The restless memory of Staro Sajmiste

Rapid changes

The Belgrade Exhibition Grounds (Beogradsko sajmište), built between 1937 and 1940, was the first construction on the left bank of the Sava River. Historically, it divided the Kingdom of Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Before the construction began, the river’s western waterfront was a deserted sandy area and largely viewed as foreign territory. The Exhibition Grounds were located in close proximity to the newly built King Alexander Bridge (1934), which became the first permanent construction linking Belgrade with the left bank of the Sava.

In the 1930s, the site was famous for its impressive modernist architecture and hosted numerous fairs, exhibitions and cultural events. The nearby area was full of restaurants. It was within a short walking distance of the city centre, making it popular among city dwellers.

The interwar period was characterised by the changing political landscape in the region, which was noticeable within the area of the exhibition grounds. The fascist symbols dominated the German and Italian pavilions and after the German aggression against Czechoslovakia in 1938, the Exhibition Grounds changed its name to the Pavilion of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. While the space reflected the rapid changes afflicting the continent, no one expected that only five years later, the first Belgrade Fair would become a Holocaust site, and 80 years later – a forgotten ruin.

After the outbreak of the Second World War and partition of Yugoslavia in 1941, the Sava River regained its role as a state border – this time separating Nazi-occupied Serbia from the Independent State of Croatia. The area of the Exhibition Grounds formally became a part of Croatia, controlled by the German military command of Semlin (Zemun). In autumn 1941, the Nazi authorities decided to use the Belgrade Exhibition Grounds as a detention camp for Jewish women, children and the elderly from Serbia.

The Croatian government agreed, under the condition that the authorities in Belgrade would supply the camp with food. Since it was the German military command of Semlin that formally controlled the territory, the documents often refer to Staro Sajmiste as Semlin Judenlager. By December 1941, around 5,000 Jewish and 500 Roma detainees were placed in the camp. The initial plan of the Nazi authorities was to deport the camp’s prisoners to a “reception camp in the east”, but in spring 1942 they decided to conduct mass executions on site. A specially equipped gas van – the tool of the execution – was brought to Belgrade in March 1942. Its first victims were 800 patients and staff of Belgrade’s two Jewish hospitals. Thereafter, 6,300 of the Semlin camp’s inmates shared the same fate. The prisoners were taken into the gas van under the pretext of being transported outside of Sajmiste. The transport went directly to the village of Jajinci, where the dead were buried.

Soon after the extermination of the Jewish prisoners, the Semlin Judenlager turned into a detention camp for political prisoners and became the main distribution centre for forced labour in the former Yugoslavia. The 32,000 detainees who passed through the Semlin Anhaltelager between May 1942 and July 1944 included Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Greeks, Albanians and Jews. More than 10,000 detainees died and were buried in mass graves at the Jewish cemetery in Zemun, Bežanija, Jajinci, and several other locations.

Neglected memory

Even though Staro Sajmiste is an important Holocaust site, and despite the academic community’s interest in its history, it lacks proper commemoration in Belgrade’s urban landscape. This is because of the peculiarity of Serbian historical narratives of the Holocaust, the site’s complex history and the fact that its premises have been turned into a living space and artistic workshop.

After the end of the Second World War, Staro Sajmiste was used as a temporary housing facility for workers of the Youth Brigade involved in building the New Belgrade – a new communist style neighbourhood on the left side of the Sava River and the first housing district in the area. The workers mostly came from distant regions of Yugoslavia and were unaware of the history of the site, which was obscured by the authorities. Staro Sajmiste was not only a place where they lived, but also their place of leisure.

One of the reasons for the communist authorities’ secretive policy towards the site was the fact that the district of the New Belgrade was meant to symbolise a new beginning: building socialism “on clean ground”. Therefore, the very existence of the old fairgrounds – not to mention the tragic memory of the Second World War – did not match the new ideological framework.

As a result of tensions between Yugoslavia and the USSR, financial assistance from the Soviet Union for the building of New Belgrade eventually dried up. Construction work was suspended and members of the Youth Brigade left Staro Sajmiste. At first, the authorities wanted to demolish the site, but then changed the plan and invited some prominent artists to open up workshops and ateliers in some of the old pavilions. As a result, many artists began to work and live on the site. This gave the place a completely new meaning, distancing it even further away from the tragic events of the past.

Ideology of commemoration

The majority of Yugoslav Second World War memorials commemorate either the suffering of all “Yugoslav peoples” or the deeds of those fighting against fascism. In the case of Staro Sajmiste, however, it was difficult to deny the ethnicity of the victims. Moreover, ever since the days of communist Yugoslavia, the Holocaust tends to be associated in Serbia with the events that took place on the territory of the Croatian Ustaše state. The main symbol of the Holocaust is the Jasenovac extermination camp, which highlights Serbian victimhood. The lack of attention on Staro Sajmiste perfectly follows the well-worn narrative: the site was formally located on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War. Hence, the argument goes, the commemoration of its victims is not Serbia’s responsibility.

Several monuments were unveiled at the site, representing the changing political context, but none of them properly designated the place. The first memory plaque in Sajmiste was installed in 1951 and commemorated the tenth anniversary of the partisan uprising in Yugoslavia. Thus, the text on the monument spoke about the murdered members of the Partisan movement. The second plaque was erected in 1974 to commemorate the memory of the 30th anniversary of Belgrade’s liberation. Its inscription referred to the “people from different parts of the country” who were killed on the site, but it did not directly mention the Holocaust. Again, a monument with similar words was unveiled in Sajmiste in 1984, and the open space around the plaque became one of the symbolic places to celebrate the fight against fascism. Today, this monument is as neglected as the rest of the old fairgrounds, hidden between the trees and covered by grass.

The most notable monument in the area was erected in 1995 at the bank of the Sava River. The construction, visible from different places around the city, seems to cover the site of Staro Sajmiste itself and in fact, it is not easily accessible from the monument. The plaque nearby the monument mentions Serbs, Jews and the Roma as the main groups who perished there. They are commemorated together with the victims of the Ustaše camp in Jasenovac and the Hungarian occupying forces.

Even though Jews and the Roma are mentioned in the inscription, the main focus is on the suffering of the Serbs and the memory of the “war crimes and genocide against 100,000 patriots, members of the Yugoslav national liberation movement, children, women and the elderly”. The inscription reflects the official line of Serbian memory politics at the time.

During Slobodan Milosevic’s regime (1997-2000), the topic of the Holocaust was practically absent from the public debate. Holocaust memory was only used as a tool for highlighting Serbian victimhood. The fact that during the Second World War Staro Sajmiste was located within the borders of the Independent State of Croatia was constantly stressed by nationalist politicians and intellectuals. Thus, the focus was shifted from the events of the Holocaust towards commemoration of the Serbian victims of the war, and the old fairgrounds were consigned to oblivion up until the end of first decade of 2000s.

Art and politics

Among the several Serbian films dealing with the Holocaust memory, the one that gained greatest popularity abroad was Goran Paskaljevic’s When Day Breaks (Kad Svane Dan, 2012). It was shown at various film festivals around the world and received an Oscar nomination in 2012. The film’s co-screenwriter, Filip David, wrote an award-winning book, The House of Remembering and Forgetting, which also addressed the Holocaust. The film takes place in Belgrade and the plot tells the story of Staro Sajmiste. It critically assesses the silencing of the Holocaust memory in Serbia and highlights the problems connected with using the former concentration camp as a living space.

Although the film was screened in Serbian cinemas and on national TV, it did not provoke any public discussion about Staro Sajmiste. Nevertheless, the attention that the site received within the artistic community was the first step towards breaking the silence around the topic.

The first exhibition dedicated to the Holocaust in Serbia opened in the Museum of Yugoslav History on January 27th 2012, which marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 2013 Staro Sajmiste was mentioned in a debate titled “A Living Death Camp”, which took place during the famous October Salon in Belgrade (the annual exhibition of contemporary visual arts – editor’s note).

Most of the researchers focusing on Serbia’s recent past, however, link the recent public interest in the topic with the ongoing instrumentalisation of the Holocaust memory in Serbia. Undoubtedly, bringing the Holocaust memory to the forefront allows Serbia to participate in the international “moral community” – especially as the Holocaust has become the unifying European memory. At the same time, however, it is quite clear that in Serbia the Holocaust serves as a screen memory to highlight Serbian martyrdom and a tool for repressing a more recent memory – the Balkan wars.

A way forward

Currently, a special commission is working on creating a memorial complex at Staro Sajmiste. The initial goal of the commission – which includes representatives of the Jewish community, artists, historians, cultural figures and journalists – was to create a museum, an educational and research institution on the site dedicated to the Holocaust. However, due to some disagreements that took place within the commission, the plan has been abandoned.

The new commission, formed in 2014 and headed by Bishop Jovan Culibrk of the Serbian Orthodox Church, is planning to estasblish three different pavilions on site, one dedicated to Serbs, one to Jews and one to the Roma people. With this approach, the commission continues the long-established tradition of equating the suffering of Serbs during the Second World War with the Holocaust, which undermines the uniqueness of the latter. At the same time, it raises the question of how to commemorate the victims who do not fall into the three groups.

The fate of Staro Sajmiste and its memory will, to a large extent, depend on how the discourse on the Holocaust develops in Serbia. Today, the Holocaust memory serves as yet another vehicle for highlighting Serbia’s belonging to the European memory culture and as a justification for Serbia’s EU aspirations. At the same time, it supports the national narrative of Serbian victimhood, which is backed by the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Serbian historians, when asked to comment on the situation around the old fairgrounds, often say that Serbian society is still divided on how to appropriately commemorate the Second World War. However, other countries in the region exemplify that coming to terms with one’s own past is necessary in order to develop an adequate approach to such complex memory sites as Staro Sajmiste.

Yulia Oreshina is a social anthropologist, translator and lecturer in cultural memory studies at Georgian American University in Tbilisi.

Serbia, Staro Sajmiste