Neubeschenowa / Ujbesenyo

Our Swabian ancestors  were a hardy bunch. They came from The  Black Forest region in Baden-Wurttemberg, Saarland  and Trier. Many immigrated to Banat,  then  Austria  in 1737 due to rising  taxes and lack of religious  freedom. During the Ottoman rule, parts of Banat had  low population density after years of warfare and much of the area was nearly uninhabited marsh, heath and forest. Count Claudius Mercy (1666–1734), who was appointed governor of the Banat of Temesvar in 1720, took numerous measures for the regeneration of the Banat. The marshes near the Danube and Tisza rivers were cleared, roads and canals were built at great expense of labor, German artisans and other settlers were attracted to colonize the district, and agriculture and trade encouraged. Maria Theresa also took a great interest in the Banat; she colonized the region with large numbers of German peasants, encouraged the exploitation, (some were sent by chains by boats  because of the Salpeter war.) of the salpeter mineral wealth of the country, and generally developed the measures introduced by Count Mercy. German settlers arrived from Swabia, Alsace and Bavaria, as well as people from Austria. Many settlements in the eastern Banat thus were mostly German-inhabited. The ethnic Germans in the Banat region became known as the Danube Swabian, or Donauschwaben. As a result of the Swabians labor, the Banat region was transformed into a breadbasket of Europe.

The village of Neubeschenowa (NB)  was founded  in Banat by German colonists in  1748-1749. In the summer of the same year, men of the village  were ordered by Maria Theresia   to complete a military training in case of future war. The  Village church was then  built in 1750-1751 followed by cemetery  the  1751. The village  was fully formed by 1783 with 225 houses. Not unlike other villages in the Banat area NB kept its language and culture throughout the generations. Marriages among the village residents people, and  not many outsiders  marriages were common.

In 1895 the railroad was opened, and it was possible to take a train to the largest city, Temesvar, 15km southeast. Things were changing politically in Banat by 1898. The Hungarian government changed the village name to a Hungarian name, Ujbesenyo, and both Hungarians and Romanians were moving into the area.. The great immigration to America, Europe and Astralia was in early 1900 about 1905.

World War I began in 1914 and when  the war ended in 1918, The war claimed 127  lives from NB. In 1919  after the war, Banat was split and NB was now became Romania..

In Romania, eighty-three  men from NB died in World War II was between 1939 and 1945. After the war,  Romania became a  Iron Curtain country of  Russia. Between September 29th and Oct 10, 1944, all the people in NB were evacuated to a nearby town while the houses were plundered and the cattle driven away  by the Russians. Nineteen families fled to Germany.

On the 14th  of January 1945,  Swabian  men of Banat  between the ages of seventeen and forty-five and woman between the  ages  eighteen and thirty-two,  (a total of 297 people from NB)  were rounded up by the Russians, leaving small children in the care of  relatives and neighbours. They were taken by train for two weeks, thirty to fifty people per boxcar to Kharkov, Ukraine. They were to become slaves in the coal mines. Sixteen to twenty percent died on the journey, sixty-eight died in the coalmines. But NB wasn’t the only village to withstand this hardship; over 75,000 Swabian throughout Banat  were forced to work in 208  labour camps in Russia and the Urals. By the time they were released in 1949,  11,000 had died in Russia.

The Germans of  Banat were  again  forced into exile. In the morning  on  June 17, 1951, they were awakened at two in the morning and told to be ready to leave by 10am. Each family was allowed to bring  with them: two horses, one cow, two hogs, five chickens, feed for  the livestock,  and one wagon. They were not told where they were going. Land, houses, cattle and agricultural machines taken  from 190 villages in Banat without compensation by the Romanians

Armed soldiers escorted them to the railroad station, with their belongings. In some cases, two or three families were loaded into one boxcar. Once they  were loaded, they could not leave  to return to their homes or visit relatives. After the families had been locked up with their livestock for nearly two days in the heat, the train finally began to roll from the station with  about fifty boxcars. Heading eastward, the train passed through Temeswar, then through Transylvania, toward an unknown destination. It was very hot in the boxcars and the livestock was getting restless from thirst. After the train left Bucharest heading toward the Danube, relief showed on the captive’s faces  because they were now certain that they were not going to Russia.

The trains travelled a few more days and nights before they came to a stop. Over 40,000 people discovered          their new home was without any sign of civilization and without water, trees or bushes. Just thistles. It was it was  Baragan Steppe, also known as the Romanian Siberia. Here sixty-two families from NB created a makeshift shanty- town and named it Bumbacari. They made houses  from sod  bricks with straw thatched roofs. They burnt the thistles for heat in the winter and  survived by growing wheat and corn. The Banaters built 180 villages on the Baragan Steppe, This was to be their home until 1956. When  they returned to NB, they found that Romanians had moved into their houses. Today there are very few Germans living in what was  first Neubeschenowa  (German), then Ujbesenyo (Hungarian),  and finally Dudestii Noi (Romanian). .

Fi you have family from Neubeschenowa. contact me at Neubeschenowa/Uibesenyo Facebook page