Novi Sad raid
노비사드 학살
A massacre carried out in January 1942 by the Hungarian army and gendarmerie in annexed Bačka on the pretext of fighting Partisans. Beginning at Čurug on 6 January, it culminated in Novi Sad (Újvidék) on 20–23 January; estimates of the dead, mostly Serbs and Jews, range from about 3,300 to 4,100.
In depth
Chief of Staff Ferenc Szombathelyi ordered the punitive raids, and Bárdossy’s government wanted to show Germany that troops were needed in the occupied territories. In Novi Sad Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner’s troops marched residents to the Danube in bitter cold, shot them and threw the bodies into holes in the ice. The killing stopped only after the city’s lord lieutenant, László Deák, alerted Budapest.
The deputy Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky denounced it in parliament, and Kállay’s government brought those responsible before a court martial in December 1943, but the convicted officers fled to Germany in January 1944. In Hungarian it is also called the “Cold Days”; in 2013 Hungary’s president formally apologised to Serbia.