1945 Rukavina Authorization
This document issued by Tito’s Brigadier General Ivan Rukavina on 10th of January 1945, has been discovered recently “buried” in a pile of other documents in the basement of the Museum of Vojvodina, now part of Serbia. It is an authorization to all the military officers to deal with the ethnic German population in any way they please. An official Carta Blanca for the persecution of Yugoslavia’s Danube Swabians that followed.
It is interesting to note that the document calls the ethnic Germans of Vojvodina as Germans, although the ethnic Germans or as we know them Danube Swabians, were citizens of Kingdom of Yugoslavia and not citizens of Germany.
The Museum of Vojvodina is located in two buildings. One is the permanent exhibition from prehistory to XX century and the newer, nearby building covers the 20th century but does not have a permanent exhibition and serves mainly for various modern art exhibitions. That museum used to be “Museum of Socialist Revolution” until 1990’s and that is why many documents related to WWII and the history of communist movement was kept there where they still are. Their archives in the basement still contain documents from that period. – Rosina T. Schmidt – January 2014.
Translation:
MILITARY GOVERNMENT
Of People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia
FOR BANAT, BATCKA AND BARANYA
No. 129
10th of January 1945
A U T H O R I Z A T I O N
By which I am authorizing comrade Lieutenant Colonel Kladarin Djuro to inspect all of the camps for the Germans on the territory of Vojvodina, all the locations where German population was evacuated or places which have not yet been evacuated and arrest and take with him persons at his own discretion and act in whatever way he thinks is necessary.
DATH TO FASCISM – FREEDEOM TO THE PEOPLE!
Commander:
Major General I. R. 1)
issued 2) to: Lieutenant colonel Kladarin Djuro 3), Spasic Branko 4), Funaric Stjepan 5), and 6 blank authorizations 6)
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1) initials of Ivan Rukavina
2) All named were highest-position officer and members of of communist party and all of them received the
identical authorization and were in charge for implementing the same order.
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djuro_Klaradin.
4) The link to this person was not found, but a list of him on the Yugoslavian pre-war communists states that he fought in Spanish civil war against Nationalist faction of gen. Francisco Franco. Spasic was born in Cetinje, Montenegro, in 1916, studied in Zagreb and in 1939 was arrested in France but was released or escaped back to Yugoslavia to join the partisans.
5) http://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stjepan-Funaric
6) Which were to be granted to the assistent appointed by Kladarin and other associates in this matter