destruction, it took another decade to reestablish security and initiate another German migration.
In a new colonization decree, Maria Theresa also invited commissioned and non-commissioned soldiers to settle in Banat. The Theresian settlement proved successful for the next 125 years. During that time the Germans drained swamps, worked the land in the fertile regions, and built villages. They succeeded in establishing many farming communities, while suffering through major epidemics of swamp fever and cholera in the process. In Gakova, where the Seiberts worked the land, they eventually became wealthy farmers, owning threshing machines that were used to thresh wheat on farms throughout the region. In 1788 the Turks returned once again and destroyed over 100 villages.
In 1777, the total population of the area was 320,000, of which only 43,000 were Germans. There were approximately double that amount of Serbians, and the majority of 181,000 were Romanians. During this entire time period, the Austro-Hungarian Empire held things together in the Banat, but during the next 40 years the Empire began to turn more governing responsibility over to local kingdoms.
In the case of the Batschka, this meant Hungarian rule, and an increasing influence from, and friction with, the Hungarian Kingdom. The Hungarians instituted a Magyarization attempt, which tried to replace German city and region names with Hungarian names. The Hungarians also tried to suppress the use of the German language in the Hungarian Banat including the Batschka region and replace it with Hungarian. The Germans struggled against Magyarization and even petitioned the Empire to have their own German Count assigned and to be placed under the direct protection of the Empire. For the German people to make this request was unusual and extreme, because the Germans had a tendency to avoid politics and focused primarily on village life and the day to day business of farming.
In 1920, at the end of World War I, the Treaty of Trianon officially broke Banat up into parts of Romania, Yugoslavia and Hungary.
For the Fall 1999 Newsletter, I will discuss the Banat and Batschka 1818 to present.
---Caroline
Guten Tag Meine Freunde und Familie,
In mid April, during the first part of my three week vacation, my sister Mary and I had a wonderful opportunity to visit St. Stephen's Catholic Church in Los Angeles. After getting lost in the Los Angeles freeway system and going miles out of our way, we found the church on Woodlawn, between Main and 37th Street, located in a Hispanic/German area close to downtown Los Angeles. Mass is held in English, Spanish, German and Hungarian, however we decided to go to the German Mass. We met several Danube Swabians there who freely shared their family histories with us, as we did with them. I felt very "at home" among these people and was strongly reminded of my youth, before my father died, and of growing up in New York in the German culture which we experienced as children.
Following the Catholic Mass we stayed for a genuine Hungarian meal with the Swabians and I took photos of the church and the paintings inside. I also talked with the Priest about the efforts of the Catholic Church in bringing the Swabians to America, and also the owner of the Swabian German newspaper in Los Angeles. I would recommend this rewarding experience to anyone who is seeking to connect with their Swabian heritage! There will be a gathering of Danube Swabians in August, in Anaheim, which I am looking forward to attending.
While I was in California, I also taped my sister Mary's early family memories and will begin to transcribe that information for my databanks. She revealed a rich memory of her childhood and experiences in New York. Together we visited my cousin Margaret and her daughter Jennifer whom I had not seen in many years. We shared many wonderful family memories of New York and of our youth. I taped their comments and remembrances of life on Long Island and their early family memories and reminiscences. I also made copies of an excellent photo of Matthias Seibert and of my cousins and aunts and uncles for my genealogy albums. We had a great visit with them, and find myself fortunate to have a such a loving, caring extended family!
Baby "Emily Helen" was born to my nephew Steven the day I arrived in Southern California. She is a beautiful, healthy baby girl who is named after her grandmother, my sister, Helen. Mary and I were fortunate to be able to see her when she was just a few hours old. Her grandfather, Tim, flew into California from the East coast in time to be in attendance at the birth of his first grandchild. Congratulations to both Helen and Tim and to Steve and Sandra!
While visiting in Florida; between hiking, birding, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and in Fran's pool, basking in the sun, shopping, meeting new friends and visiting old friends; I recorded the early memories of Francis, her son Robert, and Mary, and got the complete story on tape of how my brother John met and married Francis. This will be a treasured part of my research! We also got to visit relatives on Francis' side of the family and had wonderful "family" times together, including a great Lasagna dinner.
One of the highlights of the trip was our trip to Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. It's a great place for birding, viewing Manatees and Dolphins, and learning about the wildlife in the area and the efforts of the not-for-profit institute established by Seward Johnson, of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company.
On my return trip, I spent several days in So. California again, this time visiting with my son Michael's Aunt Josie whom I had not seen in over 40 years! I couldn't believe that she still looks the same as she did 40 years ago. I was able to get copies of family photographs of Michael's father, and newspaper clippings, and an audio tape of Josie telling of their family history. The family still lives in the home of Michael's grandparents, Edward and Anita, where I visited often when I was married to Michael's father. I also visited the Ash Garden where Michael's father's ashes were placed in the Sierra Madre Cemetery. Memories abounded during my visit!
Next month I will begin a two-part history of the Swabians in my newsletter, while I work on updating the data banks. For any of you who are concerned about confidentiality on the internet, I will never post any addresses, birthdates of living relatives, or confidential information. Be sure to sign the guestbook before leaving this site!
Bis folgenden Monat!
Caroline
Hallo meine Freunde und Familie und fr�hliche Ostern!
Yes, a very Happy Easter to you all! I spent many hours trying to sort out the Seibert and Gayk histories last month. A lot of what I have found can now be read on this website. As you can see by going to the links on each of the cities listed on the main page, maps have been added. Also, the Gayk and Seibert families histories have been separated, and additional information about origins has been added. It seems that the Gayks originally came from Freesia, then to East Prussia, and Borbeck - Essen. The Seibert's came from Alsace Lorraine, and probably migrated through Ulm, to Gakova.
By clicking on our Danube Swabian Coat of Arms, you can read information about the Swabians, and what the insignia stands for.
I spoke again to my second cousin in Illinois about the family and updated my genealogy data banks with information that she provided. She and her mother and family escaped Gakova only 10 days before the Russian occupation. Other distant family members were not so fortunate, and at least one relative was sent to a Siberian prison camp. When she was released some years later, she went to Germany where she was treated by doctors there, however; she never fully recovered. I understand that, not many years ago, my mother's uncle Stefan's grave, bearing a black marble headstone, remained intact in the cemetery in Gakova, however I have not located anyone who has been to the city in the recent past. From what I understand the town is in ruins.
For those of you who live in Southern California, you may want to consider a visit St. Stephen's Catholic Church, which is literally and emotionally the central gathering place of Danube Swabians in Southern California. In the late 1940's and early 1950's, Father Lani, a Roman Catholic priest and great humanitarian, succeeded in bringing many Danube Swabians from the refugee camps in Austria and Germany to Southern California. St. Stephens Church became a haven of shelter, security and fellowship. Within it's walls sprang the new aspirations of a proud people far from home. Currently, there are active Danube Swabian organizations all over the world, sharing common bonds of origin, history and faith. Their goal is to encourage future generations to honor and treasure the heritage of their ancestors, who faced hardship, suffering and loss with individual and collective strength.
As a first generation American, I am gratified to say that the Danube Swabian heritage is a heritage to be proud of!
I hope that, by next month, I will have the descendant charts of Carl Realich and Matthias Seibert on this website. Although these charts will include some living family member names and birth dates, no other information about living relatives will be posted on this site.
Bis folgenden Monat!
Caroline
(If you need to translate the German on this page to English, go to Alta Vista Translations. It's a very handy tool!
Guten Tag, Und wie geht es Ihnen?
It has been a busy month for me. I have found the addresses of a Seibert family and a Fiorentino family in New York. They are my cousins. Although I have not had the time to make contact yet, any family member who would like to can please e-mail me and I will get you the address information
I have spent most of the past month doing research on Austria-Hungary, Austria, Serbia and the Vojvodina, especially the Batschka and Banat.
I have not been able to find out where the Seibert family emigrated from when they settled in the Batschka. I believe that they came from Germany, traveling South on the Danube to farm the fertile valleys between the Danube and the Tisa Tisa Rivers in the area known as the "Batschka." I have made contact with some Hungarian and Serbian web sites, and have seen photographs of the beautiful Danube hills and valleys, the wheat fields, the architecture, and the simple peasant lives of the Serbians who now occupy that region. It is difficult to imagine how anyone could leave a homeland so bountiful. But the Swabians were forced out of the region during the ethnic cleansing of the 1930's and 1940's. Tens of thousands of Hungarians fled the Vojvodina to escape massacre and have never returned to their homeland. The Seibert family, at least those who came to the United States in the 1920's, were fortunate. Had they waited just a few short years longer, they would have been a part of the bloodbath. I don't know if there are any family left in the Vojvodina. I pray that they have all relocated to more humanitarian countries.
When you turn on your television sets and hear of the atrocities being committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, remember that our homeland lies just a few hours to the North, near the Hungarian border. The ethnic cleansing experienced by the Swabians in the 30's and 40's is still going on in Serbia. For the most part, this is a silent and bloodless cleansing that is taking place in the Hungarian populated parts of the Vojvodina. The number of native Hungarians has diminished by almost a hundred thousand, due to intimidation, and the restrictions the Belgrade language law imposed on the use of their native language. They have moved to Hungary, or dispersed all over the world. There are still over three hundred thousand Hungarians living in the Vojvodina; but due to the massive settlements of non-Hungarians, many of them arriving from Bosnia and Herzegovina, they may find themselves dispersed and diminished to an insignificant minority.
I am sorry to end on a sad note. Please check back in the beginning of April.
Tsch�s! Be sure to sign my guest book before you leave this site!
Caroline
Guten Tag Friends and Family, and Happy Valentine's Day!
Well, the month of January proved to be very rewarding for me in my research. I re-located family members in California and Arizona whom I had not seen in many years, and new details about the families and descendants of the Seibert family is now being entered into my databanks. It was wonderful hearing from all of you who had family history to share. I was grieved to find out that my Aunt Gertie, whom I had not seen in some years, had passed on in 1996, and was flown back to New York to be buried in St. Charles Cemetery beside her husband, my Uncle Martin.
Some of our family are still residing in New York, and with the new information I now have, I should be able to make contact with them also.
The best news of all I have saved for last. I have located my Mother Helen's first cousin and her family in Illinois. She is 92 years old, and doesn't speak English. I have forwarded my name and address to the family there, and expect to soon hear more about the history of the Seiberts in Gakovo, Austria Hungary. Friends of Ignatz Kapp and his parents who lived in Backi Brestovac, Yugoslavia have also been located, and they remember the Kapp family well. They even remember my brother John from his visit to Austria Hungary when he was just 5 years old.
My database on living descendants, especially marriage dates and birth dates of spouses, is still sketchy. Also, few family members have turned in any biographies of their deceased family members. I am writing biographies on relatives as best as I can, but would appreciate additional information on all living and deceased family members. Remember, the information I am compiling is for future generations, so our descendants won't have to go through this process a second time to find their roots. One of the saddest things that I am experiencing, is that we often fail to listen to our older family members when they speak of their past, or make note of important information while they are living, and once they are gone, the information, the stories, the history, is lost---sometimes forever.
In case you have not yet checked out the links on this page, please check out Katherine Flotz' Homepage. Her story, written when she was a teenager about life in Gakovo during the war, will put you in touch with your Gakovian roots!
Auf Wiedersehen! Be sure to sign my guest book before you leave this site!
Caroline
Dear Family and Friends;
Well, Christmas is over, and it has certainly been a wonderful Christmas season!
My son Stan and I spent a wonderful traditional Christmas day with friends in Crooked River Ranch. Our weather here has warmed up a bit for the holidays, up to the 40's from -8 degrees. It certainly makes heating a lot easier, since we have been heating entirely with wood for the last two winters. The Cascades are covered with snow, making a striking panoramic picture outside my windows, and "Moo" the emu is snug and warm in his new house. Life is good in Central Oregon.
As you may know, I have been working on the family genealogy for the past year or so, and have finally had several break-throughs. I contacted a woman who grew up in Gakovo, Austria Hungary (now Yugoslavia) and I may have a trace on the Seiberts/Bergmans who lived there. Evidently the Donnerschwaben area of Austria-Hungary was settled and farmed by Germans who originated from the Black Forest region of Germany in the 1600-1700s. What wonderful stories this "Gakovian" had to tell of Gakovo, and what horrors she experienced during the years that Gakovo was used as a Russian concentration camp. Our families were some of the fortunate few who escaped Austria-Hungary before the war. The area that our families settled in is now farmed by Serbs.
On the Gayk side of the family, I may have located some ancestors in Germany also, but I may need to make a trip to Salt Lake City to further research the history, since I have not been able to get the information at the local LDS Church or on the internet.
Many thanks to the families who wrote to me responding to my Christmas letter asking for current information. I have been able to get some data about the Gayk/Seibert non-bloodline family members also. Hopefully, my database will continue to grow with additional input from all family members. When responding with information, a short bio on deceased family members would be appreciated, as would dates of birth, baptism, marriages, and any and all relevant information. All of this data will be included in the final work.
A very Happy New Year to all! My love goes out to each and every one of you!
Caroline
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