• »Menorah in Flames« Holocaust Memorial
The »Menorah in Flames« Memorial by Nandor Gild has since 1990 commemorated the approximately 9,000 Belgrade Jews who were murdered by SS and army units or deported to concentration camps under the German occupation between 1941 and 1944.
Image: Belgrade, undated, The Bet Israel Synagogue, which was destroyed in 1944, Jevrejski istorijski muzej
Belgrade, undated, The Bet Israel Synagogue, which was destroyed in 1944, Jevrejski istorijski muzej

Image: Belgrade, undated, Holocaust Memorial »Menorah in Flames«, Jevrejska Opština Beograd
Belgrade, undated, Holocaust Memorial »Menorah in Flames«, Jevrejska Opština Beograd
In 1941, the Serbian capital Belgrade was home to over 9,000 Jews. Jews had lived in Serbia since the 16th century and they were well integrated into Serbian society. The German Wehrmacht occupied the Serbian heartland in April 1941. The German occupation authorities immediately began persecuting the Jewish population: Jews were gradually excluded from public life, they were registered and forced to wear a badge on their clothes. In the summer of 1941, when resistance against the Wehrmacht formed, the Germans decided to take »retributive actions« against the Jews: For each killed German soldier, the Germans killed 100 Serbian men; for each wounded soldier, 50 Serbs were shot. The occupiers mostly chose Jewish men as victims of their »retribution«. Jewish women and children were initially spared. However, in the winter of 1941 they were deported to various camps, first and foremost to the Sajmište concentration camp at the Belgrade trade fair grounds (German: »Judenlager Semlin«). At the beginning of 1942, the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) deployed a gas van to Belgrade. The Germans murdered about 6,500 prisoners of the Sajmište camp with motor fumes. Most of the victims were Jewish women and children. In the summer of 1942, the Belgrade commander of the security police and security service Schäfer sent the following report to his superiors at the RSHA in Berlin: »Serbia is free of Jews«.
Image: Belgrade, undated, The Bet Israel Synagogue, which was destroyed in 1944, Jevrejski istorijski muzej
Belgrade, undated, The Bet Israel Synagogue, which was destroyed in 1944, Jevrejski istorijski muzej

Image: Belgrade, undated, Holocaust Memorial »Menorah in Flames«, Jevrejska Opština Beograd
Belgrade, undated, Holocaust Memorial »Menorah in Flames«, Jevrejska Opština Beograd
Only few of the over 9,000 Belgrade Jews survived. Before the war, Serbia was home to about 12,500 Jews; all but 2,000 of the Jewish men, women and children were murdered by German units.
Image: Belgrade, 2005, Inscription with dedication, Jonathan Davis
Belgrade, 2005, Inscription with dedication, Jonathan Davis

The city of Belgrade and the local Jewish community erected a memorial by artist Nandor Glid in the Dorćol quarter, which had until World War I been the Jewish quarter of Belgrade, in 1990. The sculpture »Menora u plamenu« (English: »Menorah in Flames«) is dedicated to the Jewish community of Belgrade as well as all Serbian Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The only other memorial in Belgrade in honour of the Jewish victims is the memorial to the Jewish victims of fascism on the Jewish cemetery.
Artist Nandor Glid (1924-1997), himself a Holocaust survivor who had been a forced labourer and partisan, created a number of well-known monuments in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, including the international memorial at the Dachau concentration camp memorial (1968) and further memorials in Yugoslavia. The Holocaust memorial in Thessaloniki, which was begun in 1997 and which represents a variation on the Belgrade Menorah, was completed by Nandor Glid's sons after his death.
Image: Belgrade, 2005, The memorial as seen from the Danube, Jonathan Davis
Belgrade, 2005, The memorial as seen from the Danube, Jonathan Davis

Name
Spomenik »Menora u plamenu«
Address
Bank of the Danube (Šetalište) corner of Ulica Tadeuša Košćuška
11000 Beograd
Open
The memorial is always accessible.