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Barefoot in the Rubble
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E-mail Button 		In the late seventeenth century, the Austro - Hungarian Empire recovered its Hungarian domains by defeating the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman Empire had occupied the region for 150 years. Fearful that the Ottoman Turks would regain control of the area, the Austrian Imperial Council launched a great colonization scheme to settle the recovered lands with loyal subjects. Promising land in exchange for hard work, the Austrian Empire encouraged German-speaking people from Southwestern Germany, Northeastern France and Switzerland to cultivate the region.

Since no roads linked Central Europe to Southeastern Europe, the new settlers traveled down the Danube by barge. More than 1,000 farming communities and numerous homesteads were settled in the Danubian Plain in what later became Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. The two largest areas they settled became known as Banat and Batschka. The German-speaking settlers became known as Danube - Swabians. (Danube, because they had traveled the Danube and settled its plain, and Swabian, because their port of departure had been in Ulm, Swabia.)

The "Schwowe", as the Danube - Swabians called themselves, lived in harmony with their Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and Croatian and other ethnic neighbors. Their hard work turned the wastelands of the former Ottoman Empire into the breadbasket of Europe. They built their towns according to the specifications of the Austro - Hungarian Monarchy, with unusually wide streets, whitewashed houses and a Baroque - style church at the center.

Karlsdorf, the town where this story begins, was just such a town.

The Austro - Hungarian Empire became disbanded at the end of World War I. Life for the Danube-Swabians in Karlsdorf and other parts of the newly formed country of Yugoslavia went on much as it had before the war.

However, the end of World War II spelled disaster for Yugoslavia's 537,000 Danube - Swabians. Tito's communist government declared ethnic Germans "enemies of the state". Danube - Swabians lost all their rights and property. Worse yet, those who did not flee Yugoslavia were forced into concentration camps. Tens of thousands died in this, Yugoslavia's first ethnic cleansing.

This book contains the story of one family who managed to survive. 		 
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