Figure 1.-- Source: USHM. |
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The German military administration in Serbia legally defined precisely what a Jew was (May 30, 1941). Based on the legal defination, the Germans required te Jews to register. They insisted that Jews be removed expelled from the the professions (Law ad medicene) and not allowed to practive. They also required that they be fired from any government positions. Restrictions were placed on their movement and business activities. The Germans required Jews to wear a yellow star with the letter Ž on it, which stood for "Jew" in Serbo-Croatian. Jewish men and teenage boys were conscripted for forced labor. The Germans began registering Jewish property. The Serbian population was prohibited hiding Jews (Beherbergungsverbot). Severe penalites were enacted for violations. Communists led an uprising, in part protesting the actions being taken against Jews (July 1941). German authorities in response required the Jewish community to deliver 40 hostages weekly. This provided a conventient source of hostages to execulte in retaliation for Resistance attacks. As a result, most were executed before the end of the year. Next Jewish womwn and children and the elderly were rounded up and interned at Sajmiste, a gairground near Belgrade (December). The NAZIs brought poison gas vans and began killing the internees (March 1942). Within a few weeks the 8,000 Jews in the camps had been killed. Serbia was one of the most deadly places in Europe for the Jews. The NAZIs succeeded in killing an estimated 94 percent. Only those who escaped or found someone to hide them survived. The Germans condfiscated about 1 billion dinars in Jewish property. This was to be turned over to the Serb state. The Germans in practice, however, kept control of 60 percent of proceeds which they justified as war damage to the Serbian property of Reich Germans.
Jews first arrived in Europe during the Roman times with the Diaspra following the supression of the Jewish Revolt. Very little information is available on Jews in what is now Serbia or the Balkans in general. There is also little information about Jew in Serbia diring the medieval era. This did not change until the Spanish expulsion of the Jews (1492). Many Sephardic Jews sought refugee in the Ottoman Empire. Some of te Jews entered the Balkans at this time and small Jewish communities developed in Serbia and other areas of the Balkans.
Jews were given full civil rights in the Yugoslav kingdom organized around the Serbian monarchy after World War I. We do not have much information on anti-Semitism during the inter-War period. The most anti-Semetic group was the outlawed Croatian nationalist movement--the Ustache. Under pressure from the NAZIs, the government of Dragiša Cvetković and Vladko Maček enacted anti-Jewish edicts. These edicts restricted Jewish participation in the Yugoslav economy and set limits on university enrolment.
Prince Paul met with Hitler and signed an alliance with the NAZIS, becoming a member of the Axis (March 1941). Hitler at the time was attempting to secure his southern flank in preparatin for the invasion of the Sovier Union. The alliance with the Nazis was rejected by most Yugoslavs, especially the Serbs. Riots in Belgrade forced a renunciation of the Axis.
The invasion of Yugoslavia or Operation 25 is somtimes described as a Axis invasion, in fact it was almost enitely an all German operation. All the serious fighting was done by the Germans who in sharp contrast to Workd war I secured a stunibgly swift victirt=y with virtually no casualties. The Wehrmacht launched a three-rong attack on Yugoslavia aimed at taking Belgrade and the Luftwaffe began the terror bombing of Bekgrade orderd by Hitler to punish the Serbs (April 6). The swift German victory was due to superior German preparation, tactics, and equipment. The Yugoslav Army was affected by ethnic divisions the country. Zagreb radio announced the establishment of an independent Croatian republic under their nationalist leader Ante Pavelic (April 10). A major factor in the German victory was that the Yugoslav Army attempted to defend the entire country rather than concentrating forces. The Axis countries (Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria) proceeded to occupy and deismember defeated Yugoslavia. Germany's Axis allies play a minor role in the campsaign. The Italian and Hungarian Army launched limited attacks on Yugoslav positions (April 11). The Bulgarian participation was to occupy Mancedonia already taken by the Germans. King Peter fled the country (April 14). The Yugoslavs surrendered only 11 days later (April 17). Former Foreign Minister Cincar-Markovic signed an armistace with the Germans.
The German military administration in Serbia legally defined precisely what a Jew was (May 30, 1941). The Germans set up a Government of National Salvation as a puppet regime in Serbia. Based on the legal defination, the Germans required te Jews to register. They insisted that Jews be removed expelled from the the professions (Law ad medicene) and not allowed to practive. They also required that they be fired from any government positions. Restrictions were placed on their movement and business activities. The Germans required Jews to wear a yellow star with the letter Ž on it, which stood for "Jew" in Serbo-Croatian. Jewish men and teenage boys were conscripted for forced labor. The Germans began registering Jewish property. The Serbian population was prohibited hiding Jews (Beherbergungsverbot). Severe penalites were enacted for violations.
Serbian authorities opened an exhibition entitled "Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibit" in Belgrade (October 1941). It was funded by municipal authories, apparently to impress the Germans. The basic purpose was to expose a Jewish-Communist-Masonic plot for world domination. NAZI supervised newspapers (Obnova--Renewal and Nasa Borba--Our Struggle) wrote fauning reviews and repeated the charge that Jews were the ancient enemies of the Serbian people and insisted that the Serbs should not depend on the Germans to slove the "Jewish problem". Several months aftervthecexhibit, Serbian authorities issued postage stamps commemorating the exhibit.
Communists led an uprising, in part protesting the actions being taken against Jews (July 1941). The Jews in Belgrade were among the first targets. German authorities in response required the Jewish community to deliver 40 hostages weekly. This provided a conventient source of hostages to execulte in retaliation for Resistance attacks. As a result, most were executed before the end of the year.
The Germans detached an area they called the Banat from Serbia. Like gettoes, it was the revival of a medieval institution. The Banat was dministered by the Wehrmcht. It was turned over to the ethnic German minority in Serbia, a kind of reservation for them. The small Jewish community was an immediate target.
The Whermachtb immeditely instituted anti-Jewish measures. The killing began very quickly. This was done locally and not in the death camps set up in occupied Poland. We do not yet have details on the found ups and killings and the extent to which the ethnic Germans were involved as opposed to the Serbs and German occupartion forces. The Whermacht rounded up the Jews in Zrenjanin and transported then to the Tašmajdan concentration camp near Belgrade where they were soon executed. There was a mass hanging of Serb and Jewish civilians (September 194). Young healthy Jews were also forced into labor battalions overseen by the German occupation authorities. Conditions were very haesh and high mortality rates resulted from absuse, low raiins, and hosing consitions. German authorities announced that the Banat was judenrein mean Jew free (August 1942). [Cox, pp. 92.] The Banat was used for other German killing operations. One source reports that at a Stratište locality near Jabuka village in the Banat more than 10,000 Serbs, Jews and Roma was killed (1941-44).
German military authorities used Yugoslav Army barracks to set up the Banjica concentration camp in a Belgrade suburb (June 1941). A month earlier, German military authorities established the legal basis for the campaign against Serbian Jews. The Germans defined just who Jews wre and began issuing anti-Semetic decress.
The initial purpose of Banjica was to hold hostages, many of whom were at first Jewish. The people held here included Jews, communists, partisans and Gypseys. Camp registers document 23,637 prisoners. The German commandant was Willy Friedrich. Much of the killing of the Banjica prisioners was reportedly carried out at Jajinci, a village near Belgrade. Most of the Jewish prisoners were murdered, including small children. Several thousands mostly Christian prisoners were transported to concentration and labor camps in the Reich and Poland, including Mauthausen-Gusen and Auschwitz. The camp operated until the Germans abandoned Belgrade (September 1944). The Partisans liberated the city (October 1944). Commandant Friedrich was tried by a Yugoslav military court at Belgrade after the War (1947). He was found guilty and sentenced to death. A HBC reader has prepared a report on his visit to the camp which has been preserved as a museum.
The NAZIs after invading Yugoslavia set up Sajmište on the outskirts of Belgrade on the left bank of the Sava River (December 1941). It was initially used primarily for Serbian Jews. The NAZIs alo intered Gypseys there. Much of the country's Jews and Gypseys were killed here. Many Jewish men had already been killed when the NAZIs began transporting Jews to Sajmište. Here the NAZIs used gas van to kill thousands of Jewish women and children. The number of both Jews and Gypseys in Serbia was relatively small. Much larger numbers of Serbs resiting the NAZI occupation were interned and killed at the camp. The camp operated until (September 1944). At that time the Germans were retreating north from the Balkans and the Partisans were closing in on Belgrade.
SS-Standartenfuehrer Paul Blobel, commanding Aktion 1005, arrived in Belgrade (Novmber 1943). The Germans in 1941-42 killed millions of people in the Baltics, Poland, the Soviet Union and Yugoskavia. Unlike the industial operations at some of the death camps and Auschwitz-Birkenau, which had crematoria, many of the people killed by shooting had been simply buried in large mass graves. At the times the NAZIs believed they would win the War and these graves would never be discovered. Reverses on the Eastern Front in 1943 meant that the Soviets would overun the areas where these graves could be found. Thus the Germans decided that the evidence needed to be destroyed. Aopart of this operation was to destoy the evidence in Serbi. This was Blobel's assignment. He was to disinter the bodies of those murdered in 1941-42 and burn the corpses to destoy the evidence. His unit consisting of 50 Sicherheits polizei (Security Police) men and German military police. They commandeered 100 Jewish and Serbian prisoners to do the gruesome work of digging up the decomposing bodies and burning them.
Some Serbian Jews were able to elude the NAZI round-ups and fled into Italian-controlled Kosovo. The Italian authorities set up an internment camp using an abandoned school in Priština, the Kosovo city where much of the small Jewish population iived. The Italians held the Jewish refugees there for 10 months. Eventually the Italians moved them to the Pristina prison. Here the prison authorities permitted the Jews to remain in family groups. They were kept separate from the other prisoners. They were not kept locked in cells all the time, but allowed out into the courtyard during the day. Here we see some of the Jewish prisoners in the courtyard (figure 1). These Jews complained about the poor conditions in the prison. Germans reportedly retaliated by shooting half of the Jews in the prison. We do not understand this because Pristina was within the Italian zone of control and had been annexed to Albania. Just why the Germans carried out this action we are unsure. The Germans apparently demanded that the other Jews in the Pristina Prison be dealt with. The Italians loaded most of the Jews at the Prison on trucks and tranported them out of Kosovo to Kavaja in Albania proper.
The Croats set up the independent state of Croatia (NDH), a NAZI puppet state. The Italians seized Croat-populated areas along the Adriatic (Dalmatia). The Croats were compensated with Bosnia (whichbhad a mixed population) and Serbian Vojvodin. The Croatian Ustashe set out on a murderous campaign to ethnically clense the area under their control. Estimates vary as to just how many people they killed. We have noted estimates of 0.3-0.7 million Serbs as well as 40,000 Gypsies and 32,000 Jews. It is somewhat difficyltvto describe these Jews as Bosnian, Croat, or Serbian Jews. The Ustaše set up concentration camps at Kerestinac, Jadovna, Metajna and Slana. They were run by Croatsand not Germans. The most notorious of these camps were Pag and Jasenovac. Estimates suggest that the Ustashe killed 0.8 million Serbs at Jasenovac, many from Boisnia. They also killed 20,000 Jews.
The Chetniks organized by Draza Mihailovic were primarily a Serbian resistance movement. The barbarity of German reprisals against civilians caused the Chetniks to restrict attacks on the Germans and Italians. The Chetniks were not a centrlly organized group. Many local commanders were essentially independent of central control. Many negotiated cease fires with the Germans and Italians. Some began cooperating with the Germans against the growuing Partisan movement. Eventually the Allies stopped suporting the Chetniks. Some units attempted to protect Serbian communities from Ustache and Albanian ethnic cleasing operations as well as carrying out ethnic cleansing operations of their own. Some were involved in killing Jews. Chetnik operations are a very complicated topic because of the lack of central control and the desire of the Tito regime after the war to depict other resistance grouos as tools of the Germans.
Serbia was the first NAZI satellite state to proclaim itself "Judenfrei" ("Jew free"). Dr. Harald Turner (Chief of the German civil administration in Serbia) announced that Serbia was the only country in which the "Jewish question" had been resolved and that Belgrade was the "first city of a New Europe to be Judenfrei." (August 1942). Turner pointed to Serbian assistance in this achievement. Serbia was one of the most deadly places in Europe for the Jews. The NAZIs succeeded in killing an estimated 94 percent. Only those who escaped or found someone to hide them survived.
The Germans confiscated about 1 billion dinars in Jewish property. This was to be turned over to the Serb state. The Germans in practice, however, kept control of 60 percent of proceeds which they justified as war damage to the Serbian property of Reich Germans.
Cox, John K. The History of Serbia (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002).
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