Talk:Kucura

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During the 19th and first half of the 20th century, a sizeable population of ethnic Germans lived in the village of Kucura. They were mostly landowners and farmers. They spoke a dialect of German (derived from the German dialect spoken in Rhineland Palatinate, from where many of their ancestors first came), but also the local languages too, which at that time included Serbo-Croat and Hungarian. When the Second World War broke out, some of the ethnic German males left to join the German army. For most of the war, as the region was under the control of Hitler's military, the ethnic Germans continued their daily lives. But as Germany began to lose the war and Hitler withdrew his forces from the Balkans, the ethnic Germans were left with two options: either to stay and await the arrival of Tito's partisan forces (as they made their way north), or to leave and head for the distant 'fatherland', a country alien to most of them. Most of those who stayed were put into camps; many did not survive, not least because of the very cold conditions of the winter of 1944/45. Those who fled - thinking that they might at some point be able to return - made long and hazardous journeys towards Austria and Germany, never to return. In many cases, the homes of the ethnic Germans were 'issued' to Serbians; and the cemetery in which Germans from earlier decades were buried has now fallen into disrepair and is hidden behind hedges and beneath undergrowth. The ethnic Germans were compensated for their material losses by the German government in the mid 1960s. Kleins50 15:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)