In Serbia, there is a monument to the victims at the site of the tragedy. There is a plate with the names and surnames of those executed on the monument. It has 17 surnames: 16 - Serbian and 1 - German Josef Schultz. The name of the German soldier Josef Schulz is known in Serbia and is always pronounced with respect. Moreover, a film was made about this German in Serbia, and his name is on the pages of a Serbian history textbook.
It happened in 1941 in Serbia near the village of Vishevets. In July of that year, a partisan detachment was defeated here. Immediately after a hard battle, a sweep was carried out, as a result of which 16 local residents were arrested. People were suspected of supporting and sympathizing with the partisans. The military court was swift, its verdict was predictable: all 16 people were sentenced to death. A platoon from the 714th Infantry Division was assigned to carry out the sentence. The convicts, blindfolded, were put to a haystack. The soldiers stood against them and took their rifles … and suddenly one of the soldiers abruptly lowered the rifle. He approached the officer and said that he refused to shoot, stating that he was a soldier, not an executioner. The stunned officer tried to reason with the subordinate and reminded the soldier of the oath. As a result, the officer said that Josef Schultz would have to choose:either he returns to the ranks and, together with others, will carry out the order, or he will stand at the stack with the convicts. Schultz chose the latter. Putting his rifle on the ground, he went to the Serbs sentenced to death and stood next to them.
After the war, this story was hushed up in Germany in every possible way. Moreover, the Schultz family received an official notification that Corporal Josef Schultz gave his life for the Fuhrer and the Reich in a battle with Tito's "bandits". But there is a fact: the commander of the 714th division Friedrich Stahl described this incident in detail in his diary. In addition, photographs were found taken by one of the members of the firing squad. On one of them, Joseph Schulz, without a weapon and without a helmet, goes to a haystack to stand among those being shot. And the main point was put by the exhumation of those dead people, carried out in 1947. Among the 17 buried, one was in the uniform of the Wehrmacht troops. So it was proved that Joseph Schultz did not die in battle, but was shot by his own. Of course, the command of the division, in order to avoid such a shameful incident,sent a notice to Schultz's mother in Wuppertal about the heroic death of her son in battle.
In 1941, Joseph was 32 years old. According to his brother's recollections, he was a gentle and sentimental person. His father died in the First World War, Joseph remained the eldest in the family and began working early. He was never involved in politics, was neither a communist nor a social democrat. Schultz was undoubtedly aware that he would be for refusing to obey the order.