Sajmište concentration camp

Jews were rounded up by the Germans after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia.

In the fall of 1941, Turner ordered that all Jewish women and children in Serbia be concentrated in a camp. At first the Germans considered creating a ghetto for the Jews in the Gypsy quarter of Belgrade, but this idea was quickly dismissed due to the area being considered "too filthy and unhygenic." When several other plans to intern the Jewish and Romani populations of Belgrade failed, a concentration camp was established on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Sava river,[2] and located in full view of Belgrade's central Terazije Square.[15] The camp was positioned in a manner which made escape almost impossible. It was located near administrative and police centres, as well as the Belgrade central railway station, which allowed for the efficient transport of Jews to the camp from the many towns in the region. Its purpose was to detain Jewish women and children that the Germans claimed "endangered" public safety and the Wehrmacht.[2]

The Germans dubbed Sajmište the "Jewish camp in Zemun" (German: Judenlager Semlin).[16] The camp was intended to hold as many as 500,000 people captured from rebels areas across occupied Yugoslavia.[17] The name "Semlin" was derived from the German word for the former Austro-Hungarian frontier town of Zemun, where the camp was located.[15] Despite being located on the territory of the NDH, it was controlled by the German military police apparatus in occupied Serbia.[17][18] NDH authorities did not object to its establishment and told the Germans that it could be located on NDH territory as long as its guards were German rather than Serb.[12] Soon after the camp was established, SS-Scharführer Edgar Enge of the Belgrade Gestapo became its commander.[19] Initially, the campgrounds held about 500 male Jewish inmates[20] who were given the task of running the camp's so-called "self-administration" and were made responsible for distributing food, dividing up labour, and organizing a Jewish guard force which patrolled along the camp. The exterior of the camp, however, was guarded on a rotation basis by twenty-five members of Reserve Police Battalion 64.[20] By October, all male Jewish inmates and most male Romani inmates were killed. Most were executed in four major waves, with frequent killings occurring in mid-September and between 9 and 11 October. On each occasion, inmates were told that they were being transported to a camp in Austria with better labour conditions but were instead taken to Jabuka in the Banat or to a firing range on the outskirts of Belgrade, where they were killed.[21] Sajmište officially opened on a wider scale on 28 October 1941.[22] The last of the initial male Jewish inmates were killed on 11 November.[21]

A gas van similar to one used in Sajmište.

At the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, approximately 7,000 Jewish women, children and old men were brought to the camp, along with a further 500 Jewish men and 292 Romani women and children.[23] Most of these people were from the outlying Serbian towns, primarily Niš, Smederevo and Šabac.[19] Women and children were placed in makeshift barracks that were barely heated,[20][24] and whose windows were shattered due to German bombing raids carried out during the invasion of Yugoslavia. Originally constructed as fair pavilions, the largest of these barracks held up to 5,000 prisoners. Inmates suffered during numerous influenza epidemics, slept on wet straw or bare floorboards, and were provided with inadequate amounts of food.[21] Starvation was widespread, and Jewish inmates appealed unsuccessfully to Serbian authorities for more food to be provided to the camp.[25] Consequently, a high number of detainees, especially children, died in late 1941 and early 1942,[20] with many inmates freezing to death in one of the coldest winters on record.[21] The Romani inmates were kept in far more miserable conditions than their Jewish counterparts.[21] They also slept on straw in an unheated hall, but were kept separate from non-Romani prisoners.[26] The majority of Romani inmates were released after six weeks of detention. Most Jewish inmates remained detained, with the exception of ten Jewish women who were married to Christian men.[21]

In January 1942, SS-Untersturmführer Herbert Andorfer was appointed to replace the inexperienced Enge as commander of the camp. Enge was subsequently made Andorfer's deputy.[19] That month, German military authorities demanded the camp be cleared of Jews in order to accommodate the growing number of captives taken in battles with the Partisans.[27] By February the camp held about 6,500 inmates, ten percent of whom were Romani.[28] In early March, Andorfer was informed that a gas van had been sent to the camp from Berlin. The Sauer van had been delivered upon the request of the German military administration chief in Serbia, Harald Turner.[20] Stricken with guilt over having to play a central role in the murder of the Jewish inmates, some of whom he had developed good relations with, Andorfer requested a transfer; this was denied.[29] In order to ensure the quickness and efficiency of the gassings, he made announcements intended to convince the prisoners that they were going to be transferred to another, better-equipped camp. He went so far as to post fictitious camp regulations, and announced that prisoners would be allowed to take their bags with them. Many detainees registered for the supposed transfer, hoping to escape the camp's terrible living conditions.[20] Inmates who had volunteered to leave the previous evening climbed into the van the next day in groups of between 50 and 80. The drivers of the van, SS-Scharführers Meier and Götz, distributed candy to children in order to win their affection. Afterwards, the doors of the van were sealed shut. The van then followed a small car driven by Andorfer and Enge, before crossing the border into German-occupied Serbia.[30] It was here that one of the drivers exited the van and crawled underneath it, diverting its exhaust into the interior of the vehicle[29] and killing the inmates with carbon monoxide gas.[31] The van was then taken to the Avala firing range, where corpses were dumped into mass graves freshly dug by Serbian[30] and Romani prisoners.[21] Such gassings became routine, and the gas van arrived every day except Sunday. Rumours quickly circulated about the gassings, with news reaching German troops stationed in Belgrade and even some Serbians.[30] Consequently, the gas van was nicknamed the "soul killer" (Serbian: dušegupka) by the Serb population exposed to these rumours.[31] It is thought that the gassings took the lives of as many as 8,000 inmates, mostly women and children.[32] The seven Serbian prisoners that had participated in unloading the murdered inmates from the van were shot after the gassings stopped, but the gravedigger, a Serb named Vladimir Milutinović, survived. "Eighty-one or eighty-two trenches were prepared and I helped dig all of them," he recalled. "At least 100 people [fit] into each trench [...] These ones were only for those suffocated in the truck. We dug a different set for those who were shot."[33]

Few inmates remained in the camp after the gassings stopped, mostly non-Jewish women who had been married to Jews. They were released several days later, after being sworn to secrecy. Apart from Sajmište inmates, the 500 patients and staff of the Belgrade Jewish Hospital, as well as Jewish prisoners from the nearby Banjica concentration camp, were also killed in the gas van. The last Jewish prisoner in Sajmište was killed on 8 May 1942, and the gas van used at the camp was returned to Berlin on 9 June 1942.[34] It received a technical upgrade there, and was then transferred to Belarus where it was used to gas Jews in Minsk.[35] Shortly after leading the extermination of the Jewish inmates in Sajmište, Andorfer and Enge were assigned different Security Police roles. Andorfer later received an Iron Cross 2nd Class for running the camp, and won a promotion.[34]

With the extermination of the original Jewish inmates completed, the camp was renamed Zemun concentration camp (German: Anhaltelager Semlin) and served to hold one last group of Jews who were arrested upon the surrender of Italy in September 1943. It also held captured Yugoslav Partisans, Chetniks, sympathizers of the Greek and Albanian resistance movements, and Serb peasants from villages in the Croatian Ustaše-controlled regions of Srem and Kozara, where they had been detained in the Jasenovac concentration camp.[36] Conditions deteriorated to such an extent that some began comparing it to Jasenovac and other large concentration camps throughout Europe.[37] The camp became the main transit point for Yugoslav prisoners and detainees on their way to labour locations and concentration camps in Germany.[17] An estimated 32,000 mostly Serb prisoners passed through Sajmište during this period, 10,600 of whom were killed or died due to hunger and disease.[38][39]

Alarmed by the fact that the campgrounds could easily be seen from across the Sava, in late 1943, the new German ambassador to Serbia proposed that the camp be moved deeper into NDH territory, because its "[continuing existence] before the eyes of the people of Belgrade was politically intolerable for reasons of public feeling." His requests were ignored by German authorities.[40] By the end of 1943, the Germans made an effort to erase all traces of the atrocities committed in the camp by burning records, incinerating corpses, and destroying other pieces of evidence.[41] This task was undertaken by SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, who arrived in Belgrade in November 1943. Upon arrival, he ordered the head of the local Gestapo, SS-Sturmbannführer Bruno Sattler, to form a special detachment that was to be responsible for the exhumation and burning of bodies. The detachment was led by Lieutenant Erich Grunwald, and composed of ten security policemen and 48 military policemen. The digging battalions were composed of 100 Serbian and Jewish prisoners. Exhumations occurred from December 1943 to April 1944, and thousands of bodies were burned. All the prisoners that were present during the exhumations were shot, except for three Serbs who managed to escape.[42] Allied aircraft bombed Sajmište on 17 April 1944, killing about 100 inmates and inflicting heavy damage to the camp itself.[38] On 17 May 1944, the Germans transferred control of the camp over to the NDH.[43] It was closed that July.[22]

Belgrade Jews murdered during the Holocaust, including those at Sajmište, were not commemorated by Yugoslavia's post-war Communist government until 30 years after the war ended.[1] The old Sajmište fairgrounds are marked by small plaques and a monument to commemorate those detained or killed in the camp.[48] The plaques were dedicated in 1974 and 1984, respectively. On 9 July 1987,[49] the Sajmište fairgrounds were granted cultural landmark status by the government of Yugoslavia. A monument, 10 m (33 ft) high and created by the artist Mića Popović, was erected on the banks of the Sava on 22 April 1995, marking 50 years of victory over the Nazism and Serbian Holocaust Remembrance Day.[50][51] No memorial centres or museums have ever been built on the former campgrounds. The campgrounds are now used to house low-income residents.[52]

In February 1992, as provided by the detailed urban plan, the neighborhood was to be fully reconstructed to its pre-war look, an idea opposed by some architects, with added memorial and commemorative objects. The entire complex was to be transformed into one large memorial, but it all remained on paper. The idea was constantly present, gaining media and political momentum in the 2010s, but as of 2018 nothing has been actually done.[53] In November 2018 it was announced that a monument to the humanitarian Diana Budisavljević will be placed along the quay, next to the already existing memorial. Budisavljević saved 15,000 children (12,000 of which survived) from perishing in the Concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia, operated by the Ustaše regime during World War II. City decided to erect a monument in her memory already in October 2015, but only now set the location. The monument was to be finished and dedicated in the second half of 2019.[54] No work has been done regarding this project and in November 2019 city announced the monument to Budisavljević will be erected across the Sava, in the old section of the city.[55]

On the section facing the access to the Branko's Bridge, there were tumbled remains of two massive concrete columns, with their foundations. They were part of the camp's gate. In 2014, sculptor and professor Tomislav Todorović, with minimal intervention, shaped them into two heads, with iron bars forming the face (eyes, mouth) and spiky hair. The readymade work was described as an artifact, monument and work of art, all in one.[56]

On 24 February 2020, the National Assembly of Serbia adopted the Law on Memorial Center "Staro Sajmište". It is organized as the state cultural institute for, among other duties, keeping the memory on victims of the Nazi concentration camps Judenlager Semlin and Anhaltelager Semlin. For the first time, one law in Serbia recognized the genocide in the Independent State of Croatia, the Holocaust and the Samudaripen, as World War II genocides of the Serbs, Jews and Romani people, respectively. The center will also adapt the remains into the proper memorial. The law will be applied from January 2021.[57]

In June 2021, Belgrade's mayor Zoran Radojičić announced reconstruction of the complex, which should include complete restoration of all structures, starting with the central tower in 2022.[58]

In the summer of 2021, a group of fourteen high school students from various Serbian towns started a project called "Light of the fireflies". Joined by the historians and artists from Serbia and Germany, the students by December 2021 created an app, a virtual tour of the former camp. Archive footage and files, original testimonies, letters and photographs served as the basis, which was then upgraded with actors, scenic recreations and light installations. "Light of the fireflies" has been described as the "virtual monument" for both the victims and the locality itself, marking 80 years since the formation of the camp.[59][60]

Preparatory works on the reconstruction of the central tower started on 27 July 2022. Project includes adaptation of the complex into two museum sections, one for the each phase of the camp's history. Scholar and diplomat Krinka Vidaković Petrov, former ambassador to Israel, has been appointed the director of the memorial center.[49] The tower was in such bad shape that it had to be demolished and rebuilt according to the original project, with addition of panoramic elevator. Deadline is the end of 2023, after which the Italian pavilion and the Pavilion of Nikola Spasić will be reconstructed. Plan is to renovate all pre-war pavilions.[61]

Croatian author Anto Knežević caused considerable controversy in May 1993 when he suggested that Serbs, not Germans, had been responsible for running the camp. This claim was vehemently denied by Jewish historians and Belgrade's Jewish community.[62]

The neglected and desolate complex housed in time some prominent artists (painters and sculptors) as former fair buildings were awarded to them as their ateliers.[63] Also, some other facilities moved-in over time, like the kafanas and gyms, but the major public controversy arose in April 2019 when it was announced that a privately owned kindergarten will be open in one of the buildings. The investor, Milorad Krsmanović, purchased the building (the Simić pavilion) in 1998, but the court later voided the contract, which didn't prevent him from using the venue as a disco club, gallery, restaurant and gym since then. A fierce public debate ensued, including city administration asking for the state government to "re-think about the permit", government claiming that there is no legal cause to stop it, Jewish and parents organizations which are against it and the investor who blames the state of trying to rob him. The debate also pointed again to the 75 years long inability of the state to arrange the complex properly.[64]

According to Jovan Byford, from the very beginning Sajmište was one of the main motives of the struggle of Serbian and Croatian quasi-historians. Authors in Serbia at the end of the eighties increasingly claimed that Sajmište was located on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. Most often, the intention was not to "transfer" victims of this camp to Croatia, but to point out that the collaborationist government in Serbia had no influence on the events in this camp since Sajmište was under German administration and on the territory of another state. According to some authors in Serbia, Nedic's government in Belgrade cannot bear responsibility for the Holocaust. This argument was also used by the collaborators in post-war trials. However, those who saw the fact that Sajmište was formally located on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia, they saw confirmation that it was an Ustasha camp. In 1990 Politika article Sajmište is mentioned along with Jasenovac and Jadovno, as the site of an Ustasha crime against Jewish, Serbs and Roma. Authors from Croatia responded to such claims with a counterattack. Apart from disputing the claim that Sajmište was an Ustasha camp (especially not at the time when Jews were imprisoned there), they tried to prove that the Serbs were the biggest executioners in it.[65]

It took two years since the law was introduced, to preparatory works on the camp's adaptation to start. Project Belgrade Waterfront was named as one of the possible reasons for dragging on with the reconstruction of the former complex, as the tenants of the luxurious and elite residential complex across the Sava have a direct view on the former camp area.[66]

Jovana Krstić, a Serbian architect, said that Staro Sajmište is the unique phenomenon in the world as no other localities merged the symbols of prosperity and downfall in such a unique and tragic way. She identified the locality with Pierre Nora's term lieux de memoire, a place where the memory persists even though the locality changed its appearance and stopped being a milieux de memoire, the real environment of a memory. Writer David Albahari wrote: "It's a place that doesn't simply humiliate by its inhumanity, but also by its complete exposing to Belgrade, which silently watched it from across the river".[53]