We will never know if Werner, while standing at the window of the PRIZAD building with his camera pointed at the Fairgrounds pavilions, even thought for a moment about their new purpose. It is more likely that the Fairground was found by chance in a photograph whose subject was a striking scene of the sunset. And yet, by chance, this ordinary photo - a military souvenir from Belgrade - immortalized a turning point in the history of Belgrade: the moment when the Belgrade Fair became the Semlin Judenlager
Stariozef Werner, Major of the 18th Mountain Army Corps German Wehrmacht, spent two and a half months in Belgrade in the fall of 1941. He arrived at the end of September, right after the commander of his corps, General Franz Boehme, was appointed as the plenipotentiary commander-in-chief in Serbia. Werner was an officer in the headquarters command and, judging by surviving photographs from his personal collection, part of General Behm's entourage. In this capacity, he was part of the German military apparatus responsible for the bloodiest period of the Nazi occupation of Serbia. During Beme's mandate in Belgrade during the fall of 1941, almost all the males were killed Jewish population of the territory under his authority and numerous mass shootings were carried out in Šabac, Kragujevac, Kraljevo and Jajinci. It is estimated that in just over two months, around 20.000 civilians died in mass reprisals in Serbia.
Werner was a passionate amateur photographer who left behind several photo albums from Serbia, as well as France, Greece, Bulgaria and Norway. These are amateur recordings, dominated by scenes from military life, landscapes and portraits of local residents, mostly poor people who probably seemed exotic to German soldiers and who, in the case of the Balkans, confirmed prejudices about this area as primitive and backward. Coincidentally, Werner's albums were recently found at a photo auction and thus became available to the public for the first time.
ONE SUNSET IN BELGRADE
One of Werner's preserved photographs from Belgrade deserves attention. It is a scene of sunset over the Sava. The photo (9 x 6cm) is black and white, but we can assume that on that partly cloudy autumn day the sky over Belgrade was flaming orange. Werner liked to paint sunset scenes: in his albums there are several such photos from Glyfada, Athens and other places. On the right side of the photo from Belgrade, you can see the ruins of the King Alexander Bridge and the pontoon bridge built next to them by the Germans. More importantly, the sun sets behind the pavilions of the Belgrade Fair, the buildings where the Judenlager Semlin was established in early December 1941.
Josef Werner did not record where and when he immortalized this scene. On the back of the photo is written only "Blick nach Semlin, Belgrad" - view of Zemun, Belgrade. However, by studying the video in detail and cross-referencing data from different sources, answers to these questions can be given.
Through a comparative analysis of the angle from which the photograph was taken, modern satellite images and aerial photographs taken by allied reconnaissance aircraft during the war, it can be determined with certainty that the scene was photographed from one of the upper floors of the building of the pre-war Privileged Export Company (PRIZAD) on Obilićevo Venec . In the post-war period, this building was known as the headquarters of TANJUG. The German occupation forces requisitioned this multi-story building for their needs immediately after entering Belgrade in April 1941, but it is not known what was in it during the first eight months of the occupation. It is known, however, that the building changed its purpose in December 1941, precisely at the time when the 18th Corps was leaving Serbia. Therefore, we should not rule out the possibility that in the fall of 1941, this building housed the headquarters of this corps, and that Werner photographed the sunset from the window of one of the offices or from the roof. A field of view of slightly less than 40 degrees indicates that the photo was taken with a camera with a 50mm lens, most likely a "Leica" pocket camera, which was widespread and especially popular among Wehrmacht officers.
Through the position of the sun at sunset, it is possible to roughly determine the date when the photo was taken. The website www.suncalc.com allows you to determine the path of the sunset for any date from 1900 to the present, at any geographic location. If we consider that the photo was taken from the PRIZAD building, there is every chance that it was taken in the second week of November 1941, about twenty days before Werner left Belgrade.
TIME AND PLACE
Those November days were fateful for the Belgrade Fair. At the end of October 1941, General Boehme decided to open a camp in that place where the remaining Jewish population, mainly women, children and the elderly, i.e. all Jews who were spared from being shot because of their gender, age or physical condition, would be accommodated. autumn. Since Sajmište was formally located on the territory of the NDH, on October 29, through diplomatic channels, permission for the creation of the camp was requested from the competent authorities in Zagreb. The affirmative answer arrived on November 3, and the very next day, the Chief of Administrative Staff of the Military Commander of Serbia, Harald Turner, announced the adaptation of the space in accordance with its new purpose. Therefore, Werner's photograph was taken about a week after the decision to turn the pavilion of the Belgrade Fair into a camp for Jews was confirmed. At that time, groups of Jews from the Topovska šupa camp were brought to forced labor every day, which entailed laying wires around the camp and building accommodation for detainees.
We will never know if Werner, as he stood at the window of the building
of PRIZAD with a camera pointed at the Fairgrounds pavilions, even thought for a moment about their new purpose. It is more likely that the Fairground was found by chance in a photograph whose subject was a striking scene of the sunset. And yet, by chance, this ordinary photo - a military souvenir from Belgrade - immortalized a turning point in the history of Belgrade: the moment when the Belgrade fairground became the Judenlager Semlin.
The place from which Werner painted this scene is also important. In the spring of 1942, a gas truck was delivered to Belgrade from Germany, which, across the pontoon bridge that is clearly visible in Werner's photo, transported groups of Judenlager prisoners to their deaths every day. This action, in which about 6.000 Jews perished in six weeks and which was a foreshadowing of the tragic fate of millions of Jews throughout Europe, was directed by the Judenlager commander Herbert Andorfer, the head of the security police in occupied Serbia, Emanuel Schäfer, and their superior, General SS and of the police August von Meiszner (von Meyszner). Meisner and Šefer arrived in Belgrade at the end of January 1942, and the headquarters of their repressive apparatus was located, by chance, in the PRIZAD building. Werner's photograph therefore gives us a unique insight into the perspective of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust in Serbia, who had a clear view of the crime scene from their workplace. It is possible that Meisner had before his eyes the view from Werner's photograph when, in the spring of 1942, Schaefer submitted morning reports on the situation in the Judenlager and informed him about the daily reduction in the number of detainees. Including the beginning of May 1942, when Schaefer's report contained information that he later proudly forwarded to Berlin: that the gas truck had completed its deadly mission and that Serbia had been "cleansed of Jews".
Most of Werner's photographs from occupied Serbia have no special historical value. They give an insight, first of all, into the ability of some Wehrmacht officers to turn their eyes, and the lens, away from anything that would point to the crimes in which they even directly participated and to preserve only banal landscapes and tourist photos as a memory of the warrior days. And yet, the sunset photo, because of the moment it was taken and the place from which it was taken, has a certain symbolism and significance. If nothing else, it forces us to face one of the most tragic episodes in the history of Belgrade and Serbia in a new way and to look at it from a previously unknown perspective.
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