SOME WORDS ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST IN SERBIA

Miško Stanišić

FOREWORD

Terraforming is a leading organisation recognised across the world for its remarkable achievements in delivering first class programmes that empower educators to promote understanding about the Holocaust and its significance today. Located in the town of Novi Sad in Serbia, and funded on a shoestring, it punches well beyond its weight in terms of impact and influence. It’s a leading advocate for inculcating a culture of Holocaust remembrance, locally, nationally, and internationally, and is a powerful voice for the identification and preservation of related sites that are in danger of being overlooked, forgotten or destroyed.

It also does outstanding educational work in challenging those who seek to distort or manipulate this history or are intent on spreading hate, and it stands in solidarity with the Jewish community against contemporary antisemitism.

In addition to teachers, Terraforming works with archivists, librarians, and museum educators, promoting fact-based learning and introducing pedagogical approaches to engaging Holocaust records and other historical sources. Terraforming’s visionary project, the International Library Platform for Education about the Holocaust, was awarded the Yehuda Bauer Grant by IHRA. Through its engaging teaching materials and exhibitions, Terraforming skilfully connects the past with the present, telling powerful personal stories, while emphasising the importance of countering contemporary antisemitism and antigypsyism.

Teaching about genocide is no easy undertaking. There is so much to know, so much to get right and so much at stake. How, for example, do you teach mass murder to young people in such a way that causes no emotional trauma and how does one deal with the difficult local discoveries that are uncovered by an authentic telling of the past? Terraforming does not shy away from the realities and finds ways to confront them with teachers. It gives them tried and tested tools to work through these problems sensitively with their students including using graphic novels as a means to wrestle with important issues raised by the Holocaust. I had the pleasure of visiting one of its teacher conferences and witnessed first-hand the transformatory effect its work has on teachers.

This publication is an excellent example of Terraforming’s approach: bold, compelling, deeply moving with human stories at the heart.

Ruth-Anne Lenga
Associate Professor
UCL Centre For Holocaust Education
UCL IOE – Faculty of Education and Society
Ruth-Anne is Deputy Head of the UK Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF THE HOLOCAUST IN SERBIA

82.000 Jews in Yugoslavia, 35.000 in Serbia

There were 82,000 Jews in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 35,000 of whom lived in Serbia. Jews represented a small community, making up 0.5% of the total population of Yugoslavia before World War II. The Jewish community, which had been contributing for centuries to the progress of the societies it had lived within, simultaneously preserving its own identity, almost completely disappeared in the Holocaust.

3.300 Jews in Serbia today

After the liberation in 1945, only a fraction of the Jews returned. Some survived the war as fighters in the Yugoslav partisans, some in hiding with false identities, and some survived the horrors of Nazi camps across Europe. A few years later, many survivors emigrated, primarily to Israel. Rebuilding the Jewish community was difficult and challenging. Among those who survived and decided to stay, some found the strength to assemble a new life and start new families, forming the backbone from which the new stem of the Jewish community grew. Today, The Federation of Jewish Communities of Serbia has 3.300 members.

50,000 Jewish refugees pased through

During the times of Nazi persecution in Germany in the late 1930s, about 50,000 Jewish refugees passed through Yugoslavia until April 1941. About 4,000 Jewish refugees happened to be on the territory of Yugoslavia at the time of Germany’s and its allies’ attack. During the Holocaust, most of them shared the destiny of local Jews, as the majority were killed.

Strong anti-fascist resistance

The anti-fascist resistance movement swept across Serbia during the summer of 1941. The Republic of Užice was the first liberated territory in World War II Europe, which lasted more than four months. The uprising was suppressed by brutal German military reprisals against civilians. The first target was the Jews.

Significant participation of Jews in the resistance

Many Jews joined the Yugoslav partisans, the communist-led liberation movement, to survive and to fight the Germans and their collaborators. 4,556 Jews participated, some among the organizers of the uprising with important positions in the liberation movement. 14 Jews reached the rank of generals, while 10 were declared National Heroes. In proportion to their numbers, the participation of Yugoslav Jews in the resistance was among the highest in Europe.

Multiple victim groups and atrocities

While Jews were targeted for systematic persecution and murder in a manner that set their fate apart from others, in parallel with the Holocaust, large-scale atrocities and mass shootings of Serbian civilians, Roma, and members of the anti-fascist resistance movement took place across Serbia. At the same time, a civil war was fought between a communist-led anti-fascist resistance movement on one and royalists (who eventually collaborated with the Nazis) on the other side; the Serbian puppet government under German occupation collaborated and supported Germans in every way; the Independent State of Croatia executed genocide against Serbs, Jews, and Roma; and brutal violence between various ethnic and religious groups was taking place across Yugoslav territories.

Different occupying powers and policies

After Germany and its allies attacked and destroyed Yugoslavia in April 1941, the largest part of central Serbia came under direct German occupation, as did the territory of Banat, which was governed by local ethnic Germans—Volksdeutsche. In the northwest, Hungary annexed the territory of Bačka, while the Independent State of Croatia annexed Srem. Bulgaria annexed territories in the west, and southern parts of Serbia were annexed by Italy and Albania under Italian rule. Consequently, in various parts of occupied Serbia, the Holocaust unfolded at different periods, by other perpetrators, under different circumstances. Still, the consequences were devastating everywhere, as 80% of Jews were murdered.

Germans instigated the Holocaust

Although other occupiers and their collaborators did commit crimes, loot and kill Jews as well, it was Germans who instigated, organized, and, for the most part, committed the Holocaust in Serbia, including the territories controlled by Hungary, Bulgaria, and Italy, the only exception being the Ustashas Independent State of Croatia: Jews from the territory of Srem were mostly killed by the Croatian Ustasha at the Concentration Camp Jasenovac.

Two phases of the Holocaust in Serbia

The Holocaust in Serbia under German control is executed in two phases: first, mass shootings of men at various killing sites and then gassing of women and children in a concentration camp. Although it happened much faster and in a smaller territory, the Holocaust in Serbia unfolded in many ways as the broader European Holocaust, with the first phase of mass shootings and the second as industrialized mass murder in death camps. The events of the Holocaust in Serbia took place before or at the same time as what we now call the “Holocaust by bullets” in the East, and the decision to murder all Serbian Jews was taken just by the time of the Wannsee Conference.

Wermacht, not the SS

Mass killings in Serbia were not committed by the SS or the Einsatzgruppen death squads but by Wermacht – the ordinary German army. For this task, Germans brought specifically Austrian troops and motivated them to “revenge their fathers, who were humiliated in Serbia during WWI.”

100 for 1 – mass shooting of men

While the anti-Jewish measures were implemented immediately after German troops entered Serbia, including obligatory identification, marking by yellow armband, humiliating forced labor, restrictions, expropriations of properties, lootings, antisemitic propaganda, and violence, the mass-scale murders started already during the late summer of 1941.
Carrying out mass reprisals, Germans simultaneously worked to suppress the uprising in Serbia and to kill as many Jews as possible as part of a broader plan to destroy European Jewry. An order was issued that for every German killed by the Serbian resistance fighters, 100 civilian hostages should be shot dead. Jewish men were the first to be arrested around Serbia and killed as hostages. As there were not enough Jews to fulfill the “quota,” thousands of Roma men and Serbian civilians, including high school students and teachers, were arrested and killed in mass shootings.

Gas Van

By late autumn of 1941, almost all Jewish men in the territory under the control of the German military were killed. The decision was made to destroy the rest of the Serbian Jews. In December 1941, the remaining Jewish women and children were sent to the concentration camp at Staro Sajmište (then just outside Belgrade – now in the city of Belgrade). All 6500 of them were killed in a couple of weeks between March and May 1942 by a single gas van, a mobile gas chamber, driven by two SS officers. The Nazis reported to Berlin that “the Jewish question in Serbia was solved.” Thus, the death camp at Staro Sajmište became a symbol of the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jews in occupied Serbia.

THE HOLOCAUST - AN UNPRECEDENTED CRIME

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and murder of Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. __

The Holocaust is an unprecedented crime in history. Nazi Germany based its ideology on racist antisemitism. Pursuing the fantasy of the new world order and the living space for the German nation, the Third Reich saw the destruction of Jews not as an instrument but as the sole purpose. Even later, when Germany is already essentially losing the war, the killing of Jews accelerates and intensifies despite or precisely because of it.

The Holocaust is an unprecedented crime in history because behind the project to destroy a minority community was the complete apparatus of a strong and modern German state, with all the resources, capacities, administration, and organization. All the segments, all the screws and gears of that powerful complex mechanism worked and turned with only one goal – to kill all the Jews. All the ministries, from economy and agriculture, energy and transport, to culture, information, and education, through services for social and family affairs, ministries for youth and sports, to the police and the army, all worked diligently and meticulously to kill one entire nation.

The Holocaust is an unprecedented crime in history because it took place on the entire European continent, as the Nazis were not alone. They had helpers all over Europe who willingly and happily joined in this crime. Some participated in arresting and handing Jews over to the Germans. Some instigated the killing of their Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens. In Serbia, too, we had collaborators – from well-known war criminals to various nameless and petty people who used the opportunity to abuse someone else’s distress and misery to steal something.

The Holocaust is an unprecedented crime in history because it happened before the eyes of millions of silent observers. These bystanders did not want to see or were afraid to. Some were pleased and supported what was happening. All those quiet millions essentially made the Holocaust possible and enabled the crime.

Behind this silence, antisemitism, the oldest hatred, has been deeply embedded in the fabric of European cultural identity.

In many ways, the Holocaust was a turning point in history. It affected all segments of our societies. Today, we still struggle with how to deal with the Holocaust memory.

Holocaust memory culture implies not only preserving the memory of the victims but also recognizing one’s own personal and social responsibility to identify and oppose contemporary threats to civil and human rights, including contemporary antisemitism and the abuse and distortion of history for promoting nationalism and hate.

Words, just like forgotten names: mean more than they can say.

David Albahari

David Albahari (1948-2023) was a Serbian-Jewish writer. Among his many important works is the novel “Gotz And Meyer.” Narrated by an unnamed Jewish teacher in modern Belgrade it contemplates about two German SS officers who drove the Gas van, killing all 6500 Jews in the concentration camp at Staro Sajmiste.

A photograph of Julija and Erik Fišer taken in Belgrade before the war. Julija Fišer was born as Julija Sandel to mother Ester (née Tenenbaum), and to father Menahem in the town of Slavonski Brod in 1915. She lived in Belgrade working as a teacher at Medical School. Julija was married to Erik Fišer, a doctor and a lieutenant of Yugoslav army.
Julija was killed in February 1942. She was 27.

Photo Credit: Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem. 9162/2 9162/2

Isak Manojlović (bottom right) on the beach with his future wife Hilda Gerštel (bottom left) on Lido beach on the Danube in Belgrade, 1928. On the first day of the war, Isak was conscripted to the Yugoslav army. He became a prisoner of war in Germany and was placed in the POW camp in Osnabrueck where he remained for the duration of the war. After his release, Isak stayed in Germany to help track down Nazis. __

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Joseph Manojlovic

Jaša and Lela Altarac, 1941 in Belgrade. Lela was killed, while Jaša survived and moved to Israel in 1948.

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jasa & Ester Frances Altarac

JEWS

After being expelled from Spain and Portugal, Jews started arriving in the interior of the Balkan Peninsula, which gradually led to the establishment of the first large Jewish communities in Sarajevo, Belgrade, Skopje, and other cities during the 16th century. Since then, Jews have been living, working, contributing to society, and sharing the same destiny аs other nations in the region.

It was after the Second Serbian Uprising in 1815 that the Jewish community started to progress in Serbia. Jews’ active participation in wars of national liberation contributed to their social integration, and they were recognized as “Serbs of Moses’ faith.” In Serbia, there were both Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish communities, the Sephardic being a larger one.

When Serbia gained independence from Turkey in 1878, the Jews gained full equality of rights. Jews and Serbs shared the same feeling of patriotism, which was witnessed in the Balkan wars and World War I, when the Jews shared the same fate as the Serbian people. Many Jews in the Serbian army distinguished themselves in battles, and Jewish nurses and doctors played an important part, as well.

During the period between the two World Wars, Jews lived as equal citizens, taking part in and contributing to the political, cultural, and economic life of Yugoslavia. Many of them were in trade, often keeping small family shops. Some were industrialists, doctors, military officers, professors, lawyers, engineers, craftsmen, and clerks,but a large number were simple workers, while some were even poor.

There were 82,000 Jews in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 35,000 of whom lived in Serbia. Jews represented a small community, making up 0.5% of the total population of Yugoslavia before World War II.

The Jewish community, which for centuries contributed to the progress of the society in which it lived, nurturing its own identity at the same time, will almost completely disappear in the Holocaust.

HOLOCAUST

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and murder of Jews committed by Nazi Germany, its collaborators, and local helpers between 1933 and 1945. Perpetrators of the Holocaust destroyed not only individuals and families but also entire communities and cultures that had developed over centuries, forever changing the face of European society. The Holocaust occurred in the context of the war violence and Nazi-led persecution and murder that targeted many other groups and peoples.*

This continent-wide genocide unfolded as one big monstrous plan – an intent to destroy all the Jews and, at the same time, as 6 million events of individual murders. To grasp the scope and the nature of the Holocaust, we must look at the broader context and the large picture while examining local micro-histories and individual personal stories. The Holocaust in Serbia, too, incorporates a broader Europen, and regional and micro-historical context, including personal stories.

*based on IHRA’s Recommendations for Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust

A tram with the sign “Forbidden for Jews” in occupied Belgrade.

Passive bystanders and collaborators made the Holocaust possible

In Germany, but also throughout occupied Europe, millions of people silently watched the humiliation, exclusion, persecution, looting, deportation, and murder of Jews. Some out of fear, some felt it was “not their business,” some because they too harbored antisemitic prejudices, and some actively helped Germans and other perpetrators because of direct personal benefits from the Holocaust. Apart from hatred of Jews, the most common motives for collaboration were prosaic, such as the looting of Jewish property, an opportunity for career advancement, or achieving a higher social status.

While the historical circumstances before and the situation during the German occupation were quite different in different countries throughout Europe, one thing was common everywhere: the millions of ordinary citizens silently observed, approved, or even actively helped and contributed to the realization of the Holocaust.

The passports of German citizens who were Jews were marked with the letter “J” in order to be immediately identified. Many countries did not want to accept Jewish refugees.

ANTISEMITISM

Antisemitism is hatred of Jews based on prejudices and myths, which, through religious antisemitism and later antisemitism based on racist quasi-scientific theories, was woven into the fabric of European cultural identity for centuries.

Antisemitism is at the very core of the Nazi ideology, and the idea of the destruction of the Jews as a goal and as a means to the realization of the new world order constitutes the essential motivation and driving force of the German state and war machine. At that time, antisemitism was deeply embedded in all elements of German society, and although based on lies and propaganda, it became a powerful motive for Germany to start a world war. The Germans deeply believe in antisemitism even when they are already well aware that the war is lost, and despite that, or precisely because of it, at that moment, the pace of extermination of the Jews is intensified and accelerated.

Antisemitism did not emerge with the German Nazis. It existed for centuries and still exists throughout Europe. It manifested in diverse intensities and forms in different societies and socio-political situations. Also, in Serbia, antisemitism did not appear only after the German occupation.

The gradual increase of antisemitism in Serbia in the 1930s was partly a consequence of the state crisis of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia when internal and external compromises were sought, international trends and the influence of fascist and racist ideologies, and partially the ever-present latent antisemitism often inspired by economic or religious motives. Christian-right-wing antisemitism found space in the works of bishop Nikolaj Velimirović. Dimitrije Ljotić and his “Zbor” actively propagated antisemitism inspired by fascism and the Nazi antisemitic vision of the “new world.” With the arrival of the 1940s, more and more anti-Jewish writings appeared in newspapers and other publications, in which “Vreme” was especially prominent. In the fall of 1940, the government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, for the first time, adopted discriminatory measures against Jews, among which was a decree limiting the enrollment of students of Jewish origin in universities, colleges, high schools, secondary schools, and other schools (numerus clausus).

With the collapse of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the occupation, intense antisemitic propaganda began as part of the process of dehumanization and preparation for the destruction of the Jewish community.

Antisemitism did not disappear with the defeat of Nazism. Antisemitism continued to exist and still exists today in all of Europe, including in Serbia.

REFUGEES

Jewish refugees shared the same fate as the Jewish population in Serbia.

During the 1930s, oppressed by antisemitism and anti-Jewish laws, many Jews were forced to flee from Germany. After the Anschluss, i.e. Germany’s annexation of Austria and occupation of Czechoslovakia the number of Jewish refugees from Central Europe kept rising. A large number of them was trying to reach Palestine territory which was a British protectorate at that time, but also some other ones, oversea countries, in particular. One of the refugee routes led across the territory of Kingdom of Yugoslavia, along which about 50,000 Jewish refugees passed until April 1941. Many countries refused to accept Jewish refugees, partly for anti-Semitic reasons.

About 4,000 Jewish refugees happened to be on the territory of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the war. Some 1,200 refugees came by so-called “Kladovo transport” from Vienna and Bratislava to the river-port of Kladovo by the Danube, where ice forced them to stop and were later towed to the river-port of Šabac, where German occupation found them and were eventually killed in the Holocaust.

Regina Rivka Schlesinger with her son Heinz in Šabac in 1941. __ Regina Rivka Schlesinger with her son Heinz in Šabac in 1941. They were part of the group of more than 1200 Jewish refugees from Central Europe in the so-called “Kladovo transport”.

They were killed together with Serbian Jews at Judenlager Semlin, the concentration camp at Staro Sajmište.

OCCUPATION

Having succumbed to Germany’s pressure, the Yugoslav government signed the accession to the Tripartite Pact. But only two days later, on March 27, 1941, demonstrations broke out in Belgrade and other cities. After a coup d’état, a new government was established that rejected an alliance with Germany. Consequently, Hitler decided to defeat and destroy Yugoslavia both militarily and as a state.

German Air Fleet started bombing Belgrade in the dawn of 6th of April 1941. Italy, Bulgaria, and Hungary joined Germany in aggression against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. __ After a short war, historically referred to as the April War, which resulted in the defeat of Yugoslavia, it was occupied, and some parts of it were annexed by the aggressors. The Ustashas Independent State of Croatia was formed from the central part of Yugoslavia. Serbia was occupied and divided between occupying forces.

The largest part of Serbia came under German occupation, including the northern part of Kosovo and the territory of Banat governed by Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans living in Banat). Other parts of Serbia were annexed by Hungary, Italy, Bulgaria, and the Independent State of Croatia.

It was the Germans who instigated, organized, and for the most part committed the Holocaust.

Although other occupiers and their collaborators did commit crimes, loot and kill Jews as well, it was Germans who instigated, organized, and for the most part committed the Holocaust in Serbia, including the territories controlled by Hungary, Bulgaria, and Italy, the only exception being the Ustashas Independent State of Croatia: Jews from the territory of Srem were mostly killed at Jasenovac.

DEHUMANIZATION

Orders issued by the German military commander of Serbia on May 27, 1941. Credit: Historical Archive of Belgrade.

Immediately after their troops had entered Serbia, Germans started to enforce anti-Jewish measures. It was already on the 16th of April 1941, right after the capitulation of the Yugoslav army, that Wilhelm Fuchs, the chief of the Einsatzgruppe of German Police, ordered the registration of Belgrade Jews. All Jews had to register with the German Police. Other measures followed, which came into force by order of the German military commander in Serbia issued on 31st of May 1941. __ Jews were registered, marked with yellow armbands, compelled to go to forced labor, expelled from public services, and their possessions were confiscated.

It was only the beginning of the suffering of Jews which would consequently lead to systematic destruction of Jews.

When the war broke out, there were 82,000 Jews living in Yugoslavia and about 4,000 Jewish refugees who came there mostly from Central Europe. Thus out of a total of 86,000 Jews, 71,000 (over 82%) of them lost their lives in the Holocaust. On the whole territory of Serbia, including the one under German occupation and the parts annexed by Hungary, the Independent State of Croatia, Bulgaria, and Italy, out of almost 35,000 (1200 Jewish refugees included), over 28,000 Jews were killed, which is over 81% of the Jewish population.

The process of destruction of the Jews in Serbia went through typical stages, like in many other European countries where the Germans carried out the Holocaust.

An anti-Jewish poster exhibited at the Grand Anti-Masonic exhibition in occupied Belgrade in October 1941.

PROPAGANDA

Antisemitic propaganda was being spread around in occupied Serbia. Antisemitism permeated propaganda against communists, the USSR, western allied forces, and other enemies of Germany.

Jews were blamed for the war, for capitalism, or for communism, as well as for “all other evils”.

In order to promote antisemitic ideas and spread hatred against Jews on 22nd of October 1941 the Anti-Masonic exhibition was organized in Belgrade by Lazar Prokić, chief of the Section of State propaganda in the Nedić’s Government, sponsored and financially supported by Germans. __ It is estimated that around 80,000 people visited the exhibition in Belgrade, including Milan Nedić and his ministers.

After having been shown in Zagreb in May 1942, an Ustashas’ anti-Jewish exhibition entitled “Jews – an exhibition about development of Judaism and their destructive work in Croatia prior to 10th of April 1941. __ Solution of Jewish question in the Independent State of Croatia.” was opened in occupied Zemun on 19th of August that same year. Beside antisemitic accusations borrowed from Nazi racial narrative, propaganda of Ustashas is simultaneously anti-Yugoslav and anti-Serbian, and among other things Jews are accused of creating “monster state of Yugoslavia”.

COLLABORATION

Anti-Jewish measures in Serbia under the German occupation were carried out by the German police with the help of the Serbian collaborationist administration of Milan Aćimović, and then General Milan Nedić.

Milan Nedić, the leader of the puppet Government in 1941-1944, was the bearer of a collaborationist regime extremely loyal to the German occupying power, convinced of the victory of the new European order led by Germany.

During the occupation, Dimitrije Ljotić was the leader of the Serbian Volunteer Corps, whose members, known as “Ljotićevci,” helped the Germans in finding, identifying, and detaining Jews, arresting opponents of the occupation and supporters of the resistance movement, and actively participated in the collection, detention, and execution of civilians during German reprisals.

During the occupation, Dragomir Dragi Jovanović was the chief of the Belgrade police and the administrator of the city of Belgrade, who actively persecuted patriots and opponents of the occupation.

Chetnik commander Kosta Pećanac (Konstantin Milovanović) concluded agreements with the German occupation authorities and the puppet government of Milan Nedić to cooperate in the fight against the partisan resistant movement. Kosta Pećanac’s Chetnik troops actively cooperated with the German military authorities in locating and arresting Jews.

Milan Nedić, the prime minister of the “Government of National Salvation”, central organ of the puppet quisling authority in Serbia under German military administration.

HELPERS

helped Jews in various ways.

Some were members of an organized resistance movement, and some were ordinary people who spontaneously decided to help unknown people in need. Sometimes, it was necessary to obtain false documents, or it was enough to offer food and shelter just for one night, while sometimes helpers risked their lives by hiding Jews in apartments, attics, houses, barns, stables, and other hiding places, for a day, or extended periods.

Until 2022, the State of Israel has awarded 139 citizens of Serbia “Righteous Among the Nations” – an honorific for the non-Jews who, for purely altruistic reasons, risked their lives to save Jews from being exterminated by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

Aleksandar Nećak survived the Holocaust, hiding with his mother in Belgrade. It was possible thanks to good and brave ordinary people who welcomed them into their homes, the members of the resistance movement who helped find safe houses, and a German officer who provided false documents.
On the photo: Three-year-old Aleksandar Nećak during hiding in Belgrade in 1942.
Photo: Courtesy of Aleksandar Nećak.

Portrait of Žana Nahmija (disguised as Jovanka Rašić) with her rescuer Veljko Rašić, 1943. __

Žana was born on May 11, 1937 in Belgrade. After the occupation, Žana’s father Marko and older brother Gavra were arrested and imprisoned in the Topovske šupe camp, from where they never returned. Žana’s mother Margit managed to obtain false papers. Žana was registered under the name Jovanka Rašić, her sister became Dana Popović, and her mother Ana Popović. Since then, Žana’s mother and sister Silvija lived with the Miković family, while Žana was sent to Helena and Veljko Rašić. Žana lived with them from the end of 1941 to 1944. Her mother visited her every other week, but Žana was not allowed to call her mother at that time so that no one would find out. In 1948, Žana immigrated to Israel.

Dr Roza Papo in 1944 with Yugoslav partisans.
She was the first female Army General.

RESISTANCE

During the summer of 1941, resistance against the occupation flared up in Serbia. The massive anti-fascist uprising that swept through most of occupied Serbia in September and October was suppressed by brutal German military reprisals against civilians. The first target was the Jews.

For the next four years, a liberation war against the occupiers and their collaborators, as well as a civil war, was fought in Yugoslavia.

The Jews who managed to get out of the cities in Serbia mainly hid in the countryside, often with the false identity of Serbian refugees from the Independent State of Croatia. Others tried to reach the territories occupied by Italy or Hungary, where they were initially safe. Many Jews joined the liberation movement, which was both a way to survive and to fight the Nazis and their collaborators directly.

4,556 Jews participated in the national liberation struggle. Some of them were among the organizers of the uprising and held important positions in the partisan movement. The participation of Jewish women was significant, too.

14 Jews reached the rank of general of the Yugoslav Army, while 10 were declared National Heroes. In proportion to their numbers, the participation of Yugoslav Jews in the anti-fascist struggle was among the highest in Europe.

MASS SHOOTINGS

During the summer and autumn in 1941, Germans were trying to suppress the uprising in Serbia with extreme repressive measures, primarily with mass arrest of civilians, who were detained as hostages and shot dead for a reprisal. They were targeting mostly Jews, Roma, communists and occupation opponents, but any else as well. For every German soldier killed 100, and for every wounded 50 hostages were to be shot dead.

By carrying out massive reprisals against civilians, the Germans simultaneously worked to suppress the uprising in Serbia and to implement a broader plan to destroy the Jews.

After a few months, in autumn 1941 almost complete Jewish men population on the territory of Serbia under German occupation was killed at execution sites such as: Ledine and Jajinci near Belgrade, Jabuka near Pančevo, Bubanj near Niš, Zasavica near Šabac, and at other places.

Germans burn down Serbian village, summer 1941 __

A wedding portrait of Magda Schiller and Mikloš Blauhorn taken in the yard of the Schiller family in Novi Kneževac, 1933-1934. In the picture in the first row from left to right are: Ivan Singer, Ana Singer, Magda Schiller, Miklos Blauhorn, Olga Schiller, and Jelinek Joško. Behind Ivan is Gabor Schwartz. Everyone in the picture except Ivan was killed in the Holocaust.

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ivan Singer

Ivan Singer is the son of Josif and Ilonka (Schwartz) Singer. He was born on August 1, 1922, in Vršac, where his father was a medical doctor. Ivan had a sister Ana (b. 1925). On April 11, 1941, the Germans occupied Vršac, and on July 14, all its Jewish inhabitants were deported to Belgrade. In September, the men were detained in the camp at Topovski Šupe and then shot. In December 1941, women and children were imprisoned in the camp at Staro Sajmište (the Old Fairground), where they were killed in a gas van between March and May 10, 1942.

In the meantime, Ivan managed to hide in Belgrade, from where he escaped to Split at the end of December 1941. There, he was arrested by Italian forces and deported to the Camp Scipione di Salsomaggiore in Italy. In July 1943, he was transferred to the Feramonti camp. A few weeks later he was freed by the British army. Ivan returned to the country and joined the Yugoslav partisan movement. He fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. In August 1944, he was sent to a pilot school in the Soviet Union. After the war, Ivan was a pilot in the Yugoslav Air Force until his retirement in 1961. __

CONCENTRATION CAMPS

On the territory of Serbia occupied by Germans, the occupying forces started immediately to arrest communists, opponents of the occupation and the collaborationist regime, and Jews, primarily Jewish men population. They were detained mostly in the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade, the camp in Šabac, and the Red Cross camp in Niš. The camp “Topovske Šupe” at an urban neighborhood of Belgrade called Autokomanda, where Jewish and Roma men were detained from the end of September 1941, served as a source of hostages for shooting. Judenlager Semlin at Belgrade Fairgrounds (Saro Sajmište) was a death camp for Jewish women and children and the remaining Jewish men who had not been shot until then.

The largest death camps in the Ustasha-run Independent State of Croatia were Gospić-Jadovno and Jasenovac. Jews from other areas of Yugoslavia mainly were killed in the Nazi death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka.

Due to the need for labor in the Bor mine, at the request of the Germans, the Hungarian occupation authorities sent Jews from Bačka and Baranja to forced labor in Bor. In May and April 1944, the camps in Bačka Topola, Szeged and Subotica served the Hungarians during the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. At that time, there was also a Jewish ghetto in Subotica.

Merika Manojlović in a photo from 1936. –
Merika and her mother Sofija Manojlović from Belgrade were killed in the Holocaust.

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Joseph Manojlovic

The German camp Judenlager Semlin at the Old Fairground (Staro Sajmište) is a symbol of the Holocaust and the destruction of Jews in occupied Serbia

Founded as a camp for Serbian Jews primarily from Belgrade but also from Banat as well as other cities of Serbia under German occupation, the Jewish camp at Staro Sajmište was under the administration of the Gestapo and the command of SS officers. It was a death camp established with the explicit aim of killing all Jews in occupied Serbia.

On December 8, 1941, all Jews registered in Belgrade were sent to the camp. In the course of a few weeks from mid-March to May 10, 1942, the prisoners of the camp, mostly women and children, were systematically killed in a gas van – a truck converted into a mobile gas chamber, specially constructed and delivered from Berlin for that purpose. As most of the Jewish men had already perished in mass shootings during the past months, by killing the remaining almost 6,500, mostly women and children, as the Nazis cynically formulated it, “the Jewish question in Serbia was solved.”

The Jewish digital collection – a database about the life of Belgrade Jews and the victims killed at the camp at Staro Sajmište, is available on the Historical Archive of Belgrade’s website.

SREM UNDER THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA

Germany and Italy enabled creation of the Independent State of Croatia headed by Ante Pavelić, which also comprised today Bosnia and Hercegovina, and the region of Srem, as far as the town of Zemun and bank of the Sava river, which was the boundary of Belgrade at that time. Ustasha regime in the Independent State of Croatia was very similar to the Nazi regime. While persecuting Serbs, Ustasha simultaneously started to persecute Jews and Roma. Jews were registered, marked, exposed to extortion, violence and looting which was supported by a strong anti-Semitic campaign.

The Ustaše regime carried out, and for the most part accomplished the Holocaust in their death camps Gospić-Jadovno and Jasenovac, where Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists were killed.

At the end of July in 1942, Ustashas’ authorities ordered arrest of all Jews in Srem, after which they were deported to death camps. Most of the arrested Jews were detained at the football stadium in the town of Vinkovci in the open. After a month a part of detainees were deported to Jasenovac, and the other part to Auschwitz, where the majority was killed immediately.

A Jewish boy in the Loborgrad Ustasha camp.

The Ustasha authorities of the NDH established the Loborgrad camp at the beginning of September 1941. It was mainly occupied by women and children of Serbian and Jewish nationality. Conditions in the camp were very difficult, so mortality was extremely high.

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the Jasenovac Memorial Museum and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts; Public Domain.

Poster for the promotion of the Ustasha anti-Jewish exhibition

Anti-Semitic exhibition

The Ustasha regime of the Independent State of Croatia organized in Zagreb in May 1942 the anti-Semitic exhibition “Jews – an exhibition about the development of Jewry and their destructive work in Croatia before April 10, 1941. The solution of the Jewish question in the NDH”.

The exhibition was the culmination of a propaganda campaign aimed at demonizing and dehumanizing Jews in order to justify their persecution and extermination.

Apart from the anti-Semitic accusations taken from the Nazi racist narrative, Ustasha propaganda is simultaneously anti-Yugoslav and anti-Serbian, and the Jews are accused, among other things, of having created the “state monster Yugoslavia”.

BANAT UNDER THE VOLKSDEUTSCHE

The region of Banat belonged to the zone of German Military Government of Occupation, but it was governed by Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans living in Banat. Kreis-Kommandantur represented German Occupying Authorities in Banat with its headquarters in the town of Petrovgrad (today Zrenjanin).

After several months of looting, mistreating, beating, arresting and killing Jews, in the middle of August 1941 German authorities in Banat expelled all Jews to Belgrade, where they shared the fate of Belgrade Jews.

In Banat, it was especially difficult for the Jews because the crimes were committed by native Germans who knew their Jewish neighbors well, understood the language, and knew exactly which property belonged to the Jews. Banat is one of the regions where Jewish property has been looted the most in all of Europe.

The synagogue in Petrovgrad, today’s Zrenjanin, was built in 1896. __ After the occupation in 1941, the synagogue was looted, ruined, and demolished using explosives. Today, the only remaining trace of the synagogue is the organ in the possession of the Reformed Church in Zrenjanin.

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ivan Singer

View of the Hitler Youth (Hitler-Jugend) in 1941.
in Petrovgrad, today’s Zrenjanin.

Volksdeutscher

Part of the members of the German national minority immediately entered the civil and military service of the occupiers, especially in Banat, which was under the administration of local Germans. In March 1942, the infamous volunteer SS division “Prince Eugen” was formed in Bela Crkva from the Volksdeutsche, which participated in war operations against the uprising in Yugoslavia and committed crimes against civilians.

BAČKA UNDER HUNGARY

After the fall of Yugoslavia, the region of Bačka came under the administration of pro-fascist Hungarian occupying authorities headed by Miklos Horthy. The regime oppressed people by looting, arresting, killing, and persecuting. In January 1942 Hungarian soldiers and gendarmes committed a mass crime, by executing mostly Serbs and Jews in the region of Šajkaška, southern Bačka, and in Novi Sad when more than 4,000 men, women, children, and old people were killed. This mass crime is known as the Novi Sad Raid.

At the end of April 1944, Hungarians arrested Jews from Bačka and handed them over to Germans who deported them to the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Mira and Elvira, daughters of Daniel’s sister Irene, were killed in Auschwitz.

Daniel Rip in Novi Sad in July 1941. __

Daniel Rip was born in Novi Sad in 1922. __ Daniel Rip was born in Novi Sad in 1922. He trained to be an upholsterer and carpenter and started his own shop shortly before the start of the war. Daniel had four siblings. After the Hungarian occupation, Daniel’s brother Imre was arrested for his political activities and killed. Daniel’s father, Hinko Rip, was killed in the Novi Sad Raid, and his mother, Marie, and sister, Irena, and her two daughters, Mira and Elvira, were deported to Auschwitz and killed. In 1942, Daniel was sent to forced labor. Working conditions were very severe, and the prisoners were routinely beaten. He was later deported to Budapest and placed in a ghetto. There, he met his future wife, Judit Fribert. Judith and Daniel survived the Holocaust.

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Vera Ripp Hirschhorn

Rena, Rafael-Rudi, and their father, Jakov Abravanel, from Pirot

PIROT UNDER BULGARIA

Bulgarian occupying zone comprised southeast Serbia including the town of Pirot with its Jewish community. The Bulgarian antisemitic legislation was enforced, and Jews were registered, marked, exposed to looting and humiliation. Starting from 11th March 1943 all Jews from Bulgarian occupying zones in Serbia, North Macedonia, and Greece were deported to the death camp Treblinka from where nobody returned.

Rafael-Rudi Abravanel was born in Pirot in 1920 into an old Jewish family. His father, Jakov, was a merchant. Rudi had a sister named Rena, who was born in 1918. __ She married a Serbian man and changed her name to Radmila Čorović. During the occupation, she joined the Yugoslav Partisans – a communist-led anti-fascist resistance movement. She was captured by the Germans and executed in 1943. __
Rudi was 23 when Bulgarian forces arrested all the Jews in Pirot. They were robbed and then forced onto trains in cattle wagons. They traveled through Bulgaria for days without any food or water. While the train was changing speed, Rudi managed to slip through the narrow opening on the floor of the cattle car and jump from the moving train. The rest of his family – including his father, mother, grandparents, and cousins – remained on the train and arrived at the harbor of Lom on the Black Sea. They were sent by ships to Treblinka, where all of them were killed. With the help of relatives in Sofia, Rudi obtained false documents and escaped through Macedonia, Albania, and Italy. In 1944, Rudi reached Palestine. He remained living in Israel until he died in 2008. __

A monument to the Jews of Pirot in the form of a broken Star of David was unveiled in 2011 in Jevrejska street in Pirot.

“An important fact of my fate is related to the origins I come from and the times I was born in, which probably is the cause of my restless nature.”

Danilo Kiš, književnik

Danilo Kiš (1935-1989) is one of Serbia’s greatest writers. He survived the horrors of the Holocaust as a boy, and his father was killed in the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. Through his literature, Danilo Kiš always returned to this experience, trauma, eternal escape and chaos, the anatomy of fear and evil, as well as the search for meaning.

LIFE

The surviving Jews faced a terrible loss. It took enormous courage and will to try to start a new life after the horrors of the Holocaust.

The Jewish community was almost completely destroyed in the Holocaust. In many cities, there were no more Jews at all. In some places, the survivors tried to revive the cultural and religious life of the community. Many joined the thousands of European Jews who immigrated to Israel. Some decided to move to other countries far from the traces of war. But many continued to live in their countries. Thus, despite the enormous suffering, the Jewish community survived and remained in Serbia.

Today, Serbian Jews are gathered around the Jewish communities in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica, Pančevo, Zemun, Niš, Zrenjanin, Sombor, and Kikinda and around the Federation of Jewish Communities of Serbia.

In 2022, the NGO Haver Serbia initiated the placement of “Stumbling stones” (Stolperstein) in memory of the Holocaust victims at ten locations in Belgrade. The stones in front of Marshal Birjuzova Street number 9 are dedicated to Emil, Augusta, Hans, and Hilda Dajč.

Remembrance

Several official Memorial Days committed to the victims of the Holocaust, as well as to the memory of the joint suffering of Jews, Serbs, Roma, and other victims of crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators, are observed in the Republic of Serbia:

January 27: International Holocaust Remembrance Day
April 22: Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust and Genocide in WWII, marking the uprise and escape attempt by the remaining prisoners of Jasenovac concentration camp in 1945
October 21: Day of Remembrance of Serbian Victims in the Second World War, in memory of the bloody fall of 1941 when German troops committed mass crimes against civilians in Kragujevac and other cities
November 9: International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism
● December 16: Day of Remembrance of Roma Victims in the Second World War, when Himmler ordered the systematic deportation of Roma to concentration camps and their extermination in 1942

Several Memorial Days are commemorated locally by city authorities and local communities, among them:

● May 10: Holocaust Remembrance Day in Belgrade, marking the day when the last group of Jewish prisoners of Judenlager Semlin at Staro Sajmiste was murdered in 1942,
January 23: for the victims of the Novi Sad Raid in 1942,
April 26: when the Jews from Novi Sad and Bačka were deported to death camps in 1944.

During WWII, apart from the Holocaust – the genocide against the Jews, the —Germans, and other fascist regimes, their allies and collaborators committed and facilitated other crimes in which various groups of victims were persecuted: genocide against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, Samudaripen – genocide against Roma and Sinti, genocide against Poles, murders and persecutions of political opponents, murders of mentally ill and disabled people, mass crimes against Soviet civilians, persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses, murders and persecution of homosexuals, and other groups. We must remember all the victims with respect.

Scientific research aims to investigate and analyze all these crimes in order to understand their unique and specific features, the processes that led to the crimes, who were the victims and perpetrators, what consequences remain to this day, and how this reflects on our contemporary societies.

Today, Europe is faced with the challenge of Holocaust distortion, manipulation, politicization, and abuse of history for nationalist propaganda, and the equation of the crimes of Nazism and Communism. There are attempts to rehabilitate even those who undoubtedly directly participated in the crimes. Our responsibility to remember and study the causes, processes, and consequences of past crimes is greater than ever. At the same time, we can see a new unprecedented rise of antisemitism across political specter.

An honest, meaningful, and courageous memory culture does not misuse the victims to inflame hatred, fear, and nationalism.

These are the challenges we must deal with in the Republic of Serbia, too. That is why it is essential to develop the professional capacities of the leading actors of the memory culture in Serbia and to implement international norms and standards in memorialization and education, such as the strategies, definitions, and recommendations of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance IHRA.

Photo: Miško Stanišić

EDUCATION

Education

It is essential to teach and learn about the Holocaust, not only because it is a civilizational, moral, and human duty but also because by learning about our shared past, life, and history, we learn about our present, ourselves, and humanity as a whole.

As an event that fundamentally challenged human values, education about the Holocaust creates the opportunity to understand the processes that led to atrocities and genocide and to raise awareness about the consequences of antisemitism. We can achieve that through fact-based knowledge and examination of the choices people made to participate, ignore, or resist the process of persecution and murder.

Considering a strong antifascist tradition in Serbia, the fact that the Serbs themselves were victims of terror and genocide, and the tremendous number of lives lost in resistance against Nazism, teaching and learning about the Holocaust should come as a natural constituent of the memory and the historical narratives in Serbia.

The process of shaping and embracing democracy, tolerance, the rule of law, and respect for human and civil rights as general civilizational values began after the world was faced with the scope and horrors of the crimes committed by the Nazis and their helpers, among which the Holocaust has a unique place.

The culture of remembrance and education about the Holocaust is, therefore, the foundation of understanding and learning about human rights, the development of critical thinking, and competence for democratic culture, without which there can be no social progress. At the same time, education about the Holocaust is a necessary element in opposing contemporary antisemitism, which has been present since the end of the Holocaust and is on the rise around Europe. While it is essential to know that education about antisemitism and teaching and learning about the Holocaust are not the same and are not interchangeable, one supports the other and helps us understand its correlation. This also allows us to better understand and counter different forms of hatred and intolerance, such as antigypsyism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and others.

Pedagogical approaches and experiences in teaching and learning about the Holocaust have been developed, improved, and collected for decades. While today we know much more about the problems and best practices, education about the Holocaust still represents a considerable challenge. IHRA’s Recommendations on Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust are the ultimate guideline for policymakers, curricula developers, and educators in schools, memorial centers, and museums.

THE REMEMBERING HILDA DAJČ AWARD

Remembering Hilda Dajč is an annual award established in 2022 by Terraforming, the NGO Education for the 21st Century, and other Serbian activists. It is awarded yearly around May 10, Remembrance Day for the Holocaust Victims in Belgrade.

Remembering Hilda Dajč is awarded to individuals, institutions, or organizations that have significantly contributed to fostering and improving the Holocaust memory culture, or have demonstrated civic responsibility and social awareness in identifying and solving a specific problem in the local community.

The invitation to nominate candidates for the “Remembrance of Hilda Dajč” award is published on December 8, the day on which in 1941 Jews from Belgrade were sent to the camp at the Old Fair.

HILDA DAJČ 1922-1942

Hilda Deich was a 19-year-old architecture student when she voluntarily went to the German camp at Staro Sajmiste in Belgrade to help sick and exhausted Jewish prisoners by working in the camp’s infirmary. The four letters Hilda sent to her girlfriends in Belgrade are a rare testimony from the camp. Hilda was killed between March and May 1942 in the mobile gas chamber together with about 6500 other detainees at Staro Sajmiste.

IMPRESSUM

Author: Miško Stanišić
Design: Darko Vuković
Map and infographic design: Miško Stanišić
Web design: Skilltech Web Design

The exhibition “Some Words about the Holocaust in Serbia” was produced in November 2023 as an improved and updated version of the 2018 exhibition of the same name. This publication further improves on and introduces a new printed format. __ Expert advisors on the creation of the first version of the exhibition in 2018:
– Dr Milan Koljanin, “Staro sajmište” Memorial Center, Belgrade
– Nevena Bajalica , Teraforming, Novi Sad
– Aleksandar Todosijević , Association for Social History UDI Euroklio, Belgrade

ISBN-978-86-900731-5-3
Publisher: Terraforming
www.terraforming.org

Terraforming is committed to promoting and improving teaching and learning about the Holocaust and combating antisemitism, antigypsyism, and other forms of xenophobia. __ Terraforming designs training programs, facilitates the international exchange of experiences and best practices and produces various public outreach activities to empower multipliers such as teachers, librarians, archivists, museum workers, and NGO activists, and inform local communities, decision- and policymakers, and other stakeholders.

About the author:
Miško Stanišić is the director and co-founder of Terraforming. During more than 15 years in the field of memorialization and education, as a pedagogue, digital media specialist, and expert in the field of Holocaust education, Miško has developed numerous resources, exhibitions, workshops, and international projects. He is a member of the delegation of the Republic of Serbia in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance IHRA, where he participates in the Working Group for Education and the Committee for Genocide against Roma. He is the founder of the Center for Combating Antisemitism and Intolerance, a platform for creating a national strategy for combating Antisemitism in the Republic of Serbia. Miško is one of the initiators of the Remembering Hilda Dajč Award. He is a member of various international networks, expert bodies, and committees for combating Antisemitism, Antigypsyism, and education about the Holocaust and the genocide of the Roma.

Literature and references:
– Teaching Material for Combating Antisemitism (Milan Koljanin, Milovan Pisari, Miško Stanišić, Aleksandar Todosijević);
– Recommendations for Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance IHRA, and other IHRA materials;
– Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum);
– TVarious teaching materials produced by Yad Vashem;

A photograph of the Baruh family taken in Belgrade before World War II: mother Mazal (née Ruso) and children Isak (1927), Streja (1928), Roza (1930) and Sofika (1931), father Rahamim Baruh not being on this photograph probably because it was he who took it. They were living in the Dubrovačka street No. 6 in Belgrade. 6. Mazal and the children Isak, Streja, Roza and Sofika were all killed in the concentration camp Judenlager Semlin at Staro Sajmiste – former Belgrade Fairground. Rahamim survived the war. Besides his wife and children he also lost his brothers Moša and Ašrer. Rahamim moved to Israel in 1953.

Photo Credit: Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem. 4731/4 4731/4

Top

The Holocaust - an unprecedented crime

Words, just like forgotten names

Jews

The Holocaust

Anti-Semitism

Refugees

Occupation

Dehumanization

Propaganda

Collaboration

Helpers

Resistance

Mass Shootings

Concentration Camps

Judenlager Semlin at Staro Sajmište

Srem under the Independent State of Croatia

Banat under Volksdeutscher

Bačka under Hungary

Pirot under Bulgaria

Life

Remembrance

Education

The Remembering Hilda Dajč Award

Impressum