Regional Study Visit to Sites of Memory – Serbia

Documenta –
Centre for Dealing with the Past is organizing regional study visits
to sites of memory, which include a series of three educational study
visits in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia to sites marked
with traumatic events from the period 1941-1945. Our aim is to
systematically learn about practices of marking sites of suffering
and about the commemorative culture in the region, to initiate a
public dialogue on the culture of remembrance, as well as to
strengthen a team of experts interested in dealing with the past in
particular countries.

In the period March 1 to 3, 2013, we
have organized the second out of three planned regional study visits
dedicated to the culture of remembrance, which was held in Serbia.
During the study visit, we visited the following locations: camp
‘Staro sajmište’, cemetery of the liberators of Belgrade, Jewish
cemetery, memorial-cemetery of the fighters of the national
liberation struggle, location of the former camp Topovske šupe in
Belgrade, as well as memorial-complex Sremski front near Adaševci.

Nenad Lajbenšperger from the
Republican commission for the protection of cultural monuments in
Belgrade gave us a presentation about Staro sajmište camp, which was
established on 8 December 1941, under the jurisdiction of Gestapo for
Serbia and command of the SS officers. Milan Radanović,
associate on the ‘Staro sajmište’ project, guided us through the
Jewish cemetery, memorial-cemetery of the fighters of the national
liberation struggle and cemetery of the liberators of Belgrade,
giving us a detailed account of the historical background of these
sites, as well as on their current lives in the mental map of sites
in Belgrade related to the city’s anti-fascist past.

Except for the mentioned
locations, we have also visited the exhibition “Yugoslavia from
beginning until the end” in the Museum
of Yugoslavia’s History, where we were
guided by Hrvoje Klasić,
one of the authors of the exhibition texts, from the history
department at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.
In the Museum of Yugoslavia’s History we have also participated at
the round table entitled “Monuments to national liberation
struggle: Sites of memory or witnesses of forgetting?”, which
was jointly organized by Documenta
and Museum of Yugoslavia’s History. During the round table, we
discussed the ways in which commemorative practices changed during
Yugoslavia after its dissolution, i.e. the organized visits to these
monuments in the past (during Yugoslavia) and about the situation
with these monuments and places of memory today. Participants at the
round table were Olga
Manojlović-Pintar from
the Institute for Serbia’s recent history, Nenad
Lajbenšperger
from the Republican commission for the protection of cultural
monuments in Belgrade, Vjeran
Pavlaković
from the Cultural studies department, Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Rijeka, and Aleksandar
Ignjatović
from Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade.

At the end of the study visit, we also
visited memorial-complex Sremski front near Adaševci, one of the
most important strategic front lines in Yugoslavia during the Second
World War, where we were given a lecture by Hrvoje Klasić
from the department of history, Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Zagreb.

Please see the program of the study
visit in the attachment.