Remember can't forget / Work cycle / Point 5 / Library of Memories
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.
Behind the barracks there is a row of sheds, in which the inhabitants of the barracks store old things. In one of the gaps between the sheds you can see the 1995 monument to the victims of the Zemun concentration camp. At the moment, there is a reconstruction of the landscaping near the monument, so there is a sand preparation in front of it. It is on this sand base, exactly along the axis of the monument, that I place an object, the shape of which is based on the image of library card indexes and, at the same time, on the image of a columbarium. The memories that we store in the card index gradually seep through our fingers like sand and disappear into oblivion. The slits in the front of the boxes are made in the form of the letters “izgubljeni raj”, quoting a letter from Hilda Deich, who wrote it from the camp territory to her friends who were free. Freedom is the other side of the river, clearly visible but so unattainable that Hilda compares it to paradise. Sand, which fills the boxes, flows through the slits, seeps in and gradually empties them, as it does with the card index of memories.
A construction worker passes by, a woman sits on the curb and talks on the phone. They do not pay attention to what is happening. A girl comes up from behind, judging by her face and look, she reads the inscription. She takes out her phone and takes a photo of the installation. The photos will remain not only with me.