Šabac concentration camp
| Šabac concentration camp | |
|---|---|
| Concentration camp | |
  Šabac Location within Serbia | |
| Coordinates | 44°45′N 19°42′E / 44.750°N 19.700°E |
| Known for | Mass detention and killings of civilians, Jews and Roma |
| Location | Šabac, German-occupied Serbia |
| Built by | 342nd Infantry Division |
| Operated by | Wehrmacht and German Order Police |
| Operational | 30 September 1941 – 31 March 1942 |
| Inmates | Serbian civilians, Jews, Roma and suspected insurgents |
Number of inmates | 26,000–30,000[1] |
| Killed | Unknown |
Šabac concentration camp (German: KZ Schabatz[2]) was a Wehrmacht-run concentration camp in German-occupied Serbia during World War II. Established in September 1941 by the 342nd Infantry Division, it was used to detain Serbian civilians, Jews and Roma arrested during German military operations against the insurgency.
The camp was a site of mass detention, persecution and killing under German occupation. In September 1941, around 200 prisoners were killed or died from exhaustion during a forced march from Šabac to Jarak and back, known as the "blood march", while more than 650 Jewish men from the Kladovo transport were taken from Šabac and later murdered near the village of Zasavica. By October, the camp held between 15,000 and 20,000 prisoners and was severely overcrowded. Prisoners were also held as hostages for German reprisals, and mass shootings of inmates took place during the camp's operation.
The camp was closed on 31 March 1942, and its surviving prisoners were transferred to other detention facilities, including Banjica concentration camp and Sajmište concentration camp.
History
Background
The Sava camp
Following the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Serbia came under German occupation. In July 1941, the German security police in Belgrade ordered the detention of Jewish refugees and local Jews.[3] Around 1,107 Jewish refugees from the Kladovo transport, who had been stranded in Yugoslavia while attempting to reach Palestine, were imprisoned near Šabac's old fortress on the Sava River, in a former artillery depot. The site became known as the "Sava camp".[4]
The camp at Jarak and the "blood march"
In September 1941, following fighting around the town of Šabac in the Mačva region, one of the main area of Partisan and Chetnik resistance, the German command ordered a mass roundup of the town's male population. More than four thousand locals were arrested, while German forces also razed forty houses.[5] On 26 September, approximately 5,000 men were force-marched to a newly established detention camp north of Šabac, at Jarak in Croatia. The journey became known in Yugoslav literature as the "blood march".[6] Before setting up on the journey, soldiers of the 342nd Infantry Division of the German Army, executed 82 people for "disobedience".[5] Escorted by German and Croatian personnel, the prisoners were first held without food for two days at Klenak then forced to run 23 km to Jarak; those unable to keep pace were shot along the way.[6] After the camp at Jarak was deemed unsuitable because of its unfavourable location, the prisoners were force-marched back to Šabac, where a new provisional camp was being established.[6] Between 21 and 30 September, the 342nd Division executed 830 prisoners, most were unarmed civilians.[7]
Establishment
The Šabac camp was established on 30 September 1941 by the 342nd Division.[8] It was later placed under the authority of the Plenipotentiary Commanding General in Serbia (Bevollmächtigter kommandierender General in Serbien), whose military administration staff was headed by Harald Turner.[9] Barracks located in the town were used, the camp was guarded by the 1st Company of the 64th Reserve Police Battalion and the 4th and 6th Companies of the 750th Infantry Regiment, part of the 718th Infantry Division.[9]
Detention and reprisal killings
Following German military operations in the Sava–Drina area in late September and early October 1941, more than 21,000 people were arrested and brought to the camp. They included male civilians from Šabac, Sremska Mitrovica and surrounding areas, as well as local Jews and several hundred Roma.[10] A Security Service unit (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) unit came to screen detainees for links to the insurgency; 910 people were executed as a result during the first two weeks.[10][9] On 2 October, 22 German soldiers of a Wehrmacht signals unit were ambushed and killed near Topola. That same night, around 100 Partisans attacked the camp but were repulsed.[10][11] On 4 October, Böhme ordered the execution of 2,100 hostages, later increased to 2,200, to be selected from the concentration camps at Šabac and Belgrade, mostly Jews and communists.[12] On 10 October, he issued a general order establishing a ratio of 100 hostages to be executed for every German soldier killed and 50 for every soldier wounded.[12] By mid-October, the camp held between 15,000 and 20,000 people, while the 342nd Division was transferring approximately 1,000 civilians to the camp each day. The resulting overcrowding placed considerable strain on the camp's capacity and security.[13] Böhme requested permission to deport the detained civilians to Germany as prisoners of war, but the request was refused.[14] By 20 October the SD had released 5,000 people out of over 22,000 incarcerated.[15]
Planned camp at Zasavica
On 6 October 1941, a site near the village of Zasavica, in the northern part of the Sava–Drina bend, was selected for a larger concentration camp intended to serve Serbia.[16] The camp was initially expected to receive the prisoners held at Šabac within two weeks.[17] Construction was assigned to the Organisation Todt, with an initial capacity of 30,000 prisoners planned for 20 October. An SD report envisaged expanding the camp to accommodate as many as 500,000 people, modelled on the German concentration-camp system.[16] On 8 October, 400 Serbian builders and craftsmen were transferred from Šabac to work on its construction.[17]
On 11 October 1941, the Jewish men of the Kladovo-Šabac group imprisoned at the Sava camp were transferred first to the Šabac camp and then to the Zasavica site, where they were held alongside a group of Roma. According to historian Bojan Aleksov, "at least 725 refugee men and two women from the camp, along with 23 local Jewish men, 84 Roma and several Serbs", were executed near the village of Zasavica on 12 and 13 October.[18] The executions were carried out by soldiers of the 750th Regiment, and the victims were buried in mass graves on the banks of the Sava River.[19] The remaining Jewish women and children of the Kladovo-Šabac group were later taken to Sajmiste concentration camp, where they were murdered in a gas van.[20]
The site soon proved unsuitable, as heavy rain turned the clay soil into a quagmire that prevented vehicles from reaching the camp. On 29 October, Böhme's quartermaster department ordered construction to stop and the surviving prisoners to return to Šabac.[21]
Closure
Further mass shootings of camp inmates took place in November 1941.[9] About 1,000 inmates were shot by the 1st Company of the 64th Reserve Police Battalion during the camp's operation, over the same period more than 2,200 civilians were killed in wider "cleansing operations" conducted by the division's units in the area.[22] The camp was closed on 31 March 1942, with remaining prisoners transferred to other facilities, including Banjica concentration camp in German-occupied Serbia and Sajmište concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia.[9]
Notes
References
- ↑ Kramer 2025, p. 286.
- ↑ Megargee & White 2018, p. 835.
- ↑ Jacobs 2009, p. 156.
- ↑ Weiner & Ofer 1996, p. 140.
- 1 2 Shepherd 2012, p. 127.
- 1 2 3 Manoschek 1995, p. 64.
- ↑ Shepherd 2012, p. 128.
- ↑ Manoschek 1995, p. 75.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Megargee & Hecker 2022, pp. 541–542.
- 1 2 3 Kay 2022, pp. 82–83.
- ↑ Manoschek 1995, p. 76.
- 1 2 Kay 2022, pp. 228–229.
- ↑ Manoschek 1995, pp. 75–76.
- ↑ Manoschek 1995, pp. 76–77.
- ↑ Israeli 2017, p. 37.
- 1 2 Weiner & Ofer 1996, p. 152.
- 1 2 Manoschek 1995, pp. 67–68.
- ↑ Aleksov 2023, p. 136.
- ↑ Weiner & Ofer 1996, p. 155.
- ↑ Shepherd 2012.
- ↑ Manoschek 1995, p. 69.
- ↑ Manoschek 1995, p. 79.
Sources
- Aleksov, B. (2023). Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933-1945. Balkan Studies Library. Brill. ISBN 978-3-657-79174-3.
- Israeli, Raphael (12 July 2017). The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions, 1941-1945. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-48403-9.
- Jacobs, S.L. (2009). Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. G – Reference,Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-0-7391-3589-1.
- Kay, Alex (15 December 2022). Das Reich der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtgeschichte des nationalsozialistischen Massenmordens [The Realm of Destruction: A Comprehensive History of Nazi Mass Murder] (in German). Verlag Herder GmbH. ISBN 978-3-8062-4604-9.
- Kramer, Alan (26 March 2025). Concentration Camps: A Global History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-252091-3.
- Manoschek, Walter (1995). "Serbien ist judenfrei": militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42 ["Serbia is Free of Jews": Military Occupation Policy and the Destruction of the Jews in Serbia, 1941/42]. Beiträge zur Militärgeschichte (in German). Vol. 38 (2nd ed.). Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag. ISBN 3-486-56137-5.
- Megargee, G.P.; Hecker, M. (2022). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV: Camps and Other Detention Facilities Under the German Armed Forces. Book collections on Project MUSE. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-06090-7.
- Megargee, Geoffrey P.; White, Joseph R. (29 May 2018). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945: Volume III: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-02386-5.
- Shepherd, Ben H. (25 April 2012). Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-06943-5.
- Weiner, Hana; Ofer, Dalia (2 April 1996). Dead-End Journey: The Tragic Story of the Kladovo-Sabec Group, Volume 14. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. ISBN 978-0-7618-0199-3.