Anti-Semitic regulations were rounded up by the Germans after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. On 16 April 1941, before the
Royal Yugoslav Army formally capitulated, Wilhelm Fuchs – commander of the
Einsatzgruppe Serbia 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. Böhme's order stated that hostages were 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 Serbian civilians were
executed by German troops during the first 2 months of this policy,By the end of Summer 1941, the Gestapo and local
Volksdeutsche had already rounded up all the Jews in the Banat and transferred them to the
Topovske Šupe and
Sajmište concentration camps. The Germans carried out the first arrest of hostages in Belgrade in April 1941. From August to November 1941 Germans rounded up adult Jewish males from the rest of Serbia, and interned them at Topovske Šupe. These formed the main reservoir of Jewish hostages to be shot as part of the German reprisal policy of executing Serbian civilians. From there the Germans took and executed the Jews at killing grounds at Jajinci, Jabuka (near Pančevo), etc.,. 500 Banat Jews were executed at Deliblatska peščara in the south Banat, while some Jews were killed as part of mass German executions elsewhere, like the
Kragujevac and
Kraljevo massacres. Thus, by November 1941 “there were almost no living male Jews who could be used as hostages.”
The killing of women and children , similar to one used at Sajmište to gas Jewish women and children. The exhaust pipe diverted fumes into the sealed compartment at back. Once it was placed into position, a 10-15 minute ride was enough to kill up to 100 people locked in back The second genocidal activity, between December 1941 and May 1942, involved the incarceration of the women and children at the
Semlin, or Sajmište concentration camp and their gassing in a mobile gas van called a
Sauerwagen. The German concentration camp, in the old fairgrounds or
Staro 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. On 8 December 1941, all remaining Belgrade Jews were ordered to report to the offices of the
Judenreferat (Gestapo Jewish Police) in George Washington Street. After handing over the keys to their homes, the Germans took them via the pontoon bridge over the Sava to the newly established
Judenlager Semlin. 7,000 Jewish women and children were thus interned in the bombed-out camp fairgrounds over a brutal winter, when hundreds started to die. The first victims of the German gas van were the staff and patients at the two Jewish hospitals in Belgrade. Over two days in March 1942, the Germans loaded over 800 people, mostly patients, into the gas van, in groups of between 80 and 100. They died of carbon-monoxide poisoning as the van drove to the killing grounds in
Jajinci. After the Jewish hospitals were emptied, the destruction of the Jewish women and children at Semlin began. As the historian Christopher Browning explains: Between 19 March and 10 May, the drivers, Götz and Meyer, accompanied by the camp commander
Herbert Andorfer, made between 65 and 70 trips between Semlin and Jajinci, killing 6,300 Jewish inmates. Of the almost 7000 Jews interned at Semlin, fewer than 50 women survived. The victims of the camp included 10,600 Serbs and uncounted
Romani . 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 destruction of the Kladovo Transport monument In December 1939, ships carrying about 1,200 Jewish refugees, mostly from Austria and Germany, landed in
Kladovo, on Serbia's border with Romania. Fleeing the Nazis, they were travelling the Danube to the Black Sea to reach Palestine, but due to British limitations on Jewish emigration to Palestine, the Romanian authorities refused them passage. At first they lived onshore and aboard the ships at Kladovo, with aid provided by the Belgrade Jewish community. In September 1940, they were resettled to the Serbian town of Šabac, some moving into private homes, others living in community facilities. Welcomed by the Mayor and locals, they resumed cultural, educational and religious activities; some young men joined the city soccer team. In April 1941, when the Germans invaded Serbia, they incarcerated Kladovo transport and local Jews in an internment camp near town. In September 1941, as part of retaliations for a Partisan attack on Šabac, the Germans took the Jewish men on a 46 kilometer, forced “bloody march”, during which they killed 21 stragglers. In October 1941, Wehrmacht squads shot the rest of the Jewish men, as part of executions of 2,100 hostages in retaliation for 21 German soldiers killed by Partisans. In January 1942 the Germans took the women and children to Zemun, then forced them to march 10 kilometers through the snow to the
Sajmište concentration camp, with some infants dying along the way. With the exception of two Kladovo transport women who managed to survive, all were later murdered by the Germans via asphyxiation in gas vans, together with Jewish women and children from across Serbia.
The Holocaust in the Banat Local ethnic German
Danube Swabian or
Shwovish authorities in
Banat helped carry out the Holocaust in that area of German-occupied Serbia. Following the fall of Yugoslavia, local Germans began to plunder the property of Jews and engaged in acts of torture. On the evening of 14–15 August 1941, approximately 2,500 Jews from across all of Banat including
Zrenjanin,
Srpska Crnja,
Jaša Tomić,
Kikinda and
Pančevo were arrested and deported to the German military authorities in Serbia by the local ethnic German authorities under
Sepp Janko. The Jews were sent to concentration camps near Belgrade including Sajmište and Banjica where they were eventually killed. ==Role of the
Wehrmacht==