From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Main street

Center of the village with market place and park. Here stood until 1948 the destroyed German church.

The memorial at the edge of the old German graveyard, where the internees themselves buried those who died of "hunger, disease, and cold", according to the sign.

Knićanin (Serbian: Knićanin or Книћанин, German: Rudolfsgnad) is a village in Serbia. It is located in the Zrenjanin municipal area, in the Banat region, Vojvodina province. Its population is 2,026 people.

Name

The village was named after vojvoda Stevan Knićanin, who was the commander of the Serbian volunteer squads in the Serbian Vojvodina during the 1848/1849 revolution.

The former name of this village, Rudolfsgnad, was in use since 1868, when the village was named after the Habsburg prince Rudolf.

Population

Today, the village has a Serb ethnic majority, while before the end of the World War II, the population of the village numbered about 3,000 people, and was mainly composed of ethnic Germans (Danube Swabians).

History

The village formerly had a large German (Danube Swabian) population. In the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the villagers were mainly farmers and artisans.

After the World War II, the village was used as a concentration camp for Germans of the Vojvodina region by the Yugoslav partisans. A memorial to victims of a mass grave was constructed nearby with an inscription in both Serbian and German.

The larger sign in the photo reads: "Here rest our fellow citizens of German ethnicity, who died of hunger, sickness, and cold in the camp 'Knićanin/Rudolfsgnad' 1946-1948. May they rest in peace".

The smaller sign reads: "To the victims from the camp of German Elemer/Elemir Knićanin/Rudolfsgnad 314".

See also