Sajmište concentration camp

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Sajmište
Concentration camp

The central tower of the Sajmište fairgrounds, 2010.
Location of Sajmište within the Independent State of Croatia
Location of Sajmište within the Independent State of Croatia
Coordinates 44°48′46″N 20°26′42″E / 44.81278°N 20.44500°E / 44.81278; 20.44500Coordinates: 44°48′46″N 20°26′42″E / 44.81278°N 20.44500°E / 44.81278; 20.44500
Location Staro Sajmište, Independent State of Croatia
Operated by German occupational authorities
Original use Exhibition centre
Operational September 1941–July 1944
Inmates Primarily Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists
Number of inmates 92,000
Killed 23,000–47,000
Website Staro Sajmište

The Sajmište concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Sajmište, Croatian: Koncentracijski logor Sajmište, Serbian: Концентрациони логор Сајмиште; pronounced [sâjmiːʃtɛ]), also known as the Jewish camp in Zemun (German: Judenlager Semlin), was a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in Staro Sajmište on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. Located on the outskirts of Belgrade, it became operational in September 1941 and was officially opened on 28 October of that year. At the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, thousands of Jewish women, children and old men were brought to the camp, along with 500 Jewish men and 292 Romani women and children, most of whom were from the Serbian towns of Niš, Smederevo and Šabac. Women and children were placed in makeshift barracks and suffered during numerous influenza epidemics. Kept in squalid conditions, they were provided with inadequate amounts of food and many froze to death during the winter of 1941/42.

In January 1942, SS-Untersturmführer Herbert Andorfer was appointed commander of the camp. That month, German military authorities demanded it be cleared of Jews in order to accommodate the growing number of captives taken in the war with the Yugoslav Partisans. A gas van sent from Berlin was then used by the Germans to kill thousands of Jewish inmates. The gassings stopped in May 1942 and by the following month the van was returned to Berlin to undergo repairs before being sent to Minsk to exterminate the Jews there. Shortly afterwards, Andorfer was promoted, assigned to a different Security Police assignment, and decorated with an Iron Cross 2nd Class for the role he played in the camp.

With the gassings complete, the camp was renamed Concentration Camp Zemun (German: Ahhalte Lager Semlin) and served to hold one last group of Jews who were arrested upon the surrender of Italy in September 1943. During this time it also held captured Yugoslav Partisans, Chetniks, sympathizers of the Greek and Albanian resistance movements, and Serb peasants from villages in other parts of the NDH. An estimated 32,000 mostly Serb prisoners passed through the camp during this period, 10,600 of whom were killed or died due to hunger and disease. Conditions in Sajmište were so poor that some began comparing it to Jasenovac and other large concentration camps throughout Europe. In 1943 and 1944, evidence of atrocities committed in the camp was destroyed by units led by SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, and thousands of corpses were exhumed from mass graves and incinerated. The camp was closed in July 1944. Estimates of the number of deaths at the camp range from 23,000 to 47,000, with the number of Jewish deaths estimated at 7,000 to 10,000. It is thought that half of all Serbian Jews perished at Sajmište.

Most of the Germans responsible for the operation of the camp were captured and brought to trial. Several were extradited to Yugoslavia and executed. Camp commander Herbert Andorfer and his deputy Edgar Enge were arrested in the 1960s after many years of hiding. Both men were subsequently given short prison sentences in West Germany and Austria, respectively, although Enge's sentence was never carried out due to his age and poor health.

Background

map showing the partition of Yugoslavia, 1941–43
A map showing the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia from 1941–43.

The site that became the Sajmište concentration camp during World War II had originally been an exhibition centre built by the Belgrade municipality in 1937[1] in an attempt to attract international commerce to the city.[2] The centre's modernist pavilions featured elaborate displays of industrial progress and design from European countries, including Germany. Its architectural centerpiece was a large tower which was used by Philips to transmit the earliest television broadcasts in Europe.[3] Nevertheless, much of the centre stood decrepit and empty until the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941.[2] The country was dismembered following the invasion, with Serbia being reduced to its pre-1912 borders and placed under a government of German military occupation.[4] Milan Nedić, a pre-war politician who was known to have pro-Axis leanings, was then selected by the Germans to lead the collaborationist Government of National Salvation in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia.[5] The civilian administration in the country was headed by SS-Gruppenführer Harald Turner, who commanded the Einsatzgruppen Serbien. Originally led by SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Fuchs, and later by SS-Gruppenführer August Meyszner with SS-Standartenführer Emanuel Schäfer as his deputy, the group was responsible for ensuring internal security, fighting opponents of the occupation, and dealing with Jews.[6]

Meanwhile, the extreme Croat nationalist and fascist Ante Pavelić, who had been in exile in Benito Mussolini's Italy, was appointed Poglavnik ("leader") of an Ustaše-led Croatian state – the Independent State of Croatia (often called the NDH, from the Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska).[7] The NDH combined almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of modern-day Serbia into an "Italian-German quasi-protectorate."[8] NDH authorities, led by the Ustaše militia,[9] subsequently implemented genocidal policies against the Serb, Jewish and Romani populations living within the borders of the new state.[10] The territory of the former Belgrade municipality was divided between occupied Serbia and the NDH, with the area where the Sajmište fairgrounds were located coming under Croatian control.[11] With the German invasion of the Soviet Union, an uprising erupted in Serbia. Although they took no part in the rebellion, Jews were targeted for retaliatory execution by the Germans. Anti-Jewish laws were quickly implemented by the Germans and by the end of August 1941 all Jewish men in Serbia were interned in concentration camps, primarily at Topovske Šupe in Belgrade.[12]

History

Establishment

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.[13] 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]

Dubbed the "Jewish camp in Zemun" (German: Judenlager Semlin),[14] Sajmište was intended to hold as many as 500,000 people captured from rebels areas across occupied Yugoslavia.[15] The name "Semlin" was derived from the German word for the former Austro-Hungarian frontier town of Zemun, where the camp was located.[13] Despite being located on the territory of the NDH, it was controlled by the German military police apparatus in occupied Serbia.[16][15] 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.[11] Soon after the camp was established, SS-Scharführer Edgar Enge of the Belgrade Gestapo became its commander.[17] Initially, the campgrounds held about 500 male Jewish inmates[18] 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.[18] 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 with better labour conditions located in Austria but were instead taken to Jabuka in the Banat or to a firing range on the outskirts of Belgrade, where they were killed.[19] Sajmište officially opened on a wider scale on 28 October 1941.[20] The last group of male Jewish inmates were killed on 11 November.[19]

Exterminations

A gas van, similar to the one used in Sajmište, photographed in Poland.

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.[21] Most of these people were from the outlying Serbian towns, primarily Niš, Smederevo and Šabac.[17] Women and children were placed in makeshift barracks that were barely heated,[18] 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.[19] Starvation was widespread, and Jewish inmates appealed unsuccessfully to Serbian authorities for more food to be provided to the camp.[22] Consequently a high number of detainees, especially children, died in late 1941 and early 1942,[18] with many inmates freezing to death in one of the coldest winters on record.[19] The Romani inmates were kept in far more miserable conditions than their Jewish counterparts,[19] sleeping on straw in an unheated hall separate from non-Romani prisoners.[23] After six weeks of detention most were released. On the other hand, most Jewish inmates remained in detention, with the exception of ten Jewish women who were married to Christian men.[19]

SS-Untersturmführer Herbert Andorfer was appointed to replace the inexperienced Enge as commander of the camp in January 1942. Enge was subsequently made Andorfer's deputy.[17] That month, German military authorities demanded the camp be cleared of Jews in order to accommodate the growing number of captives taken in the war with the Yugoslav Partisans.[24] By February the camp held about 6,500 inmates, ten percent of whom were Romani.[25]

In early March, Andorfer was informed that a gas van had been sent to the camp from Berlin. The vans had been delivered upon the request of the German military administration chief in Serbia, Harald Turner.[18] 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.[26] In order to ensure the quickness and efficiency of the gassings, he then made announcements to make prisoners believe that they were 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.[18] Inmates who had volunteered to leave the previous evening climbed into the van the next day in groups of between fifty and eighty. 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 the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia.[27] It was here that one of the drivers exited the van and crawled underneath it, diverting its exhaust into the interior of the vehicle[26] and killing the inmates inside with carbon monoxide gas.[28] The van was then taken to the Avala firing range, where corpses were dumped into mass graves freshly dug by Serbian[27] and Romani prisoners.[19] Such gassings became routine, and the gas van arrived on every day except Sunday. Rumours quickly circulated about the gassings, with news reaching German troops stationed in Belgrade and even some Serbians.[27] Consequently, the gas van was nicknamed the "soul-killer" (Serbian: dušegupka) by the Serb population exposed to these rumours.[28] It is thought that the gassings took the lives of as many as 8,000 inmates, mostly women and children.[29] The seven Serbian prisoners that had participated in unloading the murdered inmates from the van were shot after the gassings stopped. The gravedigger, a Serb named Vladimir Milutinović, survived. "81 or 82 trenches were prepared and I helped dig all of them," he recalled. "At least 100 people fitted into each trench ... These ones were only for those suffocated in the truck. We dug a different set for those who were shot."[30]

When the gassings stopped, few inmates remained in the camp, mostly non-Jewish women who had been married to Jews. They were released several days later, after having been 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 vans. 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.[31] It received a technical upgrade there, and was then transferred to Belarus where it was used to gas Jews in Minsk.[32] Shortly after leading the extermination of the Jewish inmates in Sajmište, Andorfer and Enge were assigned to different Security Police assignments. Andorfer was subsequently promoted and decorated with an Iron Cross 2nd Class for the role he played in the camp.[31]

After the gassings

With the extermination of the original Jewish inmates completed, the camp was renamed "Concentration Camp Zemun" (German: Ahhalte Lager 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.[33] During this period, Montenegrin separatist leader Sekula Drljević became the camp's administrator.[34] Conditions deteriorated to such an extent that some began comparing it to Jasenovac and other large concentration camps throughout Europe.[35] The camp became the main transit point for Yugoslav prisoners and detainees on their way to labour locations and concentration camps in Germany.[15] 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.[36]

Evacuation

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.[37] 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 of the prisoners who were present during the exhumations were shot, except for three Serbs who managed to escape.[38] In April 1944 Allied aircraft bombed Sajmište, killing many inmates and inflicting heavy damage on the camp itself.[36] The camp was closed that July.[20]

Aftermath

Of the 8,000 women and children who passed through Sajmište, only six survived the war.[39] It is estimated that half of all Serbian Jews were killed in the camp;[40] however, estimates of the total number of deaths vary. The Staro Sajmište memorial estimates that 23,000 people perished in the camp, of whom 10,000 were Jews.[41] The Yugoslav State War Crimes Commission estimated that as many as 40,000 may have been killed in the camp, including 7,000 Jews.[20] Professor Paul Mojzes states that the number of deaths may have been as high as 47,000 from a total of 92,000 inmates,[35] while author Philip J. Cohen writes that 7,500 Jews were killed in the camp.[42]

Most of the Germans who were responsible for the operation of the camp were captured and brought to trial. Many of those who had been prominent German officials during the occupation of Serbia, including Turner, Fuchs and Meyszner, were extradited to Yugoslavia by the Allies after the war, where they were executed. Camp commander Andorfer managed to escape with the assistance of the Roman Catholic Church, which helped him flee to South America. He returned to Austria from Venezuela in the 1960s, and was subsequently apprehended and tried on the minor charge of being an accessory to murder—for which he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment. Andorfer's deputy, Enge, was apprehended in the 1960s, and sentenced to one-and-a-half years imprisonment—his sentence was never carried out due to his old age and poor health. German guards suspected of executing Serbian prisoners were never tried, although they served as witnesses in several trials in West Germany.[29]

Legacy

A statue constructed to commemorate the victims of the camp.

Belgrade Jews murdered during the Holocaust, including those at Sajmište, were not commemorated by Yugoslavia's post-war Communist government until thirty years after the events.[1] At present, the old Sajmište fairgrounds are marked by small plaques and a statue to commemorate those detained in the camp.[43] The plaques were dedicated in 1974 and 1984, respectively. In 1987 the Sajmište fairgrounds were given a cultural landmark status by the government of Yugoslavia. A 10 m (33 ft) high monument created by artist Miodrag Popović was erected on the banks of the Sava in 1995.[44] No memorial centres or museums have ever been built on the former campgrounds. Today, the area where the camp was located is used as a state-run facility housing low-income residents of Belgrade. It is estimated that as many as 2,500 people presently live on the grounds of the former camp.[45]

Notes

Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Norris 2009, p. 212.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Shelach 1989, p. 1170.
  3. ↑ Steven Heller (7 April 2010). "Graphic Content: The Designer as Activist". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 December 2013. 
  4. ↑ Cohen 1996, p. 50.
  5. ↑ Singleton 1985, p. 182.
  6. ↑ Shelach 1989, pp. 1168–1169.
  7. ↑ Goldstein 1999, p. 133.
  8. ↑ Tomasevich 2001, p. 272.
  9. ↑ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 397–409.
  10. ↑ Hoare 2007, pp. 20–24.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Crowe 2000, p. 196.
  12. ↑ Shelach 1989, p. 1169.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Matthäus 2013, p. 228.
  14. ↑ Israeli 2013, p. 33.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Pavlowitch 2002, p. 143.
  16. ↑ Pavlowitch 2007, p. 69.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Shelach 1989, p. 1174.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 18.5 Manoschek 2000, p. 179.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 19.5 19.6 Mojzes 2011, p. 82.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Ramet 2006, p. 131.
  21. ↑ Manoschek 2000, pp. 178–179.
  22. ↑ Cohen 1996, p. 79.
  23. ↑ Kenrick & Puxon 2009, p. 80.
  24. ↑ Glenny 2011, p. 504.
  25. ↑ Cohen 1996, pp. 63–64.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Glenny 2011, p. 505.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 Shelach 1989, pp. 1177–1178.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Mojzes 2011, p. 83.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Shelach 1989, p. 1180.
  30. ↑ Glenny 2011, pp. 505–506.
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 Shelach 1989, pp. 1177–1179.
  32. ↑ Manoschek 2000, p. 180.
  33. ↑ Israeli 2013, pp. 33–34.
  34. ↑ Kurapovna 2009, p. 62.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Mojzes 2011, p. 85.
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 "Sajmište, istorija jednog logora" [Sajmište, History of a Camp]. B92 (in Serbian). 23 January 2009. 
  37. ↑ Ramet 2006, pp. 131–132.
  38. ↑ Shelach 1989, pp. 1179–1180.
  39. ↑ Glenny 2011, p. 506.
  40. ↑ Cohen 1996, p. 181.
  41. ↑ Pavlowitch 2007, p. 70.
  42. ↑ Cohen 1996, p. 64.
  43. ↑ "Diskusija o Starom sajmištu" [Discussion About Staro Sajmište]. B92 (in Serbian). 11 May 2008. 
  44. ↑ "Memorial to the Victims of the Sajmište Concentration Camp". Memorial Museums. 
  45. ↑ Salem, Harriet (8 February 2013). "Staro Sajmište: Belgrade's forgotten concentration camp". Southeast European Times. 

Bibliography

External links

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