Tag: wwii

Hidden Belgrade, Politics, Serbia, The Belgradist

Occupation in 2-6 Pictures (2): Strahinja Janjić – a traitor’s traitor

On July 28th  1942, 36 year old Strahinja Janjić was taken to the infamous Banjica camp, on the charge of planning to assassinate Milan Nedić, the head of the puppet government that was helping the Germans control “German occupied territory of Serbia”. Banjica, ran in tandem by the Gestapo and Nedić’s government, claimed more than 3,800 lives and was the place where anti-fascist Serbs, Jews … Continue reading Occupation in 2-6 Pictures (2): Strahinja Janjić – a traitor’s traitor

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Occupation in 2-6 Pictures: Beginning

On this day 80 years ago, 6 April 1941, my great-grandparents’s flat in Vuka Karadžića street in Belgrade was torn in two by the Nazi bombs. On the same day, their relative, who was a child at the time was almost killed in the debris the Stukas made of an air-raid shelter by the Ascension church. A few days later, as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia … Continue reading Occupation in 2-6 Pictures: Beginning

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Belgrade, Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (57): Friends in need… or how Czechs and Slovaks shaped Belgrade

In the past few years much is made about Serbia’s alliances, whether old (albeit tumultuous) ones like those with Russia and France and or relatively recent ones with China and the UAE. Despite many memorial events in the past few years related to 80th anniversary of the start and 75th anniversary of the end of WWII, it is remarkable that no one decided to mark … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (57): Friends in need… or how Czechs and Slovaks shaped Belgrade

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Balkans, Life, Politics, Travel

Warrior Posing

Ever since the debates about current or imminent “fascism” and “antifascism” (or Antifascism™)  became popular again, I came to think about my grandad, who as a committed communist before WWII and then a partisan during it would probably have more to say than those engaging in these debates now. He was a bit of an oddity as a bourgeois lawyer/communist in Nikšić, a town in … Continue reading Warrior Posing

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (36): ‘German Bridge’ and its Hero

Belgrade’s relationship with this iconic green-arched bridge, the city’s shortest and oldest continuously standing, started off in the worst possible way during the darkest days of World War II. After Nazi Germany attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, the Royal Yugoslav Army blew up all of Belgrade’s bridges on the Sava and the Danube in order to slow down the enemy advance. … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (36): ‘German Bridge’ and its Hero

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (24): Bežanija airport

2017 marked the 90th anniversary of the opening of the now mostly forgotten, Belgrade International Airport, which was located next to the old Austro-Hungarian village of Bežanija, in what is now New Belgrade. This airport, however, was not the first airfield serving the city. The first airplane to fly from Belgrade took off in Banjica in 1910, close to where VMA, the military hospital complex, … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (24): Bežanija airport

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (22): Pištolj-mala and Lower Dorćol’s lowly days

Now a budding foodie hub, attracting Belgrade’s fashionable creatives, Lower Dorcol was the site of Belgrade’s most notorious shanty town, Pištolj-mala (“Pistol slum”), some 90 years ago. As Serbian architect and historian of Belgrade’s urbanism, Dr Zlata Vuksanović Macura, notes in her research(with some great photos), at its peak this shantytown housed about 1,500 souls in about 300 houses , spread in the area around … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (22): Pištolj-mala and Lower Dorćol’s lowly days

Srdjan Garcevic7 Comments
Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (7): The fall of Ikarus

Tragically named airplane factory that found its way to the hearts of New Belgraders Ikarus was the first Yugoslav airplane factory, founded in 1923, in Novi Sad.  As expected for an aircraft factory named after the first known air accident with a human fatality, Ikarus had suitably a bumpy start as it almost went bankrupt before it started producing planes. Neverthelss, after a bit of … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (7): The fall of Ikarus

Srdjan Garcevic6 Comments