Topovske Šupe concentration camp

Topovske Šupe
Topovske Šupe
	Concentration camp
	Location of Topovske Šupe within occupied Yugoslavia
Coordinates	44°47′25″N 20°28′05″E / 44.79028°N 20.46806°ECoordinates: 44°47′25″N 20°28′05″E / 44.79028°N 20.46806°E
Location	Belgrade, Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia
Operated by	German Gestapo; Gendermarie of the Government of National Salvation
Original use	Royal Yugoslav Army military base
Operational	August–December 1941
Inmates	primarily Jews and Romanis
Number of inmates	5,000–6,500
Killed	4,300

The Topovske Šupe concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Kanonen-Schuppen;^[1] Serbian: Logor Topovske Šupe, Логор Топовске Шупе) was a concentration camp located on the outskirts of Belgrade which was operated by Nazi Germany with the help of Milan Nedić's quisling government during World War II. Located in the neighborhood of Autokomanda, on the site of an old military base, the camp held between 5,000 and 6,500 inmates from its establishment in August 1941 until its closure that December. About 4,300 inmates were killed during its operation, of whom 3,000 were killed as hostages and 1,300 as suspected anti-fascists.

Background[edit]

Jews were rounded up by the Germans after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia.

On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the Royal Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated.^[2] The country was then occupied and dismembered, with the Wehrmacht establishing the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia^[3] under a government of military occupation. The territory included most of Serbia proper, with the addition of the northern part of Kosovo (centred on Kosovska Mitrovica), and the Banat.^[4] It was the only area of partitioned Yugoslavia in which the German occupants established a military government, to exploit the key rail and riverine transport routes that passed through it, and its valuable resources, particularly non-ferrous metals.^[5] The Military Commander in Serbia appointed Serbian puppet governments to "carry on administrative chores under German direction and supervision".^[6] On 29 August 1941, the Germans appointed the Government of National Salvation under General Milan Nedić, to replace the short-lived Commissioner Administration.^[7]

A pre-war politician who was known to have pro-Axis leanings, Nedić was selected because the Germans believed his fierce anti-Communism and military experience could be used to quell an armed uprising in the Serbian region of Šumadija.^[8] Unable to bring reinforcements due to the need to send soldiers to the Eastern Front, the Germans responded to the revolt by declaring that one-hundred Serbs would be executed for every German soldier killed and that fifty would be executed for every German soldier wounded. By October 1941, this policy had resulted in the deaths of 25,000 Serbs.^[9] The Germans also targeted Jews, who were subjected to forced labour, punitive taxing, and restrictive decrees.^[10] Jews were also registered with German authorities and forced to wear identifying armbands while Jewish property was confiscated.^[11] They, and to a lesser degree Romanis, were targeted on racial grounds, although most were not killed outright. Following the start of the anti-German uprising, German propaganda began associating Jews with Communism and anti-German ideology. Executions and arrests of Serbian Jews followed.^[10]

Operation[edit]

The camp at Topovske Šupe (lit. cannon sheds)^[10] was established on 20 August 1941^[12] on the site of a former Royal Yugoslav Army military base.^[1]^[13] The former military base was called Logor kraljevića Andreja, the "Prince Andrej Camp", after Prince Andrew of Yugoslavia, brother of the king.^[14] Located on the outskirts of Belgrade, it was the first extermination camp for Jewish men established by German forces in Serbia^[12]^[14] and was partly run by the Gestapo.^[15]

Originally, Jews from the Banat were detained in the camp due to Nazi allegations that Jewish groups were behind the anti-German revolt. They were expelled by the Volksdeutsche from Banat to Belgrade where they originally settled into the Jewish centers, private houses and synagogues. Later, an order was issued that they all should be interned into the Topovske Šupe. At first, the inmates were sent to the forced labor. As the rebellion spread over Serbia in 1941, the Nazis organized penal expeditions and mass internment began, so the camp became a "hostage reservoir".^[14] Afterwards, the camp only detained Jewish males of fourteen years and older. Prisoners were held in poor conditions and were guarded by the gendarmes of the Nedić government, whose cruely towards inmates often exceeded that of the Germans. Prisoners who attempted to escape the camp were publicly hanged by the gendarmes as a warning to other inmates. The camp became a hostage centre from where the Germans could select victims for reprisal shootings. Daily, the Germans shot between 150 and 450 predominantly Jewish inmates.^[12] Though officially called "Jewish Transitional Camp", the complex was used for gathering other nationalities, too. Romany population was mostly brought from the neighborhood of Marinkova Bara to the east, but also from other parts of Belgrade. One part of Topovske Šupe was declared a Refugee Camp where Serbs, refugees from the Independent State of Croatia, were situated.^[16]

Executions usually occurred at the Jajinci firing range, in the village of Jabuka or in the Deliblato Sands.^[14] They were carried out after inmates were deceived into thinking they were being taken to a camp in Austria where they would experience better treatment and would be fed better food.^[12] By December 1941, most Serbian Jews over fourteen were detained at Topovske Šupe.^[11] That month, the camp was closed.^[1] Surviving inmates were used as the forced laborers during the adaptation of the Sajmište into the camp, to which they were transferred later.^[14] It took only several months to annihilate the entire male Jewish population of Belgrade, so mostly women and children were interned in Sajmište.^[16]

An estimated 5,000–6,000 people were detained at Topovske Šupe throughout its operation,^[17] of whom 3,000 were killed as hostages and 1,300 were killed as suspected anti-fascists.^[18] The historian Milan Koljanin has estimated that the camp held 6,000–6,500 inmates (5,000 Jews and 1,000–1,500 Romanis). Milovan Pisari, from the Center for Research and Education about Holocaust, writes that there is no evidence that executions were conducted in the camp, but mentions the case of two Jews who were publicly hanged between the barracks after an unsuccessful escape attempt.^[14]

Aftermath[edit]

After the war, the site of the camp was neglected by Belgrade authorities.^[19] Pisari believes that the reason for neglect, despite very meticulous official politics in former Yugoslavia regarding the memory of victims, is that victims in this camp were neither Communist fighters nor anti-fascists, while later the focus shifted to the Serbian victims. Koljanin says that, as a society, "we didn't appear in a good light" when it comes to the Sajmište camp either, and that Topovske Šupe should be part of a memorial web, centered in the future commemorative complex in Sajmište.^[14]

The remains of the objects are desolate and within the complex near the Tabanovačka Street, only one wall and two one-floor barracks survive today. The memorial plaque, which commemorates the events in Topovske Šupe was dedicated only in 2005, when Miroslav Mišković, a tycoon and one of the richest Serbs and owner of Delta Holding, purchased the lot and announced plans to build a massive Delta Planet Shopping Center and two 40-floor business towers. The plaque was stolen in the summer of 2017, then recovered by the police and handed over to the Jewish Municipality of Belgrade, but as of November 2017 it was still not returned to the location. Only the small central part is arranged, in the form of a rose garden, while the complex extends into an informal settlement.^[14]

The announcement by Delta Holding was met by opposition from Jewish groups who argued that it was not "[morally] right to build a shopping centre on a site from where people have been taken to death." One of the main contractors behind the project is an architectural group from Israel.^[17] As of 2017, Delta Holding still didn't began any works on the mega project, but claim that they will build the planned 200,000 m² (2,200,000 sq ft) shopping mall but also that they will keep the memory of the camp. The company also stated that for 10 years they contemplate what to do and how to adapt the ruins into the proper memorial, in collaboration with the architect of the project, Ami Mur from Israel. Before any works done on the complex, the investors would have to obtain permits from the Institute for the culture monuments protection as Topovske Šupe are placed under the "preliminary protection". Serbian Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Policy stated that the investor has to preserve the complex and that nothing can't be built in the zone of 5 m (16 ft) around the present ruins.^[14]

Notes[edit]

^ ^a ^b ^c Sundhaussen 2009, p. 345.
^ Cohen 1996, p. 28.
^ Hehn 1971, official name of the occupied territory.
^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 63–64.
^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 64.
^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 177.
^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 179.
^ Singleton 1985, p. 182.
^ Pavlowitch 2002, p. 143.
^ ^a ^b ^c Mojzes 2011, p. 80.
^ ^a ^b Israeli 2013, p. 22.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Mojzes 2011, p. 81.
^ Weiner & Ôfer 1996, p. 139.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Vuković & 19 November 2017.
^ Žarković, p. 107.
^ ^a ^b Vuković, 28 March 2018.
^ ^a ^b Dhumieres & 29 August 2013.
^ Premerl 1988, p. 191.
^ Byford 2013, pp. 527–528.

References[edit]

Books

Byford, Jovan (2013). Himka, John-Paul; Michlic, Joanna Beata, eds. Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. Lincoln, Nebraska: Nebraska University Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-4647-8.
Cohen, Philip J. (1996). Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-0-89096-760-7.
Israeli, Raphael (2013). The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions, 1941–1945. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-4975-3.
Mojzes, Paul (2011). Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the 20th Century. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-0665-6.
Pavlowitch, Stevan K. (2002). Serbia: The History of an Idea. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-6708-5.
Premerl, Nada (1988). Židovi na tlu Jugoslavije [Jews on the Territory of Yugoslavia] (in Serbo-Croatian). Zagreb: MTM.
Singleton, Frederick Bernard (1985). A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-27485-2.
Sundhaussen, Holm (2009). Benz, Wolfgang; Distel, Barbara, eds. Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager (in German). 9. Munich: C.H.Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8.
Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2.
Weiner, Hana; Ôfer, Dāliyyā (1996). Dead-End Journey: The Tragic Story of the Kladovo-Šabac Group. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0-7618-0199-3.

Documents

Nenad, Žarković. "Прoлазни логор Топовске шупе" [The Topovske Šupe Transit Camp] (PDF) (in Serbian). Belgrade: Nasleđe.

Journals

Hehn, Paul N. (1971). "Serbia, Croatia and Germany 1941–1945: Civil War and Revolution in the Balkans". Canadian Slavonic Papers. University of Alberta. 13 (4): 344–373. JSTOR 40866373.
Vuković, Ana (19 November 2017). "Sećanje na Topovske šupe nestalo, logor zaboravljen" [Memory of Topovske Šupe faded away, the camp is forgotten]. Politika (in Serbian). Belgrade.
Vuković, Ana (28 March 2018). ""Topovske šupe" spasiti od zaborava" [Saving Topovske Šupe from oblivion]. Politika (in Serbian). Belgrade. p. 08.