Racial Persecution
Racial laws were introduced in all occupied territories with immediate effects on Jews and Roma people, as well as causing the imprisonment of those opposed to Nazism. Several concentration camps were formed in Serbia and at the 1942 Anti-Freemason Exhibition in Belgrade the city was pronounced to be free of Jews (Judenfrei). On 1 April 1942, a Serbian Gestapo was formed. It is estimated that approximately 80,000 people were killed from 1941 to 1944 in the German-run concentration camps in Nedić's Serbia. Serbia was proclaimed one of the Judenfrei (free of Jews) countries in Europe. Approximately 14,500 Serbian Jews – 90 percent of Serbia's Jewish population of 16,000 – were murdered in World War II.
Collaborationist armed formations forces were involved, either directly or indirectly, in the mass killings of Jews, Roma and those Serbs who sided with any anti-German resistance or were suspects of being a member of such. These forces were also responsible for the killings of many Croats and Muslims; however, some Croats who took refuge in Nedić's Serbia were not discriminated against. After the war, the Serbian involvement in many of these events and the issue of Serbian collaboration were subject to historical revisionism by Serbian leaders.
The following were the concentration camps established in the occupied territory:
- Sajmište concentration camp (Belgrade)
- Banjica concentration camp (near Belgrade)
- Crveni krst concentration camp (Niš)
- Topovske Šupe (Belgrade)
- Dulag 183 (Šabac)
Read more about this topic: Serbia Under German Occupation
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