In the early morning hours on Thursday, June 25, through the cultural property in Subotica, over the Smolenski Mill, the banner "Serbia wins" was flown.
Let's remind you, a month ago, it dawned SNS banner and through Beograđanka, a building that is also a cultural monument of the capital.
The Subotica Intermunicipal Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments confirms to "Vreme" that it did not issue permission to cover the Smolenski Mill with the SNS banner.
The director of the Subotica institute is currently on vacation, and so is the colleague who is in charge of advertisements - the institute says that the SNS institute is classified as an advertisement, and that they will submit a report to the inspection against this kind of desecration of cultural property. Such is the procedure, they say, so it will depend on the inspector's decision whether this advertisement will be removed from Mliuna Smolenski or not.
The place of suffering is not the carrier of the SNS banner
The public outside Subotica learned about this from social networks.
"It is unacceptable to turn the building from which several thousand Jews from Bačka were taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp and death, into a place where political banners are hung. It is illegal to change the purpose of the cultural monument Mlin Smolenski in Subotica to a banner carrier. Above all, the desecration of a place associated with the suffering during the Second World War is inhumane. Will this kind of nonsense end?" wrote on his FB account Nenad Leibensperger, conservator, who "Vreme" declared as Person of 2025 for everything he did with his colleagues from the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments to thwart the demolition of the General Staff.
The biggest in town
The Smolenski Mill was declared an immovable cultural asset in 1993.
Photo: Subotica Institute for the Protection of Cultural MonumentsSmolensky Mill
On the website of the Subotica Inter-Municipal Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, it is written that "the building of the three-story mill on Beogradsko put at No. 120, next to the City Hospital, is not only a significant element in the development of the economic and industrial structure of the city, but also played a very sad role in the recent past of the Bačka Plain".
Then it is explained that the project for the mill was made in November 1889 in Budapest for Ladislav First, who was its first owner. It is known as the Smolensk mill after the next owner, and it kept that name even after getting the next owners. In the 1920s, this mill was the largest in the city, employing up to 70 workers and having a capacity of 600 metric cents per day.
Part of a sad past
The website of the Subotica Institute further states that at the end of the Second World War, fascists gathered Jewish families in the settlements of Srboran, Kula, Vrbas, Crvenka, Bačka Topola and other places, concentrated them here and kept them for days, without food and water, in extremely inhumane conditions, before transferring them to Bacalmas and further to death camps in Poland and Germany.
According to the story, the mill continued its infamous role even after the end of the war; the communists also kept their prisoners here and later took most of them to the execution grounds.
The mill is one of the few three-story buildings, built at the beginning of the 20th century in Subotica, whose facade with few decorative elements emphasizes a new period in architecture - modern.
It can be assumed that this advertisement was placed by the local board of SNS. Is it possible that they did not know about all this about the Smolensk Mill? It seems as if they don't really care about the cultural monument of their city and the history and the place of suffering.
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