Bački Gračac () is a village located in the

Odžaci Odžaci ( sr-cyrl, Оџаци, ; ) is a town and municipality located in the West Bačka District of the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbia. The town of Odžaci has a population of 7,556 people, while the population of the municipality of ...

municipality, in the

West Bačka District The West Bačka District (, ) is one of administrative districts of Serbia. It lies in the geographical region of Bačka. According to the 2022 census, West Bačka District has a population of 154,491 inhabitants. The administrative seat of the ...

Serbia , image_flag = Flag of Serbia.svg , national_motto = , image_coat = Coat of arms of Serbia.svg , national_anthem = () , image_map = , map_caption = Location of Serbia (gree ...

. It is situated in the Autonomous Province of

Vojvodina Vojvodina ( ; sr-Cyrl, Војводина, ), officially the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, is an Autonomous administrative division, autonomous province that occupies the northernmost part of Serbia, located in Central Europe. It lies withi ...

. The population of the village is 2,913 people (2002 census), of whom 2,810 are ethnic

Serbs The Serbs ( sr-Cyr, Срби, Srbi, ) are a South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to Southeastern Europe who share a common Serbian Cultural heritage, ancestry, Culture of Serbia, culture, History of Serbia, history, and Serbian lan ...

. This village is a former site of genocide.

Name

Old Serbian name of the village was ''Filipovo'' (Филипово). The modified versions of this Serbian name (Filipowa, Filipsdorf, Philipsdorf) were also used by Svabos/

Shwoveh The Danube Swabians ( ) is a collective term for the ethnic German-speaking population who lived in the Kingdom of Hungary in east-central Europe, especially in the Danube River valley, first in the 12th century, and in greater numbers in the 17 ...

. Name was first recorded in the (presumably already modified) form ''Filipova'' in a document written in the time of the Hungarian King Béla III (1173–1196). Other names used for the village were: Filipovo Selo (in Serbian), Kindlingen, Sankt Philipp (in German), Szentfülöp, Szent-Fülöp (in Hungarian) and Filipovo (in Croatian).

History

During the Ottoman rule (16th-17th century), the village of Filipovo was mainly populated by ethnic Serbs. In 1652, there were 7 houses, and a monastery. Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the region became part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. The area having been depopulated by the lengthy Turkish wars, Germans citizens from

Württemberg Württemberg ( ; ) is a historical German territory roughly corresponding to the cultural and linguistic region of Swabia. The main town of the region is Stuttgart. Together with Baden and Province of Hohenzollern, Hohenzollern, two other histo ...

migrated to the area at the invitation of

Empress Maria Theresa Maria Theresa (Maria Theresia Walburga Amalia Christina; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was the ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 1740 until her death in 1780, and the only woman to hold the position in her own right. She was the sovereig ...

of Austria-Hungary, beginning in 1763. By 1764, 20 houses were built and soon a total of 60 houses were built with a population of 75 German families; by 1801, there were 272 houses. In the beginning of the 1900s there were 535 houses in the village. Before and during WWII there was a strong Kulturbund organization in the village. The Kulturbund (German: Schwäbisch-Deutscher Kulturbund) was an organization of Germans in Banat, Bačka and Srem, which during the Second World War helped the occupier and propagated German Nazism. Founded in June 1920 in Novi Sad, it was initially conceived as a non-political organization operating throughout the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, with the aim of preserving and developing German culture and language. With the entry of German forces after the April War, the Kulturbund became the headquarters of the Volksdeutsche, who, in large numbers, put themselves in the service of the Third Reich. There were dozens of volunteers from the village who joined the German Wehrmacht and SS units on the eastern front. German occupying forces committed many crimes and massacres in Serbia, many of which have elements of genocide. German men, aged 16 to 65, were arrested and shot for aiding the Third Reich in its crimes in occupied territory. The remaining population was placed in transit camps. The camps consisted of property taken from the very people they were housed in, and were guarded by armed communist partisans. Many succumb to typhus, dysentery or starvation. Some managed to escape the camps to Austria and Germany by 1945, and many later immigrated to Canada and the United States in the 1950s. After the liberation of the village, the village is inhabited with 4,328 Serbians. For every family that moved to the village, the Germans and their Ustasha allies killed a family member. They were from the vicinity of Gračac in Lika, so the village got its current name - Bački Gračac. The maximum number of inhabitants in the settlement was reached in 1953, after which regression followed, which was mitigated to some extent by the beginning of the 21st century. After the genocide against the Serbs in Croatia in 1995, another large group of refugees arrived in the village.

Historical population

* 1880: 3,039 * 1910: 3,881 * 1921: 3,806 * 1961: 4,284 * 1971: 3,343 * 1981: 2,996 * 1991: 2,924 * 2002: 2,913 * 2011: 2,295 * 2014: 2.273

Notable people

Robert Zollitsch Robert Zollitsch (born 9 August 1938) is a German prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Freiburg im Breisgau from 2003 to 2013 and was Chairman of the German Episcopal Conference from 2008 to 2014. In April 2023, the rep ...

, a German prelate of the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. He formerly served as Archbishop of

Freiburg im Breisgau Freiburg im Breisgau or simply Freiburg is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fourth-largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Its built-up area has a population of abou ...

and Chairman of the German Episcopal Conference. *

Peter Kupferschmidt Peter Kupferschmidt (born 2 March 1942) is a German footballer who played for Bayern Munich during the 1960s. Early life Kupferschmidt's story began in Filipovo, which is now in Serbia and known as Backi Gracac. His family had to flee when he w ...

, a German football player.

References

*Slobodan Ćurčić, Broj stanovnika Vojvodine, Novi Sad, 1996.

External links