The Kingdom of serbia : report upon the atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army during the first invasion of Serbia

78 AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN ATROCITIES

peasants was announced, he immediately gave the order, “To the nut-tree with them!” He spoke Serbian very badly. Simonovitch first saw 5 men hanged, then twice 7 peasants, and finally 1 more. All these men were hanged on the trees by the roadside just in front of her house. Usually the soldiers only left them hanging till they had dug the pits for burial. Only one corpse was left nearly all day. Most of those hanged were old men and young boys. Before hanging their victims the soldiers beat them most terribly with the buttends of their rifles. The soldiers were Croats, Germans and Hungarians.

She asked one soldier who spoke Serbian: “Why do you do these things?” He answered : “ Because we have been ordered to.” Four officers who put up at her inn told her one day to sew them some small bags to hold the money taken from the men who were hanged and from the prisoners, as well as that which they looted in the village. When she asked why they were taking all the money, they answered that the war was a heavy expense to the Austrian State and that this money was to help to defray the cost of it.

In the parish of Sokol, 24 persons were killed and 55 carried off. The victims were bayoneted or shot, or clubbed to death with the butt-ends of rifles. The Austrians committed these massacres on August 4th and 5th.

In Kostainik (pop. 2,400) the Austrians perpetrated numerous cruelties. In all 94 persons were either killed or carried off.