Internment and shooting of the Jews of Niš

Niš, the great city of southern Serbia, was home to a Jewish community settled in an ancient quarter at the foot of the fortress. After the German occupation, the Jews of the city were registered, marked, subjected to forced labor, then arrested and interned in a camp set up along the roadside, in the buildings of the Red Cross. From there, the men were taken in groups to the hill overlooking the valley and shot at the edge of pits dug in advance — the same place where Serbian hostages from the region were executed. A mass escape from the camp during the winter remains one of the rare acts of armed resistance by Jewish prisoners in occupied Serbia. The women and children were transferred to the camp at the fairground, near the capital.