During the Holocaust in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, the military administration of Nazi Germany established after the April 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia, Jewish and Romani people were subjected to genocidal acts. The crimes were primarily committed by the German occupation authorities who implemented Nazi racial policies, assisted by the collaborationist forces of the successive puppet governments established by the Germans in the occupied territory.
Immediately after the occupation, the occupation authorities introduced racial laws, labeling Jews and Romani as Untermensch ("sub-humans"). They also appointed two Serbian civil puppet governments to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision.
Jews were the primary target but Romani were also targeted for elimination. The perpetrators of the Holocaust was the Nazi German Wehrmacht stationed in German-occupied Serbia. The main engine of extermination was the regular German army.Misha Glenny. The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804–1999. Page 502: "The Nazis were assisted by several thousand ethnic Germans as well as by supporters of Dijmitrje Ljotic's Yugoslav fascist movement, Zbor, and General Milan Nedic's quisling administration. But the main engine of extermination was the regular army. The destruction of the Serbian Jews gives the lie to Wehrmacht claims that it took no part in the genocidal programmes of the Nazis. Indeed, General Bohme and his men in German-occupied Serbia planned and carried out the murder of over 20,000 Jews and Gypsies without any prompting from Berlin" They carried out operations with the assistance of Milan Nedić's puppet government and Dimitrije Ljotić's fascist organization Yugoslav National Movement (Zbor), which had joint control over the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade along with the German Gestapo. The murders were primarily carried out in concentration camps and gas vans. In May 1942, occupied Serbia became one of the first territories declared judenfrei. The Nazis systematically murdered approximately 18,000 Serbian Jews in the occupied territory.
The main Holocaust perpetrators in Serbia—Nazi German officers Harald Turner, August Meyszner, Wilhelm Fuchs and Johann Fortner—were extradited after the war to Yugoslavia, where they were tried and executed. Milan Nedić was imprisoned by the Yugoslav authorities, but committed suicide soon after, while Ljotić was killed in a car accident. As of 2019, 139 Serbians have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.
Background
Yugoslav Foreign Secretary Anton Korošec, who was Roman Catholic priest and leader of Slovenian conservatives, stated in September 1938, that "Jewish issue did not exist in Yugoslavia…. Jewish refugees from the Nazi Germany are not welcome here." In December 1938 Rabbi Isaac Alkalai, the only Jewish member of government was dismissed from the government.
On 25 March 1941, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact, allying the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the Axis powers. The Pact was extremely unpopular, particularly in Serbia and Montenegro, and demonstrations broke out. On 27 March, Serb military officers overthrew Prince Paul. The new government withdrew its support for the Axis, but did not repudiate the Tripartite Pact. Nevertheless, Axis forces, led by Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941.
The Axis forces partitioned Serbia, with Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy and the Independent State of Croatia occupying and annexing large areas. In central Serbia the Germans occupiers established the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia (Gebiet des Militärbefehlshabers in Serbien), the only area of partitioned Yugoslavia under direct German military government, with the day-to-day administration of the territory controlled by the German Chief of the Military Administration. The German Military Commander in Serbia appointed a Serbian civil puppet government to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision. The police and army of the puppet government were placed under German commanders.
In July 1941, a major uprising began in Serbia against the German occupiers, which included the establishment of the Republic of Užice, the first liberated territory in World War II Europe. At Hitler's personal command to crush the resistance, the German military started executing tens-of-thousands of Serb civilians, among whom they included thousands of Jews. To assist in quelling the rebellion the German occupiers in August 1941 put in place the puppet government of Milan Nedić, which was also given responsibility for many Holocaust-related activities, including the registration and arrest of Jews and joint control over the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade.
The Holocaust Antisemitic regulations
On 16 April 1941, before the Royal Yugoslav Army formally capitulated, Wilhelm Fuchs – commander of the Einsatzgruppe Serbia based in Belgrade – ordered the registration of the city's Jews. His order stated that all those who did not register would be shot. Shortly after, Field Commander Colonel von Keisenberg issued a decree which limited their freedom of movement. On 29 April 1941, the Chief of the German Military Administration in Serbia, Harald Turner issued the order to register all Jews and Gypsies throughout German-occupied Serbia. The order prescribed the wearing of yellow armbands, introduced forced labor and curfew, limited access to food and other provisions and banned the use of public transport.
On 30 May, the German Military Commander in Serbia, Helmuth Förster, issued the main race laws – The Regulation Concerning Jews and Gypsies (Verordnung Betreffend Die Juden Und Zigeuner), which defined who is considered Jewish and Gypsy. The law excluded Jews and Roma from public and economic life, their property was seized, they were obliged to register in special lists (Judenregister and Zigeunerlisten) and for forced labor. In addition, the order prescribed the obligatory wearing of yellow tape for Jews and Roma, and prohibited them from working in public institutions or in professions such as law, medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pharmacy, as well as visiting cinemas, theaters, entertainment venues, public baths, sports fields and markets.
Beginning of persecution
Already in the initial days of the occupation, members of the German Einsatzgruppe Jugoslawien started breaking into and looting Jewish businesses. Later these businesses were confiscated, per German antisemitic regulations, often turned over to the control of local Volksdeutsche. All other Jewish real estate and personal property, plus religious properties, were also confiscated. A special form of theft was "the contribution", amounting to 12 million dinars, which Belgrade Jews were forced to pay, for the "damages to Germans of the April War, which the Jews caused". In addition, the Germans forced Belgrade Jews to pay 1,400,000 dinars into a "Fund for the suppression of Jewish-Communist actions". Germans and Volksdeutsche mistreated and beat Jews on the streets, while in Belgrade Volksdeutsche and Ljotić-ites captured older Jews, bestially mistreating them. Germans, with the help of Volksdeutsche and Ljotić-ites destroyed and desecrated Jewish temples. The Germans conscripted all Jewish men between ages 14 and 60, and all Jewish women between 16 and 40, to perform forced labor for 17 and 18 hours a day, without rest. They were forced to do the most difficult work, including remove with their bare hands the debris and bodies left from the extensive German bombardment of Belgrade. Those who could not keep up, were shot by the German guards.
The killing of Jewish men
The destruction of Serbian Jews by the Nazi Germans was carried out in two distinct phases. The first, which lasted between July and November 1941, involved the murder of Jewish men, who were shot as part of retaliatory executions carried out by German forces in response to the rising anti-Nazi, partisan insurgency in Serbia. In October 1941. the German general, Franz Böhme, ordered the execution of 100 civilians for every German soldier killed and 50 for every wounded. Böhme's order stated that hostages were to be drawn from "all Communists, people suspected of being Communists, all Jews, and a given number of nationalist and democratically minded inhabitants". Altogether some 30,000 Serbian civilians were executed by German troops during the first 2 months of this policy, among them 5,000 Jewish men, or nearly all the Jewish males above age 14 in Serbia and the Banat.By the end of Summer 1941, the Gestapo and local Volksdeutsche had already rounded up all the Jews in the Banat and transferred them to the Topovske Šupe and Sajmište concentration camps. The Germans carried out the first arrest of hostages in Belgrade in April 1941. From August to November 1941 Germans rounded up adult Jewish males from the rest of Serbia, and interned them at Topovske Šupe. These formed the main reservoir of Jewish hostages to be shot as part of the German reprisal policy of executing Serbian civilians. From there the Germans took and executed the Jews at killing grounds at Jajinci, Jabuka (near Pančevo), etc. 500 Banat Jews were executed at Deliblatska peščara in the south Banat, while some Jews were killed as part of mass German executions elsewhere, like the Kragujevac and Kraljevo massacres. Thus, by November 1941 “there were almost no living male Jews who could be used as hostages.”
The killing of women and children
The second genocidal activity, between December 1941 and May 1942, involved the incarceration of the women and children at the Semlin, or Sajmište concentration camp and their gassing in a mobile gas van called a Sauerwagen. The German concentration camp, in the old fairgrounds or Staro Sajmište, near Zemun was established across the Sava river from Belgrade, on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia, to process and eliminate the captured Jews, Serbs, Roma, and others.
On 8 December 1941, all remaining Belgrade Jews were ordered to report to the offices of the Judenreferat (Gestapo Jewish Police) in George Washington Street. After handing over the keys to their homes, the Germans took them via the pontoon bridge over the Sava to the newly established Judenlager Semlin. 7,000 Jewish women and children were thus interned in the bombed-out camp fairgrounds over a brutal winter, when hundreds started to die.
The first victims of the German gas van were the staff and patients at the two Jewish hospitals in Belgrade. Over two days in March 1942, the Germans loaded over 800 people, mostly patients, into the gas van, in groups of between 80 and 100. They died of carbon-monoxide poisoning as the van drove to the killing grounds in Jajinci. After the Jewish hospitals were emptied, the destruction of the Jewish women and children at Semlin began. As the historian Christopher Browning explains:
Between 19 March and 10 May, the drivers, Götz and Meyer, accompanied by the camp commander Herbert Andorfer, made between 65 and 70 trips between Semlin and Jajinci, killing 6,300 Jewish inmates. Of the almost 7000 Jews interned at Semlin, fewer than 50 women survived. The victims of the camp included 10,600 Serbs and uncounted Romani. Gendarmes of Milan Nedić, Dimitrije Ljotić and Chetniks by September 1944 captured about 455 remaining Jews in Serbia who were handed over to the Banjica camp where they were immediately killed.
The destruction of the Kladovo Transport