Odžaci

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Оџаци
Odžaci
Location in Serbia

General Information
District	West Bačka
Land area	411 km²
Population (2002 census)	9,940 (town) 35,582 (municipality)
Settlements	9
Coordinates	45°31′N 19°16′E
Area code	+381 25
Car plates	SO
Time zone	CET (UTC+1) CEST (UTC+2)
Website	http://www.odzaci.info

Politics
Mayor	Milan Ćuk

Odžaci - Orthodox Church

Odžaci (Оџаци) is a town and municipality in the West Bačka District of Serbia. It is situated in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. The town of Odžaci has a population of 9,832 people, while the population of the municipality of Odžaci is 35,474 people (2002 census).

1 Name
2 History
3 Inhabited places
4 Ethnic groups (2002 census)
5 Economy
6 Pictures of Odžaci town
7 External links

[edit] Name

The name Odžaci means "chimneys" in Serbian. Formerly, the settlement was also known as Odžak ("chimney"). The Slavic/Serbian word "odžak" (or plural "odžaci") is a modification of the Turkish word "odzlak", also meaning "chimney".

In Croatian, the town is known as Odžaci, in Hungarian as Hódság, and in German as Hodschag.

The old Hungarian name of the settlement was "Kéménd", first mentioned in 1522, and meaning a "little chimney". Derived from the aforementioned Serbian word "Odžak" was the new Hungarian name "Hódság" (also later called "Hódsági Járás" (Hódsági district)), as well as the German name "Hodschag".

[edit] History

[edit] Origins

While there is speculation about a village named Odos or Hodos being mentioned by Catholic records as early as the 1300s, the first reliable mention of the Hungarian village of Kéménd was in 1522. This village was destroyed during the Ottoman invasion, and the Ottomans founded a new village on the near-by location. This village is mentioned in the Ottoman defters in 1557 under the name Učak. It was part of the nahija of Bač.

The 1579 Ottoman defter mentions a village named Tatar Odžak with 28 Serbian and also some Muslim families. In 1610, the village of Odžak is mentioned as part of the sanjak of Segedin. However, due to heavy taxation, the population of the village fled to the north and east.

[edit] Habsburg administration

Starting in 1687, the village was under Habsburg administration, and in 1690 it was populated with new Serbian settlers. During the uprising of Đerđ Rakoci (1703-1711), the village of Odžak was destroyed.

Odžak is mentioned again in 1728, while in 1733 it was populated with 100 Serbian and Šokac families, but they were soon resettled. With the pretext that Serbs do not pay taxes, the empress Maria Theresa decided in 1755 to resettle those Serbs from this territory and to populate Odžak with Germans. The first group of Germans came a year later from the Schwarzwald. About 300 German families were brought into the area. Some Hungarians also settled here in 1752.

By 1767, the villagers had erected a Roman Catholic church. At times Germans spelled the village's name "Hocsak", which is presumably a name adopted from Serbs, but it soon became and remained "Hodschag", as a variant of the Hungarian "Hódság". By 1813, it was a "field town", giving it the right to grant citizenship to settlers (who continued to come), as well engage in fairs and other economic activity. As in some other parts of the Vojvodina, its economy was based on hemp, the rope derived from it being very important in agricultural applications of the day, and became fairly well-developed, enlarging its church, and having a post office, telegram access, and a train station.

The 1813 National Census records that the village consisted of 4,344 inhabitants, in 704 houses, of whom 3,798 gave their language as German, 460 as Hungarian, 45 as Slovakian, and 29 Serbian, and of whom 4,224 gave their religion as Roman Catholicism, 37 as Calvinism, 34 as Lutheranism, 32 as Greek Orthodoxy, and 8 as Judaism.

[edit] Between the World Wars

During the interbellum period, Odžaci was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The first football club in Odžaci was founded in 1919, and in 1920, the beer factory also began operating.

[edit] Second World War

During the Axis invasion, the Jews of Odžaci left, or were transported to face a grim fate in concentration camps. At the end of the Second World War, the German majority (the highest percentage of any major town in the Vojvodina, ahead of Vrbas and Apatin), by then known as Danube Swabians, were labeled collectively guilty for their connection to the Axis invasion, and were expelled, interned, or killed.

For a brief period, Odžaci itself was turned into a notorious Lager (logor) or concentration camp for the former residents and others (notably members of the Kulturbund (cultural society)) by Tito's Partisans, in conjunction with the Soviet Red Army.

[edit] Recent developments

Since the end of the World War II, a peace has returned to the town, but the demography is much changed. The economy and the architecture have also modernized, reflecting the typical modern but not especially dynamic nature of mid-size towns of the SFRY.

In 1994, a group of former German residents sponsored the reconstruction of the destroyed Catholic cemetery and its chapel, and erected a memorial inside the chapel with the names of 955 residents murdered either in Odžaci or in other camps in Yugoslavia. Reassured that the "Swabians" do not wish to return, the current residents received them warmly.

[edit] Inhabited places

The municipality of Odžaci encompasses the town of Odžaci, and the following villages:

Bački Brestovac
Bački Gračac
Bogojevo (Hungarian: Gombos)
Deronje
Karavukovo
Lalić
Ratkovo
Srpski Miletić

Note: For the village with Hungarian ethnic majority, the name is also given in Hungarian.

[edit] Ethnic groups (2002 census)

The population of the Odžaci municipality:

Serbs (82.84%)
Hungarians (4.41%)
Slovaks (2.81%)
Roma (2.35%)

Settlements with Serb ethnic majority are: Odžaci, Bački Brestovac, Bački Gračac, Deronje, Karavukovo, Ratkovo, and Srpski Miletić. The settlement with Hungarian ethnic majority is Bogojevo. Ethnically mixed settlement with relative Slovak majority is Lalić.