The Banjica concentration camp in the suburb of Belgrade, also known as the Dedinje detention camp [Anhaltelager] or ‘Konzentrationslager Serbien, Belgrad’, was one of the main Nazi camps in German-occupied Serbia and the Balkans. During the four years of its existence more than 30 000 inmates were probably imprisoned there, among them an unknown number of Roma. Even though the exact number of inmates is impossible to establish, the fate of the 23 637 who were registered by the camp administration is known. While the State Commission for Determining the Crimes of the Occupiers and Collaborators put the total number of inmates killed at 8,756, the documented number of deaths is 4,286; others were released and transferred to other camps.
Establishment of the Camp
The decision to set up the Banjica camp was taken in June 1941, although the German and Serbian collaborationist authorities had previously thought of using the buildings of the existing prison on Ada Ciganlija (an island in the River Sava) to isolate politically unwanted individuals or groups. The relevant section of the Belgrade Special Police [Specijalna Policija Uprave Grada Beograda] was already prepared in this sense since it was made up of policemen and officials who, even in the period preceding the outbreak of the war, had the task of following, finding and arresting members of the Communist Party, which had been banned by law as early as 1921.
As Germany launched its attack on the Soviet Union, Dragi Jovanović (1902–1946) and the Belgrade City Administration were entrusted with the task of adapting the buildings of the former 18th Infantry Regiment of the Yugoslav army and preparing them to accommodate the prisoners. The main building was chosen and surrounded by barbed wire, while guard towers were built in addition to the surrounding wall. The camp existed until October 1944.
The first groups of inmates arrived there on 9 July 1941, when the structural adaptations had not yet been completed. They were communist partisans arrested in the first days of the insurrection that broke out on 7 July 1941. The Banjica camp was in fact intended primarily for the internment of communists, anti-fascists and anyone who could resist or represent a danger for the occupiers and collaborators.
In the first months the camp was under the control of the German military administration in Belgrade. From February 1942 it passed under the control of the Higher SS and Police Leader in the area of the Military Commander of the Occupied Territories in Serbia, August Meyszner (1886–1947). Among the commandants of the camp, Gestapo officer Willy Friedrich (unknown–1947) had held this position the longest, while the last commandant was a certain Lieutenant Becker (biographical data unknown). Among the surviving inmates, there was a strong memory of the cruelty of the commandant’s aide, the Volkdeutscher Peter Krieger (biographical data unknown), and of the camp’s doctor, SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Friedrich Jung (biographical data unknown), who killed those inmates who had survived execution by shooting.
German and Serbian Responsibilities
However, the Banjica camp had a distinct structure, compared to the other camps in German-occupied Serbia: while the command was in German hands, Serbian collaborators, acting through the administration of the City of Belgrade and the Ministry of the Interior, had direct control over a third of the camp. The camp administrator was the Serb Svetozar Vujković (1899–1949), who had been an inspector of the anti-communist section of the Belgrade police before the war.
The work of guarding the camp was also subject to a dual authority: for a period it was ensured by the police of the Milan Nedić (1878–1946) government, while at other times it was organised by the German Ordnungspolizei. The Serbian collaborationist authorities had the power to arrest and intern on their own initiative, but not to release detainees. Fundamental decisions were always made by the German authorities.
The Inmates
Especially in the early period, numerous Jews were also interned, about 900 in total. Among them were people who had gone into hiding or who had fled abroad and been returned to the Germans. In addition to them and the communists, inmates included sympathisers of other political parties of the pre-war period, members of Draža Mihailović’s (1893–1946) Chetniks movement, Roma, peasants who failed to meet their quota of grain handed over to the authorities, freemasons and ‘common criminals’. The detainees were divided into categories, and the harshest treatment was reserved for communists and sympathisers of the liberation movement. They were also the first to be selected for retaliatory shootings. According to some witnesses, some groups of prisoners were also killed using the gas van already used in the Sajmište camp.
Some of the Banjica inmates—according to some data about 7–8,000—were sent to concentration camps in the German Reich, including Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück, or to Norway and Greece as forced labourers.
The presence of Roma in the camp is documented by the administration books which in some cases, especially in 1941, also registered the inmates on the basis of nationality, especially in the case of Jews or Roma.
The first Roma were interned in mid-September 1941. On 12 September, partisans clashed with the Serbian gendarmerie near the village of Meljak, near Belgrade. Serbian collaborators accused the Roma of the village of having helped them. A group of 15 Roma men were then arrested and sent to Banjica, only to be shot a few days later during one of the retaliatory measures against partisans. In October, other Roma were interned, individually or in small groups, and suffered the same fate.
The names of 56 Roma are known from the inmate list of the Banjica camp.1Micković et al., Logor Banjica, 26. However, it is difficult to establish the total number of Roma held there and whether they were arrested solely as sympathisers of the partisans or as a result of racial persecution, as is known to have been the case with the internments in the camps of Topovske šupe and Sajmište. This is because there were most likely inmates who did not declare themselves as Roma or who were not registered as Roma by the camp administration on the basis of the Military Commander’s order of 11 July 1941, according to which those who could demonstrate permanent residence and employment in the city should not be considered ‘Gypsies’.
Aftermath
After the end of the war, the buildings were handed over to the Yugoslav National Army which opened its Military Academy there. In one part of the main building a museum dedicated to the camp was opened in 1969; it included a reconstruction of one of the rooms in which the inmates were kept. The museum presents the brutality of the occupation regime and honours the members of the partisan movement. Unlike the Sajmište camp, the Banjica camp is mentioned in numerous survivor testimonies and has been the subject of many historical and autobiographical publications.
