Banjica concentration camp
The Banjica concentration camp was a concentration camp in Serbia during World War II and existed from July 5, 1941 to September 1944. The camp was located in the suburb of the same name in the Serbian capital Belgrade , about five kilometers south of the city center. It was originally built for Serbian Jews , but later increasingly used to imprison opponents (mainly Tito partisans and Mihailović Chetniks ) of the Serbian collaboration government under Milan Nedić .
The concentration camp prisoners were detained by the Belgrade civil administration, the Serbian State Guard , the Serbian Volunteer Corps and Serbian courts from across the country. There were up to 23,637 prisoners in the Banjica camp at the same time. The Gestapo , Serbian special police and the Serbian State Guard carried out numerous mass shootings . About 4,200 were murdered. Several thousand prisoners were taken to the Mauthausen and Auschwitz camps.
After the first prisoners had been brought there on May 9, 1941, at a meeting of members of the Serbian police and members of the Gestapo in June 1941, it was decided to convert one of the barracks of the Yugoslav Army into a concentration camp. Dragi Jovanović (1902–1946) signed the relevant order, Svetozar Vujković (1899–1949) was appointed camp commander of the Serbian parts of the camp. A smaller part of the camp was under the Gestapo. Oberleutnant Friedrich Willy was in command of the camp . The medical management of the camp was officially subordinate to the SS Major Friedrich Jung, who was assisted by the imprisoned doctors Velisar Pijade (Jew), Žarko Fogaraš (Tito partisan) and Ljubodrag Stefanović (Mihailović-Tschetnik); of the three, only Žarko Fogaraš survived the camp.
Commemoration
A first memorial was built in 1963 in a part that is not accessible to the public, the barracks that are still in operation today; The expansion followed in 1983. From this point on, the museum was also open to general visitors. Numerous items that belonged to the prisoners (photos, drawings, hand-made art objects) are exhibited in the Banjica Museum.
Known inmates
- Vasa Čubrilović (1897–1990), briefly held hostage
- Aleksandar Deroko (1894–1988)
- Viktor Novak (1889–1977), briefly imprisoned as a hostage in 1941
- Nikola Vulić (1872–1945)
Web links
- Banjica Concentration Camp Museum (from the web archive)
literature
- Evica Micković, Milena Radojčić: Logor Banjica: logoraši: knjige zatočenika koncentracionog logora Beograd-Banjica: 1941–1944 . Ed .: Istorijski arhiv Beograda. 2nd volumes. Beograd 2009 ( online book review by Editor-in-Chief Zlatoje Martinov in the Serbian magazine Republika [accessed March 23, 2013]).
Coordinates: 44 ° 46 ′ 15 ″ N , 20 ° 28 ′ 3 ″ E