Maglić: And what if Swabians come back...

Since the new communist authorities between 1945 and 1948 settled 225.696 inhabitants from the rural and war-ravaged regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and Serbia in the former German houses in Vojvodina - anxiety has been hanging over the heads of the fourth generation of those colonists: " What if the Swabians come back...".
We should not spend time on arguments that this fear, especially in the past 30 years, is completely unreasonable, since it is difficult to expect that any descendant of the Germans here would return from Bavaria to Vojvodina for, on average, five times lower salary and standard. The time when the descendants of the Vojvodina Swabians immigrated to the Pannonian Plain almost 250 years ago in the Teresian colonizations is far behind us and today it is much better there than here, so migrations in the 20th and 21st centuries go exclusively in one direction - from our country to Germany .

Nevertheless, the fear that the "Swabians could return", that their land and houses would be returned, would intensify every time there was a sudden and noticeable strengthening of relations between Germany and Serbia, which is especially the case in the past 10 years. Now the public is talking openly about the camps for German civilians that existed in Vojvodina from 1945 to 1948. Entire villages - Gakovo, Bački Jarak, Knićanin and others were then turned into camps for civilians, mostly old people, women and children. It is believed that tens of thousands of completely innocent civilians died in them from winter, disease and hunger in those three years.
It is especially tragic that these are the very people who welcomed the partisan units and the Red Army, believing that nothing would happen to them, because "Austro-Hungary also failed, the Serbian army came in 1918, so we stayed and nothing happened to us." Their fate was the worst, unlike those who, at the end of September and beginning of October 1944, in long convoys of horse-drawn vehicles or ships on the Danube, left in time in the direction of Austria and Germany.

That topic was a complete taboo in socialist Yugoslavia, the first articles about it appeared in "Nedeljna Dalmacija" in 1989, and in 1990 I wrote the first article in Serbia for the student "Index" that dealt with this dark spot in the history of Tito's state.
Last week, as part of my cycling tours around Vojvodina, I visited Maglić in the municipality of Bački Petrovac. This village was called Bulkes until the Second World War and was almost entirely German. Then the Germans left or were taken to the camps in 1944 and Bulkes remained empty. In May 1945, Tito moved 4.650 Greek refugees, members of the People's Liberation Army "ELAS", to the former German houses.
Buljkes was given the status of an extraterritorial municipality of Greece, in which the Greek legal regulations recognized by Yugoslavia were valid. During their stay in Bukljes, the Greeks kept registers of births, marriages and deaths. It is interesting that the Greeks also sent their special units to work actions like the one for the Šamac-Sarajevo railway.
The Informburo resolution divided the Greeks in Buljkes. Some supported Stalin and others the KPJ. In order to prevent mutual friction and even killing in the spring of 1949, a decision was made that the Greeks who were in favor of the IB would be evicted, and those who were loyal to the KPJ had the right to choose freely, so some of them remained, as evidenced by several graves with Greek surnames at the local cemetery in Maglić.
In the center of the village there is a large, freshly painted white German Reformed Church. A rare sight, since German churches in villages where there are no other believers (Catholics or Protestants) usually stand dilapidated and in some places they were demolished after the war (Bački Gradačac, Bački Jarak, Novi Kozarci, Nakovo, Veliko Banatsko Selo...).
One of the townspeople finds a godfather "who works at the Utility Company and has the keys to the church." We enter the still ruined interior of the temple, which is in complete contrast to the shining facade. However, all the windows are new, and it can be seen that work has also begun on the interior of the temple. We climb the dusty stairs to the tower where the bells keep company and mobile phone transmitters "bells of the 21st century"...
After the church's long-term decay, the Association for the Promotion of People's Understanding, Cultivation of Culture and Homeland between the city of Kirchheim unter Tek and the municipality of Bački Petrovac collected money in 2019 and started work.
Hartmut Rehm from Kirchheim unter Teck, the chairman of the aforementioned association, with his wife Angelika, is happy to return to the birthplace of her ancestors. Since German Evangelical Christians no longer live in Maglić, the plan is to make this imposing building a multicultural center. Meetings of citizens of two communities and two nations will be held in it, and it is planned that the Museum of History of Bulkes (Maglića) will become part of the space.
As I hear in the village, the former inhabitants of Bulkes are very well received by the people who live in their houses today, and the local community and the Municipality of Bački Petrovac are very cooperative in the work on the revitalization of the church.
In a sea of ​​bad news in a region where political elites are constantly digging into the old wounds of their people, the news from Maglić can be a good example and guide for others.

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