Remember can't forget / Work cycle / Point 3 / The Curve of Forgetting
The area of Old Sajmište in Belgrade is a place of many memories.
In 1937-1938, this was the site of the Belgrade Fair, where pavilions were built and cultural and commercial life took place. The first Belgrade Fair opened on September 11, 1937. And already on December 8, 1941, the Jews of Belgrade were sent to the fairgrounds, which were transformed by the German military administration into the Jewish camp Zemun (Judenlager Semlin). By December 12, there were already more than 5,000 prisoners in the camp.
In the Belgrade archives, there are 4 letters from nurse Hilda Deich, who voluntarily went to the camp to work in the camp hospital and help people. And like a large number of prisoners, she died there.
After the Second World War, the area of the fair was used to build barracks for the builders of New Belgrade (a district of the city located between Stari Sajmište and Zemun). People still live there. The Italian pavilion was given over to the workshops of the Serbian Union of Artists (there are still workshops there).
In July 2022, the reconstruction of the central tower of the fair began, which currently houses the Zemun Holocaust Museum. Next in line is the former Italian pavilion.
Once I get to this place, I can’t stop thinking about it and I come there again and again. The layers of historical traumatic context, the everyday life of the people for whom this is home, the gradual restoration of the memorial function, all this creates a very multifaceted pattern of the territory. The simultaneous presence of memory and, at the same time, the flow of ordinary life in the present against the background of this memoriality, outlines the issue of the visibility of memory and the history of the place.
Next to the central tower of the former fair, there is a building block. It is entwined with a creeper that has grown through it (new life has even broken through the concrete), snails and various insects live in it. The block is very similar to a memorial tombstone, forgotten, like in old cemeteries, when there is no one left to look after it, so it has become a new stronghold of life in the environment, which gradually absorbs it. I engrave on this block the “curve of forgetting” or “Ebbinghaus curve”, a graph that clearly demonstrates the process of forgetting in relation to time. The more time passes from the moment of the event, the more, but also the slower, the forgotten. At the same time, the strength of the preservation of information in memory enhances repetition. What can we do to prevent a tragic experience from being repeated? Return ourselves to memories, do not allow time to dissolve the mistakes of the past in oblivion.
The sound of the engraving machine is very loud and unpleasant. But it does not bother anyone, despite my concerns. The boy is swinging on a swing, his mother is walking next to the dog. The dog is pulling on the leash, trying to get closer to me. The woman apologizes and leaves, calling her son with her, who is looking at me with childish curiosity.