The Banjica concentration camp (German: KZ Banjica, Serbian: Бањички логор, Banjički logor) was a Nazi German[1] concentration camp in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia,[2] the military administration of the Third Reich established after the Invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II.

In response to escalating resistance, the German army instituted severe repressive measures – mass executions of civilian hostages and the establishment of concentration camps.

It was jointly run by German occupiers under the command of Gestapo official Willy Friedrich and the Milan Nedić's puppet government, which was under full control of the occupational forces.

Following the 1938 Anschluss between Germany and Austria, Yugoslavia shared a border with the Third Reich and came under increasing pressure as her neighbours aligned themselves with the Axis powers.

[6] Intending to secure his southern flank for the impending attack on the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler began placing heavy pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Axis.

Two days later, a group of pro-Western, Serbian nationalist Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers deposed the country's regent, Prince Paul, in a bloodless coup d'état, placed his teenaged nephew Peter on the throne, and brought to power a "government of national unity" led by General Dušan Simović.

On 30 May 1941 the German Military Commander in Serbia, Helmuth Förster, issued the main Race Laws, which excluded Jews and Roma from public and economic life, seized their property and required them to register for forced labor.

[10] On July 7, 1941 Partisan-led armed resistance broke out in Serbia, quickly spreading and leading to the establishment of the first liberated territory in occupied Europe, the Republic of Užice.

Additionally, to fight the resistance, the Germans set up a quisling administration, under Milan Nedić, but he was given very limited powers, and was unable to establish order.

The first military commander in the occupied territory was General der Flieger Helmuth Förster, a Luftwaffe officer, appointed on 20 April 1941,[13] assisted by the chief of the administrative staff, SS-Brigadeführer and State Councillor, Dr. Harald Turner.

[14] A further key figure in the initial German administration was SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Fuchs, who commanded Einsatzgruppe Serbia, which was a grouping that included various detachments of the Reich Security Main Office (German: Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), including Gestapo (Secret State Police), Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police, or Kripo), and Ausland-Sicherheitsdienst (Foreign Security Service, or Ausland-SD).

Consideration was given to appointing Belgrade police chief Dragomir Jovanović, but the German Military Commander in Serbia selected former Yugoslav Minister of Internal Affairs Milan Aćimović.

Jews were removed from all official posts by 14 May, and a series of anti-Jewish laws were passed prohibiting them from activities ranging from going to restaurants to riding streetcars.

In the same month, an order from Aćimović's Ministry of Internal Affairs (Serbo-Croatian: Ministarstvo unutrašnjih poslova, MUP) also mentioned a plan to establish a concentration camp to hold known communists and other persons.

In addition to his role as the administrator of Belgrade, Jovanović was also the chief of Serbian State Security for Aćimović's puppet regime.

The committee consisted of Jovanović's deputy city administrator, Miodrag Đorđević, the chief engineer of Belgrade, Milan Janjušević, and an unnamed representative of the Gestapo.

The committee chose the former barracks of the Royal Yugoslav Army's 18th Infantry Regiment, located in the Belgrade suburb of Banjica.

The wall was completed within a month, and was 5 metres (16 ft) high, enclosing the camp in the form of a pentagon, with towers set at each corner in which machine guns and searchlights were mounted.

After the war, while he was being interrogated, Jovanović explained that this division had come about when "the Gestapo arrived one day without warning and decreed that one-third of the camp would belong to the Serbian authorities, and the rest they took for their prisoners".

[33] Most of the inmates were individuals affiliated with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian: Komunistička partija Jugoslavije; KPJ) or participants in that summer's anti-fascist uprising.

These rules prohibited singing, speaking loudly, having conversations on political subjects, possessing writing utensils and paper, and all other personal belongings.

Despite this, imprisoned anti-fascists defied the Germans by singing Partisan songs, shouting their support for Tito and Stalin, and by holding lectures, discussions, one-act plays, recitals, and even folk-song and dance performances on the campgrounds.

[37] Those committed by the SP UGB and the SDS were carried out under the orders of Belgrade police commissioner Svetozar Vujković, a noted sadist who collaborated enthusiastically with the Germans, interrogated prisoners and devised a number of humiliating torture techniques.

Executions occurred frequently at Vujković's whim and he rarely asked for approval from German or Serbian authorities to carry out murders.

A surviving member of the chain gang, Momčilo Damjanović, testified that the incineration of the corpses was organized by a unit of the Kommando 1005, headed by SS-Standartenführer [Colonel] Paul Blobel, the man responsible for erasing traces of German atrocities throughout German-occupied Europe.

[45] According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: In November 1943 SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, the officer in charge of Aktion 1005, came to Belgrade in order to set up a unit that would disinter the bodies of the murder victims and burn them.

[35] After the war, Banjica's German commander, Willy Friedrich, was tried by a Yugoslav military court in Belgrade on 27 March 1947, and was sentenced to death.

[50] Historian Jozo Tomasevich calls Banjica the most notorious concentration camp in Serbia during World War II.