Object Alone

Obj. ID: 43551  Holocaust Memorial in the Jewish Cemetery in Novi Sad, Serbia, 1952

© Olga Ungar, Photographer: Ungar, Olga, 2018

Who is commemorated?

Jewish victims of Holocaust from Novi Sad 

Description

The memorial includes an upright marker topped by an urn. The marker is inscribed with years “1941–1945” and decorated with a bas-relief of the Menorah depicted as on the emblem of Israel. The marker is surrounded by four tall pillars covered by a stepped roof that features Magen David. The memorial is set upon the stepped base.  The plaque with the inscription is affixed at the foot of the marker, between four pillars. A path filled with pebbles leads to the memorial.  

Inscriptions

The inscriptions in Serbo-Croatian and in Hebrew commemorate “4,000 Jews of Novi Sad who perished as victims of fascism 1941–1945”. The inscriptions in two languages are identical apart from the closing sentence in Hebrew - omitted in Serbo-Croatian: “Remember God with all the righteous of the world,” followed by the traditional Jewish blessing for deceased “May their souls be bound in the bundle of life.”

The inscriptions read:

1941-45

In Hebrew:

לזכרון
ארבעה אלפים
יהודים יושבי נובי סד
שנספו כקרבנות הפשיזם
1941-1945
יזכרם יי עם כל צדיקי העולם
תנצב''ה [=תהי נשמתם צרורה בצרור החיים]

Translation: In memory of 4,000 Jews of Novi Sad who perished as victims of fascism 1941–1945 / Remember God with all the righteous of the world / May their souls be bound in the bundle of life 

In Serbo-Croatian:

 За успомену на 4000
новосадских Jевреja
погинулих као жртве
фашизма 1941-1945

Translation: In memory of 4,000 Jews of Novi Sad who perished as victims of fascism 1941–1945

Commissioned by

The Jewish Community of Novi Sad and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia

Documenter
Olga Ungar | 2000
Author of description
Olga Ungar, Anna Berezin | 2022
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12 image(s)

Name / Title
Holocaust Memorial in the Jewish Cemetery in Novi Sad | Unknown
Monument Setting
Cemetery   
Object Detail
Completion Date
1952
Synagogue active dates
Reconstruction dates
Location
Serbia | Vojvodina | Novi Sad (Нови Сад)
| 67 Doža Đerđa Street
Site
Unknown
School/Style
Unknown|
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Period Detail
Collection
Unknown |
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Material / Technique
White marble (Arandjelovac marble)
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Façade (main)
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Location of Torah Ark
Location of Apse
Location of Niche
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Summary and Remarks
History

Novi Sad, also known as Újvidék in Hungarian and Neusatz in German, is the capital of the Serbian autonomous province of Vojvodina.

On the eve of  World War II, the city had approximately 61,000 residents. Its population was eminently heterogeneous. While Serbs, Hungarians, and Germans were the main ethnic groups, more than twenty ethnic minorities resided in the city. Jews numbered up to 4,000. Between 1941 and 1944, during World War II, Vojvodina was divided between Nazi Germany and its allies, Hungary and the Independent State of Croatia. Novi Sad that time located in the Bačka district of northern Serbia was annexed by Hungary. Upon the invasion, Hungarian forces began terrorizing the Jewish and Serb residents. During the January 1942 massacres in Novi Sad and its environs (Raid in southern Bačka), Hungarian police killed at least 800 Jews in the city and 400 in its environs. The rest of the Jews of Novi-Sad, around 1,600 people, were deported to Auschwitz with the rest of the Hungarian Jews. [Hungarian policemen...]

The history of the monument started in 1947 when the Jewish Community of Novi Sad organized a competition and awarded three prizes for the design of the memorial. The sculptor Dejan Bešlin received the third prize, however, his design was chosen in the end for construction. The monument was dedicated on September 1, 1952.

The inauguration of this monument was part of a larger action by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia to unveil central monuments to the victims in Sarajevo, Belgrade, Zagreb, Novi Sad, and Đakovo in September and October 1952. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Yugoslav state and Communist Party officials and Israeli and U. S. Jewish delegates. The event was fully covered by the mass media and well-documented in a series of photographs taken during the inauguration ceremony (currently in the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade).

Emil Kerenji wrote about the messages that these monuments conveyed:

The dedication ceremonies and the monuments themselves reflected the dual goals of the [Jewish] Federation—the commemoration of specifically Jewish victims of the war in the context of confirmation of the officially revered legacies of the “struggle for national liberation” (narodnooslobodilačka borba) and “brotherhood and unity” (bratstvojedinstvo). Monuments were thus meant to commemorate both the “Jewish victims of Fascism” and “Jewish fallen fighters,” in accordance with the ritual mode of commemoration of World War II that was being established in Yugoslavia at the time [...].

The monuments did, however, feature Jewish motifs that were immediately recognizable to Jews, and that invoked cultural connotations that were of an entirely different order than those provided by the discourses of “victims of Fascism” and “fallen fighters.” [...] The monuments thus simultaneously conveyed two different cultural contexts—one compatible with the reigning ideological mode of commemoration of World War II, fully and literally translatable into Hebrew, the language of the new Jewish culture; and one more elusive, and accessible only to those familiar with Jewish culture and tradition.

One important caveat regarding the monuments in Yugoslavia ... is that they were located in the Jewish cemeteries. They were thus removed from the full view of the general Yugoslav public. They were located at the periphery. Monuments to general, unnamed “victims of Fascism” and “fallen fighters” were being built across Yugoslavia, in central locations in cities, towns, and villages. Monuments to Jewish victims, however, because they commemorated a specific ethnic group, could not vie for those locations. But since their primary importance for the Jewish communities in Yugoslavia lay in their potential to rally the remaining Jews in the country around a new basis for Jewish identification, their placement at Jewish cemeteries was not a drawback; on the contrary, ritual commemorations that developed over the years around these monuments only confirmed their Jewish character. 

The dedication ceremonies, however, contrary to the later annual commemorations, were very visible to the general Yugoslav public. They were widely covered by the press across Yugoslavia. The numerous articles stressed: [...] Jews finally felt free and equal in the new Yugoslavia, in which the national question was solved; numerous international Jewish delegations in attendance testified to this fact, as did the presence of state representatives and the general public at the ceremonies.

[Kerenji, 2008, pp. 211-216]

The monument is the meeting ground on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27.

The monument is easily accessible and located at the very entrance to the cemetery, right in front of the cemetery chapel (Beit Tahara). 

Main Surveys & Excavations
Sources

"Hungarian policemen and soldiers standing over murdered Jews in Novi-Sad, Yugoslavia, 23 January 1942," Yad Vashem, https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/january/1942-3.html (accessed February 23, 2022)

Kerenji, Emil, “Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia: Politics of Jewish Identity in a Socialist State, 1944–1974,” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2008, 201-222., https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/60848/ekerenji_1.pdf?sequence=1. June 2020 (accessed February 23, 2022)

Klimó, Árpád von. “1956 and the Collapse of Stalinist Politics of History: Forgetting and Remembering the 1942 Újvidék/Novi Sad Massacre and the 1944/45 Partisan Retaliations in Hungary and Yugoslavia (1950s–1960s).” Hungarian Historical Review 5 No. 4 2016: 739-766.

"Memorials in Novi Sad," Locations (Vojvodina Holocaust Memorials Project), https://www.vhmproject.org/en-US/Locations/Memorials/17 (accessed April 10, 2022)

Stipić, Davor. 'U borbi protiv zaborava: Jevrejska zajednica u Jugoslaviji i očuvanje sećanja na Holokaust 1945–1955.” Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju 2 (2016): 91–121

Ungar, Olga, "Remembering the Victims: Vojvodina Holocaust Memorials," in   Jewish Literatures and Cultures in Southeastern Europe: Experiences, Positions, Memories (=Schriften des Centrums für jüdische Studien, vol. 37) eds Renate Hansen-Kokoruš and Olaf Terpitz

Šosberger, Pavle. Jevreji u Vojvodini: Kratak pregled istorije vojvođanskih Jevreja (Novi Sad: Prometej, 1998)

Šosberger, Pavle. Novosadski Jevreji: Iz istorije jevrejske zajednice u Novom Sadu (Novi Sad: Književna zajednica Novog Sada, 1988).

“Istorijska groblja Novog Sada i Petrovaradina kao prostori sećanja,” Kultura Secanja (Mapping Places of Remembrance and the Remembrance Culture of Novi Sad Project), https://kulturasecanjabiblioteka.wordpress.com/istorijska-groblja-novog-sada-i-petrovaradina-kao-prostori-secanja/ (accessed February 23, 2022)
Type
The following information on this monument will be completed: