Photo: Helga Wilson
Valpovo camp
Of all the suffering and genocide of the Germans, the most cruel and terrible tragedy is the fate of the lost children in Communist Yugoslavia. Today we know that between 40,000 and 45,000 German children under the age of 14 were sent to Tito’s camps and at least six thousand starved to death. The brutal removal of children from their mothers was particularly cruel, as almost all of the young women were shipped to Russia as slaves. It is also documented that more than 20 thousand children were kidnapped from these camps and taken to orphanages throughout Yugoslavia. Brothers were separated, most children were given Slavic names and sent to areas far from their ancestral homeland to learn the new ideology that would make them true patriots of Tito’s dictatorial Communist state. This process of renationalization violates human rights and personal dignity, as stated in the UN Declaration from 1948.
We publish a document that confirms the fact that the Yugoslav Communist authorities compelled children into forced labor. By order of the command of the Valpovo labor camp, children aged 1, 3, 8 and 13 are returned to the camp and forced to work. The cruelty of the Yugoslav Communist Tito regime knows no bounds, and this document proves it, as do thousands of other irrefutable proofs. The question arises how it can be that today in a democratic Croatia we find praises of the dictator and criminal Tito in the textbooks for the 8th grade. Children in Croatia learn about Tito as a positive personality, the same Tito who maintained labor camps for children, Tito whose regime killed a large number of children not only during the war and after the war, but also after the liquidation of emigration by the UDBA. We publish the entire original document:
March 28, 1946
Ovčara (Čepin)
The agricultural administration of the Ovčara, of the State Farm Belje, on the instructions of the command of the Valpovo labor camp, brings the children of camp prisoners back to the camp
State Farm “Belje”
Agricultural administration
Ovčara, March 28, 1946
Number: 729/46,
Subject: Return of internees to the Valpovo camp
By order of the command of the Valpovo labor camp, number 1397/46, children internees are to be sent back to the Valpovo camp. This refers to:
Knohl, Antun Jr., 8 years old
Knohl, Greta ” 3″
Knohl, Slavica ” 1 “
Gajzer, Slavica ” 13 “
All the above mentioned are to be present in Ovčara on Friday, March 29, 1946 at 6 a.m. for further procedure. If they do not respond to this call, they will be summoned through the people’s authorities, which would have unpleasant consequences for them and their parents.
Death to fascism – freedom to the people!
LS
Administrator:
/ ENG Šimić /
ENG Šimić [signature]
Original, typescript In possession of the editor:
V. Geiger, Radni logor Valpovo 1945.-1946. Dokumenti, Osijek, 1999, p. 107.
Round seal: State Farm Belje Agricultural administration of Ovčara (near Čepin) (in the center the coat of arms of the FNR of Yugoslavia).
Editorial/crimesofcommunism.net
