1942 and was commanded by the Romanian Volksdeutsche SS Gruppenfuehrer and General-lieutenant of the Waffen SS, Artur Phleps. By December 31, 1941, the division was made up of 21,102 men. The Prinz Eugen SS Division was deployed throughout the former Yugoslavia to put down the Yugoslav Partisans, but was largely unsuccessful. During the campaigns it became infamous for reprisals and atrocities against innocent Yugoslav civilians. The division was formally accused of committing atrocities against POWs and civilians during World War II at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Post-war fate of ethnic Germans At the end of the war, in retribution, Partisan bands engaged in massacres of ethnic Germans, primarily in the area of present-day Vojvodina. Villages were wiped out, with the inhabitants either killed or forced into concentration camps, where many died of hunger or disease. The provisional government of Tito’s Partisan movement was the AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist Council for the Liberation of Yugoslavia). In its meeting in Belgrade on November 21, 1944, it decreed that all property of ethnic Germans residing in Yugoslavia be confiscated. Their Yugoslav citizenship was revoked, they no longer had any civil rights, and they were declared enemies of the people. Exempted were those ethnic Germans who participated in the partisan national liberation movement, and those who were not members of German ethnic societies such as the “Schwäbisch–Deutsche Kulturbund", nor declared themselves to be members of the ethnic German community. Of the approximately 524,000 Germans living in pre-war Yugoslavia, about 370,000 escaped to Germany in the last days of the War or were subsequently expelled by the Yugoslav Government (at one point, in January 1946, the Yugoslav Government requested the U.S. military authorities’ permission to transfer these ethnic Germans to the U.S. occupation zone of Germany, but it was not granted). Of this number, 30,000 to 40,000 escaped from Yugoslav concentration and work camps, often with the connivance of the authorities, most going either to Hungary or Romania. Those who went to Hungary, later subsequently fled or were expelled to Austria or Germany, whereas those who fled to Romania generally remained, at least provisionally, in the Swabian communities in the Romanian Banat. About 55,000 people died in the concentration camps, another 31,000 died serving in the German armed forces, and about 31,000 disappeared, mostly likely dead, with another 37,000 still unaccounted for. Thus the total victims of the war and subsequent ethnic cleansing and killings comprised