06.10.2019.
Commemoration ceremony dedicated to victims of World War II in Jajinci
At the Jajinci memorial park, today, a commemoration ceremony dedicated to preserving the dignified memory of tens of thousands of brutally killed victims in World War II at the Jajinci execution site near Belgrade, has been held.
The commemoration ceremony was attended by state secretaries of the Ministry of Defence, Aleksandar Živković and Bojan Jocić, as well as representatives of the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces.
The state commemoration ceremony was led by the envoy of the President of the Republic, Minister of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs Zoran Đorđević.After the wreath-laying ceremony with the highest state and military honours, those present were also addressed by the survivor of the Ustasha camp Jasenovac, president of the ‘Jasenovac’ Association Slavko Milanović.
In his address, Minister Đorđević recalled that on the move from the detention camp at the Old Fairgrounds to the Jajinci execution site, starting in 1942, notorious "SS" officers drove a gas truck that killed the Belgrade citizens in the most brutal way.
Today in Jajinci we remember the victims of Nazi terror, but also great deed of our fearless ancestors, who did not despair during the difficult times when there seemed to be no hope and the way out for our people. They courageously took fate into their own hands and freed the world from the clutches of a monstrous Nazi enslavement, Đorđević said.
The commemoration ceremony was attended by representatives of the Government of Serbia, the City of Belgrade, diplomatic and military-diplomatic representatives, representatives of the National Council of the Roma National Minority, representatives of the Jewish National Community, Association of Concentration Camp Prisoners and SUBNOR of Serbia, war veterans, former prisoners of death camps in occupied Europe during the Second World War II, descendants of the victims, as well as numerous citizens.The Jajinci memorial park is the largest Second World War execution site in Serbia since the Nazis killed more than 60,000 people at that site – Serbs, Jews, members of the People's Liberation Movement, anti-fascists and those who did not agree with the occupation of the country in the period from 1941 to 1944, resisting the occupier.
The great memorial park in Jajinci, including the monument to the victims, was opened on 20th October 1964, on the occasion of two decades since the entry of partisan forces into Belgrade.
