Sajmiste

Sajmiste - darkometer rating : 5 - The principal site of the Holocaust in Belgrade and one of the (almost) "forgotten camps". A little more commemoration revolves around the camp's additional function as an internment site for Serbian political prisoners and partisans. Currently totally underdeveloped, there are calls for turning the site into a proper memorial centre. We'll see. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Sajmiste was a former trade fair / exhibition ground set up in 1937. At the time of the occupation of parts of the Balkans by Axis powers during WWII the complex lay mainly unused and derelict. So the Germans turned it into a concentration camp . Due to the occupying powers having split up the former kingdom of Yugoslavia , the Sajmiste site on the western banks of the Sava fell into Croatian territory. But the Ustasha, the Croatian fascists allied with Nazi Germany (or rather: used as a puppet regime serving the latter), granted the Germans the use of the site as a concentration camp. To this day this is grounds for animosity towards Croatia on the part of nationalist Serbs. Apart from Serbian resistance fighters, however, during the first phase of the camp, from autumn 1941, it primarily functioned as a "Judenlager", i.e. to house the Jews rounded up in Belgrade. As usual, housing conditions were atrocious. But what's more, soon the systematic extermination of the Jews began: Some were executed in Jajinci (the men mainly), like those victims from the Banjica camp in the south of Belgrade . But in order to complete and "smoothen out" the "operation", a gas van soon came into use. This was the same type as developed and first used at the Chelmno death camp in Poland .