MESTO LOGORA U OKUPACIONOM SISTEMU U SRBIJI (1941-1944)
GERMAN CAMPS IN OCCUPIED SERBIA (1941-1944)

Summary/Abstract: German camps were the pivot of the invador’s system of occupation in Serbia. The formation of camps was begun after the assault of the Third Reich on the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941 and was practically finished by July of the following year. There were five principle camps in Serbia: two in Belgrade (in Banjica and the Fair), and the others in Niš, Sabac and Veliki Bečkerek/Petrovgrad. The purpose of the camps was to isolate, torture and (or) liquidate real or potential opponents and even entire nations (Jews and Gypsies). The prisoners served as hostages for German mass reprisals for losses suffered in their battles against the rebels and, from the summer of 1942, these prisoners were also used for labor in work and concentration camps in other occupied lands and the Third Reich. In the second half of 1942 a system of work camps was also formed in Serbia, usually near mines (Bar, Trepča etc.) and on farms in Banat. In May 1942, German camps in Serbia began co-operating with those in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška and, from the beginning of the following year, with German camps in the Independent State of Croatia. The main German camp in occupied Serbia and the whole of the European southeast was the camp situated at the Belgrade Fair. It would be wrong to call these places concentration camps since they represented a subsystem in the European system of German camps (work, concentration and death camps). The question of the number and makeup of the prisoners in German camps in Serbia has still not been answered properly and requires a comprehensive study based on a specific methodology.

• Details
• Contents