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King Alexander Bridge

Bridges completed in 1934Bridges in BelgradeBridges over the Sava in SerbiaBuildings and structures completed in 1934Buildings and structures demolished in 1944
Buildings and structures destroyed during World War IIBuildings and structures in BelgradeDemolished buildings and structures in SerbiaRoad bridges in Serbia
King Aleksandar bridge in Belgrade
King Aleksandar bridge in Belgrade

King Alexander Bridge (Serbian: Мост краља Александра, Most kralja Aleksandra), in full The Bridge of King Alexander Karađorđević or The Bridge of the Knightly King Alexander, was a road and tram bridge over the Sava river, in Belgrade, capital of Yugoslavia. It was the first permanent road bridge across the Sava in Belgrade after almost 250 years and the Long Bridge from 1688. Finished in 1934, it was damaged and out of use since 1941, and fully demolished in 1944, during World War II. Its pylons were later used for the modern Branko's Bridge, built in 1956. The bridge was revered while existed being described as "gorgeous" and "one of the most important object ever built in Belgrade".

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article King Alexander Bridge (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

King Alexander Bridge
Ушће, Belgrade New Belgrade (New Belgrade Urban Municipality)

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N 44.8149 ° E 20.448 °
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Ушће
11000 Belgrade, New Belgrade (New Belgrade Urban Municipality)
Central Serbia, Serbia
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King Aleksandar bridge in Belgrade
King Aleksandar bridge in Belgrade
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Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia
Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia

The Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia (German: Gebiet des Militärbefehlshabers in Serbien; Serbian: Подручје Војног заповедника у Србији, romanized: Područje vojnog zapovednika u Srbiji) was the area of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that was placed under a military government of occupation by the Wehrmacht following the invasion, occupation and dismantling of Yugoslavia in April 1941. The territory included only central Serbia, with the addition of the northern part of Kosovo (around Kosovska Mitrovica), and the Banat. This territory was the only area of partitioned Yugoslavia in which the German occupants established a military government. This was due to the key rail and the Danube transport routes that passed through it, and its valuable resources, particularly non-ferrous metals. On 22 April 1941, the territory was placed under the supreme authority of the German military commander in Serbia, with the day-to-day administration of the territory under the control of the chief of the military administration staff. The lines of command and control in the occupied territory were never unified, and were made more complex by the appointment of direct representatives of senior Nazi figures such as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (for police and security matters), Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (for the economy), and Reichsminister Joachim von Ribbentrop (for foreign affairs). The Germans used Bulgarian troops to assist in the occupation, but they were at all times under German control. Sources variously describe the territory as a puppet state, a protectorate, a "special administrative province", or describe it as having a puppet government. The military commander in Serbia had very limited German garrison troops and police detachments to maintain order, but could request assistance from a corps of three divisions of poorly-equipped occupation troops. The German military commander in Serbia appointed two Serbian civil puppet governments to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision. The first of these was the short-lived Commissioner Government which was established on 30 May 1941. The Commissioner Government was a basic tool of the occupation regime, lacking in any powers. In late July 1941, an uprising began in the occupied territory, which quickly swamped the Serbian gendarmerie, German police and security apparatus, and even the rear area infantry force. To assist in quelling the rebellion, which initially involved both the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and the monarchist Chetniks, a second puppet government was established. The Government of National Salvation under Milan Nedić replaced the Commissioner Government on 29 August 1941. Although it enjoyed some support, the regime was unpopular with the majority of Serbs. This failed to turn the tide however, and the Germans were forced to bring in front line divisions from France, Greece and even the Eastern Front to suppress the revolt. Commencing from late September 1941, Operation Uzice expelled the Partisans from the occupied territory, and in December, Operation Mihailovic dispersed the Chetniks. Resistance continued at a low level until 1944, accompanied by frequent reprisal killings, which for some time involved the execution of 100 hostages for every German killed. The Nedić regime had no status under international law, no powers beyond those granted by the Germans, and was simply an instrument of German rule. Although German forces took the leading and guiding role of the Final Solution in Serbia, and the Germans monopolized the killing of Jews, they were actively aided in that role by Serbian collaborators. The Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade was jointly controlled by Nedic's regime and the German army. The one area in which the puppet administration did exercise initiative and achieve success was in the reception and care of hundreds of thousands of Serb refugees from other parts of partitioned Yugoslavia. Throughout the occupation, the Banat was an autonomous region, formally responsible to the puppet governments in Belgrade, but in practice governed by its Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) minority. While the Commissioner Government was limited to the use of gendarmerie, the Nedić government was authorized to raise an armed force, the Serbian State Guard, to impose order, but they were immediately placed under the control of the Higher SS and Police Leader, and essentially functioned as German auxiliaries until the German withdrawal in October 1944. The Germans also raised several other local auxiliary forces for various purposes within the territory. In order to secure the Trepča mines and the Belgrade-Skopje railway, the Germans made an arrangement with Albanian collaborators in the northern tip of present-day Kosovo which resulted in the effective autonomy of the region from the puppet government in Belgrade, which later formalized the German arrangement. The Government of National Salvation remained in place until the German withdrawal in the face of the combined Red Army, Bulgarian People's Army and Partisan Belgrade Offensive. During the occupation, the German authorities killed nearly all Jews residing in the occupied territory, by shooting the men as part of reprisals conducted in 1941, and gassing the women and children in early 1942 using a gas van. After the war, several of the key German and Serbian leaders in the occupied territory were tried and executed for war crimes.

Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia (; Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslavija / Југославија [juɡǒslaːʋija]; Slovene: Jugoslavija [juɡɔˈslàːʋija]; Macedonian: Југославија [juɡɔˈsɫavija]; lit. 'Land of the South Slavs') was a country in Southeast Europe and Central Europe for most of the 20th century. It came into existence after World War I in 1918 under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (which was formed from territories of the former Austria-Hungary) with the Kingdom of Serbia, and constituted the first union of the South Slavic people as a sovereign state, following centuries in which the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign. The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris. The official name of the state was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929. The Kingdom was invaded by the Axis powers on 6 April 1941. In 1943, a Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was proclaimed by the Partisan resistance. In 1944, King Peter II, then living in exile, recognised it as the legitimate government. The monarchy was subsequently abolished in November 1945. Yugoslavia was renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, when a communist government was established. It acquired the territories of Istria, Rijeka, and Zadar from Italy. Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito ruled the country as president until his death in 1980. In 1963, the country was renamed again, as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The six constituent republics that made up the SFRY were the SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SR Croatia, SR Macedonia, SR Montenegro, SR Serbia, and SR Slovenia. SR Serbia contained two Socialist Autonomous Provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo, which after 1974 were largely equal to the other members of the federation. After an economic and political crisis in the 1980s and the rise of nationalism, Yugoslavia broke up along its republics' borders, at first into five countries, leading to the Yugoslav Wars. From 1993 to 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia tried political and military leaders from the former Yugoslavia for war crimes, genocide, and other crimes committed during those wars. After the breakup, the republics of Montenegro and Serbia formed a reduced federative state, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), known from 2003 to 2006 as Serbia and Montenegro. This state aspired to the status of sole legal successor to the SFRY, but those claims were opposed by the other former republics. Eventually, it accepted the opinion of the Badinter Arbitration Committee about shared succession and in 2003 its official name was changed to Serbia and Montenegro. This state dissolved when Montenegro and Serbia each became independent states in 2006, with Kosovo having an ongoing dispute over its declaration of independence in 2008.

Sajmište concentration camp
Sajmište concentration camp

The Sajmište concentration camp (pronounced [sâjmiːʃtɛ]) was a Nazi German concentration and extermination camp during World War II. It was located at the former Belgrade fairground site near the town of Zemun, in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The camp was organized and operated by SS Einsatzgruppen units stationed in occupied Serbia. It became operational in September 1941 and was officially opened on 28 October of that year. The Germans dubbed it the Jewish camp in Zemun (German: Judenlager Semlin). At the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, thousands of Jewish women, children and old men were brought to the camp, along with 500 Jewish men and 292 Romani women and children, most of whom were from Niš, Smederevo and Šabac. Women and children were placed in makeshift barracks and suffered during numerous influenza epidemics. Kept in squalid conditions, they were provided with inadequate amounts of food and many froze to death during the winter of 1941–42. Between March and May 1942, the Germans used a gas van sent from Berlin to kill thousands of Jewish inmates. With the gassings complete, it was renamed Zemun concentration camp (German: Anhaltelager Semlin) and served to hold one last group of Jews who were arrested upon the surrender of Italy in September 1943. During this time it also held captured Yugoslav Partisans, Chetniks, sympathizers of the Greek and Albanian resistance movements, and Serb peasants from villages in other parts of the NDH. An estimated 32,000 prisoners, mostly Serbs, passed through the camp during this period, 10,600 of whom were killed or died due to hunger and disease. Conditions in Sajmište were so poor that some began comparing it to Jasenovac and other large concentration camps throughout Europe. In 1943 and 1944, evidence of atrocities committed in the camp was destroyed by the units of SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, and thousands of corpses were exhumed from mass graves and incinerated. In May 1944, the Germans transferred control of the camp over to the NDH, and it was closed that July. Estimates of the number of deaths at Sajmište range from 20,000 to 23,000, with the number of Jewish deaths estimated at 7,000 to 10,000. It is thought that half of all Serbian Jews perished at the camp. Most of the Germans responsible for the operation of the camp were captured and brought to trial. Several were extradited to Yugoslavia and executed. Camp commander Herbert Andorfer and his deputy Edgar Enge were arrested in the 1960s after many years of hiding. Both were given short prison sentences in West Germany and Austria, respectively, though Enge never served any time given his old age and poor health. The derelict complex was declared a cultural monument on 9 July 1987. National Assembly of Serbia adopted the law which established the Memorial Center "Staro Sajmište" on 24 February 2020. Reconstruction of the central tower, as the first step in the adaptation of the remains into the memorial center and museum began on 27 July 2022.