poppy image  Who Will Forget Them? poppy image

The extermination of the Danube Swabians in Yugoslavia took place between 1944 and 1948. It was “officially sanctioned genocide, and was carried out in full view of thousands of horrified witnesses. Yet, the world knows nothing of this great atrocity which, proportionate to population, was surely the most sweeping and cruel extermination of any European ethnic community within living memory.

What’s more, the perpetrators of this heinous crime literally got away with murder, because the most influential witness to this monumental crime was the Western media, which helped to cover up the crime by ignoring it. Thus in effect, they became Tito’s accomplice, and are not about to uncover a subject they silently helped bury some 45 years ago.

Now for the first time in North America, you may read an eye witness account of the tragic demise of the Danube Swabians in a recently published book entitled In The Claws Of The Red Dragon.

It consists of excerpts from the diary of a Jesuit priest, Father Wendelin Gruber who shared the fate of his countryman in a number of partisan death camps, and was himself incarcerated for many years for trying to let the world know what went on in Tito’s Yugoslavia.

This book was recently translated into English by Canadian writer and historian Frank Schmidt, who also gives a brief historical sketch of the Danube Swabians in his foreword. In remembrance of their martyred kinsmen, and for the edification of their children and friends, no Danube Swabian family should be without this important book.


by Frank Schmidt
Copyright: Heimat Publishers

Reprinted with permission of the author

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