Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day: Mass killing of Serbs, Jews and Romani at Old Fairground

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Today marks National Holocaust, WWII Genocide and other Fascist Crimes Victims' Remembrance Day in Serbia, and wreaths will be laid at the Monument to the Victims of Genocide in the complex of the former death camp Staro Sajmiste (Old Fairground), run by Nazis in occupied Belgrade.

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The day is a state holiday in Serbia, and is dedicated to the memory of Serbs, Jews and Roma who perished during mass and inhuman killings during the Second World War.

The National Holocaust, WWII Genocide and other Fascist Crimes Victims' Remembrance Day is marked in memory of April 22, 1945 and the breakthrough of a group of prisoners from the Ustasha death camp in Jasenovac-Donja Gradina in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

The Jasenovac concentration camp was one of the largest execution sites in the Second World War. From 1941 until 1945, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the camp, mostly Serbs, as well as Jews and Romani, including tens of thousands of children (in the Jastrebarsko camp).

Apart from the Jasenovac-Donja Gradina death camp, the complex included several locations in the territory of today's Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The most notorious Nazi camp in the territory of Nazi-occupied Serbia was at Stari Sajmiste, whose detainees, mostly Serbs, Jews and Roma, were killed en masse there from 1941 until 1944.

"By April 22, 1945, when the breakthrough occurred, only 1,220 prisoners had remained in Jasenovac. Of those, the breakthrough was made by 600, when they realized that certain death awaited them. On the same day, 147 prisoners in Kozara made their breakthrough. 118 prisoners survived the breakthrough from Ciglana, and 11 from Kozara. The Ustashas first started killings in the women's camp. The last group of about 80 women was killed the day before," according to the Association of Serbs in the Region.

Wreaths will be laid at the monument today on behalf of the president of Serbia by the Secretary General of the President Suzana Paunovic, and on behalf of the City of Belgrade by Mayor Zoran Radojicic.

(Telegraf.rs)