BELGRADE – Amid the streets of New Belgrade, shops sit next to apartment blocks, businesses align with public parks, and the River Sava flows gently by.
Inside the neighborhood of Staro Sajmiste, a white tower glitters as it reaches up toward the sky. At the same time, the area echoes with crowds mingling, gazing at the modern technology of the 1930s, or enjoying ice cream, and children running around between pavilions, taking in the day.
Before it became a site of unimaginable horror in the Holocaust, the grounds of Staro Sajmiste told a different story. In the summer of 1937, workers rushed to complete what was then one of Belgrade’s most ambitious architectural projects – a sprawling modernist fairground designed to showcase the industrial and cultural progress of royal Yugoslavia. Built in just three months, the complex officially opened on September 11, 1937.
The centerpiece of the fairgrounds was the imposing Central Tower, a slender steel spire that quickly became a symbol of Yugoslav modernity. Designed by architects Milivoje Trickovic, Rajko Tatic, and Dorde Lukic, the site embodied a forward-looking vision.
Surrounding the tower were a series of sleek exhibition pavilions – five representing different Yugoslav regions, one financed by the Nikola Spasic Foundation, and others belonging to international participants such as Italy, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Turkey, Germany, and the Dutch electronics giant Philips.
In total, the fairgrounds boasted 17,000 square meters of roofed exhibition halls, 20,000 square meters of open display space, and nearly 50,000 square meters of landscaped gardens, roads, and paths. It was, at the time, a symbol of promise for the country Yugoslavia hoped to be.
Within just a few years, however, that promise would be shattered, royal Yugoslavia had collapsed, and Belgrade would be split between the occupying Nazi forces and the Croatian fascist puppet state formed in the wake of independence. The architectural marvel designed to celebrate human achievement would become one of Europe’s earliest concentration camps under Nazi occupation.
Occupation and disintegration
The Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 set the stage for this transformation. Yugoslavia was swiftly dismantled by the Axis powers. Serbia proper was placed under German military occupation, while the Banat region and northern Kosovo were absorbed into adjacent puppet zones. Croatia was carved into the Independent State of Croatia (ISC), a Nazi-aligned regime led by the Ustase, a fascist army whose genocidal policies targeted Serbs, Jews, and Roma.
In Serbia, the Germans installed a puppet administration under Milan Nedic, a former army general. But while the collaborationist government handled routine affairs, actual power rested with Nazi officers, which included SS-Gruppenfuhrer Harald Turner and his security chief Wilhelm Fuchs. Turner, a central figure in implementing the Final Solution in the Balkans, coordinated the arrests, deportations, and killings of Serbian Jews with methodical precision. His successors, who included August Meyszner and Emanuel Schafer, ensured that the policy was followed ruthlessly.
Zemun, a former Austro-Hungarian town that was the birthplace of Theodor Herzl’s grandparents and was situated near the site of the Sajmiste fairgrounds, was incorporated into the ISC but remained effectively within reach of German forces stationed in Belgrade. With the Ustase regime offering no resistance to German demands, the fairgrounds were selected in the autumn of 1941 as the site for a new concentration camp.
Known in German as Judenlager Semlin (“Jewish Camp Zemun”), the site became one of the earliest concentration camps established outside the borders of the Reich. Its proximity to Belgrade’s central railway station made it ideal for transporting prisoners from across Serbia, and its location on the river banks made escape nearly impossible.
The camp initially held around 500 male Jewish prisoners, forced to set up a “self-administration” system, distribute food, and maintain order under German supervision. The perimeter was guarded by German police battalions, while internal patrols were carried out by Jewish detainees.
By October 1941, mass killings had already begun. Groups of prisoners were told they were being transferred to labor camps in Austria. Instead, they were taken to firing ranges outside Belgrade or to the village of Jabuka in the Banat region, where they were executed en masse. The deception was deliberate and carefully orchestrated. The final group of these initial male inmates were murdered on November 11, 1941.
As the German campaign against Serbia’s Jewish population escalated, the camp filled with thousands of Jewish women, children, and elderly men – those left after the mass murder of the adult male population. Most were transferred from towns like Nis, Sabac, and Smederevo. Groups of Roma and political detainees were also interned.
The exhibition pavilions were never designed to house people. With no proper heating, broken windows, and leaking roofs, the halls offered little protection from the brutal winter of 1941-1942. Inmates slept on wet straw or directly on the floor. Food rations were meager, and disease spread rapidly. Death from typhus, influenza, starvation, and cold became routine. Some barracks reportedly housed more than 5,000 people in unbearable conditions. Many children did not survive their first weeks in the camp.
In desperation, appeals were made to local Serbian officials, some of whom tried to negotiate improved conditions, but to little avail. The camp remained under firm German control, and the suffering continued unchecked.
Drawings by inmates during this time have survived and show the terrible state of conditions, which included typhus epidemics and the invasion of rats.
Roma inmates, detained under even worse conditions, were housed separately and subjected to forced labor. While some were released after several weeks, others vanished without a trace.
The gas van arrives
In January 1942, the Nazi regime decided to accelerate the extermination process. SS-Untersturmfuhrer Herbert Andorfer replaced Edgar Enge as camp commandant. The following month, a gas van was delivered from Berlin on the orders of Harald Turner. This mobile killing machine would become the camp’s most chilling tool of murder.
Before the development of fixed gas chambers, the Nazis employed mobile gas vans as a primary method of mass murder, particularly at sites like the Chelmno extermination camp. Two main models were used in Eastern Europe by the Einsatzgruppen: the smaller 3.5-ton Opel-Blitz, and the larger 7-ton Saurerwagen.
In Belgrade, the vehicle became known locally as the dusegupka, a grim term meaning “soul killer.” Within SS bureaucracy, the vans were given sanitized labels such as Sonderwagen, Spezialwagen, or simply S-Wagen, meaning “special vehicle.”
These vans were engineered to channel engine exhaust through pipes into a sealed compartment in the back, where victims were packed tightly. Once the engine was engaged, carbon monoxide filled the chamber, killing those inside by suffocation. The gruesome conditions found by those who witnessed the gas vans were among the factors that led camp commandant Rudolf Hoss to seek alternatives like Zyklon B at Auschwitz, although it, too, resulted in similarly horrifying effects.
Andorfer, by some accounts conflicted over his role, nonetheless carried out the gassings with calculated efficiency. Inmates were deceived into believing they were being transferred to a better camp. Announcements were made, lists posted, and belongings permitted.
Children were even given sweets by noncommissioned SS officers Wilhelm Gotz and Erwin Meyer to ease their fears. The famous Serbian writer of Sephardi origin, David Albahari, wrote an epochal short novel entitled Gotz and Meyer, translated into many languages, including English and Hebrew.
Today, the novel is regarded as essential reading for its powerful portrayal of the lasting emotional toll carried by the descendants of Staro Sajmiste’s victims.
Once boarded, the van, carrying between 50 to 80 people per trip, was driven across the Sava into German-controlled Serbia. There, the exhaust was diverted into the vehicle. Victims suffocated within minutes. The corpses were then transported to the Avala firing range, where Serbian and Roma prisoners dug mass graves.
Survivor Lea Ben David (née Papo) was a teenage inmate at Sajmiste when she and her family were told they would be transferred to Austria for labor.
“We were told we would be moved,” she recalled. “That we would go to Austria to work. I even packed my coat and a blanket. My mother combed my hair. That morning, my younger brother asked for his shoes to be cleaned. He thought we were going somewhere better. They took them to the truck. The next day, we knew. The children were gone. The truck never came back with them.”
The awful truth became clear: They had been murdered in the gas van. Her account is preserved in the book Testimonies from Jewish Survivors in Yugoslavia, edited by Zeni Lebl.
This became a daily operation. The van arrived every morning except Sundays, and by May 1942 nearly all of the camp’s Jewish population, estimated at more than 6,000, had been murdered.
The final group of Jewish prisoners at Sajmiste were gassed on May 8, 1942. The van was returned to Berlin shortly thereafter and was eventually repurposed for mass killings in Belarus.
Unlike other camps, such as Auschwitz, hidden in the Polish countryside and fed by endless rail lines, Sajmiste required no trains. Its victims were already within walking distance of the gas van. The city watched as death unfolded just across the river.
From extermination to detention
With its Jewish population annihilated, Sajmiste was renamed Anhaltelager Semlin, a general detention camp. It began housing thousands of new prisoners: civilians from Ustase-controlled regions, captured Yugoslav partisans, Chetniks, and Greek and Albanian resistance fighters. Many had previously been interned at Jasenovac or other Ustase-run camps.
Conditions, already dire, worsened. Food became even scarcer. Diseases like tuberculosis and dysentery spread rapidly. Suicide and psychological collapse were common. Of the 32,000 prisoners held during this period, at least 10,600 died.
In late 1943, Germany’s ambassador to Serbia reportedly urged that the camp be relocated, citing its visibility from downtown Belgrade as “politically intolerable.” His request was ignored.
Operation cover-up
As the war turned against the Nazis, efforts were made to erase the evidence of genocide. SS-Standartenfuhrer Paul Blobel, the architect of Sonderaktion 1005, arrived in Belgrade to supervise the exhumation and incineration of mass graves.
Beginning in December 1943, teams of Serbian prisoners were forced to dig up thousands of decomposing corpses. The bodies were burned on pyres constructed with railway ties and drenched in gasoline. These operations continued until April 1944. When the task was completed, the prisoners involved were executed – except for a few who managed to escape.
Vladimir Milutinovic, a Serbian gravedigger who survived, later testified: “Eighty-one or 82 trenches were prepared, and I helped dig all of them. At least 100 people fit into each trench. These were only for those suffocated in the truck. We dug a different set for those who were shot.”
Bombing and closure
On April 17, 1944, Allied bombers struck Belgrade. One wave mistakenly hit the Sajmiste camp, killing roughly 100 prisoners and causing significant structural damage. A month later, the camp was officially transferred to ISC control. By July 1944, it had been permanently closed.
But the scars remained. Sajmiste had played a central role in the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, facilitating the near-total destruction of the country’s Jewish population and serving as a transit point for tens of thousands of political and ethnic prisoners.
The site fell into disrepair, and survivors’ voices were often ignored in the post-war reconstruction of memory.
Post-war and future hopes
For decades after the war, the camp’s history was neglected or politicized. Under president Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia, official narratives emphasized the camp’s use against partisans while downplaying the scale of the Jewish genocide. In a country where Tito wanted Croats, Serbs, and others to live in brotherhood and unity, dredging up the scars of the past was not useful.
Over the years, the neglected and deteriorating Sajmiste complex became home to several artists, with former fairground buildings repurposed into studios for painters and sculptors. Other enterprises gradually moved in as well, such as taverns and gyms.
However, a major public outcry erupted in April 2019 when news broke that a private kindergarten was set to open in one of the historic pavilions. The building in question had been purchased in 1998 by entrepreneur Milorad Krsmanovic, though a court later annulled the sale. Despite the ruling, Krsmanovic continued to operate various businesses there over the years, which included a nightclub, art gallery, restaurant, and fitness center.
During this period, the only indication of the site’s past was a generic memorial slab, paid for by victims’ families. It mentioned only that tragedy took place, with no reference to Serbs, Jews, or Roma murdered there.
The announcement reignited long-standing controversy surrounding the site’s use. City officials appealed to the national government to reconsider the permit, while state authorities claimed there were no legal grounds to halt the project. Jewish organizations and parents groups voiced strong opposition, citing the site’s history as a place of suffering and death. Krsmanovic, for his part, accused the government of attempting to strip him of his property rights.
The uproar once again highlighted the state’s decades-long failure to properly memorialize and protect the Sajmiste complex, more than 75 years after the atrocities that occurred there.
In 2020, under the leadership of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian National Assembly established the Memorial Center Staro Sajmiste to commemorate Holocaust victims.
The site is currently undergoing restoration, but funding is lacking to complete the mission of turning it into a museum. The project is led by director and former ambassador of Serbia and Montenegro to Israel, Krinka Vidakovic Petrov, who gave the Magazine a tour of the site.
“You know, I am very angry with myself,” Vucic stated to the Magazine when asked about the law. “I heard there were some problems, and I didn’t follow the entire process, and now I am engaging myself once again to finish everything down there. Because if I don’t do it, nobody will.
“We need to do it for our future. People will have to visit that place, people will have to see what happened there and understand what happened there, so nothing similar can happen to us at any time in the future.”