Language:
English
Year of publication:
2010
Titel der Quelle:
History and Memory; Studies in Representation of the Past
Angaben zur Quelle:
22,1 (2010) 5-47
Keywords:
Banjica (Concentration camp)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust survivors
Abstract:
A myth that a mobile gas van was deployed in German-occupied Serbia not only at the Semlin Judenlager at Sajmište in Belgrade, but also at another camp in the city, Banjica, obtained credency in post-World War II Yugoslav historiography and is continuing in present Serbian historiography. The myth is based on a handful of testimonies from survivors, bystanders, and collaborators, and contradicts extant contemporary documents which attest to the fact that the method of execution in Banjica was by shooting. Banjica was a camp mainly for political prisoners, not part of the Nazi Final Solution, like Semlin. Argues that the source of the myth is a wartime "fear rumor" that circulated both within the camp and in its vicinity. The rumor was picked up by the communist partisans and, after the liberation, by the government War Crimes Commission, which retained the myth of gas vans in Banjica out of political considerations, in particular in order to buttress the imagery of equality between Jewish and non-Jewish victims of Nazism in Yugoslavia. The survivors, most of whom had been members of the communist resistance, unintentionally adapted their testimonies to the War Crimes Commission's expectations. The case of the "gas vans in Banjica" is an additional illustration of the unreliability of testimony.
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