page_title: The Holocaust in German-occupied Serbia
section_title: The Holocaust
hierarchical_section_title: The Holocaust in German-occupied Serbia / The Holocaust
caption_attribution_description: English: A Serbian poster for an exhibition in 1941-1942 during the Fascist regime of Milan Nedic, showing the Jews and Masons controlling the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, with marionettes of Stalin and Churchill. Caption: "The Jew is holding the strings. Whose strings and how? He'll answer you. The anti-masonic exhibit"
context_page_description: The Holocaust in German-occupied Serbia was part of the European-wide Holocaust, the Nazi genocide against Jews during World War II, which occurred in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, the German military occupation authorities established after the April 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia. 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. 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 perpetrator of the Holocaust was the Nazi German Wehrmacht stationed in German-occupied Serbia.
context_section_description: On 13 April 1941, before the Royal Yugoslav Army formally capitulated, Wilhelm Fuchs – Chief of the Einsatzgruppen 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.
  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 are 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 people were executed by the Nazi's during the first 2 months of this policy, including nearly all Serbian Jewish males, as well as tens of thousands of Serbs. Despite executing tens of thousands of Jewish men, the Wehrmacht in Belgrade refused to kill women and children because that would have been "dishonourable".
  The second genocidal activity, between December 1941 and May 1942, involved the incarceration of the women and children at the Semlin concentration camp and former fairgrounds in Belgrade and their gassing in a mobile gas van called a Sauerwagen. The German concentration camp, the old fairgrounds or Stare 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. Some 7,000 to 10,000 Jews are estimated to have been exterminated by the Nazis in the Semlin concentration camp alone, along with more than 10,600 Serbs and uncounted Romani (see Sajmište concentration camp). 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 SS-commander Harald Turner, Chief of the German military administration in Serbia described how the Nazis carried out the genocide of Serbian Jews:
  Already some months ago, I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on in this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD (i.e. Sicherheitsdienst – Nazi Security Services) got my hands on a "delousing van," that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp...
  — Dr. Harold Turner's letter to Karl Wolff, dated April 11, 1942.
  While the Germans were exclusively responsible for attempted extermination the Jews of Serbia proper, they were assisted by loc
caption: Anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic propaganda poster of the Nedić's quisling regime
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