Serbian WWI soldiers who died in the Netherlands
Following its neutrality and the Fifth Convention of The Hague, signed at the Second Peace conference of 1907, the Netherlands became the theatre of massive replacement of troops during and after World War I. Already during the Great War any prisoners of belligerents who would reach its neutral territory would be given a relative freedom to move, shelter and food. Furthermore an agreement was reached on 2 July 1917 with Germany and England for the internment of 17000 prisoners on Dutch soil. Thus thousands of refugees and prisoners of war reached the Netherlands, already during the war.
These soldiers and civilians were interned in various camps all over the country. After the war had ended on 11 November 1918, the port of Rotterdam was used to repatriate soldiers coming from the battlefields, as well as liberated prisoners of war, back to their native lands. According to Dutch newspapers in January 1919 a total of 222,347 PoWs had arrived from Germany since mid-November 1918, of which 202,250 had left the country again by mid-January. Among the tens of thousands of prisoners who passed through the Netherlands were 4316 Serbs, 1160 of which via Enschede, on their way home. By 15 January 130 had thus left the country.
In January 1919 the Spanish flu struck among these prisoners, many of whom were weak after more than four years of war and mobilisation. Especially because, by then 4186 Serbs in the Netherlands had already seen the Balkan Wars in the years before the outbreak of World War I. Between 11 January and 7 February 1919, so in four weeks' time, 87 Serbian soldiers died in the Netherlands, not because of war, but because of the flu. Another 5 Serbs had already died in The Netherlands of different causes before mid-January 1919.
All 92 were buried in The Netherlands (Barneveld (Garderen: 30), Nijmegen (21), Lonneker (Enschede: 17), Dordrecht (15), Hengelo (3), Rotterdam (2), Borger (2) Amersfoort (1) and Nieuw-Beerta (1)). Starting from the 1920s the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes started concentrating their war graves in various places where many Serbs had died, such as Zeitenlik, Vido, Thiais, Olomouc or Jindřichovice (the site of the Austrian concentration camp Heinrichsgrün).
Plans were made to also concentrate the remains of the Serbs who had died in The Netherlands. According to Dutch law something needed to be done to preserve the graves in order for them not to be removed by the authorities (who preserved the right to reclaim graves 10 or 20 years after they had been dug in case no relatives would show up to claim them).
In this way through the consulate-general of Yugoslavia in Rotterdam contacts were made with the Dutch authorities in the 1930s to exhume the graves and transport the remains to the Serbian Field of Honour in Thiais, near Paris. The consulate-general contacted the various municipalities for the exhumations and their counterparts in Brussels and Paris to organise the transport by rail via Roosendaal.
In November 1937 it became clear that there was not sufficient place on the Field of Honour in Thiais, and that the remains would be transported to the Serbian mausoleum in Jindřichovice, Czech Republic instead. To this end two inspectors were sent to Netherlands to supervise the works. 89 graves were exhumed early May 1938 and brought to Nijmegen, where the remains were put in lead-lined coffins. On the morning of 18 May 1938 the transport reached the Dutch-German border at Wyler/Kranenburg, where the 89 coffins were transferred to the Germans, who received them with full military honours. From there the transport continued to the mausoleum, where 89 of the 92 Serbs who died in Netherlands in 1919 found their final resting place
Of the three war graves not exhumed in 1938, only the one in Nieuw-Beerta is known to still exist. One grave in Rotterdam was probably already removed before 1938 and it is likely the same happened to one grave in Borger.
More info on our website www.secanje.nl
Serbian Prisoners of World War I
Prisoners of War
Monument in Garderen (NL) for the Serbian WWI soldiers who died in the Netherlands
52.233516,5.71840700000007
Photograph
CREATOR
www.secanje.nl
DATE
1919-01-11 - 1919-02-07
LANGUAGE
eng
ITEMS
0
INSTITUTION
Europeana 1914-1918
PROGRESS
METADATA
Discover Similar Stories
Milovan Milojević | Serbian WWI soldier who died in the Netherlands.
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Introduction: Milovan Milojević was born in 1889 in Azanja, a village in the Podunavlje district approximately 80 kilometres South-East of Serbia's capital Belgrade. He was the son of Stepan (1851-1927) and Ikonija Milojević. Milovan had three brothers, Čedomir (1883-1927), Milan (1893-?) and Stevan (1893-1987). Milovan was married to Stanica and they got two children: Svetomir (1909-died as a child) and Dragoslav (1912-1996). When he had to serve his country he was part of the 4th company, 1st battalion in the 8th regiment infantry, his rank has been unknown until so far. Azanja: The village where Milovan was born, Azanja, had 8803 inhabitants in 1910 (the Kingdom of Serbia had then 2.922.058 inhabitants). In 1921 the population of Azanja dropped to 8052 inhabitants. The village of Azanja paid a huge price during the Balkan Wars and the First World War: it lost almost 800 soldiers during these wars, so far only around 400 were traced back. Azanja was back then, and still is, a rural village so it must have been a huge impact when such a high amount of men died because of the wars. Milovan was one of them, but also Djuro Stojadinović who died a day earlier in Nieuw-Milligen. Unfortunately we haven't been able to find his roots in Azanja yet. Capture & Arrival in the Netherlands : According to the Prisoners of the First World War International Red Cross website we know that Milovan was captured 14/11/1915 in Kruševac (Central-Serbia). On 18/12/1915 he was reported in the Prisoners of War camp in Braunau (in Bohomia, nowadays the Czech Republic, back then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire). The list was written 21/01/1916, see below. Jindřichovice and Braunau were used as transit camps in the beginning of the war and the Serbian Prisoners of War were mostly transported further into Germany. We know from earlier discoveries that they (Miloš Jeremić and Đorđe Vukosavljević) also spent time in camps in Soltau and Emden (in the province of Hannover or in German the 'Kriegsgefangenenlager des X. Armeekorps in Hannover'). Other soldiers who arrived in the Netherlands were held prisoners in the camps of the VII Korps Münster. We do not know when Milovan arrived in the Netherlands, but at one point he was transported to the Prisoner of War camp in Nieuw-Milligen between Garderen and Apeldoorn. Also French soldiers were there waiting for transport to their home country, as the Serbian soldiers. We do not know when he was transported and from where (most possibly Enschede). According to the family we talked to he died on the train, but we cannot confirm this. Burial and exhumation: Milovan died on the 21st January 1919 in Nieuw-Milligen (a village which is a part of the municipality of Apeldoorn) of Spanish flu. A day later (22nd January 1919) autopsy was done by a doctor who concluded that Milovan died of Spanish flu. His death was registered by the municipality of Apeldoorn (act 71, date 23rd January 1919, which can be found here). This was reported by Jan David Mathias Schlaepfer, 49 years old Sergeant-Major in the Dutch army. Hendrik Muis, 45 years old civil servant, was the second person who registered his death. Milovan was buried on 24th January 1919 together with 11 of his comrades in Garderen (municipality of Barneveld). On the cemetery where he was buried a monument was erected in April 1919 by the legation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in the Hague. The text was in French and it was written les soldats serbes décédés au camp de Millingen 1919 with 29 names in French transcription, and on the back in Serbian and Dutch the text Deceased for Serbia / the grateful Serbian fatherland (Умрли за Србију / Gestorven voor Serbie, Благодарна Отаџбина Србија / Het Dankbaar Serbische Vaderland). In May 1938, he was exhumed (together with the other Serbian WWI graves) and transported to Jindřichovice. The exhumation report can be found below. Even though the newspaper articles in 1938 mentioned that the remains of '89 Serbian soldiers' were repatriated to 'Yugoslavia', the official documents of the time mention 'Czechoslovakia' as the destination. The remains of Milovan and 87 others were transferred to Jindřichovice in Czechoslovakia (nowadays Czech Republic) via the Dutch/German border at Beek-Wyler. It is not known in which box his remains were collected as on his Serbian exhumation report (no K. Br. 84024/XII) it is not mentioned. It must be one of the lead boxes numbered 45, 61-65, or 67-89 as for the other numbers the names were mentioned. Milovan found his last resting place in Jindřichovice, together with 7658 other Serbian soldiers and 189 Russian soldiers (calculated as on 1940). Discovery: After contacts with officials of the municipality of Smederevska Palanka (Azanja is part of that municipality nowadays) we got the contact information of Žarko Talijan which we contacted afterwards. He wrote a book about Azanja and the victims of the Balkan Wars and the First World War and wanted to meet us. When we met 19/03/2016 in Azanja he showed us, together with a relative of Milovan, the monument on the graveyard of Azanja. This was actually the first monument we have seen so far where it was written where the soldier died. On the monument is written: 'Milovan sin Stepana Milojevića vojnik žive 30 g. umre 6-1.1919 g. u Milingenu u Holandiji. Spomen dižu ožalošćeni otac mati braća sin i supruga. Translation: Milovan, a son of Stepan Milojević, a soldier, lived for 30 years, died 6.1.1919. in Miligen in the Netherlands. The monument erected by his bereaved father, brothers, son and wife. Conclusion: With the help of the civil servants of Smederevska Palanka we contacted Žarko Talijan and together with Damir Živković they gave us the information we needed. We met a family member and gave copies of the official Dutch & Serbian acts and pictures of the monument in Garderen and the mausoleum in Jindřichovice to him. At least now they know that he has not been forgotten and that his name is written on the monument in Garderen, that there is a cross for him as well there and that his remains are in the mausoleum in Jindřichovice. We are very grateful for the picture of Milovan, as he is now not just a name any more, but a person with a face and a history. He died in the Netherlands with his comrades far from Serbia, but 100 years later both countries did not forget him and his comrades. Večna mu slava! (=Eternal glory to him!) Sources / Special thanks to The following sources were used: -Žarko Talijan, Miris Tamjana -Azanjci u ratovima od 1912 do 1918 godine, 2014. -Damir Živković who helped to write the part about Azanja. -National Archives of Serbia : Exhumation report , no K. Br. 84024/XII -Gelders Archief (Archives of the province of Gelderland) : Civil registration Gemeente Apeldoorn January 1919 No 71. -Habert, Henri, Binnen het prikkeldraad: naar verhalen van uitgeweken Serviërs (Entre les fils barbelés: D'après les récits des évadés Serbes), Amsterdam, 1919. More information about the routes and places on the special Google Maps we have created: Link to Google Maps (click) -International Red Cross The Prisoners of the First World War historical archives website: 18,2,64./ZH96 PS255, link: http://grandeguerre.icrc.org/en/File/Details/4768524/12/2/ Special thanks to: -Žarko Talijan -Damir Živković (https://nastavnikdamir.wordpress.com) -Bojan Stojadinović Story by: Fabian Vendrig with the help of Tanja Vendrig, John Stienen and Damir Živković. || Photograph of Milovan Milojević , copies of the official Dutch & Serbian acts and pictures of the monument in Garderen and the mausoleum in Jindřichovice || || 44.42602299999999,20.883406400000013 || Photograph || Milovan Milojević || Azanja || Picture of Milovan Milojević (photo courtesy Žarko Talijan & Damir Živković). || || Photograph || The school of Azanja , early 20th century (Photo courtesy Damir Živković) || Azanja || || Detailed card from the website of the Prisoners of the First World War, historical archiv || 50.5856582,16.33181509999997 || Broumov || Official document || || Milovan Milojević || the autopsy report of the doctor who confirmed his death on the 21st January 1919. || Official document || || Belgrade || 44.786568,20.44892159999995 || Exhumation report : The remains of Milovan and 87 others were transferred to Jindřichovice in Czechoslovakia (nowadays Czech Republic) via the Dutch/German border at Beek-Wyler. It is not known in which box his remains were collected as on his Serbian exhumation report (no K. Br. 84024/XII) it is not mentioned. It must be one of the lead boxes numbered 45, 61-65, or 67-89 as for the other numbers the names were mentioned. || Milovan Milojević || || 50.2826603,12.602321800000027 || Inside the mausoleum in Jindřichovice (CZ), 28/06/2014 (photo by Fabian Vendrig). || Jindřichovice || Photograph || || Azanja || Monument for Milovan on the graveyard of Azanja (Serbia), 19/03/2016 (Photo by Fabian Vendrig). || Photograph || || Azanja || Photograph || On the monument is written: 'Milovan sin Stepana Milojevića vojnik žive 30 g. umre 6-1.1919 g. u Milingenu u Holandiji. Spomen dižu ožalošćeni otac mati braća sin i supruga. Translation: Milovan, a son of Stepan Milojević, a soldier, lived for 30 years, died 6.1.1919. in Miligen in the Netherlands. The monument erected by his bereaved father, brothers, son and wife. Photo below: detail of the monument for Milovan in Azanja, 19/03/2016 (photo by Fabian Vendrig). || || Garderen || 52.2329632,5.714814400000023 || The cross in Garderen (NL) with Milovan Milojević's name, 22/05/2014. Photo by Fabian Vendrig
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