Re: Article "The Disastrous Experience of the Banat Germans of Setschan in 1944-45"

Judy;

I first ran across the Setschan chronical about 25 years ago when I was working on the Josefsdorf family register.  I had gotten the Setschan KBs because so many Setchaners had settled in Josefsdorf and then subsequently in North Dakota.  This led to heavy correspondance with Karl Benz who wrote the Setschan FB and helped fill in the gaps in each others project.  When I got my hands on microfilm of the Setschan KBs I was pleasantly surprised to find the chronical among the last pages.  I made myself a hard copy and it sat in a binder in file cabinets here until a couple of years ago when my family got on my butt to clear out the files----------Not sure what happened to them---------did I find someone to give them away to or did they go into the recycling?  I am sure that I would have posted a notice of the chronical on the Banat list when I first acquired them.  

I suspect that over time there may have been many more such chronicles but if they were not attached to the KBs they become separated and subsequently lost or not preserved with other  records.

Setschan was located adjacent to the Temisch River and was subject to frequent flooding and I remember one striking section of the chronicles which described the flooding one year as so severe that when one climbed the church steeple there was nothing to see but flood waters in all directions.       

I am not sure what the disastrous experience was.  Perhaps it was an unpleasant experience with Serb Partisans at the end of the war when they were all to ready to render retribution to villages who had give whole hearted support to the German side and I will note that there seemed to be disporpoent number of Setschaners who were difficult to account for at the end of the war.

As Juergen notes you likely can get a copy of the chronicles from the AKdFF or you could write to Karl Benz with a request(See the AKdFF members directory).

Dave Dreyer

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