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The Blood feud in Bácska also known as the Freezing weeks was a genocide against about 40000 Hungarian civilians in Bácska organised by the Yugoslav Partisan Movement beetween 1944-1945.

The Freezing weeks

During World War II, in 1941, Nazi Germany occupied Yugoslavia. At the same time, Hungary took possession of and re-annexed Vojvodina from divided Yugoslavia. At the end of 1944, the Serbs reoccupied Bácska, which has belonged to Serbia ever since.

In October 1944 the Hungarian Army abandoned Vojvodina and shortly after the Red Army, under the command of Marshal Malinovsky, crossed the Tisza river. Following the Russians and under their protection, Tito's Partisans, the so-called People's Liberation Army, took over the defenseless territory. The Serbian troops arrived under very strict order in Bácska, they had to "show the strongest possible determination against fifth columnists, especially against Germans and Hungarians".
The term "fifth column" is applied to the subversive and resistant forces and organizations left behind by a retreating "enemy". The National Committee for People's Liberation and the Red Army had agreed on the necessary cooperation in due time. The partisans were well aware of their bloody task. About the establishment of the military government, Josip Broz Tito said the following, "The liberation of Bácska, Banat and Baranya requires the quickest possible return to normal life and the establishment of the people's democratic power in these territories. The extraordinary conditions under which these territories had to live during the occupation, and the necessity that we overcome all the misfortunes of our people caused by the occupying forces and foreign ethnic groups requires that, in the beginning, the army concentrate all power in order to mobilize the economy and carry on the war of liberation more successfully." Brigadier General Ivan Rukovina was appointed commander of the military administration. He was in constant and direct contact with Tito, the supreme commander. In his first decree, he ordered his troops to "protect the national future and the Southern Slavic character of the territories". This sentence was meant to encourage the alteration of the existing ethnic proportions, in today's terms, ethnic cleansing. In the October 28, 1944 issue of "Slobodna Vojvodina", the newspaper of the People's Liberation Front in Vojvodina, one member of the Regional Committee of the Yugoslavian Communist Party summarized the intentions suggested from above, which were to be planted into the heads of the fierce partisans, "Although we destroyed the occupying German and Hungarian hordes and drove them back to the west, we have not yet eradicated the roots of the poisonous weeds planted by them... The hundreds of thousands of foreigners who were settled on the territories where our ancestors had cleared the forests, drained the swamps, and created the conditions necessary for civilized life. These foreigners still kept shooting at our soldiers and the Soviet soldiers from the dark. They do everything they can to prevent the return to normal life, preparing, in the midst of this difficult situation, to stab us in the back again at the appropriate moment... The people feel that determined, energetic steps are needed to ensure the Yugoslavian character of Bacska."
The vengeance on the Hungarians, the idea of the vendetta, was implanted deeply in the minds of the partisan commissars who were in constant touch with their commander, General Rukovina. Rukovina in turn had to inform Marshal Tito about all his decisions and all the "military" achievements of his subordinates. In short, it is impossible that Tito, the supreme commander, was not informed at least once a week on how the purge or rather the slaughter of the "fascist" Hungarians was going forward. The Yugoslavian government, as soon as it got in touch with the new temporary democratic Hungarian government, declared its demand for an exchange of population. They offered forty thousand Hungarians living in Bácska for the same number of Southern Slavs who were to move there in their place. This demand, however, soon became obsolete not only because the Serbs and Croats who remained in Hungary did not wish to move to Tito's Yugoslavia but also because the Yugoslav authorities were well aware of the fact that the forty thousand Hungarians they offered had already been "resettled" in the next world.

Mode of terror

Many of settlements were sacked, a lot of civilians was executed and tortured. Weemen and chilren were raped. Men who were able to work were deported to Siberia. It seems that the Serbians had plenty of wires. They spared their munitions. 15-2O Hungarian men were bound. They were lined up around a straw-stack. Last two men in the right and left sides of the line were strongly bound with wire. When the ring was fixed the straw-Stack was lit. The bound men impeded each other in escape. All of them were burnt away. Where they had enough time, the Serbian communist partisans deprived the selected Hungarian victims from all their twenty finger nails with pinchers- Their thirst of revenge was better filled if they heated previously the pinchers in a near smithery. It also happened that in the smithies the Serbian farriers drove horseshoes into the naked sole of the Hungarians. Not every Serbian could endure the horrible sights. Some of them vomited themselves during forced fulfillment of the command. Partisan women took part in these atrocities in large numbers. Hungarian Roman catholic priests and friars who got into their handsreceived particular attention! In most cases they were undressed. First a cross-shaped strap was cut out from the-skin of their back. For the sake of more hardened partisan women the sexual organs of the priests were taken care. Mostly their testicles were torn by pinchers. There was such a woman in these partisan units who stamped on these naked catholic reverends, mashed their loins.

Literature

In Hungarian

• Illés Sándor: Sirató, Budapest 1977: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó
• Cseres Tibor: Vérbosszú Bácskában, Magvető Könyvkiadó – 1991, ISBN 9631418150
• Matuska Márton: A megtorlás napjai. Forum, Novi Sad 1991
• Ötvenezer magyar vértanú, tudósítás a jugoszláviai magyar Holocaustról, 1944-1992, kiadó: Nyárády István, 1992
• Mojzes Antal: Halottak napja Bajmokon 1994
• Forró Lajos: Jelöletlen tömegsírok Magyarkanizsán, Martonoson Adorjánon, Szeged 1995
• Szloboda János: Zentán történt '44-ben, Jugoszláviai Magyar Művelődési Társaság, Újvidék 1997
• Cirkl Zsuzsa–Fuderer László: Bácskai golgota – a vallásüldözés áldozatai. Logos GrafikaiMűhely, Tóthfalu 1998
• Teleki Júlia: Keresem az apám sírját, Logos GrafikaiMűhely, Tóthfalu 1999
• Papp Imre: Ez a mi kálváriánk, Újvidék 1999
• Mészáros Sándor: Holttá nyilvánítva - Délvidéki magyar fátum 1944-45. I-II , Hatodik Síp Alapítvány, Budapest, 1995-2000
• Courtois, Stéphane: A kommunizmus fekete könyve. Budapest 2001: Nagyvilág.
• Ádám István-Csorba Béla-Matuska Márton-Ternovácz István: A temerini razzia 2001
• dr. Balla Ferenc és dr. Balla István: Bezdán története. 3. köt. 2001
• A. Sajti Enikő: Impériumváltások, revízió és kisebbség: magyarok a Délvidéken 1918-1947, Napvilág Kiadó, 2004, ISBN 9639350370
• Matuska Márton: Hová tűntek Zsablyáról a magyarok? VMDP Történelmi Bizottsága, Temerin 2004

In English

• Fifty thousand Hungarian martyrs report about the Hungarian Holocaust in Jugoslavia, 1944-1992 - ed. István Nyárádi, 1992

In Serbian

• Serbia ikomentari 1900/1991. Beograd 1991: Zaduzbina Milosa Crnjanskog.
• Karapandzic, Borivoje: Jugoslovensko krvavo prolece 1945.Titovi Katini i Gulagi. Beograd 1990: Mladost.
• Kasas, Aleksandar: Madjari u Vojvodini 1941–1946. Novi Sad 1996: Filozofski fakultet u Novom Sadu, Odsek za istoriju.

Films

• Temetetlen halottaink, Hungarian documentary film, 1991, directed by Siflis Zoltán

External links

• Memorial site of the victims
• Cseres Tibor's book on the web

• History of Vojvodina
• History of Hungary
• World War II crimes
• Yugoslavia during World War II