Living Death Camp: The Archaeology of Staro Sajmište

Forensic Architecture

Saturday

12.09.2026

14:00-14:30

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

On the outskirts of Belgrade, Staro Sajmište has undergone a series of profound transformations. Built in 1938 as an international exhibition ground, it was converted under Nazi occupation into the Semlin concentration camp, where Jews and Roma were systematically murdered and communists and resistance fighters imprisoned. After the war, its pavilions became artists’ studios, workshops and homes, including those of Roma families with histories of Nazi persecution.

This film by Forensic Architecture examines a new chapter in the site’s contested history: plans to transform Staro Sajmište into a Holocaust memorial centre and museum. Beginning in 2013, these plans entailed the eviction of existing residents, raising the troubling question of how a place can commemorate historical violence while producing displacement in the present.

Working with ScanLAB, Grupa Spomenik and forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls, Forensic Architecture surveyed the site above and below ground, using archaeological and digital scanning techniques to reconstruct its layered histories. The film approaches Staro Sajmište not as a static monument to the past, but as a living and continuously changing site, asking whether remembrance and inhabitation might coexist and whose lives, histories and claims are made visible through acts of commemoration.