PLEASE NOTE: This book contains graphic description ... - HUNSOR

ack a 13 year-old boy to the soccer field who came with the group, holding his father's hand.The little boy proved to be very affectionate: he could not be separated from his father. Their"job" being urgent, the partisans no longer cared for him. They forced the men to pile theirspades and hoes and shot first the soccer team, then the rest of the group together with the childinto the pits. It seems that no one thought of taking up his spade and fighting against thehandful of gunmen. After the last man had been executed, they sent a messenger on horsebackto the soccer field with the message that "the job is done". On receiving the news, thepartisans who had so far guarded the unsuspecting crowd let the new widows and orphans gohome.After a few days, a division of Bulgarian soldiers arrived in29Bezdan. The report does not reveal whether the partisans had left by that time to continue theirbestial operations in other villages. The Bulgarian commander was told of the events of Nov.3. He gave permission to open the common grave and give the dead a proper burial. Thefuneral into separate graves took place on Nov. 28. The opening of the grave revealed that thevictims were tied with wire in groups of fifteen. It is amazing that people whose hands werestill free did not revolt against their murderers on seeing this: even the last group stretchedtheir hands obediently to be tied with the rusty wire. Another forty corpses, mutilated beyondrecognition, were found in the cellar of the village council house and in nearby yards, twentymore in the water of the Ferenc Canal. These were buried at the same time as the bodies fromthe two big common graves. Thirty-two bodies could not be identified due to the horriblemutilations: these were reburied in one common grave.Dr. Varga found out the name of the murder squad. The horrible crimes werecommitted by the 12th Udarna Brigade of the 51st Partisan Division, under the orders ofthe commander and the political officer (commissar).3.To begin, I am attempting to give a factual account of the bloody autumn of one singlevillage, but the mercilessly enforced silence had different effects on different memories. Thosewho dare to speak are still frightened by the threat of revenge, because no Hungarian inYugoslavia is allowed to speak about that autumn of 1944 when the Serb partisans returned.They are afraid even to tell their children what they preserved in their memories about thosebrutal days of slaughter.It is not easy, perhaps not even possible to understand how hundreds of thousands ofpeople can be forced into silence by the ice-cold, remorseless terror for almost half a century.Although we are not able to lift the ban of silence ordered by the state (perhaps secretlyenacted under penalty of death), yet we may perhaps be able to reconstruct the events of thepast from several uncertain memories.I managed to get hold of certain parts of the memoirs of Gy.L. from Bezdan, which werewritten in 1944. F.R., T.K. and Gy. M. told me their memories in 1974. None of them,however, wishes his name to appear here. Those who lived through the era of fear