Memorial Park Jajinci

Memorial park “Jajinci” is located on the territory of Belgrade municipality Voždovac, on the 11th kilometre on the way to the Аvala mountain. It was built in the location of the military shooting range used by the Armed Forces of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and which during the Second World War became the place of the terrible suffering of the innocent population on the territory of the occupied Serbia.

With the invasion of Poland by the Third Reich on September 1, 1939, started a war conflict of unprecedented scale and intensity, waged everywhere and by all means, so that historians, using the term originated during the war, rightly called it “total war”. The Axis powers waged the war to such an extent wantonly, that all the valid regulations of international law were virtually violated, and crimes that they committed were of such scope and character, that it was necessary to create for them the new provisions of international public law. Images of hunger, gas chambers, crematoria, mass executions, almost dead people as the result of “scientific experiments”, were a reality in which lived and died millions of Europeans. Humiliated, in pain and suffering, they were deprived of their elementary status of human being and reduced to occurrence, number, statistical data, and in best case, to manpower, useful and necessary only to the limit of physical strength. From 1941 to 1944, the population of Serbia and Belgrade, through the entire system of prisons, concentration camps and execution places, was included in this image of collective suffering. Immediately after the German occupying troops entered Belgrade on April 12, 1941, began reprisals against population. They introduced the practice of constant holding of hostages and the threat of their execution, if in any way resisted the occupier. The establishment of concentration camps in “Topovske šupe” in Autokomanda (urban area of Belgrade), in Banjica (urban area of Belgrade) in barracks of 18th Infantry Regiment, the concentration camp Sajmište[2] in the facilities of the former Fair Complex on the left bank of the Sava river and “Milišića ciglana” in Zvezdara (urban area of Belgrade), marked the destiny of Belgrade in a very special way. It was the only capital city in occupied Europe, on whose urban land were formed concentration camps. The executions, organized and conducted by German occupying forces, lasted every day from July 15, 1941 until the end of 1943. The liquidation of hostages and prisoners was conducted at several locations in Belgrade and its surroundings: Bežanijska kosa, Jewish Cemetery, Bubanj Potok, Central Cemetery, Мarinkova bara, villages of Jabuka, Skela, Mali Požarevac, Ralja.