Kragujevac massacre
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The Kragujevac massacre was the massacre of over 6,000 civilians, mostly Serbs, Jews, communist and Gypsys — men, women and schoolchildren — in Kragujevac, Serbia, then Yugoslavia, by the soldiers of Nazi Germany, on 20 October 1941. It was one of the worst massacres during the German military occupation of Serbia.
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[edit] Causes
The Germans had threatened to shoot 50 Yugoslavs for every wounded German soldier and 100 for each killed. They were attacked in early October by the Royalist Chetniks and the Communist Partisans near Gornji Milanovac, and the massacre was a direct reprisal for the German losses in that battle.
[edit] Arrests and the massacre
On the day of October 19 in the early morning, the whole city was raided. Around 10,000 civilians, aged 16–60, were arrested. A whole generation of high school children was taken directly from their classes. The executions started at 6 PM on the following day. People were shot in groups of 400. The shootings continued into the next day, at a lesser pace. The remaining prisoners were not released, but were held as hostages for further reprisals.
[edit] The monument and commemoration
To commemorate the victims of the massacre, the whole of Šumarice, where the killings took place, was turned into a memorial park. There are several monuments there: the monument to killed schoolchildren and their teachers, the "Broken Wings" monument, the monument of pain and defiance, the monument "One hundred for one", the monument resistance and freedom, the monument to shoe cleaners.
A famous poem about the massacre of the schoolchildren, "A Bloody fairy tale" (Krvava Bajka), was written by Desanka Maksimović.
