The Serbian Jewish community is in an uproar over plans to move the remains of a World War 2 detention camp memorial to build a shopping mall with the approval of a senior Jewish community official.

The Topovske Supe barracks were the first concentration camp for Jews and Roma in Nazi-occupied Serbia. Some 6,000 people were interned there before being sent on to death camps before Serbia was declared cleansed of Jews or Judenrein by the German command. 

The land that the remains of the barracks and a memorial stand on land which is owned by the Delta Planet company which is planning to build a shopping mall there and move the memorial and barracks to a nearby plot of land.  

Serbia’s chief Rabbi Isak Asiel has been crying foul over the idea. The company is planning to move half of the camp to adjoin land as part of the shopping mall and approval for the plans came from Jewish Community Vice-President Danilo Medic, drawing a cry of treason from the rabbi. “Those two buildings mean much more than a testimony of the suffering of citizens of Serbia and Belgrade. Those buildings are rooted in our being. Will we just bow to profits or will we bow before the victims of our homeland,” Rabbi Asiel said.  

Medic responded saying that the idea of the previous leaders of the Jewish Community was to tear down the camp memorial complex, adding that the removal of the memorial was the pragmatic solution. “Memory of the Holocaust exists or it does not. We now have an opportunity to form a memorial as part of an urbanism project, preserving the buildings which are now in a terrible state. It does not matter whether the building is 10 metres on this side or that,” Medic, who now heads the Jewish Community, said  

The building permits have not been issued yet, pending an opinion from the Belgrade Cultural Heritage Protection Authority which informed the Jewish Community that Medic gave approval on their behalf. The community filed criminal charges against Medic. “The Authority realized something was wrong and has become the barrier,” the rabbi said.  

Rabbi Asiel warned that the legal protection over the memorial expires in August 2019 which means that Delta can do what it wants with the Topovske Supe camp memorial. The company said it was not giving up on building the shopping mall but will preserve the memory of the Holocaust victims but did not say how.