ENTIRE SERBIAN VILLAGES INTERNED BY AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN AUTHORITIES IN ARAD

BELGRADE, OCTOBER 16 /SRNA/ – The former Austro-Hungarian concentration camp in Arad was a precursor to the camps established by totalitarian regimes and the concentration camps of World War II, and entire villages were imprisoned there, not just political offenders, historian Čedomir Antić told SRNA, marking the 112th anniversary of the suffering of Serbian internees at the camp.

Commenting on the fact that, during World War I, from August 1914 to 1918, the Austro-Hungarian camp in Romania was one of the largest sites of suffering for the Serbian people, Antić said such camps had been an unprecedented practice at the time.

"They started with the camps. Those held in the Arad camp were not just political offenders or potential enemies, conspirators or disloyal people, but entire villages and regions," Antić said, noting that men were sent to Arad, while, for example, a conventional internment camp operated in the area around Doboj.

Antić stressed that these were not extermination camps, but they were genuine camps where people died of disease and were subjected to torture and abuse.

He noted that Austria-Hungary was considered a developed and cultured European state at the time, and a home of administration and bureaucracy, but it also had another side: at the beginning of World War I, it committed unprecedented atrocities in Serbia and Galicia.

Antić reminded that Austria-Hungary had stripped Serbs of all but some civil rights two years before the outbreak of the war.

"That Austria-Hungary began persecuting Serbs at the start of World War I, and in addition to hundreds who were hanged or shot by its paramilitary formations, known as the Schutzkorps, more than 5,000 Serbs fell victim," Antić said.

He noted that many Serbian writers had described the horrors of these camps, while Austrian historiography did not begin addressing these crimes until the 21st century, in 2014, around the centenary of the outbreak of the war.

Antić said it was particularly unusual that prisoners of war were often also held in these camps, while Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in Serbia were treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention in force at the time.

The camp was established in Arad Fortress, in Romania, in 1914 by order of Austro-Hungarian authorities. It was primarily intended for Serbs deported from BiH, the Kingdom of Serbia and other Serbian-inhabited areas. Those interned included entire families, among them women, elderly people and children, as well as intellectuals, priests, farmers and people from all walks of life.

Arad Fortress became the first camp for Serbian internees from BiH, then part of Hungary, Croatia and the Kingdom of Serbia. Other camps included those in Nagymagyar, Doboj, Nezsider, Boldogasszony, Sopronnyek, Mauthausen, Aschach an der Donau, Heinrichsgrun, Jindrichovice and Braunau.

It is estimated that between 11,000 and 15,000 people passed through the camp, and that 4,317 Serbs died there.

The prisoners were held in casemates and damp underground corridors of the fortress without light. Many died of hunger, cold, typhus and other serious diseases because of catastrophic sanitary

conditions.