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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE
An Online Resource Centre
SERBIA 2
Jewish Community of Belgrade
Jewish Historical Museum
Kosmajska Temple
Beth Israel synagogue (site)
Banjica Concentration Camp museum
Jewish cemeteries
Other Holocaust sites and memorials
Topovske Supe [Topovske Šupe] Holocaust Memorial
Dorcol Holocaust Memorial
Sajmiste [Sajmište] concentration camp site
Former Ashkenazi synagogue
Former Sephardi synagogue
Jewish cemetery
The earliest Jewish settlers in Belgrade were Ashkenazi refugees from central Europe; it seems that in the medieval period Jewish life in the city was thriving. A large Sephardic community also developed after the Turks conquered the city in 1521.
By the Second World War, the city was home to more than 12,000 Jews, most of them Sephardi. Belgrade's Jewish quarter was in the historic Dorcol neighbourhood, near the Danube. Its main street, Jevrejska Ulica (Jewish Street), still exists, though there is little specifically Jewish about the area today. Little more than a year after the Nazi occupation of the city in April 1941, it was claimed that Belgrade was the first large city in Europe to be entirely cleared of Jews. Today, Belgrade has a Jewish population of about 2,000, including about 200 refugees from Sarajevo. The suburb of Zemun, once on the Austro-Hungarian side of the Serbian border, has an important Jewish community with a history of its own.
A single building on Kralja Petra is the focus of Belgrade's Jewish community. In addition to the Jewish Historical Museum, the building houses the offices of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia and Montenegro and of the local Jewish community (see next item).
The museum was established in 1948 and has been housed in the Jewish community centre since 1969. The museum covers the religious and cultural history of Serbian Jewry from Roman times to the Second World War. Much of the museum's collection consists of artefacts from communities that were destroyed in the Second World War.
Opening hours
General visitors
researchers
Monday to Friday 10:00 - 12:00
Monday to Friday 08:00 - 15:00
Address
Telephone
Fax
Email
Website
Kralja Petra 71a (1st Floor)
+381 11 622 634
+381 11 626 674
muzej@eunet.yu
www.jim-bg.org
This imposing synagogue, with its late neo-classical design, was built in 1926 for the Ashkenazi community. It was designed as a veritable Jewish community centre, with space set aside for a variety of religious and communal activities. The building is set in a courtyard behind a gated wall. The façade is marked by a wide central staircase and four large windows which light the sanctuary. A round window with a prominent Star of David is set within the gable. The synagogue was used by the Nazis as a military brothel and was refurbished after the war. Last restored in 1990, it is today well maintained and regularly used for services. It is the only one of Belgrade's three synagogues to have survived the Second World War.
Address
Marsala Birjuzova Street 19
For photos see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Beogradska_sinagoga.jpg
This Sephardi synagogue, destroyed by fire during the Second World War, was a Moorish-style structure with two small towers and striped outer decoration. It was designed by Milan Kapetanovic and built in 1908. King Peter I of Serbia laid the foundation stone, attesting to the importance and good standing of the Jewish community at this time. The Fresco Gallery, a subsidiary of Belgrade's National Museum, now stands on the site. It bears a memorial plaque commemorating the Jewish community.
Address
Telephone
Website
The museum is located in a surviving building from Banjica concentration camp, established in Belgrade in July 1941. The camp was managed by a special SS unit (Sonderkommando beim KCL Banjica), with the help of police forces from Serbia's collaborationist government. From 1941 until October 1944, over 24,000 Serbs, including patriots, members of the resistance, hostages, Jews, Roma and citizens from some 17 other countries were detained at the camp. Many were killed there or transported to other sites in Europe where they were to die. The Museum comprises a series of linked areas, between them symbolising the universal topic of human suffering. Perhaps its most memorable section is the Memorial Hall, which has the ambience of a camp cell and contains a list of the concentration camp's victims.
The museum, established in 1969, is a monument to the memory of prisoners and victims of the camp. Its permanent exhibition was revised in 1983 and expanded in 2000.
Opening hours
Tuesday to Friday
Saturday & Sunday
Monday
10:00 - 16:00
10:00 - 14:00
closed
Address
Telephone
Website
Belgrade's two Jewish cemeteries are located across the street from each other at Mije Kovacevica Street 1, near the city's municipal cemetery.
The Sephardic cemetery is the larger of the two. It is well maintained and has many fine tombs, some of which display photos of the deceased. Gravestones bear inscriptions in several languages - Serbian, German, Hebrew, Ladino, Hungarian - testimony to the diversity of Serbian Jewry. There is an impressive Holocaust monument, erected in 1952 and designed by Bogdan Bogdanovic (who also designed the memorial at Jasenovic, Croatia), as well as earlier memorials to Jewish victims of the various Balkan Wars and the First World War. There is also a Shemos plot (buried cache of used sacred books) marked with a distinctive tombstone in a prominent place in the cemetery and recently restored through the efforts of Rabbi Yitzhak Asiel and his wife.
The Ashkenazi cemetery, on the other side of the street, is much smaller, with about 200 gravestones. It is minimally maintained but also in fairly good condition.
Sephardi cemetery:
Address
Telephone
Mije Kovacevica Street 1
+381 11 768 250
Topovske Šupe, a former weapons depot, was the first transit camp to be set up after the Nazi occupation of 1941. From August to December of that year large numbers of Jewish and Roma people were forcibly relocated to the camp, where many were killed. When Topovske Šupe closed at the end of 1941 the remaining prisoners were transferred to various camps in the country, including the infamous Sajmište camp, where a gas van was used to murder thousands of Jewish women and children.
On 27 January 2006, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica [Koštunica] helped inaugurate a Holocaust memorial at the site. It consists of a bronze relief in the form of an open scroll - recalling a Torah scroll - on which is inscribed a brief history of the camp in Serbian, Hebrew and English. The inscription reads: 'Between August and December 1941, this site served as a Nazi concentration camp for Jews and Roma from Belgrade and Banat. All of them were imprisoned here and several hundred were taken daily for execution by firing squad'.
Address
Topovske Šupe Memorial park
(Autokomanda neighbourhood)
For photos, see:
www.eurojewcong.org/ejc/news.php?id_article=305#
Dorcol is an old neighbourhood, occupying the sloping ground between Kalemegdan fortress and the Danube. It was a centre of Jewish life for many centuries. A Holocaust memorial in the shape of a burning menorah, sculpted by Nandor Glid and dedicated in 1990, stands on the bank of the Danube at the edge of the site of the former Jewish quarter.
Glid was born in Subotica, Yugoslavia, in 1924; after the Nazi invasion he was taken to Szeged (now Hungary) for forced labour; his family was killed at Auschwitz in 1944. He managed to escape from Szeged concentration camp, fighting with the partisans until he was wounded in March 1945. In 1972 he was awarded the Yugoslav Order of National Merit. He became a professor at the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 1975 and elected chairman, and then rector of Belgrade University of Arts in 1979 and 1985 respectively. Among his notable Holocaust and war monuments are those at Mauthausen, Austria (Yugoslav Memorial, 1957); Zavala, Bosnia (1958); Subotica, Serbia (The Ballad of the Hanged, 1967); Dachau, Germany (1968); the Yad Vashem monument, Jerusalem (1979); and Salonika, Greece (1997).
Address
On the Danube bank,
off Dunavska Ulica (Danube Street)
Sajmište concentration camp, located on the left bank of the Sava river, several kilometres from Zemun, was the scene of more murders of Serbian Jews than any other site. In 1938, a complex of buildings covering 15,000 square metres was built on this previously marshy site to host trade fairs and exhibitions. In 1941 the Germans transformed the new fairground into a large concentration camp which operated until 1944. Between December 1941 and February 1942, all Jewish women and children in Serbia were taken to Sajmište. Conditions there were very bad and the mortality rate was high. In late February a gas van arrived in Belgrade from Berlin, containing a type of poison gas recently used in Poland and in the Soviet Union. From March to May 1942 those Jews still imprisoned in Sajmište were gassed to death. It is estimated that approximately 8,000 Jews died at Sajmište in 1941 and 1942. In 1944, Sajmište was hit by US bombers, killing 80 people and injuring 170 more. The bombers' intended target was the nearby railway station.
On 9 July 1987 Belgrade City Assembly designated Sajmište a cultural site, protecting it from development. On 21 April, 1995, a monument in remembrance of Sajmište victims was erected by the Sava river. Local efforts have been underway for several years to better protect the site and to further commemorate the camp and its victims.
Address: on the left bank of Belgrade's Sava river, several kilometres from Zemun, by the railway bridge at the entrance into Belgrade itself.
There is a small but active Jewish community at Zemun, now a suburb of Belgrade. From the eighteenth century the town was the last outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On European Day of Jewish Culture, 3 September 2006, the Jewish community of Zemun organised a photographic exhibition about the recent revitalisation of the community. The exhibition was displayed at the Artget gallery in the Cultural Centre of Belgrade. A tri-lingual catalogue (in Serbian, English and Hebrew) was prepared.
Exhibition catalogue:
www.joz.org.yu/izlozba/katalog.pdf
This Neo-Romanesque Synagogue was built in the mid 19th century. Today it is owned by the city and used as a restaurant. The Jewish community is attempting to buy the building. There is a functioning prayer room in the Jewish community headquarters (see below).
Address
4 Rabbi Alkalaj Street
Located near the community headquarters, the ruins of the former Sephardi synagogue are marked by a memorial plaque. A plaque nearby also marks the site of a former Jewish school.
Dating back to 1747, the cemetery contains the gravestones of some of the family of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, who were from Zemun. The cemetery has a ceremonial hall and two memorials to Jewish victims of the Holocaust and of the Second World War. Vandals toppled nine tombstones in the summer of 1997. The cemetery and its buildings were repaired between 2003 and 2005.
Care of the cemetery is entrusted to the Hevra Kadisha (Burial Society), established by the Jewish Community of Zemun between 1770 and 1780. A statute adopted in 1883 named the Hevra Kadisha the 'Israelite brotherhood for the care of the ill and for funerals in Zemun'. The society fulfilled that role until 1941. The society, among other duties, determined the sizes and positions of graves and inspected inscriptions on gravestones. The society had the right to reject inscriptions if they were not in accordance with Jewish tradition. Today, the Hevra Kadisha follows funeral regulations adopted by the Assembly of the Jewish Community of Zemun and which harmonise with state burial regulations.
Address
Cara Dusana 32
Jewish Community Office:
Address
Telephone
Email
Website
Dubrovacka 21
11080 Zemun
+381 11 195 626
jozemun@EUnet.yu
www.joz.org.yu
contact us: editor@jewish-heritage-europe.eu
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