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

to extract from them the hiding place of the jewels. First the midwife, then the priest admittedthat the jewels were hoarded in a safe place under the altar.The church, already desecrated, was completely demolished by the Serbians, and theRoman Catholic cemetery was also destroyed. The Rev. Koves, like St. Lawrence, was burnedalive, but without the possibility of future sainthood. At the same time the midwife, raped, wasstrangled and having deserved a lesser torture her mother was slaughtered too. The number ofvictims in Mozsor thus rose to seventy-two.118ZOMBORIn 1941, the Hungarian troops of the Pecs Corps reoccupied Zombor The first night thechetniks, having hidden in the attics, caused long street battles and extensive fires. There musthave been forty of them against the garrison of one thousand firing away aimlessly. That dayand the following morning the poorly trained and disorganized Hungarian troops madethemselves ridiculous, because they were unable to capture, either alive or dead, any of thefighting chetniks. Six Hungarian militiamen died in the street-fighting , sometimes hit by aHungarian bullet. In the next few months, the Hungarian counter-intelligence found elevenpeople in Zombor with its Serbian majority, who could be accused of seditious crimes.Compared to all this, the reprisal initiated by the returning Serbian military authoritieswas gigantic.In the last moments of the "Hungarian era" on October 20th, the counter-intelligencehappened to find, on the captured Serbian leader, Patarcsics, the black list of those Hungarians ofZombor who were to be executed at the first opportunity by the entering partisan militia. Out of asense of duty, the counter-intelligence warned those on the list to get away. Most of them leftwith the last retreating Hungarian troops. Surprisingly, first mentioned on the list were twoCarmelite Friars, Gellert Sztancsics and Illes Hollos. Their most serious crime was obviouslytheir patriotic sermons.Many who did not get notice of their imminent death or simply felt innocent, chose tostay but they "got on the hook" when the Russian and partisan troops entered. Some literally goton the hook; they were hanged.Rounding up Hungarians destined for death was not confined to the town. The Hungarianmales of the surrounding villages were taken to the Kronich Palace by force. From Bezdan, somefive hundred men were taken. Here they were beaten all day, and there were some bloodthirsty,sadistic, partisan women who were especially active. In different corners of the apartment halls,their activities were being watched by their fellows with guns pointed, ready to fire if one oranother of the tortured men attacked or resisted the strikes of the gun-butts. This would givethem sufficient reason for a massacre.It is from the survivors of Bezdan, that we know of the horrible119