Card Register of Victims Executed at the Bubanj Killing Site

Collection

Holding institution (official language):: Народни музеј Ниш (Narodni muzej Niš)

Postal address:: Generala Milenka Lešjanina 14, 18 105 Niš, Republic of Serbia

Scope and content:: The card register of the victims killed at the Bubanj killing site gathered the names of individuals who were executed by the German occupiers in the period from 1941 to 1944, including Jewish victims. It comprises cards for 1,483 victims shot at Bubanj. The cards were arranged according to the first letter of the victim’s last name from A to Dž (the penultimate letter in the Cyrillic alphabet). Each card included the following information: first and last name, father's name, address, date of imprisonment and date of death in the camp. The register includes information on Jewish male detainees, but also on Jewish women and children, who were most probably sent to and killed in the Sajmište concentration camp in Zemun. The cards of the Jewish victims provide basic personal information. All registered victims were from Niš, except for two victims, Malkuna and Marijeta Gedalja, who were from Greece.

Archival history:: The fonds was created by systematisation of available documentation on the victims used for preparing the publication ‘Camp on Crveni Krst’.

Administrative/biographical history:: The camp Crveni Krst (Red Cross) was opened in 1941 in a former storage building of the cavalry regiment “Miloš Obilić”. At the beginning it was used as a camp for prisoners of war. In September 1941, after the internment of the prisoners of war, it became the central concentration camp for prisoners from the territory of the former Feldkommandanture 809. In October 1941 the site known as Bubanj, which was used as training grounds for the Army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, became the killing site for the camp’s detainees. According to the assessment of the Commission for Determining War Crimes, about 10,000 people were shot at Bubanj. Crveni krst was active until 14 September 1944 when the last group of 36 prisoners was shot within the grounds of the camp.

After the Second World War, abundant material on the camp and its prisoners was gathered including records, identity documents, weapons and personal belongings of the detainees. In 1961 the building and all found items were renovated. The People’s District Committee of the City of Niš bought the camp’s building and donated it to the Museum. On 12 February 1967 the first museum exhibition was presented in the camp’s building.

System of arrangement:: The collection is arranged alphabetically by the victim’s last name.

Author of the description:: Ivana Gruden Milentijević; National Museum Niš; 2021