SERBIA MARKS ‘GREAT SCHOOL CLASS’: Here’s what happened to the perpetrators of the crime in Šumarice after the Second World War!

Every October 21, the Great School Class is held in memory of the crimes committed by the German Wehrmacht during the autumn of 1941.

In one of the largest [massacres] of the German army in the Second World War, in the terrible retaliation by the Wehrmacht in Serbia, about 30,000 innocent civilians—men, women, and children—were killed between October and December 1941 alone. The execution of 2,264 people in Kragujevac on October 21 became a symbol of the suffering of all of them. On that day, 300 gymnasium students and dozens of children were shot. The youngest among them was an 11-year-old Roma boy, a shoeshiner.

Traces of the indescribable crime were left by both the victims and their cold-blooded executioners.

“The digging of the pits takes the longest, while the execution itself goes very quickly – 100 people, 40 minutes. My personal impression is that there are no emotional problems during the execution. They appear later, when one thinks about it, in the evening, in peace, reported Lieutenant Valter,” as written by the German historian Marie-Janine Čalić, in her recently published book “Tito, the Eternal Partisan,” and reported by Deutche Welle.

Occupation, unexpected uprising, and the arrival of Böhme

With the bombing of Belgrade on April 6, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked Yugoslavia and conquered it along with its allies within a few weeks. However, resistance against the occupiers soon formed in the country. Berlin was particularly surprised and irritated by the strong resistance in Serbia – which was the only part of the dismembered country under direct German administration. Additionally, about 180,000 Serbs, prisoners of war from the defeated army, had already been taken to forced labor in Germany.

That is why Adolf Hitler personally appointed the Austrian General Franz Friedrich Böhme as Plenipotentiary Commanding General in Serbia and ordered him to “restore order in the entire area by the harshest means.” Until Böhme’s arrival in September 1941, four specially formed, but incomplete and poorly armed Wehrmacht infantry divisions operated as occupiers in Serbia. Two of which consisted of Germans – the 704th and 714th, one of Austrians – the 717th, and one was mixed – the 718th, which mainly consisted of Austrians and East Germans. Böhme therefore received two divisions as reinforcement.

Already on October 10, he issued a command that “all communists, all male inhabitants suspected of being communists, all Jews, a certain number of nationalistic and democratically inclined inhabitants, be arrested as hostages.” In the event of losses, Wehrmacht units must shoot hostages – 100 for every killed and 50 for every wounded [German soldier].

“In mid-October 1941, the head of the civil administration in Serbia, SS man Harald Turner, wrote to his friend about the executions in Serbia: Dear Richard! It is not a beautiful job! But it must be done, so that people understand once and for all what it means even to attack a German soldier. And on the other hand, this is the fastest way to solve the Jewish question,” states Marie-Janine Čalić.

What happened to those responsible for the executions?

The execution in Kragujevac was carried out more than zealously by Major Paul Koenig, from the 717th Division. He survived the war, and the investigation against him was suspended in the sixties. And since then, all traces of him have been lost.

Paul Hoffman, who commanded that infamous 717th Division, was in captivity for three years and died in 1979 in old age. Walter Hingenhofer, who also commanded two divisions in Serbia that autumn, died in Vienna in 1951. Johann Fortner, commander of the 718th Division, was arrested and extradited to Yugoslavia. He was sentenced to death and hanged in Belgrade on February 26, 1947. Harald Turner was also extradited to Yugoslavia and hanged the same year. Böhme was arrested and transferred to Nuremberg. When it became certain that he would be extradited to Yugoslavia, he committed suicide in May 1947 by jumping from the fourth floor of the investigative prison.

After the war – Šumarice

The area where the execution took place in Kragujevac was transformed in 1953 into the Šumarice Memorial Park, where a series of events are held to pay tribute to the victims of the executions in Serbia, including the Great School Class every year. Representatives of Germany were forbidden to visit Šumarice immediately after the war, Nenad Karamijalković from the “October 21” Museum told DW. Visits began in the late fifties, first from the GDR, and two decades later from West Germany.

A parliamentary delegation from Germany visited in 2002, and since 2003, Ingolstadt and Kragujevac have been partner cities. Young people from Hanover and Hamburg have established student exchange programs. The German Society for International Cooperation is helping to renovate the monumental museum with a donation of 15 million euros. A lot speaks in favor of reconciliation and the desire to pay tribute to the tens of thousands of innocent victims in Serbia.