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

170 AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN ATROCITIES

Finally, the Austro-Hungarian officers and men robbed all the safes they found in the towns and villages occupied by them.

In Shabatz alone, almost 1,000 safes were forced and relieved of their contents. I found three strongboxes which had not been opened, but attempts had been made to break them; their greater strength was their protection. I might remark, in passing, that all the safes that had been forced were of Austrian manufacture, whereas the three that proved refractory were of English or American make. As a rule, the safes were opened by blows with hatchets and other heavy instruments, which battered in the protective plates of sheet-iron. Sometimes the broken safes were left lying in the middle of the street—a typical picture indicating the passage of the Austro-Hungarian troops. Sometimes the opening of the safes was contrived more neatly. Thus, in Shabatshka Zadruga, the handiwork of the robbers is so perfect, that it might cause many a professional safe-burglar to blush with jealousy. The protective plates of sheet-iron, which are fairly thick, were cut through with a kind of long cutting crow-bar (technically known as a knacker ”), which we found on the premises. In the villages, the safes found in the town clerk’s office, the post office, and in private houses were all forced open and deprived of their contents.

In several villages I noticed that the AustroHungarian soldiers had also cut down large numbers of fruit-trees, which proves absolutely, that the enemy army desired at all costs to injure the civil population, as by this means it sought to destroy