With the gassings complete, it was renamed Zemun concentration camp (German: Anhaltelager Semlin) and served to hold one last group of Jews who were arrested upon the surrender of Italy in September 1943.

During this time it also held captured Yugoslav Partisans, Chetniks, sympathizers of the Greek and Albanian resistance movements, and Serb peasants from villages in other parts of the NDH.

In 1943 and 1944, evidence of atrocities committed in the camp was destroyed by the units of SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, and thousands of corpses were exhumed from mass graves and incinerated.

The site that became the Sajmište concentration camp during World War II had originally been an exhibition centre built by the Belgrade municipality in 1937[1] in an attempt to attract international commerce to the city.

[4] Milan Nedić, a pre-war politician who was known to have pro-Axis leanings, was then selected by the Germans to lead the collaborationist Government of National Salvation in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia.

"[8][9] NDH authorities, led by the Ustaše militia,[10] subsequently implemented genocidal policies against the Serb, Jewish and Romani populations living within the borders of the new state.

The Germans soon implemented a number of anti-Jewish laws, and by the end of August 1941, all Serbian Jewish males were interned in concentration camps, primarily at Topovske Šupe in Belgrade.

It was located near administrative and police centres, as well as the Belgrade central railway station, which allowed for the efficient transport of Jews to the camp from the many towns in the region.

On each occasion, inmates were told that they were being transported to a camp in Austria with better labour conditions but were instead taken to Jabuka in the Banat or to a firing range on the outskirts of Belgrade, where they were killed.

[19] Women and children were placed in makeshift barracks that were barely heated,[20][24] and whose windows were shattered due to German bombing raids carried out during the invasion of Yugoslavia.

Inmates suffered during numerous influenza epidemics, slept on wet straw or bare floorboards, and were provided with inadequate amounts of food.

[19] That month, German military authorities demanded the camp be cleared of Jews in order to accommodate the growing number of captives taken in battles with the Partisans.

[20] Stricken with guilt over having to play a central role in the murder of the Jewish inmates, some of whom he had developed good relations with, Andorfer requested a transfer; this was denied.

[32] The seven Serbian prisoners that had participated in unloading the murdered inmates from the van were shot after the gassings stopped, but the gravedigger, a Serb named Vladimir Milutinović, survived.

It also held captured Yugoslav Partisans, Chetniks, sympathizers of the Greek and Albanian resistance movements, and Serb peasants from villages in the Croatian Ustaše-controlled regions of Srem and Kozara, where they had been detained in the Jasenovac concentration camp.

proposed that the camp be moved deeper into NDH territory, because its "[continuing existence] before the eyes of the people of Belgrade was politically intolerable for reasons of public feeling."

[40] By the end of 1943, the Germans made an effort to erase all traces of the atrocities committed in the camp by burning records, incinerating corpses, and destroying other pieces of evidence.

Upon arrival, he ordered the head of the local Gestapo, SS-Sturmbannführer Bruno Sattler, to form a special detachment that was to be responsible for the exhumation and burning of bodies.

[22] According to the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, the death toll was exaggerated by the communists for political purposes, and the real number of inmates was about 50,000, with 20,000 killed.

[47] Belgrade Jews murdered during the Holocaust, including those at Sajmište, were not commemorated by Yugoslavia's post-war Communist government until 30 years after the war ended.

A monument, 10 m (33 ft) high and created by the artist Mića Popović, was erected on the banks of the Sava on 22 April 1995, marking 50 years of victory over the Nazism and Serbian Holocaust Remembrance Day.

[52] In February 1992, as provided by the detailed urban plan, the neighborhood was to be fully reconstructed to its pre-war look, an idea opposed by some architects, with added memorial and commemorative objects.

Budisavljević saved 15,000 children (12,000 of which survived) from perishing in the Concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia, operated by the Ustaše regime during World War II.

In 2014, sculptor and professor Tomislav Todorović [sr], with minimal intervention, shaped them into two heads, with iron bars forming the face (eyes, mouth) and spiky hair.

[57] In June 2021, Belgrade's mayor Zoran Radojičić announced reconstruction of the complex, which should include complete restoration of all structures, starting with the central tower in 2022.

Archive footage and files, original testimonies, letters and photographs served as the basis, which was then upgraded with actors, scenic recreations and light installations.

Former workers which adapted the pavilion into the vehicle repair service "Rade Končar" after the war, left statements that they discovered dead bodies but were told to rebury them and cover them with concrete.

[69] Also, some other facilities moved-in over time, like the kafanas and gyms, but the major public controversy arose in April 2019 when it was announced that a privately owned kindergarten will be open in one of the buildings.

The investor, Milorad Krsmanović, purchased the building (the Simić pavilion) in 1998, but the court later voided the contract, which didn't prevent him from using the venue as a disco club, gallery, restaurant and gym since then.

Writer David Albahari wrote: "It's a place that doesn't simply humiliate by its inhumanity, but also by its complete exposing to Belgrade, which silently watched it from across the river".