A German infantry regiment, along with officers from the Nazi German SS division, took 18 Serbian Pančevo citizens in their normal clothes to an Orthodox church cemetery and shot them to death. Afterwards, the officers of the infantry regiment slaughtered them with their pistols. A lieutenant colonel of a German infantry regiment formed a firing squad at the request of the SS division, which surrounded them, and the infantry regiment executed the shooting of 18 men. The surviving man was shot dead in the head with a pistol. Eighteen men were hanged by local German troops.
Pančevo was occupied by German troops during their invasion of Yugoslavia from April 6 to April 18. In Yugoslavia, in Pančevo, Serbia, on April 22, 1941, 18 Serbian citizens of Pančevo were shot dead and another 18 hanged on April 21 for illegal possession of weapons, allegedly in connection with an attack on German troops. Eighteen Serb men were shot dead, and 17 men and one woman were hanged victims. Eighteen people were hanged by local German troops. One woman, who was arrested and hanged, was selling vegetables at a local market when Serb snipers allegedly arrived at the cemetery from her restaurant.
Two days earlier, one of the German soldiers had been killed and another wounded in Pančevo. In retaliation for their hostile actions against the Germans, the presiding judge sentenced 36 of these mostly Serbian men to death in a pro-Serb court-martial, selecting them from about 100 Pančevo citizens. They were not given the opportunity to defend themselves in court. The hanged were strangled by having their hands tied behind their backs and the barrels knocked over. The public surrounded and watched the curious and horrifying spectacle of both shooting and strangulation. An exhibition of the images in 1995 was met with protests, condemnation and violence.
