Issue: Description

ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMISSION FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF THE CRIMES OF THE OCCUPIERS AND THEIR COLLABORATORS AND THE EXHUMATION OF THE REMAINS OF WORLD WAR II VICTIMS IN THE AREA OF THE CITY OF ŠABAC AND SURROUNDINGS, 1944-1945

Authors:
Sanja Petrović Todosijević

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The Communist authorities in Yugoslavia, who began establishing their administrative organs in liberated territories already during the Second World War, decided to form the State Commission for the In vestigation of the Crimes of the Occupiers and Their Collaborators on 30 November 1943, during the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) held in the Bosnian town of Jajce. Soon afterward, a network of commissions subordinated to the State Commission was created, each having territorial jurisdiction within the boundaries of the republics. The Republic (Zemaljska) Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Occupiers and Their Collaborators of Ser bia began its work on 27 November 1944. One of its fifteen District Offices (Okružno povereništvo) operated in Šabac, with authority over the district offices in Bogatić, Loznica, Ljubovija, Vladimirci, and Krupanj. From its es tablishment, the Šabac District Office simultaneously worked on several tasks, among which the exhumation of the remains of victims from the Jew ish Camp in Šabac, the Transit Camp in the Senjak barracks, the Concentra tion Camp on the Sava River, the “Bloody March”, and the mass execution of peasants from Mačva in Benska Bara represented one of the most significant activities. This importance derived from the scope of terror and crimes com mitted during the Second World War in the city and its surroundings, which were part of the German occupation zone in Serbia. The Šabac District Of fice also formed special investigative commissions, such as the Commission for the Collection of Corpses Floating Down the Sava River, established in May 1945. Archival materials preserved in the collection of the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes of the Occupiers at the Intermunicipal His torical Archive in Šabac, together with the valuable eyewitness testimonies of wartime events recorded by the Šabac priest Grigorije Gliša Babović in his Diary of Šabac 1941-1945, highlight the crucial role of the Šabac District Office both in the identification of victims, perpetrators, and crimes, and in the dignified reburial and commemoration of the victims. In doing so, it con tributed not only to the formation of a “space of memory” but also to the creation of a “space of the future.”