Banjica concentration camp

The Banjica concentration camp (Anhalteleger Dedinje; Бањички Концентрациони логор) was a Nazi German concentration camp in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia during World War II. Located in the Banjica neighborhood of Belgrade's Dedinje suburb, it was originally used by the Germans as a center for holding hostages. The camp was later used to hold Serbs, Jews, Roma, captured Partisans, Chetniks and other opponents of Nazi Germany. By 1942, most executions occurred at the firing ranges at Jajinci, Marinkova Bara and the Jewish cemetery.

Banjica was operational from July 1941 to October 1944. It was jointly run by German occupying forces, under the command of Gestapo official Willy Friedrich, and the Serbian State Guard. The Serbian administrator of the camp was Svetozar Vujković, a pre-war policeman who enthusiastically collaborated with the Germans. Later, both he and Friedrich were tried, found guilty and executed for war crimes by Yugoslavia's post-war Communist authorities. 23,697 individuals were detained in Banjica throughout the war, 3,849 of whom perished. After the war, a small monument dedicated to the victims of the camp was constructed. In 1969, the Museum of the Banjica Concentration Camp was opened, containing more than four hundred items relating to the camp and its operation.

Background
On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the Royal Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated. Afterwards, Yugoslavia was dismembered, with Serbia being reduced to its pre-1912 borders and placed under a government of German military occupation. Milan Nedić, a pre-war politician who was known to have pro-Axis leanings, was then selected by the Germans to lead the collaborationist Government of National Salvation in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. Upon capturing Belgrade, the Germans ordered the city's 12,000 Jews to report themselves to the occupational authorities; 9,145 of them did so. On 14 May, Jews were removed from all official posts, and a series of anti-Jewish laws were passed prohibiting Jews from activities ranging from going to restaurants to riding streetcars. Ethnic Serbs were also targeted, and in July 1941 the Germans announced that they would murder one-hundred Serbs for every German soldier killed and fifty for every German soldier wounded following the eruption of an anti-German uprising earlier that month.

Establishment
The Germans set up numerous concentration camps in Serbia with the intention of using them to incarcerate, torture and execute Jews, anti-fascists and those deemed "unworthy of life". One of these camps was the Banjica concentration camp. After German occupational authorities gave orders for its establishment in Belgrade, Mayor Dragomir Jovanović had the former 18th Infantry army barracks of the Royal Yugoslav Army converted into a concentration camp.

Operation
The Banjica concentration camp (Anhalteleger Dedinje) was established on 22 June 1941 and opened on 5 July in the Dedinje section of Belgrade. It was run by the German Gestapo, commanded by Gestapo official Willy Friedrich, in cooperation with members of the Special Police in Belgrade. Members of the Serbian State Guard acted as prison staff. The camp itself was used mostly to intern anti-fascists, the majority of whom were ethnic Serbs. It housed both men and women of all ages, as well as children. It is estimated that half of the Jewish inmates had been dispatched by the Schutzstaffel (SS), while one-third were sent to the camp by various Serbian collaborationists. Among them were Jews from Belgrade, Banat, and Central Serbia, as well as Jews from various European countries.

Prior to their arrival at the camp, inmates would spend several days in the custody of the Gestapo and in Special Police prisons, where they would be tortured and beaten. By the time they were transferred from these detention centers to Banjica, some of the prisoners would already have displayed signs of serious mutilation. Throughout the operation of the camp, guards would regularly beat and mistreat prisoners. The camp was notorious for its brutality, and executions were frequent and random. Inmates were also expected to follow the standard rules of conduct that were also implemented in other Nazi concentration camps. These rules prohibited singing, speaking loudly, having conversations on political subjects, possessing writing utensils and paper, and all other personal belongings. Infraction of any of these rules could have meant execution. Despite this, imprisoned anti-fascists defied the Germans by singing Partisan songs, shouting their support for Tito and Stalin, and by holding lectures, discussions, one-act plays, recitals, and even folk song and dance performances on the campgrounds.

Belgrade police commissioner Svetozar Vujković was the Special Police commander of the camp. He collaborated enthusiastically with the Gestapo. His role included ordering murders and devising torture techniques. Execution lists, written entirely in Cyrillic, were drawn by him beginning in 1942. Vujković often selected victims at random, including children, and had murders carried out by members of the Belgrade Special Police and the Serbian State Guard, as well as the Gestapo, who played the main role of executioners. A high-ranking official in the pre-war Belgrade police who was involved in the persecution of Communists in Yugoslavia even before the outbreak of the World War II, he is said to have participated personally in interrogations and devised numerous humiliating torture techniques. Executions occurred frequently at Vujković's whim and he rarely asked for approval from German or Serbian authorities to carry out murders and ordered prisoners killed even in cases where the Ministry of Interior decided against execution. Vujković is reported to have begged to "personally shoot twenty young girls who were ordered for shooting that day." Despite this, neither he nor any of the other Serbs holding positions of power in the camp were reprimanded or removed from their posts by the Serbian collaborationist government. When prisoners complained of lack of food, Vujković and his associates replied by saying: "[You] didn't come here for spa therapy and food, but to be executed. To eat more or less will not save your lives." The first mass-execution in Banjica occurred on 17 December 1941, when 170 prisoners were shot. By the end of 1941, the camp interned approximately 2,000 to 3,000 people. By 1942, most Jews discovered in occupied Serbia were taken to Banjica and shot at Jajinci, Marinkova Bara and the Jewish cemetery. That year, execution lists started being written by the Gestapo and the Belgrade Special Police. In the spring, the Germans used a gas van to murder Jewish inmates on two separate occasions. That autumn, the camp was used to detain many Chetnik guerillas. Executions continued throughout the war, with many inmates being shot as hostages.

Evacuation
In late 1944, the Germans forced a chain gang of Yugoslav prisoners to incinerate the remains of those killed in Banjica. A surviving member of the chain gang, Momčilo Damjanović, testified that the incineration of the corpses was organized by a unit of the Kommando 1005, headed by SS-Standartenführer [Colonel] Paul Blobel, the man responsible for erasing traces of German atrocities throughout German–occupied Europe. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: "In November 1943 SS-Standartenführer 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 camp was officially closed on 3 or 4 October 1944, when all but twenty inmates were released upon final evacuation.

Aftermath
Overall, 23,697 individuals were detained in Banjica throughout the war, including 455 to 688 Jews. At least 3,849 inmates died at the camp, including a minimum of 382 Jews. Of these, 3,420 were men and 429 were women. They were killed primarily by the Germans, but also by members of the Serbian State Guard. Furthermore, 186 Jewish inmates were transferred to the German–run Sajmište concentration camp in Zemun. Another 103 inmates were taken from the camp by the Gestapo, and the small number of those who survived were either sent to forced labour, were transferred to another camp, or were unaccounted for.

After the war, Banjica's German commander, Willy Friedrich, was tried by a Yugoslav military court in Belgrade on 27 March 1947 and was sentenced to death. Police Commissioner Vujković survived the war, and was captured and tried for war crimes by Yugoslavia's new Communist government. He was eventually found guilty, sentenced to death, and shot.

Legacy
Historian Jozo Tomasevich has called Banjica the most notorious concentration camp in Serbia during World War II. A small monument dedicated to the victims of the camp exists in Belgrade. The Museum of the Banjica Concentration Camp, first opened in 1969, is dedicated to the memory of those who were detained in the camp and the victims of other Nazi concentration camp from World War II. It contains an exhibition of over four hundred items relating to the camp and its operation.

Notable prisoners
Prominent intellectuals and artists who were imprisoned or killed in Jajinci or Banjica were, among others:
 * Aleksandar Belić, linguist
 * Josip "Bepo" Benković, painter (killed 1943)
 * Vaso Čubrilović, politician and historian
 * Aleksandar Deroko, architect
 * Jovan Erdeljanović, ethnologist
 * Ivan Đaja, biologist
 * Tihomir Đorđević, ethnologist
 * Miloš Đurić, philologist and philosopher
 * Mihailo Ilić, politicologist (killed 1944)
 * Petar Kolendić, literature historian
 * Aleksandar Leko, chemist
 * Tina Morpurgo, painter (killed 1944)
 * Viktor Novak, author
 * Vlastimir Pavlović Carevac, composer
 * Veljko Petrović, writer
 * Risto Stijović, painter
 * Šime Spitzer, Zionist (killed 1941)
 * Nikola Vulić, historian and philologist