85 YEARS SINCE FIVE SERBIAN PATRIOTS WERE HANGED ON TERAZIJE

BELGRADE, AUGUST 17 /SRNA/ - It has been 85 years since German Nazi forces shot five Serbian patriots in Belgrade and then hung their bodies from lampposts on Terazije as a warning to all those who resisted.

On August 17, 1941, workers Jovan Janković and Svetislav Milin, farmers Ratko Jević and Velimir Jovanović, and student Milorad Pokrajac were brutally killed in the early hours of the morning at a Gestapo prison. Their bodies were then taken to Terazije and hanged. The organizer of the hangings was SS Major Karl Kraus, head of the Belgrade Gestapo, while, according to some accounts, his main accomplice was Dragi Jovanović, head of the Belgrade City Administration. One of the reasons for this brutal killing was also to pressure Milan Nedić into making a decision as soon as possible to form a collaborationist government. In memory of the five fellow citizens who tragically died on August 17, 1941, the City of Belgrade erected a monument to the hanged patriots with a commemorative plaque at Terazije Square, near the Igumanov Palace, in 1983. The lampposts from which the Serbs were hanged were moved to the New Cemetery, where a special memorial site was also established. However, during the reconstruction of the complex in 2003, the lampposts were stolen and sold for scrap metal, so replicas now stand at the New Cemetery.