Serbian name
Zasavica
Former name
Hungarian name
Slovak name
German name
English description
Zasavica II or Donja Zasavica is a settlement in the municipality of Sremska Mitrovica, Srem. In mid-October 1941, Germans shot 1057 Jews and about 90 Roma. Among the murdered were 800 Austrian Jews whose remains after the war were excavated and buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Belgrade. The field of Lazar and Mila Ljubičić was chosen to be used for a mass execution of Jews from Šabac and Jewish refugees. Since the murder, the Ljubičićs has planted nothing in that field besides cypress trees in memory of the victims. Lazar and Mila Ljubičić were also proclaimed the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1994 for saving the Schossberger family from Temerin. Ljubičić has planted nothing in that field besides cypress trees in memory of the victims. In November 1939, a group of about 1,000 Jewish refugees left Vienna. They were supposed to sail by the Danube River to the Port of Sulina in Romania and from there to Eretz Israel, as part of the Aliiyah Bet (illegal immigration) organized by the Hehalutz movement. On the way, they stopped in Bratislava, Slovakia. There they discovered that there was no ship waiting for them in Romania, and that they could not stay in Bratislava. Through the efforts of the leaders of the Jewish community in Yugoslavia, three riverboats were hired. The refugees (who were joined by about 200 local Jews) continued along the Danube. The riverboats reached the "Iron Gate", (a narrow channel from the Danube to the sea), but the ice halted their progress, so they anchored near Kladovo, a small village in Yugoslavia. There the group stayed on river boats for about 3 months, during a particularly harsh winter. In April, the ice on the river melted, but there was still no ship waiting for them in Sulina, and the Yugoslav company to which the boats belonged was asking them back. The refugees were transported to Kladovo, in the hope that they would be able to continue their journey later. All attempts to find the ship were unsuccessful. At the end of May 1940, the refugees were resettled in Šabac, where there was a small Jewish community. The destination of Eretz Israel seemed more and more distant. The conditions in Šabac were better than those in Kladovo. The refugees were accommodated in a large flour mill and in the homes of the locals. Efforts to still find a way to reach Eretz Israel continued and about 200 children and youth, and several families left Šabac in March 1941. In April 1941, the Germans and their allies invaded Yugoslavia. In July 1941, an uprising broke out in Serbia under the leadership of the communists, which was brutally suppressed by the Germans. Realizing that Berlin's policy was the total liquidation of the Jewish people, the local German regime used the excuse that Jews were communists who had instigated the uprising and killed Jewish men who were imprisoned in concentration camps in the occupied Serbia. This policy was extended to refugees in Šabac. They were transferred to a concentration camp near Šabac, and in October 1941, the men were taken from the camp, shot and thrown into pits near the village of Zasavica. Among those killed were men from a group of refugees, Jews from Šabac, a group of Roma and some Serbs.
Bibliography
Spomen obeležje u Zasavici II.

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