Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:01:55.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Story of Staro Sajmište Concentration Camp, Produced/Producing Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

Despina Syrri
Despina Syrri*
Affiliation:
Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article aims at considering the story of the Belgrade Staro Sajmište Second World War concentration camp, as it unfolded since October 2007. At that point, it captured national and international headlines, as a range of actors rallied to ban the private use of this memory place for a concert by a British pop group. The article concentrates on patterns of construction of memory(ies), space and transfers of knowledge as well as power as the Staro Sajmište story is ‘uncovered’ to the public in mainstream mass media. The focus of inquiry extends beyond the official realm of memory to media representations as central aspects of contemporary manifestations of collective memory. The article intends to explore the construction of narratives, public discourse and identities that directly impact democratic practice and citizenship in the wake of the radical social and political change that Serbia has experienced in the recent past and during the Western Balkans European Union accession process. It demonstrates that the multiple (hi)stories and fractured mnemonic genealogies of Staro Sajmište produce, and are themselves produced by, the narrative of European participation and integration, in an interplay between different discursive layers, such as the national narrative, the international and European narrative and the local Jewish narrative, as well as practices of spatial reconstruction and consumerism. The article is informed by understandings of the Balkans as a space that is inside and outside Europe in many senses, traversed by flows of people, funding and ideas/imaginaries of Europe and European-ness, concretised in specific projects and the relations that constitute them.

Type
Focus: Complexities of ‘Europe’
Information
European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 04 January 2012 , pp. 23 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. B92, B92 campaigns to build Museum of Tolerance at concentration camp site, 3 November 2007, http://www.b92.net/eng/insight/pressroom.php?yyyy=2007&mm=11&nav_id=45094, accessed 15 April 2009.Google Scholar
2.The Associated Press (2007) Ire at concentration camp concert – Survivors fume over use of Belgrade facility where 48,000 perished, updated 11:10 a.m. ET Nov. 1, 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21575303/, accessed 11 April 2009.Google Scholar
3.http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/kosheen-pull-concert-after-protests_1048897, accessed on 10 April 2009.Google Scholar
4.Naumovic, S. (2007) On ‘us’ as ‘them’: understanding the historical bases and political uses of popular narratives on Serbain disunity. Centre for Advanced Study Working Papers Series Issue 1, How to Think about the Balkans: Culture, Region, Identity, www.cas.bg/uploads/files/Sofia../Slobodan%20Naumovic.pdf Sofia.Google Scholar
5.Živković, M. (2001) Serbian stories of identity and destiny. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, The University of Chicago, Chicago.Google Scholar
6.Kostovicova, D. and Bojicic-Dzelilovic, V. (2006) Europeanizing the Balkans: rethinking the post-communist and post-conflict transition. Ethnopolitics, 3, 223–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Pridham, G. (2007) Change and continuity in the European Union's political conditionality: aims, approach, and priorities. Democratization, 3, 446–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8.Turkes, M. and Gokgoz, G. (2006) The European Union's strategy towards the western Balkans: exclusion or integration? East European Politics and Societies, 20, 659–690.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9.Anastasakis, O. (2005) The Europeanization of the Balkans. Brown Journal of World Affairs, XII(1).Google Scholar
10.Benchev, D. (2006) Constructing south east Europe: the politics of regional identity in the Balkans. RAMSES Working Paper 1/06, University of Oxford, European Studies Centre.Google Scholar
11.Todorova, M. (1997) Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
12.Rasza, M. and Lindstrom, N. (2004) Balkan is beautiful: Balkanism in the political discourse of Tuđman's Croatia. East European Politics and Societies, 18(4), 628–650.Google Scholar
13.Pred, A. R. (1995) Recognizing European Modernities: a Montage of the Present (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
14.Isin, E. F. and Kim, R. (2007) Abject spaces: frontiers, zones, camps. In: E. Dauphinee and C. Masters (eds) Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave), pp. 181–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15. Shoah Resource Center. The International School for Holocaust Studies, www.yadvashem.org, accessed on 10 April 2009.Google Scholar
16.Byford, J.. Semlin Judelager in Serbian public memory, http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/semlin, accessed on 10 April 2009.Google Scholar
17.Byford, J.. Semlin Judelager in Serbian public memory, http://www.semlin.info/, accessed on 10 June 2009.Google Scholar
18. DPA news agency (kjb) – Deutsche Welle. Forgotten Fairgrounds Recall Belgrade's Nazi-era Suffering, 27 July 2008, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3499688,00.html, accessed 20 April 2009.Google Scholar
19. ‘Istorijat’ (in Serbian). Municipality of New Belgrade. http://www.novibeograd.rs/default.asp?jez=l&str=1. Retrieved on 6 September 2007.Google Scholar
20.Koljanin, M. (1992) Nemacki logor na beogradskom Sajimistu 1941–1944 (Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju).Google Scholar
21.Ignatovic, A. and Manjlovic Pintar, O. (2008) Refinisanje secanja (I). In: Helsinska povelja (Beograd: Helsinski odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji), pp. 115–116. See also A. Ignatovic and O. Manjlovic Pinra (2008) Staro Sajmiste I secanja na Drugi svestki rat. Prostori slektovanih memorija. In: Helsinska povelja (Beograd: Hensinski odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji), pp. 117–118.Google Scholar
22. Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso. Bad Memories, Sites, symbols and narrations of the wars in the Balkans. Contributions to the conference ‘Bad Memories’ held in Rovereto on 9 November 2007, http://www.osservatoriobalcani.org/article/view/11090, accessed 27 April 2009.Google Scholar
23.Rastello, L. (1998) La guerra in casa (The war at home) (Torino: Einaudi).Google Scholar
24. Eurozine, Eurozine Editorial, ‘European histories: Towards a grand narrative? Introduction’, www.eurozine.com, Published 3 May 2005.Google Scholar
25.Leggewie, C.. Battlefield Europe, transnational memory and European identity. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-04-28-leggewie-en.html, accessed in 20 April 2009.Google Scholar
26. Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Research. Europeanization of National Memory Spaces, http://www.memory-research.de/cms/k25.Europeanization-of-National-Memory-Scapes_The-Europeanization-of-National-Memory-Scapes.htm, and http://www.memory-research.de/cms/k21.Holocaust-Narrations-in-German-Memorials-completed_Holocaust-Narrations-in-German-Memorials.htm, accessed in 20 April 2009.Google Scholar
27.Rothberg, M. (2009) Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
28.Christopoulos, D. (2002) Alterity as power relation (Athens: Kritiki) (in Greek).Google Scholar
29.Pejic, J. (1998) Citizenship and statelessness in the former Yugoslavia: the legal framework. In: S. O'Leary and T. Tiilikainen (eds) Citizenship and Nationality Status in the New Europe (London: The Institute for Public Policy Research/Sweet & Maxwell), pp. 169–186.Google Scholar
30.Stiks, I. (2006) Nationality and citizenship in the ormer Yugoslavia: from disintegration to the European integration. South East European and Black Sea Studies, 6(4), 483–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31. The Associated Press. Anger over concentration camp concert – Survivors fume over use of Belgrade facility where 48,000 perished. 1 November 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21575303/, accessed 11 April 2009.Google Scholar
32.B92 (2007) Juče logor, danas koncerti (Yesterday concentration camp, today concerts), 26 October 2007, http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2007&mm=10&dd=26&nav_category=12&nav_id=269487, accessed 12 April 2009 (own translation).Google Scholar
33.B92 (2007) Boks meč na Starom sajmištu, (Boxing match on the Old Fairgrounds), 16 December 2007, http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2007&mm=12&dd=16&nav_id=276768&nav_category=12, accessed 12 April 2009.Google Scholar
34. Interview with Aleksandar Lebl, 6 May 2009.Google Scholar
35.Katriel, T. (1994) Sites of memory. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 80, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36.Katriel, T. (1993) Our future is where our past is: Studying heritage museums as ideological and performative arenas. Communication Monographs, 60, 69–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37.Erikson, K. T. (1964) Notes on the sociology of deviance. In: H. Becker (ed.) The Other Side (New York: Free Press), pp. 9–23.Google Scholar
38. Katka Krosnar JTA. In: Belgrade, man wants memorial to a ‘forgotten concentration camp’, 27 March 2003, http://www.ourjerusalem.com/history/story/history20030330.html, This entry was posted on Sunday, 30 March 2003 and is filed under history. It was accessed 11 April 2009.Google Scholar
39. Interview with Veran Matic, Belgrade, 7 May 2009.Google Scholar
40.Obrad, S., Ana, M. (eds) (2006) Community of Memory. What is Transitional Justice? Serbian and English bilingual edition, translations by V. Bogojević a.o. (Belgrade: Belgrade Circle & the Center for Cultural Decontamination).Google Scholar
41. Belgrade Circle. Project proposal transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia. September, 2004, http://www.belgradecircle.org/eng/tjustice/index.html, accessed in 21 April 2009.Google Scholar
42.Radovic, S. (2009) Politics of space and memory in Serbia or: how one learns to stop worrying about the camp and love the mall. Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
43. Katka Krosnar JTA. In: Belgrade, man wants memorial to a ‘forgotten concentration camp’, 27 March 2003, http://www.ourjerusalem.com/history/story/history20030330.html. This entry was posted on Sunday, 30 March 2003 and is filed under history. It was accessed 11 April 2009.Google Scholar
44. The Associated Press. Anger over concentration camp concert – Survivors fume over use of Belgrade facility where 48,000 perished, 1 November 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21575303/, accessed 11 April 2009.Google Scholar
45.Uriely, N. (1997) Theories of modern and postmodern tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 24, 982–985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
46.Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
47.Kramsch, O. and Dimitrovova, B. (2008) T.H. Marshall at the limit: hiding out in Maas-Rhein. Euregio, 12(1), 31–46.Google Scholar
48.Bialasiewicz, L. et al. (2009) Lines in the sand: towards an agenda for critical border studies. Geopolitics, 14, 582–587.Google Scholar
49.Browning, R. (1985) Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution (New York: Holmes & Meier), p. 84.Google Scholar
50.Levy, D. and Sznaider, N. (2002) Memory unbound: the Holocaust and the formation of cosmopolitan memory. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(1), 87–106.Google Scholar
51.Levy, D. and Sznaider, N. (2005) The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), p. 100.Google Scholar
52.Huyssen, A. (2003) Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
53.Clarke, J. (2004) Changing Welfare, Changing States: New Directions in Social Policy (London: Sage).Google Scholar
54.Jones, M. et al. (2004) An Introduction to Political Geography: Space, Place and Politics (London: Routledge), p. 104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
55.Ong, A. (2006) Mutations in citizenship. Theory, Culture & Society, 23, pp. 499–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar