On 9 July 2009 the government of Serbia founded a ""Commission for the secret graves of victims killed after September 12, 1944"" (Državna komisija za tajne grobnice ubijenih posle 12. septembra 1944. godine). The choice of the date is connected with the last stage of liberation from the occupator, when on 20 October 1944, with the help from the advancing Red Army, Belgrade was liberated. Soon after that the war activity ceased, but it marked a new period of sufferings. Even before the official declaration of the end of the war, atrocities against civilians that were assumed unsympathizing with communist rule started to happen. For example, in Vojvodina the first Hungarian victims were shot, some of them openly, convicted of being a fascist, in the middle of September 1944 in Bečej, where also the local German population was forced to wear white armbands as a sign that they will be sent to forced labor.