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The Holocaust in German-occupied Serbia

The Holocaust in German-occupied Serbia was part of the European-wide Holocaust, the Nazi genocide against Jews during World War II, which occurred in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, the military administration of the Third Reich established after the April 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia. The crimes were primarily committed by the German occupation authorities who implemented Nazi racial policies, assisted by the collaborationist forces of the successive puppet governments established by the Germans in the occupied territory.

Map of concentration camps in Yugoslavia in World War II
The monument to the Holocaust victims in Belgrade

Immediately after the occupation, the occupation authorities introduced racial laws, labeling Jews and Romani as Untermensch ("sub-humans"). They also appointed two Serbian civil puppet governments to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision.

Jews were the primary target but Romani were also targeted for elimination. The perpetrators of the Holocaust was the Nazi German Wehrmacht stationed in German-occupied Serbia. The main engine of extermination was the regular German army.[1][2] They carried out operations with the assistance of Milan Nedić's puppet government and Dimitrije Ljotić's fascist organization Yugoslav National Movement (Zbor), which had joint control over the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade along with the German Gestapo. The murders were primarily carried out in concentration camps and gas vans. In May 1942, occupied Serbia became one of the first territories declared judenfrei. The Nazis systematically murdered approximately 18,000 Serbian Jews in the occupied territory.

The main Holocaust perpetrators in Serbia - Nazi German officers Harald Turner, August Meyszner and Johann Fortner - were extradited after the war to Yugoslavia, where they were tried and executed. Milan Nedić was imprisoned by the Yugoslav authorities, but committed suicide soon after, while Ljotić was killed in a car accident. As of 2019, 139 Serbians have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

Background

 
Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia

Yugoslav Foreign Secretary Anton Korošec, who was Roman Catholic priest and leader of Slovenian conservatives, stated in September 1938, that "Jewish issue did not exist in Yugoslavia…. Jewish refugees from the Nazi Germany are not welcome here." In December 1938 Rabbi Isaac Alkalai, the only Jewish member of government was dismissed from the government.

On 25 March 1941, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact, allying the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the Axis powers. The Pact was extremely unpopular, particularly in Serbia and Montenegro, and demonstrations broke out. On 27 March, Serb military officers overthrew Prince Paul. The new government withdrew its support for the Axis, but did not repudiate the Tripartite Pact. Nevertheless, Axis forces, led by Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941.

The Axis forces partitioned Serbia, with Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy and the Independent State of Croatia occupying and annexing large areas. In central Serbia the Germans occupiers established the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia (Gebiet des Militärbefehlshabers in Serbien), the only area of partitioned Yugoslavia under direct German military government, with the day-to-day administration of the territory controlled by the German Chief of the Military Administration. The German Military Commander in Serbia appointed a Serbian civil puppet government to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision. The police and army of the puppet government were placed under German commanders.

In July 1941, a major uprising began in Serbia against the German occupiers, which included the establishment of the Republic of Užice, the first liberated territory in World War II Europe. At Hitler's personal command to crush the resistance, the German military started executing tens-of-thousands of Serb civilians, among whom they included thousands of Jews.[3] To assist in quelling the rebellion the German occupiers in August 1941 put in place the puppet government of Milan Nedić, which was also given responsibility for many Holocaust-related activities, including the registration and arrest of Jews and joint control over the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade.[1]

The Holocaust

Anti-Semitic regulations

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

On 13 April 1941, before the Royal Yugoslav Army formally capitulated, Wilhelm Fuchs – Chief of the Einsatzgruppen based in Belgrade – ordered the registration of the city's Jews.[4] His order stated that all those who did not register would be shot.[5] Shortly after, Field Commander Colonel von Keisenberg issued a decree which limited their freedom of movement.[6] On 29 April 1941, the Chief of the German Military Administration in Serbia, Harald Turner issued the order to register all Jews and Gypsies throughout German-occupied Serbia. The order prescribed the wearing of yellow armbands, introduced forced labor and curfew, limited access to food and other provisions and banned the use of public transport.[7]

On 30 May, the German Military Commander in Serbia, Helmuth Förster, issued the main race laws - The Regulation Concerning Jews and Gypsies (Verordnung Betreffend Die Juden Und Zigeuner), which defined who is considered Jewish and Gypsy. The law excluded Jews and Roma from public and economic life, their property was seized, they were obliged to register in special lists (Judenregister and Zigeunerlisten) and for forced labor. In addition, the order prescribed the obligatory wearing of yellow tape for Jews and Roma, and prohibited them from working in public institutions or in professions such as law, medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pharmacy, as well as visiting cinemas, theaters, entertainment venues, public baths, sports fields and markets.[5]

Beginning of persecution

 
Jews arrested in Belgrade in 1941.

Already in the initial days of the occupation, members of the German Einsatzgruppe Jugoslawien started breaking into and looting Jewish businesses.[8] Later these businesses were confiscated, per German anti-Semitic regulations, often turned over to the control of local Volksdeutsche.[8] All other Jewish real estate and personal property, plus religious properties, were also confiscated. A special form of theft was “the contribution”, amounting to 12 million dinars, which Belgrade Jews were forced to pay, for the “damages to Germans of the April War, which the Jews caused”.[8] In addition, the Germans forced Belgrade Jews to pay 1,400,000 dinars into a “Fund for the suppression of Jewish-Communist actions”.[8] Germans and Volksdeutsche mistreated and beat Jews on the streets, while in Belgrade Volksdeutsche and Ljotić-ites captured older Jews, bestially mistreating them.[9] Germans, with the help of Volksdeutsche and Ljotić-ites destroyed and desecrated Jewish temples.[10] The Germans conscripted all Jewish men between ages 14 and 60, and all Jewish women between 16 and 40, to perform forced labor for 17 and 18 hours a day, without rest. [11] They were forced to do the most difficult work, including remove with their bare hands the debris and bodies left from the extensive German bombardment of Belgrade.[12] Those who could not keep up, were shot by the German guards.

The killing of Jewish men

 
German soldier pointing gun at prisoner at Jajinci, where many of the Jewish men were executed

The destruction of Serbian Jews by the Nazi Germans was carried out in two distinct phases. The first, which lasted between July and November 1941, involved the murder of Jewish men, who were shot as part of retaliatory executions carried out by German forces in response to the rising anti-Nazi, partisan insurgency in Serbia. In October 1941. the German general, Franz Böhme, ordered the execution of 100 civilians for every German soldier killed and 50 for every wounded.[13] Böhme's order stated that hostages were to be drawn from "all Communists, people suspected of being Communists, all Jews, and a given number of nationalist and democratically minded inhabitants". Altogether some 30,000 Serbian civilians were executed by German troops during the first 2 months of this policy,[13] among them 5,000 Jewish men, or nearly all the Jewish males above age 14 in Serbia and the Banat.[14]

 
Crveni Krst concentration camp

By the end of Summer 1941, the Gestapo and local Volksdeutsche had already rounded up all the Jews in the Banat and transferred them to the Topovske Šupe and Sajmište concentration camps.[15] The Germans carried out the first arrest of hostages in Belgrade in April 1941. From August to November 1941 Germans rounded up adult Jewish males from the rest of Serbia, and interred them at Topovske Šupe.[15] These formed the main reservoir of Jewish hostages to be shot as part of the German reprisal policy of executing Serbian civilians. From there the Germans took and executed the Jews at killing grounds at Jajinci, Jabuka (near Pančevo), etc,.[16] 500 Banat Jews were executed at Deliblatska peščara in the south Banat,[16] while some Jews were killed as part of mass German executions elsewhere, like the Kragujevac and Kraljevo massacres.[17] Thus, by the November of 1941 “there were almost no living male Jews who could be used as hostages.”[18]

The killing of women and children

 
German van, similar to one used at Sajmište to gas Jewish women and children. The exhaust pipe diverted fumes into the sealed compartment at back. Once it was placed into position, a 10-15 minute ride was enough to kill up to 100 people locked in back[19]

The second genocidal activity, between December 1941 and May 1942, involved the incarceration of the women and children at the Semlin, or Sajmište concentration camp and their gassing in a mobile gas van called a Sauerwagen. The German concentration camp, in the old fairgrounds or Staro Sajmište, near Zemun was established across the Sava river from Belgrade, on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia, to process and eliminate the captured Jews, Serbs, Roma, and others.

On 8 December 1941, all remaining Belgrade Jews were ordered to report to the offices of the Judenreferat (Gestapo Jewish Police) in George Washington Street.[20] After handing over the keys to their homes, the Germans took them via the pontoon bridge over the Sava to the newly established Judenlager Semlin. 7,000 Jewish women and children were thus interred in the bombed-out camp fairgrounds over a brutal winter, when hundreds started to die.[20]

The first victims of the German gas van were the staff and patients at the two Jewish hospitals in Belgrade.[20] Over two days in March 1942, the Germans loaded over 800 people, mostly patients, into the gas van, in groups of between 80 and 100. They died of carbon-monoxide poisoning as the van drove to the killing grounds in Jajinci.[20] After the Jewish hospitals were emptied, the destruction of the Jewish women and children at Semlin began.  As the historian Christopher Browning explains:

'Once loaded, the [gas van] drove to the Sava bridge just several hundred meters from the camp's entrance, where Andorfer [the camp commander] waited in the car so as not to have to witness the loading […] On the far side of the bridge, the gas van stopped and one of the drivers climbed out and worked underneath it, connecting the exhaust to the sealed compartment. The baggage truck turned off the road while the gas van and the commandant's car drove through the middle of Belgrade to reach a shooting range...ten kilometres south of the city.'.[20]

Between 19 March and 10 May, the drivers, Götz and Meyer, accompanied by the camp commander Herbert Andorfer, made between 65 and 70 trips between Semlin and Jajinci, killing 6,300 Jewish inmates.[20] Of the almost 7000 Jews interned at Semlin, fewer than 50 women survived. The victims of the camp included 10,600 Serbs and uncounted Romani . Gendarmes of Milan Nedić, Dimitrije Ljotić and Chetniks by September 1944 captured about 455 remaining Jews in Serbia who were handed over to the Banjica camp where they were immediately killed.[21][22]

The destruction of the Kladovo Transport

 
Kladovo transport monument

In December 1939, ships carrying about 1,200 Jewish refugees, mostly from Austria and Germany, landed in Kladovo, on Serbia’s border with Romania.[23] Fleeing the Nazis, they were travelling the Danube to the Black Sea to reach Palestine, but due to British limitations on Jewish emigration to Palestine, the Romanian authorities refused them passage. At first they lived onshore and aboard the ships at Kladovo, with aid provided by the Belgrade Jewish community. In September 1940, they were resettled to the Serbian town of Šabac, some moving into private homes, others living in community facilities. Welcomed by the Mayor and locals, they resumed cultural, educational and religious activities; some young men joined the city soccer team.[24] In April 1941, when the Germans invaded Serbia, they incarcerated Kladovo transport and local Jews in an internment camp near town. In September 1941, as part of retaliations for a Partisan attack on Šabac, the Germans took the Jewish men on a 46 kilometer, forced “bloody march”, during which they killed 21 stragglers.[24] In October 1941, Wehrmacht squads shot the rest of the Jewish men, as part of executions of 2,100 hostages in retaliation for 21 German soldiers killed by Partisans.[24] In January 1942 the Germans took the women and children to Zemun, then forced them to march 10 kilometers through the snow to the Sajmište concentration camp, with some infants dying along the way. With the exception of two Kladovo transport women who managed to survive, all were later murdered by the Germans via asphyxiation in gas vans, together with Jewish women and children from across Serbia.[24]

The Holocaust in the Banat

Local ethnic German Danube Swabian or Shwovish authorities in Banat helped carry out the Holocaust in that area of German-occupied Serbia. Following the fall of Yugoslavia, local Germans began to plunder the property of Jews and engaged in acts of torture. On the evening of 14-15 August 1941, approximately 2,500 Jews from across all of Banat including Zrenjanin, Srpska Crnja, Jaša Tomić, Kikinda and Pančevo were arrested and deported to the German military authorities in Serbia by the local ethnic German authorities under Sepp Janko. The Jews were sent to concentration camps near Belgrade including Sajmište and Banjica where they were eventually killed.[25]

Role of the Wehrmacht

Although the Wehrmacht, after the war, stated that it took no part in the genocidal programmes, General Böhme and his men planned and executed the slaughter of over 20,000 Jews and Gypsies without any signal from Berlin.[2] As Tomasevich notes:

The Germans carried out the Final Solution almost completely in Serbia and the Banat, even before this policy was formally announced. This was possible for two main reasons. First, Germany fully controlled these areas through occupation, and the destruction of the Jews could be carried out by German forces. Second the Communist-led resistance began in Serbia, and in the mass shootings of hostages in reprisal, the Germans included a large number of Jews held in concentration camps.[17]

A German soldier wrote after the war, 'the shooting of Jews bore no relation to the Partisan attacks': the retaliations merely provided 'an alibi for the extermination of the Jews'.[4] Chief of the Military Administration in Serbia, Harald Turner, justified the killing of Jews along Serb hostages, by practicality ('they [the Jews] are the ones we have in the camp' and 'the Jewish question solves itself most quickly in this way'), adding that  '[the Jews] are also Serbian citizens and they have to disappear'.[4] By the time of the Wannsee Conference, the German military had already killed nearly all the Jewish men in Serbia and the Banat, and had herded the Jewish women and children into the Sajmiste concentration camp, in preparation for their extermination in the spring of 1942.

 
Emanuel Schäfer and Bruno Sattler in Belgrade, 1943

The SS-commander Harald Turner, Chief of the German military administration in Serbia summed up how the Nazis carried out the genocide of Serbian Jews:

Already some months ago, I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on in this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD (i.e. Sicherheitsdienst – Nazi Security Services) got my hands on a "delousing van," that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp...

— Dr. Harold Turner's letter to Karl Wolff, dated April 11, 1942.[26]

While the Germans were exclusively responsible for attempted extermination the Jews of Serbia proper, they were assisted by local collaborators in the Nedić government and others, who helped round up the Jews, Romani and Serbs who opposed the German occupation. Dimitrije Ljotić founded a Serbian pro-Nazi and pan-Serbian fascist party Zbor.[27][28][29][30] It was very active organization that published a large quantity of extreme anti-Semitic literature. The military wing of Zbor, the so-called Serbian Voluntary Guard actively supported the Gestapo in the elimination of Jews.

Emanuel Schäfer, commander of the Security Police and Gestapo in Serbia, convicted in Germany in 1953 for the death van killings of 6.000 Serbian Jews at Sajmiste, famously cabled Berlin after last Jews were killed in May 1942:

Serbien ist judenfrei.[31]

Similarly Harald Turner of the SS, later executed in Belgrade for his war crimes, stated in 1942 that:

Serbia is the only country in which the Jewish question and the Gypsy question has been solved.[32]

By the time Serbia and eastern parts of Yugoslavia were liberated in 1944, most of the Serbian Jewry had been murdered. Of the 82,500 Jews of Yugoslavia alive in 1941, only 14,000 (17%) survived the Holocaust.[33] Of the Serbian Jewish population of 16,000, the Nazis murdered approximately 14,500.[34][14][35]

Historian Christopher Browning who attended the conference on the subject of Holocaust and Serbian involvement stated:

Serbia was the only country outside Poland and the Soviet Union where all Jewish victims were killed on the spot without deportation, and was the first country after Estonia to be declared 'Judenfrei,'" a term used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to denote an area free of all Jews.

— Christopher Browning, his conference statement[36]

Collaborationist role

 
Anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic propaganda poster of the Nedić's quisling regime

To assist in the fight against the growing Partisan-led resistance in Serbia, the German military set up an entirely subservient, collaborationist administration, with limited power, under Milan Nedić.[37] While the Germans fully directed the Holocaust in Serbia, and carried out the mass-killing of Jews,[38][17] collaborationist forces assisted in a number of ways. At German command the quisling Special Police registered Jews, and enforced Nazi regulations, like wearing of yellow stars.[39] Later the German military performed mass round-ups of Jews to take them to concentration camps,[40][20] but relied on quisling forces to find and capture Jews who managed to elude the round-ups. Thus from 1942 to 1944 collaborationist forces captured and turned over at least 455 Jews to the Germans.[41] Some Jews who hid in the countryside were killed and robbed by Chetniks.[42]

The Germans and collaborationists jointly ran the Banjica concentration camp, where among the 23,697 recorded inmates, 688 were Jews.[43] The Gestapo killed 382 of these Jews in Banjica, taking the rest to other concentration camps.[43] Collaborationists, particularly members of the fascist Zbor, carried out anti-Semitic propaganda,[44] while Chetnik propaganda claimed that the Partisan resistance consisted of Jews.[45] Following the Nazi extermination of most Serbian Jews, a Nedić collaborationist document noted that "owing to the occupier, we have freed ourselves of Jews, and it is now up to us to rid ourselves of other immoral elements standing in the way of Serbia’s spiritual and national unity".[46]

The Germans placed the Banat region under the control of local, German-minority collaborationists.[17] These performed the first mass round-ups of Serbian Jews, sending local Jews to German concentration camps near Belgrade, where they were among the first to be killed by German forces.[17]

Number of victims

 
A monument commemorating the victims of the Sajmište concentration camp

Of the Jewish population of 16,000 in German-occupied Serbia, the Nazis murdered approximately 14,500.[34] Citing Jasa Romano, Tomasevich notes that from Serbia Proper, the Germans killed 11,000 Jews, plus an additional 3,800 Jews from the German-minority-controlled, Banat region.[47]

According to Jelena Subotić, of the 33,500 Jews who lived in Serbia pre-occupation, around 27,000 were killed in the Holocaust. In German-occupied Serbia approximately 12,000 of the 17,000 Jews were killed very early into the war, including almost all 11,000 Belgrade Jews.[48]

According to Yugoslav experts and post-war reports by Yugoslav government commissions, almost all Jews from Serbia, including the Banat, appeared to have been killed. Those Jews who joined the Partisans survived as well as Jewish members of the Royal Yugoslav Army captured in the invasion who ended up in Germany as prisoners of war. This means that the number of murdered Jews is around 16,000 while Romano in his latest estimates reduced that number to 15,000 killed.[49]

German concentration camps in occupied Serbia

 
A monument to those executed at the Jajinci firing range, part of the Banjica concentration camp

Help given by Serbian civilians

As of 2019, Yad Vashem recognizes 139 Serbians as Righteous Among the Nations. The numbers of Righteous are not necessarily an indication of the actual number of rescuers in each country, but reflect the cases that were made available to Yad Vashem.[50] Jaša Almuli, former president of the Jewish Association in Belgrade, wrote that the number of saved Jews was not higher because the occupying forces introduced the cruellest regime in Europe, besides the Soviet Union, which included the retaliation laws and prescribed executions.[51] Raphael Lemkin noted that Serbs were forbidden to help Jews by orders which provided the death penalty for sheltering or hiding Jews or accepting and buying objects of value from them.[52]

Restitution of properties

Serbia is the first country in Europe which adopted a law for restitution of properties of Jewish heirless victims of the Holocaust.[53] According to this law, besides this restitution, Serbia will make 950,000 EUR annual payment from its budget to the Union of Jewish Municipalities starting from 2017.[54] The World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) praised the adoption of this law while its chair of operations invited other countries to follow Serbia's example. The Embassy of Israel in Serbia issued a release welcoming the adoption of this law and emphasizing that Serbia should be an example for other countries in Europe. The release of the Embassy of Israel concluded: "The new law is a noble act of a great country that will breathe new life into the small Jewish community that it is today."[55]

Revisionism in Serbia

During the 1990s, the role Nedić and Ljotić played in the extermination of Serbia's Jews was downplayed by several Serbian historians.[56] In 1993, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts listed Nedić among The 100 most prominent Serbs.[57]

In 2006 a portrait of Milan Nedić was hung along with those of other Serbian heads of State in the Government of Serbia building. This and other attempts at rehabilitating Nedić met with sharp criticism, including from Aleksandar Lebl, head of the Association of Jewish Communities of Serbia who stated "Nedić was anti-Semitic, as were his government, police and armed forces – all these took part in the persecution of Jews, only the initiators and executors were German."[58] In 2009 Nedić’s portrait was removed after the initiative made by Ivica Dačić.[58]

Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, local councillors in Smederevo campaigned to have the town's largest square named after Ljotić. The councillors defended Ljotić's wartime record and justified the initiative by stating that "[collaboration] ... is what the biological survival of the Serbian people demanded" during World War II.[59] Later, the Serbian magazine Pogledi published a series of articles attempting to exonerate Ljotić.[60] In 1996, future Yugoslav President Vojislav Koštunica praised Ljotić in a public statement.[61] Koštunica and his Democratic Party of Serbia (Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS) actively campaigned to rehabilitate figures such as Ljotić and Nedić following the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević and his socialist government in October 2000.[61]

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Israeli, Raphael (4 March 2013). The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions, 1941–1945. Transaction Publishers. p. 31. ISBN 978-1-4128-4930-2. Retrieved 12 May 2013.
  2. ^ a b Misha Glenny. The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999. Page 502: "The Nazis were assisted by several thousand ethnic Germans as well as by supporters of Dijmitrje Ljotic's Yugoslav fascist movement, Zbor, and General Milan Nedic's quisling administration. But the main engine of extermination was the regular army. The destruction of the Serbian Jews gives the lie to Wehrmacht claims that it took no part in the genocidal programmes of the Nazis. Indeed, General Bohme and his men in German-occupied Serbia planned and carried out the murder of over 20,000 Jews and Gypsies without any prompting from Berlin"
  3. ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 587.
  4. ^ a b c "Semlin Judenlager". Retrieved 5 April 2014.
  5. ^ a b "Poseta starom sajmistu". Retrieved 20 October 2014.
  6. ^ Manoschek, Walter (2000). National Socialist extermination policies: contemporary German perspectives and controversies. Oxford: Berghan Books. p. 164.
  7. ^ Božović, Branislav (2004). Stradanje Jevreja u okupiranom Beogradu. Beograd: Srpska Školska Knjiga. pp. 282–283.
  8. ^ a b c d Romano, p. 62.
  9. ^ Romano, p. 65.
  10. ^ Romano, p. 64.
  11. ^ Romano, p. 67.
  12. ^ Romano, p. 67-68.
  13. ^ a b "Semlin Judenlager".
  14. ^ a b Ristović, Milan (2010), (PDF), Serbia. Righteous among Nations, Jewish Community of Zemun, archived from the original (PDF) on 1 February 2014, retrieved 9 April 2013
  15. ^ a b Ristovic, p. 12.
  16. ^ a b Romano, p. 72.
  17. ^ a b c d e Tomasevich 2001, p. 585.
  18. ^ Ristovic, p. 13.
  19. ^ "Semlin Judenlager 1941-1942 - Semlin Judenlager - Open University". www.open.ac.uk. Retrieved 4 November 2020.
  20. ^ a b c d e f g Byford 2011.
  21. ^ Haskin, Jeanne M. (2006). Bosnia and Beyond: The "quiet" Revolution that Wouldn't Go Quietly. Algora Publishing. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-87586-429-7.
  22. ^ Cohen, Philip J. (1996). Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-0-89096-760-7.
  23. ^ "Memorial to the Victims of the Kladovo Transport". Information portal to European sites of Remembrance.
  24. ^ a b c d Lukic, Vesna (2018). The river Danube as a Holocaust landscape : journey of the Kladovo transport (Ph.D. thesis). University of Bristol.
  25. ^ Mojzes 2011, p. 74.
  26. ^ Visualizing Otherness II, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota.
  27. ^ Skutsch, Carl (2005). Encyclopedia of the world's minorities, Volume 3. Routledge. p. 1083.
  28. ^ Megargee, Geoffrey P. (2018). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume III. Indiana University Press. p. 839.
  29. ^ Newman, John (2015). Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 1903–1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 248.
  30. ^ Cohen, Phillip J. (1996). Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. Texas A&M University Press. p. 37.
  31. ^ Barry M. Lituchy (2006). Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia: analyses and survivor testimonies. Jasenovac Research Institute. p. xxxiii. ISBN 9780975343203.
  32. ^ Dwork, Debórah; Robert Jan Pelt; Robert Jan Van Pelt (2003), Holocaust: a history, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, p. 184, ISBN 0-393-32524-5
  33. ^ Virtual Jewish History Tour – Serbia and Montenegro
  34. ^ a b Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing Company New York 1990
  35. ^ Lebel, G'eni (2007). Until "the Final Solution": The Jews in Belgrade 1521 - 1942. Avotaynu. p. 329. ISBN 9781886223332.
  36. ^ Christopher Browning; Rachel Hirshfeld (29 May 2012). "Serbia WWII Death Camp to 'Multicultural' Development?". Arutz Sheva – Israel National News. israelnationalnews.com. Retrieved 12 May 2013.
  37. ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 182.
  38. ^ Israeli 2013, p. 31-32.
  39. ^ Božović, Branislav. "Specijalna Policija I Stradanje Jevreja U Okupiranom Beogradu 1941-1944" (PDF).
  40. ^ Ristovic, Milan. Jews in Serbia during World War Two. p. 12.
  41. ^ Romano, Jasa. "Jevreji Jugoslavije 1941-1945, zrtve genocida i ucesnici NOR / Jasa Romano. p. 75. - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". collections.ushmm.org. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  42. ^ Lowenthal, Zdenko (1957). The Crimes of the Fascist Occupants and Their Collaborators Against Jews in Yugoslavia. Belgrade: Federation of Jewish Communities of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia. p. 42.
  43. ^ a b Israeli 2013, pp. 32–33.
  44. ^ Byford 2011, p. 302.
  45. ^ Tomasevich 1975, p. 192.
  46. ^ Ristovic, p. 16.
  47. ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 607.
  48. ^ Subotić, Jelena (2019). Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism. Cornell University Press. pp. 53–54. ISBN 978-1-50174-241-5.
  49. ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 654–657.
  50. ^ The Righteous Among The Nations Names and Numbers of Righteous Among the Nations – per Country & Ethnic Origin, as of 1 January 2019, Yad Vashem
  51. ^ Almuli 2002, p. 78.
  52. ^ Lemkin 2008, p. 250.
  53. ^ Nikola Samardžić (10 December 2016). . N1. Archived from the original on 29 May 2020. Retrieved 30 January 2017. Srbija je prva država u Evropi koja je donela zakon o vraćanju imovine Jevreja ubijenih u Holokaustu koji nemaju naslednike. Profesor Filozofskog fakulteta Nikola Samardžić kaže da je suočavanje sa Holokaustom ozbiljno i da je Srbija lider u Evropi po ovom zakonu.
  54. ^ Jelena Čalija (6 June 2016). "U avgustu prve odluke o vraćanju imovine stradalih Jevreja". Politika. Retrieved 30 January 2017.
  55. ^ "Law passed on Jewish property seized during Holocaust". B92. Belgrade. 15 February 2016. Retrieved 30 January 2017.
  56. ^ Perica 2002, p. 151.
  57. ^ "Rehabilitacija Milana Nedića". BBC Serbian. 7 July 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2017.
  58. ^ a b "Ko kači, a ko skida sliku Milana Nedića". Nedeljnik Vreme. 13 May 2009. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  59. ^ Byford, Jovan (2011). "Willing Bystanders: Dimitrije Ljotić, "Shield Collaboration" and the Destruction of Serbia's Jews". In Haynes, Rebecca; Rady, Martyn (eds.). In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe. I.B.Tauris. p. 96. ISBN 978-1-84511-697-2.
  60. ^ Macdonald, David Bruce (2002). Balkan Holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian Victim Centered Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia. Manchester University Press. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-71906-467-8.
  61. ^ a b Ramet 2005, p. 268.

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  • Lemkin, Raphael (2008). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Clark, New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange. ISBN 9781584779018.
  • Mojzes, Paul (2011). Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century. United Kingdom: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-0663-2.
  • Pavlowitch, Stevan K. (2002). Serbia: the History behind the Name. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 978-1-85065-476-6.
  • Perica, Vjekoslav (2002). Balkan idols: Religion and nationalism in Yugoslav states. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517429-8.
  • Prusin, Alexander (2019). "Collaboration Balkan Style: The Serbian Administration and the Holocaust". In Black, Peter; Rásky, Béla; Windsperger, Marianne (eds.). Collaboration in Eastern Europe during the Second World War and the Holocaust. new academic press / Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. pp. 205–222. ISBN 978-3-7003-2073-9.
  • Ramet, Sabrina P. (2005). Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61690-4.
  • Tomasevich, Jozo (1975). War and revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: Volume 1, The Chetniks. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0857-9. OCLC 1099749282.
  • Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: Volume 2, Occupation and Collaboration. ACLS Humanities E-Book. Stanford University Press. doi:10.1515/9780804779241. ISBN 978-0-8047-7924-1.

External links

  • Holokaust u Srbiji
  • Browning, Christopher R. (1983). «The Final Solution in Serbia; The Semlin Judenlager — A Case study». Yad Vashem Studies 15: pp. 55–90. 25 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine

holocaust, german, occupied, serbia, part, european, wide, holocaust, nazi, genocide, against, jews, during, world, which, occurred, territory, military, commander, serbia, military, administration, third, reich, established, after, april, 1941, invasion, yugo. The Holocaust in German occupied Serbia was part of the European wide Holocaust the Nazi genocide against Jews during World War II which occurred in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia the military administration of the Third Reich established after the April 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia The crimes were primarily committed by the German occupation authorities who implemented Nazi racial policies assisted by the collaborationist forces of the successive puppet governments established by the Germans in the occupied territory Map of concentration camps in Yugoslavia in World War II The monument to the Holocaust victims in Belgrade Immediately after the occupation the occupation authorities introduced racial laws labeling Jews and Romani as Untermensch sub humans They also appointed two Serbian civil puppet governments to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision Jews were the primary target but Romani were also targeted for elimination The perpetrators of the Holocaust was the Nazi German Wehrmacht stationed in German occupied Serbia The main engine of extermination was the regular German army 1 2 They carried out operations with the assistance of Milan Nedic s puppet government and Dimitrije Ljotic s fascist organization Yugoslav National Movement Zbor which had joint control over the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade along with the German Gestapo The murders were primarily carried out in concentration camps and gas vans In May 1942 occupied Serbia became one of the first territories declared judenfrei The Nazis systematically murdered approximately 18 000 Serbian Jews in the occupied territory The main Holocaust perpetrators in Serbia Nazi German officers Harald Turner August Meyszner and Johann Fortner were extradited after the war to Yugoslavia where they were tried and executed Milan Nedic was imprisoned by the Yugoslav authorities but committed suicide soon after while Ljotic was killed in a car accident As of 2019 139 Serbians have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations Contents 1 Background 2 The Holocaust 2 1 Anti Semitic regulations 2 2 Beginning of persecution 2 3 The killing of Jewish men 2 4 The killing of women and children 2 5 The destruction of the Kladovo Transport 2 6 The Holocaust in the Banat 3 Role of the Wehrmacht 3 1 Collaborationist role 4 Number of victims 5 German concentration camps in occupied Serbia 6 Help given by Serbian civilians 7 Restitution of properties 8 Revisionism in Serbia 9 See also 10 References 10 1 Footnotes 10 2 Bibliography 11 External linksBackground nbsp Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia Yugoslav Foreign Secretary Anton Korosec who was Roman Catholic priest and leader of Slovenian conservatives stated in September 1938 that Jewish issue did not exist in Yugoslavia Jewish refugees from the Nazi Germany are not welcome here In December 1938 Rabbi Isaac Alkalai the only Jewish member of government was dismissed from the government On 25 March 1941 Prince Paul of Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact allying the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the Axis powers The Pact was extremely unpopular particularly in Serbia and Montenegro and demonstrations broke out On 27 March Serb military officers overthrew Prince Paul The new government withdrew its support for the Axis but did not repudiate the Tripartite Pact Nevertheless Axis forces led by Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941 The Axis forces partitioned Serbia with Hungary Bulgaria Italy and the Independent State of Croatia occupying and annexing large areas In central Serbia the Germans occupiers established the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia Gebiet des Militarbefehlshabers in Serbien the only area of partitioned Yugoslavia under direct German military government with the day to day administration of the territory controlled by the German Chief of the Military Administration The German Military Commander in Serbia appointed a Serbian civil puppet government to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision The police and army of the puppet government were placed under German commanders In July 1941 a major uprising began in Serbia against the German occupiers which included the establishment of the Republic of Uzice the first liberated territory in World War II Europe At Hitler s personal command to crush the resistance the German military started executing tens of thousands of Serb civilians among whom they included thousands of Jews 3 To assist in quelling the rebellion the German occupiers in August 1941 put in place the puppet government of Milan Nedic which was also given responsibility for many Holocaust related activities including the registration and arrest of Jews and joint control over the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade 1 The HolocaustAnti Semitic regulations nbsp Jews were rounded up by the Germans after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia On 13 April 1941 before the Royal Yugoslav Army formally capitulated Wilhelm Fuchs Chief of the Einsatzgruppen based in Belgrade ordered the registration of the city s Jews 4 His order stated that all those who did not register would be shot 5 Shortly after Field Commander Colonel von Keisenberg issued a decree which limited their freedom of movement 6 On 29 April 1941 the Chief of the German Military Administration in Serbia Harald Turner issued the order to register all Jews and Gypsies throughout German occupied Serbia The order prescribed the wearing of yellow armbands introduced forced labor and curfew limited access to food and other provisions and banned the use of public transport 7 On 30 May the German Military Commander in Serbia Helmuth Forster issued the main race laws The Regulation Concerning Jews and Gypsies Verordnung Betreffend Die Juden Und Zigeuner which defined who is considered Jewish and Gypsy The law excluded Jews and Roma from public and economic life their property was seized they were obliged to register in special lists Judenregister and Zigeunerlisten and for forced labor In addition the order prescribed the obligatory wearing of yellow tape for Jews and Roma and prohibited them from working in public institutions or in professions such as law medicine dentistry veterinary medicine and pharmacy as well as visiting cinemas theaters entertainment venues public baths sports fields and markets 5 Beginning of persecution nbsp Jews arrested in Belgrade in 1941 Already in the initial days of the occupation members of the German Einsatzgruppe Jugoslawien started breaking into and looting Jewish businesses 8 Later these businesses were confiscated per German anti Semitic regulations often turned over to the control of local Volksdeutsche 8 All other Jewish real estate and personal property plus religious properties were also confiscated A special form of theft was the contribution amounting to 12 million dinars which Belgrade Jews were forced to pay for the damages to Germans of the April War which the Jews caused 8 In addition the Germans forced Belgrade Jews to pay 1 400 000 dinars into a Fund for the suppression of Jewish Communist actions 8 Germans and Volksdeutsche mistreated and beat Jews on the streets while in Belgrade Volksdeutsche and Ljotic ites captured older Jews bestially mistreating them 9 Germans with the help of Volksdeutsche and Ljotic ites destroyed and desecrated Jewish temples 10 The Germans conscripted all Jewish men between ages 14 and 60 and all Jewish women between 16 and 40 to perform forced labor for 17 and 18 hours a day without rest 11 They were forced to do the most difficult work including remove with their bare hands the debris and bodies left from the extensive German bombardment of Belgrade 12 Those who could not keep up were shot by the German guards The killing of Jewish men nbsp German soldier pointing gun at prisoner at Jajinci where many of the Jewish men were executedThe destruction of Serbian Jews by the Nazi Germans was carried out in two distinct phases The first which lasted between July and November 1941 involved the murder of Jewish men who were shot as part of retaliatory executions carried out by German forces in response to the rising anti Nazi partisan insurgency in Serbia In October 1941 the German general Franz Bohme ordered the execution of 100 civilians for every German soldier killed and 50 for every wounded 13 Bohme s order stated that hostages were to be drawn from all Communists people suspected of being Communists all Jews and a given number of nationalist and democratically minded inhabitants Altogether some 30 000 Serbian civilians were executed by German troops during the first 2 months of this policy 13 among them 5 000 Jewish men or nearly all the Jewish males above age 14 in Serbia and the Banat 14 nbsp Crveni Krst concentration campBy the end of Summer 1941 the Gestapo and local Volksdeutsche had already rounded up all the Jews in the Banat and transferred them to the Topovske Supe and Sajmiste concentration camps 15 The Germans carried out the first arrest of hostages in Belgrade in April 1941 From August to November 1941 Germans rounded up adult Jewish males from the rest of Serbia and interred them at Topovske Supe 15 These formed the main reservoir of Jewish hostages to be shot as part of the German reprisal policy of executing Serbian civilians From there the Germans took and executed the Jews at killing grounds at Jajinci Jabuka near Pancevo etc 16 500 Banat Jews were executed at Deliblatska pescara in the south Banat 16 while some Jews were killed as part of mass German executions elsewhere like the Kragujevac and Kraljevo massacres 17 Thus by the November of 1941 there were almost no living male Jews who could be used as hostages 18 The killing of women and children nbsp German van similar to one used at Sajmiste to gas Jewish women and children The exhaust pipe diverted fumes into the sealed compartment at back Once it was placed into position a 10 15 minute ride was enough to kill up to 100 people locked in back 19 The second genocidal activity between December 1941 and May 1942 involved the incarceration of the women and children at the Semlin or Sajmiste concentration camp and their gassing in a mobile gas van called a Sauerwagen The German concentration camp in the old fairgrounds or Staro Sajmiste near Zemun was established across the Sava river from Belgrade on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia to process and eliminate the captured Jews Serbs Roma and others On 8 December 1941 all remaining Belgrade Jews were ordered to report to the offices of the Judenreferat Gestapo Jewish Police in George Washington Street 20 After handing over the keys to their homes the Germans took them via the pontoon bridge over the Sava to the newly established Judenlager Semlin 7 000 Jewish women and children were thus interred in the bombed out camp fairgrounds over a brutal winter when hundreds started to die 20 The first victims of the German gas van were the staff and patients at the two Jewish hospitals in Belgrade 20 Over two days in March 1942 the Germans loaded over 800 people mostly patients into the gas van in groups of between 80 and 100 They died of carbon monoxide poisoning as the van drove to the killing grounds in Jajinci 20 After the Jewish hospitals were emptied the destruction of the Jewish women and children at Semlin began As the historian Christopher Browning explains Once loaded the gas van drove to the Sava bridge just several hundred meters from the camp s entrance where Andorfer the camp commander waited in the car so as not to have to witness the loading On the far side of the bridge the gas van stopped and one of the drivers climbed out and worked underneath it connecting the exhaust to the sealed compartment The baggage truck turned off the road while the gas van and the commandant s car drove through the middle of Belgrade to reach a shooting range ten kilometres south of the city 20 Between 19 March and 10 May the drivers Gotz and Meyer accompanied by the camp commander Herbert Andorfer made between 65 and 70 trips between Semlin and Jajinci killing 6 300 Jewish inmates 20 Of the almost 7000 Jews interned at Semlin fewer than 50 women survived The victims of the camp included 10 600 Serbs and uncounted Romani Gendarmes of Milan Nedic Dimitrije Ljotic and Chetniks by September 1944 captured about 455 remaining Jews in Serbia who were handed over to the Banjica camp where they were immediately killed 21 22 The destruction of the Kladovo Transport nbsp Kladovo transport monument In December 1939 ships carrying about 1 200 Jewish refugees mostly from Austria and Germany landed in Kladovo on Serbia s border with Romania 23 Fleeing the Nazis they were travelling the Danube to the Black Sea to reach Palestine but due to British limitations on Jewish emigration to Palestine the Romanian authorities refused them passage At first they lived onshore and aboard the ships at Kladovo with aid provided by the Belgrade Jewish community In September 1940 they were resettled to the Serbian town of Sabac some moving into private homes others living in community facilities Welcomed by the Mayor and locals they resumed cultural educational and religious activities some young men joined the city soccer team 24 In April 1941 when the Germans invaded Serbia they incarcerated Kladovo transport and local Jews in an internment camp near town In September 1941 as part of retaliations for a Partisan attack on Sabac the Germans took the Jewish men on a 46 kilometer forced bloody march during which they killed 21 stragglers 24 In October 1941 Wehrmacht squads shot the rest of the Jewish men as part of executions of 2 100 hostages in retaliation for 21 German soldiers killed by Partisans 24 In January 1942 the Germans took the women and children to Zemun then forced them to march 10 kilometers through the snow to the Sajmiste concentration camp with some infants dying along the way With the exception of two Kladovo transport women who managed to survive all were later murdered by the Germans via asphyxiation in gas vans together with Jewish women and children from across Serbia 24 The Holocaust in the Banat Local ethnic German Danube Swabian or Shwovish authorities in Banat helped carry out the Holocaust in that area of German occupied Serbia Following the fall of Yugoslavia local Germans began to plunder the property of Jews and engaged in acts of torture On the evening of 14 15 August 1941 approximately 2 500 Jews from across all of Banat including Zrenjanin Srpska Crnja Jasa Tomic Kikinda and Pancevo were arrested and deported to the German military authorities in Serbia by the local ethnic German authorities under Sepp Janko The Jews were sent to concentration camps near Belgrade including Sajmiste and Banjica where they were eventually killed 25 Role of the WehrmachtAlthough the Wehrmacht after the war stated that it took no part in the genocidal programmes General Bohme and his men planned and executed the slaughter of over 20 000 Jews and Gypsies without any signal from Berlin 2 As Tomasevich notes The Germans carried out the Final Solution almost completely in Serbia and the Banat even before this policy was formally announced This was possible for two main reasons First Germany fully controlled these areas through occupation and the destruction of the Jews could be carried out by German forces Second the Communist led resistance began in Serbia and in the mass shootings of hostages in reprisal the Germans included a large number of Jews held in concentration camps 17 A German soldier wrote after the war the shooting of Jews bore no relation to the Partisan attacks the retaliations merely provided an alibi for the extermination of the Jews 4 Chief of the Military Administration in Serbia Harald Turner justified the killing of Jews along Serb hostages by practicality they the Jews are the ones we have in the camp and the Jewish question solves itself most quickly in this way adding that the Jews are also Serbian citizens and they have to disappear 4 By the time of the Wannsee Conference the German military had already killed nearly all the Jewish men in Serbia and the Banat and had herded the Jewish women and children into the Sajmiste concentration camp in preparation for their extermination in the spring of 1942 nbsp Emanuel Schafer and Bruno Sattler in Belgrade 1943 The SS commander Harald Turner Chief of the German military administration in Serbia summed up how the Nazis carried out the genocide of Serbian Jews Already some months ago I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on in this area concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD i e Sicherheitsdienst Nazi Security Services got my hands on a delousing van that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp Dr Harold Turner s letter to Karl Wolff dated April 11 1942 26 While the Germans were exclusively responsible for attempted extermination the Jews of Serbia proper they were assisted by local collaborators in the Nedic government and others who helped round up the Jews Romani and Serbs who opposed the German occupation Dimitrije Ljotic founded a Serbian pro Nazi and pan Serbian fascist party Zbor 27 28 29 30 It was very active organization that published a large quantity of extreme anti Semitic literature The military wing of Zbor the so called Serbian Voluntary Guard actively supported the Gestapo in the elimination of Jews Emanuel Schafer commander of the Security Police and Gestapo in Serbia convicted in Germany in 1953 for the death van killings of 6 000 Serbian Jews at Sajmiste famously cabled Berlin after last Jews were killed in May 1942 Serbien ist judenfrei 31 Similarly Harald Turner of the SS later executed in Belgrade for his war crimes stated in 1942 that Serbia is the only country in which the Jewish question and the Gypsy question has been solved 32 By the time Serbia and eastern parts of Yugoslavia were liberated in 1944 most of the Serbian Jewry had been murdered Of the 82 500 Jews of Yugoslavia alive in 1941 only 14 000 17 survived the Holocaust 33 Of the Serbian Jewish population of 16 000 the Nazis murdered approximately 14 500 34 14 35 Historian Christopher Browning who attended the conference on the subject of Holocaust and Serbian involvement stated Serbia was the only country outside Poland and the Soviet Union where all Jewish victims were killed on the spot without deportation and was the first country after Estonia to be declared Judenfrei a term used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to denote an area free of all Jews Christopher Browning his conference statement 36 Collaborationist role nbsp Anti Semitic and anti Masonic propaganda poster of the Nedic s quisling regime To assist in the fight against the growing Partisan led resistance in Serbia the German military set up an entirely subservient collaborationist administration with limited power under Milan Nedic 37 While the Germans fully directed the Holocaust in Serbia and carried out the mass killing of Jews 38 17 collaborationist forces assisted in a number of ways At German command the quisling Special Police registered Jews and enforced Nazi regulations like wearing of yellow stars 39 Later the German military performed mass round ups of Jews to take them to concentration camps 40 20 but relied on quisling forces to find and capture Jews who managed to elude the round ups Thus from 1942 to 1944 collaborationist forces captured and turned over at least 455 Jews to the Germans 41 Some Jews who hid in the countryside were killed and robbed by Chetniks 42 The Germans and collaborationists jointly ran the Banjica concentration camp where among the 23 697 recorded inmates 688 were Jews 43 The Gestapo killed 382 of these Jews in Banjica taking the rest to other concentration camps 43 Collaborationists particularly members of the fascist Zbor carried out anti Semitic propaganda 44 while Chetnik propaganda claimed that the Partisan resistance consisted of Jews 45 Following the Nazi extermination of most Serbian Jews a Nedic collaborationist document noted that owing to the occupier we have freed ourselves of Jews and it is now up to us to rid ourselves of other immoral elements standing in the way of Serbia s spiritual and national unity 46 The Germans placed the Banat region under the control of local German minority collaborationists 17 These performed the first mass round ups of Serbian Jews sending local Jews to German concentration camps near Belgrade where they were among the first to be killed by German forces 17 Number of victims nbsp A monument commemorating the victims of the Sajmiste concentration camp Of the Jewish population of 16 000 in German occupied Serbia the Nazis murdered approximately 14 500 34 Citing Jasa Romano Tomasevich notes that from Serbia Proper the Germans killed 11 000 Jews plus an additional 3 800 Jews from the German minority controlled Banat region 47 According to Jelena Subotic of the 33 500 Jews who lived in Serbia pre occupation around 27 000 were killed in the Holocaust In German occupied Serbia approximately 12 000 of the 17 000 Jews were killed very early into the war including almost all 11 000 Belgrade Jews 48 According to Yugoslav experts and post war reports by Yugoslav government commissions almost all Jews from Serbia including the Banat appeared to have been killed Those Jews who joined the Partisans survived as well as Jewish members of the Royal Yugoslav Army captured in the invasion who ended up in Germany as prisoners of war This means that the number of murdered Jews is around 16 000 while Romano in his latest estimates reduced that number to 15 000 killed 49 German concentration camps in occupied Serbia nbsp A monument to those executed at the Jajinci firing range part of the Banjica concentration camp Sajmiste concentration camp Banjica concentration camp Topovske Supe concentration camp Crveni Krst concentration campHelp given by Serbian civiliansAs of 2019 Yad Vashem recognizes 139 Serbians as Righteous Among the Nations The numbers of Righteous are not necessarily an indication of the actual number of rescuers in each country but reflect the cases that were made available to Yad Vashem 50 Jasa Almuli former president of the Jewish Association in Belgrade wrote that the number of saved Jews was not higher because the occupying forces introduced the cruellest regime in Europe besides the Soviet Union which included the retaliation laws and prescribed executions 51 Raphael Lemkin noted that Serbs were forbidden to help Jews by orders which provided the death penalty for sheltering or hiding Jews or accepting and buying objects of value from them 52 Restitution of propertiesSerbia is the first country in Europe which adopted a law for restitution of properties of Jewish heirless victims of the Holocaust 53 According to this law besides this restitution Serbia will make 950 000 EUR annual payment from its budget to the Union of Jewish Municipalities starting from 2017 54 The World Jewish Restitution Organization WJRO praised the adoption of this law while its chair of operations invited other countries to follow Serbia s example The Embassy of Israel in Serbia issued a release welcoming the adoption of this law and emphasizing that Serbia should be an example for other countries in Europe The release of the Embassy of Israel concluded The new law is a noble act of a great country that will breathe new life into the small Jewish community that it is today 55 Revisionism in SerbiaDuring the 1990s the role Nedic and Ljotic played in the extermination of Serbia s Jews was downplayed by several Serbian historians 56 In 1993 the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts listed Nedic among The 100 most prominent Serbs 57 In 2006 a portrait of Milan Nedic was hung along with those of other Serbian heads of State in the Government of Serbia building This and other attempts at rehabilitating Nedic met with sharp criticism including from Aleksandar Lebl head of the Association of Jewish Communities of Serbia who stated Nedic was anti Semitic as were his government police and armed forces all these took part in the persecution of Jews only the initiators and executors were German 58 In 2009 Nedic s portrait was removed after the initiative made by Ivica Dacic 58 Following the breakup of Yugoslavia local councillors in Smederevo campaigned to have the town s largest square named after Ljotic The councillors defended Ljotic s wartime record and justified the initiative by stating that collaboration is what the biological survival of the Serbian people demanded during World War II 59 Later the Serbian magazine Pogledi published a series of articles attempting to exonerate Ljotic 60 In 1996 future Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica praised Ljotic in a public statement 61 Kostunica and his Democratic Party of Serbia Demokratska stranka Srbije DSS actively campaigned to rehabilitate figures such as Ljotic and Nedic following the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic and his socialist government in October 2000 61 See alsoAnti Freemason Exhibition History of the Jews in Serbia Trostruki surdukReferencesFootnotes a b Israeli Raphael 4 March 2013 The Death Camps of Croatia Visions and Revisions 1941 1945 Transaction Publishers p 31 ISBN 978 1 4128 4930 2 Retrieved 12 May 2013 a b Misha Glenny The Balkans Nationalism War and the Great Powers 1804 1999 Page 502 The Nazis were assisted by several thousand ethnic Germans as well as by supporters of Dijmitrje Ljotic s Yugoslav fascist movement Zbor and General Milan Nedic s quisling administration But the main engine of extermination was the regular army The destruction of the Serbian Jews gives the lie to Wehrmacht claims that it took no part in the genocidal programmes of the Nazis Indeed General Bohme and his men in German occupied Serbia planned and carried out the murder of over 20 000 Jews and Gypsies without any prompting from Berlin Tomasevich 2001 p 587 a b c Semlin Judenlager Retrieved 5 April 2014 a b Poseta starom sajmistu Retrieved 20 October 2014 Manoschek Walter 2000 National Socialist extermination policies contemporary German perspectives and controversies Oxford Berghan Books p 164 Bozovic Branislav 2004 Stradanje Jevreja u okupiranom Beogradu Beograd Srpska Skolska Knjiga pp 282 283 a b c d Romano p 62 Romano p 65 Romano p 64 Romano p 67 Romano p 67 68 a b Semlin Judenlager a b Ristovic Milan 2010 Jews in Serbia during World War Two PDF Serbia Righteous among Nations Jewish Community of Zemun archived from the original PDF on 1 February 2014 retrieved 9 April 2013 a b Ristovic p 12 a b Romano p 72 a b c d e Tomasevich 2001 p 585 Ristovic p 13 Semlin Judenlager 1941 1942 Semlin Judenlager Open University www open ac uk Retrieved 4 November 2020 a b c d e f g Byford 2011 Haskin Jeanne M 2006 Bosnia and Beyond The quiet Revolution that Wouldn t Go Quietly Algora Publishing p 29 ISBN 978 0 87586 429 7 Cohen Philip J 1996 Serbia s Secret War Propaganda and the Deceit of History Texas A amp M University Press ISBN 978 0 89096 760 7 Memorial to the Victims of the Kladovo Transport Information portal to European sites of Remembrance a b c d Lukic Vesna 2018 The river Danube as a Holocaust landscape journey of the Kladovo transport Ph D thesis University of Bristol Mojzes 2011 p 74 Visualizing Otherness II Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies University of Minnesota Skutsch Carl 2005 Encyclopedia of the world s minorities Volume 3 Routledge p 1083 Megargee Geoffrey P 2018 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933 1945 Volume III Indiana University Press p 839 Newman John 2015 Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War Veterans and the Limits of State Building 1903 1945 Cambridge University Press p 248 Cohen Phillip J 1996 Serbia s Secret War Propaganda and the Deceit of History Texas A amp M University Press p 37 Barry M Lituchy 2006 Jasenovac and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia analyses and survivor testimonies Jasenovac Research Institute p xxxiii ISBN 9780975343203 Dwork Deborah Robert Jan Pelt Robert Jan Van Pelt 2003 Holocaust a history New York N Y W W Norton amp Company p 184 ISBN 0 393 32524 5 Virtual Jewish History Tour Serbia and Montenegro a b Encyclopedia of the Holocaust Macmillan Publishing Company New York 1990 Lebel G eni 2007 Until the Final Solution The Jews in Belgrade 1521 1942 Avotaynu p 329 ISBN 9781886223332 Christopher Browning Rachel Hirshfeld 29 May 2012 Serbia WWII Death Camp to Multicultural Development Arutz Sheva Israel National News israelnationalnews com Retrieved 12 May 2013 Tomasevich 2001 p 182 Israeli 2013 p 31 32 Bozovic Branislav Specijalna Policija I Stradanje Jevreja U Okupiranom Beogradu 1941 1944 PDF Ristovic Milan Jews in Serbia during World War Two p 12 Romano Jasa Jevreji Jugoslavije 1941 1945 zrtve genocida i ucesnici NOR Jasa Romano p 75 Collections Search United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collections ushmm org Retrieved 31 October 2020 Lowenthal Zdenko 1957 The Crimes of the Fascist Occupants and Their Collaborators Against Jews in Yugoslavia Belgrade Federation of Jewish Communities of the Federative People s Republic of Yugoslavia p 42 a b Israeli 2013 pp 32 33 Byford 2011 p 302 Tomasevich 1975 p 192 Ristovic p 16 Tomasevich 2001 p 607 Subotic Jelena 2019 Yellow Star Red Star Holocaust Remembrance after Communism Cornell University Press pp 53 54 ISBN 978 1 50174 241 5 Tomasevich 2001 pp 654 657 The Righteous Among The Nations Names and Numbers of Righteous Among the Nations per Country amp Ethnic Origin as of 1 January 2019 Yad Vashem Almuli 2002 p 78 Lemkin 2008 p 250 Nikola Samardzic 10 December 2016 Vracanje imovine Jevrejima Srbija lider u Evropi N1 Archived from the original on 29 May 2020 Retrieved 30 January 2017 Srbija je prva drzava u Evropi koja je donela zakon o vracanju imovine Jevreja ubijenih u Holokaustu koji nemaju naslednike Profesor Filozofskog fakulteta Nikola Samardzic kaze da je suocavanje sa Holokaustom ozbiljno i da je Srbija lider u Evropi po ovom zakonu Jelena Calija 6 June 2016 U avgustu prve odluke o vracanju imovine stradalih Jevreja Politika Retrieved 30 January 2017 Law passed on Jewish property seized during Holocaust B92 Belgrade 15 February 2016 Retrieved 30 January 2017 Perica 2002 p 151 Rehabilitacija Milana Nedica BBC Serbian 7 July 2008 Retrieved 28 January 2017 a b Ko kaci a ko skida sliku Milana Nedica Nedeljnik Vreme 13 May 2009 Retrieved 3 February 2021 Byford Jovan 2011 Willing Bystanders Dimitrije Ljotic Shield Collaboration and the Destruction of Serbia s Jews In Haynes Rebecca Rady Martyn eds In the Shadow of Hitler Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe I B Tauris p 96 ISBN 978 1 84511 697 2 Macdonald David Bruce 2002 Balkan Holocausts Serbian and Croatian Victim Centered Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia Manchester University Press p 140 ISBN 978 0 71906 467 8 a b Ramet 2005 p 268 Bibliography Almuli Jasa 2002 Zivi i mrtvi razgovori sa Jevrejima S Masic ISBN 9788675980087 Hehn Paul N 1971 Serbia Croatia and Germany 1941 1945 Civil War and Revolution in the Balkans Canadian Slavonic Papers 13 4 University of Alberta 344 373 doi 10 1080 00085006 1971 11091249 Retrieved 8 April 2012 Lemkin Raphael 2008 Axis Rule in Occupied Europe Clark New Jersey The Lawbook Exchange ISBN 9781584779018 Mojzes Paul 2011 Balkan Genocides Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century United Kingdom Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers ISBN 978 1 4422 0663 2 Pavlowitch Stevan K 2002 Serbia the History behind the Name London C Hurst amp Co Publishers ISBN 978 1 85065 476 6 Perica Vjekoslav 2002 Balkan idols Religion and nationalism in Yugoslav states Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 517429 8 Prusin Alexander 2019 Collaboration Balkan Style The Serbian Administration and the Holocaust In Black Peter Rasky Bela Windsperger Marianne eds Collaboration in Eastern Europe during the Second World War and the Holocaust new academic press Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies pp 205 222 ISBN 978 3 7003 2073 9 Ramet Sabrina P 2005 Thinking about Yugoslavia Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 61690 4 Tomasevich Jozo 1975 War and revolution in Yugoslavia 1941 1945 Volume 1 The Chetniks Stanford University Press ISBN 978 0 8047 0857 9 OCLC 1099749282 Tomasevich Jozo 2001 War and Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941 1945 Volume 2 Occupation and Collaboration ACLS Humanities E Book Stanford University Press doi 10 1515 9780804779241 ISBN 978 0 8047 7924 1 External links nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Holocaust in Serbia Holokaust u Srbiji Browning Christopher R 1983 The Final Solution in Serbia The Semlin Judenlager A Case study Yad Vashem Studies 15 pp 55 90 Archived 25 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Holocaust in German occupied Serbia amp oldid 1214981950, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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