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

"I understood that through the OZNA, he had exact information about the nature of thecleaning. If there had been but a few war criminals killed, he would not even have beeninformed. I can only estimate the proportions the massacre took, and that rather withoutresponsibility, I should say. On the whole territory of Szabadka including the Germans that wereexecuted here when the partisan brigade left, some three hundred and fifty people were executed.To me it is just as much reprehensible as what the Hungarians had done some time before."Let us add to the statement, which tries to mitigate and deny the responsibility of theofficer, the recollections of two young people who managed to survive."I passed my final exam in the grammar school of Szabadka in 1942. In my class therewere three or four Serbians, three or four Bunjevaces (a small Slavic ethnic group, related to theSerbs) and one or two Jews (Francois Bondy, for example, the literary expert living inSwitzerland) besides the Hungarians. Our relationship was characterized by true friendship andby the tolerance characteristic of the people living in Vojvodina. The people who taughtHungarian literature were Jozsef Bogner and Laszlo Erdelyi. They were people of great eruditionand eloquence, we were very fond of them. Both were executed by the partisans.Jozsef Bogner was for a while headmaster of the students' dorm. He became a teacherafter the town was reattached to Hungary and later became the Mayor of the town. His eldersister was a nun called Margit Bogner. Her suit for beatification is in progress now.After the fighting, there were three students from the grammar school who were leadersof the occupying partisan groups: Radak Milos, Jelics Dusan and Dezso Pinter (his father wasHungarian, his mother Serbian but he declared himself a Serb). As far as we know, the weekbefore the executions they had Jozsef Bognar repair all the clocks of the partisans,since he alsohad a127watchmaker's certificate. At early dawn, he was executed together with Laszlo Erdelyi. It is saidthat their judge and the executor of the verdict was Dezso Pinter.""Several days after they arrived, news began to spread that so and so was taken away andkilled. On a November night we were wakened by a loud pounding. Peeping through the slits inthe shutters, we heard that our neighbors were directing the armed men to the house at thecorner. That was when I saw men and women pressed together on a peasant horse cart. The cartstopped in front of our house. Holding our breath, we were wondering what was to happen sincemy father was leader of the Turan Hunters in Szabadka. He had been imprisoned once for twoyears for the Hungarian cause in Serbian times, for which he also got the Hungarian NationalDefence Cross after 1941. People were killed for lesser "crimes" than that . It was on this nightthat Devavari was taken from next door, then the shoemaker Elizak from the other end of thestreet. It was also this night that the Kiss brothers and Janos Csiszar disappeared; they nevercame back. It was one of those days that the wholesale merchant Geza Nojcsek, president of theHungarian Readers Circle, was killed.They also killed our teacher of Hungarian, Laszlo Erdelyi, who had just come home as aReserve Lance Sergeant. He was wounded in the arm during a shooting at the station. His oldSerbian students took him to the first aid station, then took him home; they assured him he was