Member country since: 2011
Remembrance Days: 27 January (International Holocaust Remembrance Day), 22 April (National Holocaust, WWII Genocide and other Fascist Crimes Victims' Remembrance Day), 16 Dec (National Roma WWII Genocide Victims' Remembrance Day), 10 May (Holocaust Victims in Belgrade)
Nemanja Starovic (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) – Head of Delegation
Jovana Maric (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) – Deputy Head of Delegation
Nevena Bajalica (Anne Frank House) – Museums and Memorials Working Group
Dejan Ristic (Museum of the Genocide victims) – Museums and Memorials Working Group
Jovan Culibrk (Commission on Staro Sajmište Memorial Ground) – Academic Working Group
Milan Koljanin (Institute for Contemporary History) – Academic Working Group
Misko Stanisic (Terraforming) – Education Working Group
Snezana Vukovic (Ministry of Education) – Education Working Group
Krinka Vidakovic Petrov (Memorial center of Staro Sajmiste) – Museums and Memorials Working Group
Robert Sabados (Jewish Community Serbia) – Academic Working Group
Since joining the IHRA in 2011, Serbia has stepped up its efforts to promote and expand activities related to Holocaust education and its culture of remembrance and research, as well as to safeguarding the Jewish community in Serbia. There is a strong sense of determination and political will in Serbia to renovate the Nazi concentration camps on the territory of former Yugoslavia as memorial sites.
The recent developments in Staro Sajmiste attest to this. The central remembrance site in Serbia and the place of mass killings during the Second World War, Staro Sajmiste is defined by the Law on the Memorial Center “Staro Sajmiste” (adopted in February 2020 and entered into force in January 2021) as an institution of culture with the aim of collecting, archiving, maintaining and presenting documents and items in order to preserve the culture of remembrance of the victims of the Jewish extermination camp Zemun and the Topovske Supe concentration camp.
In addition to this, Serbia announced at the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, held in October 2021, that it would establish a new memorial center in the city of Bor to commemorate the victims of the labor camp which operated during the Second World War.
Additionally, Serbia is among only a few countries to have adopted a special law on restitution to the Jewish community, which systematically regulates the matter of restitution to the victims of the Holocaust without legal heirs in Serbia. The law, which entered into force in 2016, declares that Serbia will compensate the Jewish community with 950,000 EUR each year, until 2041.