Two memorial centers will be built in Serbia and the Republic of Serbian Bosnia and Herzegovina (RS BiH) in memory of the victims of fascism in World War II, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on the site of the largest Nazi concentration camp in the former Yugoslavia.
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The authorities of Serbia and the Republic of Serbian Bosnia and Herzegovina (RS BiH), with the participation of Vučić and the President of the RS BiH Milorad Dodik, as well as Russian Ambassador Igor Kalabukhov, commemorated the victims of the Donja Gradina camp, which is located across the Sava River from the main part of the concentration camp located in Croatia Jasenovac. The complex of camps stretched over 210 square kilometers and served as a place for the destruction of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies held in the camp and brought from the territory of the Independent State of Croatia (NGH, 1941-1945) by the Croatian Ustaše fascists.
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“We are signing an agreement on the construction of a memorial center here, in Donja Gradina, so that everyone from Serbia and the Republika Srpska can visit it, everyone from Serbia and the Republika Srpska knows what a shrine it is for our people. Another memorial center will be in Belgrade – so that every foreigner who will come from the former Yugoslavia and any other part of the world, knew what happened in Jasenovac, what terrible crimes were committed against people, just because they are Serbs and Orthodox,” the President of Serbia told the audience.
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According to him, official Belgrade and Banja Luka will sign documents on the construction of memorial centers in the near future.
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“If we are not able to remember this, to preserve the culture of memory, to show how important it is for us to do this, nothing awaits us in the future, and we do not deserve our existence,” the Serbian leader emphasized.
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The commemorative event, officially dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of victims of the “crime-genocide of the NGH”, began with a funeral Orthodox service for the dead, which was held by Bishop Ephraim of Banya-Luchsky. Prayers for the Jews killed in the camp were read by the rabbi, and the spiritual leaders of the Roma (Gypsy) community honored the memory of the victims.
In April 2022, the President and members of the Serbian government, in the presence of Russian Ambassador Alexander Botan-Kharchenko, erected a memorial plaque in memory of the victims of fascism in World War II at the site of the former Staro Saimishte concentration camp in Belgrade on the left bank of the Sava River, which during the Nazi occupation was part of into the NGH, where, in addition to the victims of the camp itself, the river carried numerous bodies of those killed in Jasenovac, tens of kilometers upstream.
