Why is the Yugoslav Auschwitz Pavilion empty?
The successor states cannot agree on how the Holocaust should be represented in Yugoslavia
Between September 1941 and August 1944, more than 20,000 people from the territory of Yugoslavia, which was then occupied by the Nazis, were transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Fewer than a hundred, mostly political prisoners or partisans, have survived this concentration camp.
In 1960, countries whose citizens were deported to this camp were given special pavilions to set up "national exhibitions".
The Yugoslav National Exhibition opened in 1963.
The violent death of Yugoslavia during the 1991-1999 series of wars completely changed the public remembrance of World War II and the Holocaust in the new states created by the breakup of Yugoslavia.
The genuine, extensive and devastating Holocaust of Yugoslav Jews and Roma remained at the extreme margins of public memory.
The Auschwitz Memorial Museum still holds the site of the former Yugoslavian pavilion, with the hope that a joint exhibition will be set up.