Jabuka
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of Pančevo
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Jabuka (Јабука) is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Pančevo municipality, in the South Banat District, Vojvodina province.
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[edit] Name
Name Jabuka means "apple" in Serbian. The Hungarian and German names for the village have same meaning. In Hungarian, the village was known as Torontal Almas (Almas means "apple" in Hungarian) and in German as Apfeldorf ("Apple village"). The German population called the village Jabuka, named after a former destroyed village founded by Serb fishermen; it was named Apfeldorf when the German army occupied the area in World War II.
[edit] History
At the end of the 16th century the area of the south-western Banat near the Danube was made of swamps and forests. Except the towns of Pančevo and Kovin there were no other settlements.
The village was founded by Serb fishermen in the end of 17th and beginning of the 18th century. They found a big apple tree and hence named their settlement Jabuka ("apple"). In the first half of the 18th century there were about 15 houses in the village. After the peace treaty with the Ottomans in 1726, Claudius Florimund Graf von Mercy, a man with Lorraine origin, took control of the administration of the Military Frontier. He ordered the inhabitants of Jabuka to be members of the border battalion (Grenzbezirkshauptmannschaft) Opovo - Pančevo. The census from 1733 recorded 19 Slavic (i.e. Serb) families in the village.
The small number of Serb border police was insufficient to control the border. Therefore the captain of the border police, Graf Engelshofer, called for reinforcement from Germany for the border settlements Jabuka, Glogonj, Sefkerin and Opovo at the Janitscharen insurgencies in 1755 - 1756. The German population started to settle here since 1764, and Hungarian since 1766. In the same year (1766), some Slavic inhabitants left Jabuka and settled in Crepaja and Dolovo. This old village named Jabuka was destroyed about 1770.
The new settlement was founded 11km north of Pančevo on the left side of the Tamiš river from 1772 - 1774 near the place of formerly destroyed old Jabuka. In 1774, the population of the village numbered 88 families and this was time when Romanians started to settle in the village. In 1789, many Serbs left Jabuka and settled in Sefkerin. The laying of the foundation stone of the Catholic church was on 14 November 1833, replacing the ramshackled former church. In 1901, the Romanians founded their Orthodox church dedicated to Saint Dimitrije.
In 1921, the population of the village numbered 3,265 inhabitants, including 2,918 Germans, 348 Romanians, 73 Hungarians, 20 Serbs and Croats, 2 Slovenians, 2 Russians, and 1 Englishman.
During the World War II, the village was under Axis occupation. Inhabitants of the village that were not of German ethnicity were sent to forced labour. During the war, on a location named Stratište near the village, German army killed about 20,000 people who mostly were brought from Sajmište concentration camp near Belgrade. At the same place, German army also operated a furnace for burning. [1]
After the defeat of Axis Powers, in 1944, one part of the German population left from the village together with German army. Those who remained in the village (2,109 people of German origin) were sent to prison camp in Knićanin. 26 of them where shot on the 16 October 1944 in Pančevo, and 15 more where shot on the 15 November 1944 in Pančevo.
After the war, South Slavs (Macedonians and Serbs), originating mostly from Macedonia, settled in Jabuka. According to 1971 census, ethnic Macedonians comprised 61.48% of population.
[edit] Population
The village has a Serb ethnic majority and its population is 6,312 (2002 census). Besides Serbs (numbering 3,224 people), the village also have a large ethnic Macedonian minority (numbering 2,054 people). There are also members of other ethnic groups as well. Some people with German ancestors still live in the village (10-20). They were not sent to the prison camp in Knićanin like the rest of the German population that remained in the village after defeat of German army because they were married to Serbs or other ethnic groups and therefore changed their names long before the Soviet Red Army took control of the area.
