i’m researching family history, and came across a distant relative who’s death place was listened as “Krndija Concentration Camp, Yugoslavia.” after researching further, i found out that there were quite a few concentration camps built AFTER WWII in yugoslavia to house ethnic germans. mostly women, children, and elderly. and the vast majority of these ethnic germans were common people who had been living in this area (now croatia) for centuries before either world wars even happened.
what was the reasoning for these camps? revenge??hadn’t there been enough horrors DURING the war? obviously i know war is destabilizing and it’s not going to be all sunshine and daisies the minute it ends. i just can’t comprehend why any former-ally aligned country would build concentration camps for a group of people who happened to be ethnically german but hadn’t even lived in germany before or during the war, and weren’t former soldiers or anything. disease and starvation killed approx. 1500+ people in Krndija alone.
learning about history is usually bleak and i know there’s not usually a concrete “reason” for these kinds of things. but i just don’t understand what yugoslavia possibly could have gained from this.