Banjica concentration camp
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Banjica concentration camp
Banjica concentration camp was a quisling and Nazi German concentration camp in the occupied Serbia during World War II, located in the eponymous suburb of Belgrade.[1] It started as a center for holding hostages, but later included Jews, Serbs, Roma, captured Partisans, and other opponents of the German Reich. The camp's registers record the names of 23,637 prisoners, of which 4,286 were executed or died.[1][2]
The camp was open from June 1941[1] to September 1944. It was jointly run by German occupying forces, under command of Gestapo official Willy Friedrich,[3] and the Serbian State Guard. The Serbian administrator was Svetozar Vujković, a pre-war policeman, while his deputy was Đorđe Kosmajac, and both were infamous for their sadism.[2]
The first reprisal executions in late June were against "Communists and Jews".[4] The first mass execution at Banjica occurred on December 17, 1941, when 170 prisoners were shot.[5]
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Operation of camp
The camp was chiefly intended for Serbs accused to be communists, royalists, or otherwise opposed to the occupation, although some 900 Jews and 300 Roma also passed through the camp during the course of the war. The inmates were brought by German forces and Serbian special police. The Serbians were reported to have been even more brutal to the inmates than the German occupiers. Special police, led by Ilija Paranos and Božidar Bećarević, brought in 4,456 prisoners, of which 1,409 (31.6% of the total death toll) were executed. Before execution, most were questioned and tortured in most brutal manner. The remainder was imprisoned by German forces, chiefly SS (11,311 arrested, 1,872 died) and Gestapo (1,773 arrested, 326 died).[2]
The village of Jajinci near Belgrade functioned as an execution site for inmates from the Banjica camp. Some sources state that mass murder of 250—450 Jews who were executed on October 17, 1941 on the location named Trostruki surduk, were brought there from Banjica concentration camp.[6]
One of the Banjica prisoners was Toma Petrović, then the British ambassador’s driver, who tried to conceal a quantity of arms and explosives which had been left inside the British Embassy premises and who was betrayed to the Gestapo.[7]
According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,[8] "In November 1943 SS-Standartenfuehrer Paul Blobel, the officer in charge of 'Aktion 1005', came to Belgrade in order to set up a unit that would disinter the bodies of the murder victims and burn them. The unit, consisting of fifty members of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and German military police, as well as 100 Jewish and Serbian prisoners was engaged in its gruesome task of obliterating the traces of the murders up to the fall of 1944". The few preserved lists document that even children were executed: mothers with small children in their arms, 22 under the age of 7, 26 between 7 and 14, and 76 between 14 and 17.
Several thousands of the prisoners were sent to concentration and labour camps in Germany and Poland such as Mauthausen-Gusen and Auschwitz. The museum of the Banjica prison camp has materials taken from the prisoners, including photographs, personal belongings, drawings, and hand-made art.
The Banjica concentration camp was shut down at the end of September 1944, a month before the withdrawal of the Germans from Belgrade. Its commandant, Willy Friedrich, was tried by a Yugoslav military court at Belgrade on March 27, 1947 and sentenced to death.[3]
Heritage
After the war, the site of the camp was turned into museum, with permanent exhibitions devoted to the camp site. It is part of the Museum of the City of Belgrade.
Radio Television Belgrade produced a television miniseries about the camp titled Banjica in 1984.[9]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg by International Military Tribunal Contributor Hermann Göring International Military Tribunal 1947, page 283
- ^ a b c Zlatoje Martinov. "Logor Banjica – važno mesto u istoriji zločina (book overview)" (in Serbian). Republika. http://www.republika.co.rs/460-461/32.html.
- ^ a b Noteworthy War Criminals Second World War-Europe. Commandants of Concentration Camps and Concentration Camp Trials. UNWCC
- ^ Christopher Browning. Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution. Holmes and Meyer, New York 1991, page 49
- ^ Ramet, Sabrina P., The three Yugoslavias: state-building and legitimation, 1918-2005. Indiana University Press, 2006. (p. 131)
- ^ "Konacno Resenje U Srbiji Prva Faza" (in Serbian) El Mundo Sefarad http://elmundosefarad.wikidot.com/5-konacno-resenje-u-srbiji-prva-faza. Retrieved November 28, 2010 "U pritvoreničkim knjigama Banjičkog logora, već 13. septembra 1941. godine, registrovano je 13 muškaraca — Roma iz Meljaka, koji su posle tri dana odvedeni na streljanje. Narednog dana, upisano je 187 beogradskih Jevreja za koje je, kao i za nekoliko dovedenih u međuvremenu, posle tri dana, 17. oktobra 1941, naznačeno da su odvedeni u »jevrejski logor Zemun«.95 Prema svedočenju dr Stefana Đelinea, ova grupa je u nemačkoj kartoteci dobila oznaku »crni jahač«, što znači da su streljani.96 Mogude je da je ova grupa brojala i više osoba, jer je upravo u to vreme na mestu Trostruki Surduk, 3 kilometra od Bežanije ka Surčinu, streljano 240 Jevreja.97”"
- ^ "History of the Embassy Building British Embassy, Belgrade."
- ^ Israel Gutman (Editor in Chief) (1990). Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. 4. McMillan New York. p. 1342.
- ^ "Banjica", IMDB
Bibliography
- Begović, Sima: Logor Banjica, Institut za savremenu istoriju, Beograd 1989, (Serbian) (ISBN 978867403030)
- Micković, Evica; Radojčić, Milena: Logor Banjica – logoraši 1941–1944, vol I-II, Istorijski arhiv Beograda, Beograd 2009, (Serbian) (ISBN 9788680481241)
External links
Coordinates: 44°46′15″N 20°28′03″E / 44.770792°N 20.467594°E
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