Banovci (Serbian Cyrillic: Banovci / Šidski Banovci; Hungarian: Forró / Újbánóc; German: Schider Banovci), also known by the older name Šidski Banovci, is a village in eastern Croatia, 7 kilometers from the Serbian border. The village is part of the Municipality of Nijemci, and it is informally functionally focused on two settlements of the Municipality of Tovarnik, where, among other things, the seat of the local school is located. The village is connected to the rest of the country by the state road D46, which connects it to the town of Vinkovci in the west, and in the east it continues towards Serbia to the nearest town of Šid, and a station on the main railway line Zagreb-Belgrade.
The settlement of Banovci has gone through several name changes
throughout its history, and in addition to the name Banovci, the old
name Šidski Banovci is informally used, and occasionally, but less
often, the names Novi Banovci or Veliki Banovci. Before 1900, it was
known as Novi Banovci, while the old settlement of Vinkovački Banovci
was known as the original settlement of Banovci. From 1910 to 1991, the
village was formally called "Šidski Banovci". That name was formally
changed by removing the word Šidski from the name in 1991 in the early
phase of the Homeland War. However, due to the inclusion of the
settlement in the self-proclaimed SAO East Slavonia, Baranja and Western
Srijem, the name Šidski Banovci continued to be used in practice and in
the local administration until 1998 and the end of the UNTAES
administration, while the local population still often informally uses
the old name. Gašpar Vinjalić gave a possible explanation for the names
of various places with the name Banovci: "The source got the name
Banovača, because the Croats called the managers of the forts banovi,
and to distinguish them from the bans of the province, they used the
diminutive "banovci"." Banovac was also money in Slavonia and Erdelje.
The old name "Sidski Banovci" is still occasionally mistakenly used
in official communication, for example in the law on Croatian local
elections in 1997. Croatian Railways uses the name for the local railway
station to make it easier to distinguish it from the Vinkovački Banovci
station. The old name was also used in a research report by The New York
Times from 2005, and it was also used in the 2017 Report on County
Roads, published in March 2018 by the Vukovar-Srijem County.
The current Banovci settlement was founded in the 1730s under the name Novi Banovci alongside the old village (today's Vinkovački Banovci), which was mentioned in historical records as early as the 15th century. In 1473, the old village was called Zavrakinci and was located on a low elevation of the Vukovar plain northwest of the current village of Banovci. The arrival of Serbian settlers in Banovce took place during the reign of Charles VI, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as part of the process known as the Great Migration of Serbs. The settlers of that time came from the area of present-day Montenegro and the region around Peć in Kosovo.
The first Danube Swabians settled in Banovci in 1859, and their
arrival significantly influenced the development of the settlement.
During the first period, the Protestant settlers requested and received
the help of the local Serbian Orthodox priest Uroš. The priest believed
that the arrival of German settlers could help implement necessary
reforms, especially in agriculture. However, due to the pre-reserved
areas for German Catholic colonists in the northern part of the
historical area of Srijem and the difficulties in any attempt to
settle a larger part of the Slavonian Military Territory, the German
Protestants had to establish their settlement in the area between these
two areas, the Banovci being one of the few places where it was
possible.
At the time of the arrival of the German settlers, the
local Serbian population exercised local autonomy through the election
of the village duke, but the real spiritual and secular authority was
still in the hands of the local Orthodox priest. An interesting episode
happened when the first German colonist family, the Grumbachs, offered
sausages made according to a German recipe to their neighbors. Young men
from the village, impressed by the quality of the product, began to
drunkenly come to the Grumbach household and ask to be given sausages.
This led to riotous behavior and harassment of the settlers. The German
colonists sought the help of the priest Uroš, who confronted the young
men and forbade them from repeating such actions. As compensation, he
asked each of them to bring one pig to the Grumbach household.
Since the Evangelical Reformed Church in Šidski Banovci was not built at
that time, German Protestant settlers approached priest Uroš with a
request to hold a Christmas liturgy for them under the Eastern Orthodox
liturgical rite. He refused their request, citing a disagreement with
Orthodox canonical rules, and instead suggested that they organize their
own Christmas celebration in the local Orthodox Church of St. Fridays in
Banovci. Priest Uroš attended the ceremony as a guest and was positively
impressed by it.
During the period after the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Banovci were part of Šidski Srez. They were initially part of Srijem County, and from 1922 to 1929 part of Srijem Oblast. From 1929 to 1939 they were included in the composition of the Danube Banovina, and from 1939 to 1941 they were part of the Banovina of Croatia.
During the Second World War, Banovci received survivors of the
massacre in Ivanci, a former nearby settlement. On June 15, 1943, the
German Volke group in the Independent State of Croatia reported a drop
in morale due to the activities of Yugoslav partisans. As a result,
Friedrich Hoffman took over the leadership of their local group in
Šidski Banovci, succeeding Karl Lahm.
Banovci themselves became
an important center for partisans in Srijem, with an emphasis on
sabotaging Nazi and domestic collaborationist transport along the
Zagreb-Belgrade railway line. October 8, 1943, when the Saboteur Group
of the Second Srem NOP Detachment detonated the Zagreb-Belgrade railway
line, which resulted in the destruction of a locomotive and six freight
cars, is particularly noteworthy. In retaliation, the Ustasha police
hanged 20 hostages from Šid the next day. The next attack on the railway
took place on October 19, 1943, when the locomotive and four wagons of
the German express train were destroyed. The third successful sabotage
occurred on December 2, 1943, targeting a German military freight train
carrying war materials. The train was mined and destroyed along with the
locomotive and eight wagons.
Slobodan Bajić Paja, who became the
National Hero of Yugoslavia, came from Šidski Banovac.
Several minor problems regarding the demarcation between the
Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, part of the Socialist Republic of
Serbia, and the Socialist Republic of Croatia remained unresolved until
February 24, 1945, and the end of the war. In order to solve this
problem, in June 1945, the federal authorities established a five-member
commission chaired by Milovan Đilas.
The area of Šida has been
identified as one of the points of territorial dispute. The Commission
concluded that the Municipality of Šid, including the village of Banovce
at that time, will become part of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.
However, the commission's demarcation was later changed in several
cases, including the case of the Municipality of Šid where the villages
of Tovarnik, Ilača and Banovci were eventually transferred to the
Socialist Republic of Croatia. Ilača and Tovarnik were larger ethnically
Croatian villages, while Banovci, as a smaller Serbian village that
until recently had a majority German population, was transferred to
Croatia in order to ensure territorial connection.
The Yugoslav
communist authorities claimed that local referendums for
self-determination were held in which the population decided to join the
Croatian federal unit. In a 2015 article in the right-wing conservative
quarterly magazine Nova srpska politika misao, Igor Marković claimed
that there is no evidence that such a local referendum was ever held in
Banovci.
In Banovci, on January 7, 1991, rebel Serbs founded the "Serbian National Council of Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srijem" with the aim of annexing parts of Croatia to Serbia. During the war, Banovci were part of that self-proclaimed entity. Between 1995 and 1998, Banovci were part of a temporary protectorate under the administration of the United Nations through the transitional administration UNTAES. Within the Republika Srpska Krajina, Banovci was part of the parallel de facto Municipality of Mirkovci, which was founded on the part of the pre-war municipality of Vinkovci that was controlled by rebel Serbs.
In 1998, Banovci became de jure and de facto part of Nijemci
Municipality and Vukovar-Srijem County. Banovci is a settlement within
the area of special state concern, where it belongs to the first of
three groups of territorial units. In 2005, the village was briefly in
the focus of the international media when The New York Times revealed
that it was the hiding place of Slobodan Davidović, a former member of
the paramilitary formation Škorpioni, who was accused and later
sentenced to 15 years in prison for war crimes related to the genocide
in Srebrenica. in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While Serbian police claimed
Davidović was in hiding and unreachable, The New York Times revealed
that he had also "visited this place occasionally since the end of the
war, staying with his elderly mother and brother in a small house off
the village's main street."
In 2012, the non-governmental
organization "Ivanci" was founded with the aim of restoring the
monuments in the memorial area, collecting materials for the publication
of a monograph and organizing commemorations for the victims of the
massacre in Ivanci. In 2019, residents of the villages of Tovarnik,
Ilača and Banovci organized joint protests against truckers from all
other countries except Croatia or Serbia who cause large crowds on the
D46 road while waiting to cross the state border. Locals demanded the
redirection of their truck transport, except for Croatian and Serbian
trucks traveling to one of these two countries, from the D46 road to the
A3 highway, pointing out that a similar practice is prohibited on all
other state roads.
In 2019, the village celebrated 200 years of
the local Orthodox Church and 800 years of autocephaly of the Serbian
Orthodox Church.
Until the Second World War, Banovci was inhabited mostly by Germans who were evicted from Eastern European countries by allied decisions, and according to the law of the SFRY on colonization, Serbs from war-ravaged passive regions of southern Croatia: Lika and northern Dalmatia moved into the houses. According to the 1910 census, Banovci had 990 inhabitants, of which 686 were Germans.
According to the 2001 census, the settlement had 479 inhabitants.
According to the 2011 population census, the settlement had 432
inhabitants.
The majority of the population is engaged in
agriculture. Banovci is well connected by traffic, located on the main
road Vinkovci-Šid, and the railway also passes through the town.
According to the age structure, the largest share is over 50 years old.
The place is located about 15 kilometers from the Danube in the
north. In the south, between the town itself and the highway, there are
ancient Spačvan oak forests. The town also houses the neoclassical
Orthodox church of Saint Petka, built in the first half of the 19th
century.
Slobodan Bajić Paja was born in Banovci on June 26, 1916, a participant in the National Liberation War and political commissar of the Main Staff of NOV and PO of Vojvodina, who was posthumously declared a national hero of Yugoslavia on July 5, 1952.