Obj. ID: 52476
Memorials Holocaust Memorial Plaque at the site of the Sajmište Concentration Camp in Zemun, Serbia, 1984
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Comemmorated?
Holocaust Victims who were imprisoned in the Sajmište Concentration Camp
Description
This memorial plaque is made of black marble and bears an inscription in Serbo-Croatian as well as a circular relief of an abstract design. It is mounted on an upright concrete slab, which itself is on a concrete base. It is located near the building that houses the old Turkish pavilion, a part of the former fairground/concentration camp complex, as well as a second Holocaust Memorial.
Inscriptions
Serbo-Croatian
“Na prostoru Starog sajmišta nemački Gestapo osnovao je je 1941.
godine logor “Sajmište” u kome je, uz pomoć domaćih izdajnika,
svirepo mučeno i ubijeno preko od 40.000 ljudi iz svih krajeva naše zemlje.”
Predsedništvo MO
UBNOR-a
I DPO MZ St. Sajmište
Translation: On the site of the Old Fairgrounds, the German Gestapo founded the Sajmište Camp in 1941, with the help of domestic traitors, more than 40,000 people were tortured and killed from all parts of our country. / Presidency of the Local Committee / Associations of Fighters of the National Liberation War / and Socio-Political Organizations of the Staro Sajmište Local Community
Commissioned by
[To be confirmed]
14 image(s)
sub-set tree:
| Zemunski put (Zemunski Road)
Marble (black)
The old Belgrade fairground opened in 1937 and was a monumental modernist complex, dominated by the Central Tower.
The German military administration on October 23, 1941, decided to adapt its facilities for the purpose of establishing a camp for Jews, Serbs, Roma, and anti-fascists. The location was not far from Zemun, on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia.
The Staro Sajmište camp was called Jewish Camp Zemun (Judenlager Semlin) from December 8, 1941, until the beginning of May 1942. All the Jews who were still alive in the winter of 1941/42 in occupied Serbia, about 6,400 of them, were interned in this camp. Between March and May 1942, the Jewish detainees were killed in the gas van, and their bodies were buried in the village of Jajinci, near Belgrade. From May 1942 until its dissolution in the second half of July 1944, the camp was renamed Detention Camp Zemun (Anhaltelager Semlin). During this period, a small group of Jews who were arrested upon the surrender of Italy in September 1943 were detained here. During this time, interned in the camp were also Partisans, Chetniks, sympathizers of the Greek and Albanian resistance movements, and Serb peasants who lived in the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. In that period, a total of 31,972 detainees were interned.
The site was for many years unmarked.
On October 20, 1974, the first plaque was unveiled at the site. In 1984, on July 7, it was replaced with a new plaque, with identical text, installed next to the building housing the old Turkish pavilion in the fairgrounds complex.
Byford, Jovan, Staro sajmište: mesto sećanja, zaborava i sporenja, (Belgrade: Beogradski centar za ljudska prava, 2011)
"Memorials in Zemun," Locations (Vojvodina Holocaust Memorials Project), https://www.vhmproject.org/en-US/Locations/Memorials/26 (accessed July 2, 2023)
“Jevrejski logor na beogradskom Sajmištu: istorija i sećanje,” Sećanje na Sajmište posle Drugog svetskog rata - Jevrejski logor na Beogradskom sajmištu - Otvoreni univerzitet, https://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/seml (accessed July 2, 2023)
“Remembrance in Transition: The Sajmište Concentration Camp in the Official Politics of Memory of Yugoslavia and Serbia,” Cultures of History Forum, https://www.cultures-of-history.uni-jena.de/debates/the-sajmiste-concentration-camp-in-the-official-politics-of-memory (accessed July 2, 2023)