Escalating into Holocaust

the site of the concentration camp at Sajmište today
Tuesday, 6 September, 2016

EVENT

Wednesday 21 September 2016; Amsterdam, the Netherlands

A project financed by the EACEA - Europe for Citizens Programme; Strand 1 - European Remembrance (REMEM)

From execution squads to the gas van of the concentration camp at Sajmište. Two defining phases of the Holocaust in Serbia

You are invited to participate in the event Escalating into Holocaust that is organised in the framework of the Europe for Citizens Programme. Look here for the programme and registration.

Concentration camp at Sajmište was a death camp for Jewish women and children from German occupied Serbia, most of them, about 5.500, from Belgrade. A number of Roma women and children were interned too. In six weeks, April-May 1942, the inmates at Sajmište were systematically murdered by the use of a mobile gas van dispatched from Berlin especially for that purpose.

For 70 years there were no detailed data about the victims, until recently, when archivists from the Historical Archives of Belgrade found 6 boxes among old unsorted piles. The boxes revealed unprocessed and unlisted documentation about more than 2000 Belgrade Jews killed at the Sajmište concentration camp. Motivated after this discovery, the Historical Archives of Belgrade initiated a wide international partnership with the aim to explore the best contemporary experiences and methodologies, as well as the most productive, sustainable and effective outcomes in processing such material.

This way the project will contribute to expand the view from local to European perspectives and further examine the Holocaust and its defining impact on the common European values in post-war Europe, including the current European challenges of intolerance, discrimination and raising anti-Semitism and anti-Romanyism.

The project

The main project goal is to further support Holocaust remembrance, research and education, with particular aim to explore shared European aspects of the Holocaust by taking Holocaust in Serbia as starting point, in order to further discuss important current European challenges, and Holocaust as a shared European narrative that defines European values of diversity, tolerance and Human Rights.

Through the series of 6 public events in Serbia, Sweden and the Netherlands, international experts will present and discuss shared European aspects of the Holocaust, Holocaust research, commemoration, teaching and learning about Holocaust, as well as current European challenges in facing intolerance, anti-Semitism, anti-Romanyism, xenophobia etc.

In addition, a database of the Holocaust victims killed at the concentration camp Old Fairground (Staro Sajmište) in Belgrade, a traveling exhibition, and a set of educational materials and an online presentation will be produced, and presented at the events.

More info on the project website

Image: The site of the concentration camp at Sajmište today.