Paper short abstract:

The area of the old Belgrade Fairground represents a paradigm of the constant "zero-point" in the Balkan history of discontinuity. It underwent several radical transformations: from the desert land, a theater of wars, to the modern fairground, and the concentration camp during the WWII, the HQ of youth camps after 1945, and finally, to a place of total oblivion for the last 60 years.

Paper long abstract:

This area has symbolized many different ideas in the collective memory of the Belgrade population. At first, it was a borderline of civilizatins and states for the past few centuries (and during the WWII). After it became a part of the new state of Yugoslavia, a fairground was built, which was a symbol of modernism, europeization, mass industry and commercial success. Being a Nazi concentration camp during the WWII, it became a symbol of Nazi occupation and the suffering of civilians. However, the new communist ideology tried to erase the memory of the past and to promote the idea of "new start" and the "better future". Therefore, a whole new city was built around this area, which was left out and sank into more or less intentional oblivion for the next 60 years.

The memory of the concentration camp was, however, put in another context during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s (not as a place of Holocaust, but a place of the extermination of the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia).

Although situated very close to the center of the city, it is still neglected by the city planners. The new Belgrade Fairground was built on another location in the 1950s, and so the place was definitely deprived of its symbolism of the progress, at the same time not having its proper status as a memorial of war victims