DEPORTATION OF THE JEWS OF BAČKA IN 1944

I had a technical shop in Novi Sad in 16 Vojvođanska St. On 2025 March 1944, the SS and Kulturbundists took a radio, a typewriter, a desk and five Persian rugs from my shop and apartment. In early June the Hungarian occupying authority appointed a custodian to my shop named Kiss who owned the Klisa mill. This one took various technical goods from my shop. In addition, at the beginning of October 1944, the Germans took leather belts, hemp belts and mill silk from the shop. My damage totals 130,000 dinars (in value from 1941).

I have nothing else important to say”.

Sidon, Karlo [Károly] Saturday, February 28, 1945 (AV, F. 183, AK INV, 5033) [...] Károly [Karlo] Sidon, 53 years old, merchant, Jewish, of Jewish nationality, from Subotica /4 Pašićeva St./ declares: “On April 14, 1944, I was with about 160 other Subotica Jews taken

by Hungarian occupying authorities to a camp in Topola. There we were met by German SS, and on the side of the Hungarians, there was a Commander-in-Chief Gendarmerie Lieutenant-Colonel ZALASDI. The camp had about 1500-1800 people permanently. They were all mainly Jews and Slavs from Yugoslavia, that is, from southern Hungary.

Already upon our arrival at the camp, the SS began to beat us with butts and kick us for no reason. They swore at us, scolded us, and promised to shoot us all.

All the torture and abuse were done at the behest of the commander of the camp, an SS officer named ALFRED ROSENDAHL from Düsseldorf.

His main assistant was an SS man, originally Hungarian from Sopron, named SZILASI. Both of them beat and tortured people in the most horrific ways.

We did the toughest jobs, without exception, everyone. It didn’t matter if anyone was old or young, healthy or sick, male or female, he was forced to do the hardest work, and if he was not able to perform this due to his health, he was immediately most severely beaten and abused.

They gave us almost no food: we ate soup twice a day and we got only 25 dkg of bread.

In fact, the purpose of the work was not to achieve any result, but they only wanted to humiliate us. So, for example, we would plow by 391