The eighty-fourth anniversary of the 5 June tragedy was marked in Smederevo today with commemorative events.
On this day in 1941, a large quantity of ammunition stored by the German occupiers within the walls of Smederevo Fortress exploded.
That day, in addition to a large number of Smederevo residents, the victims included passengers on the train to Velika Plana, final-year Grammar School students who had come to collect their diplomas, actors of the Serbian National Theatre from Novi Sad who were on tour in Smederevo, and many villagers who had come to the market because it was market day.
In memory of all the victims and of the time when the tragedy occurred, a locomotive whistle sounded from the railway station in Smederevo today at 14:14, and church bells rang out from the bell tower of the Church of St George.
On behalf of the City, the Mayor of Smederevo, Jasmina Vojinović, and the Head of the City Administration, Goran Milentijević, laid a wreath at the 5 June Monument, followed by representatives of the Smederevo Police Administration, the Head of the Podunavlje Administrative District, Rodoljub Stanimirović, and then representatives of the City Board of SUBNOR, the City Board of the SPS, the Association of War and Peacetime Military Invalids, the Association of Reserve Military Officers, the City Organisation of Labour Invalids, the Association of Descendants of the Warriors of 1912–1918, and Smederevo grammar school students.
“5 June 1941 is the most tragic day in the history of Smederevo, because it is the day that took many lives, the day when many Smederevo families were left without their homes and their loved ones, and the city was turned into ruins.
The consequences of the great destruction of the fortress of Despot Đurađ Branković have remained visible to this day and bear witness to the tragedy that befell Smederevo at the very beginning of the Second World War.
The 5 June tragedy, described in many harrowing testimonies by surviving residents of Smederevo, has always been and will remain a subject for historians and researchers, and it reminds us as a community that we need to nurture a culture of remembrance, to tell younger generations about the horrors we lived through during the Second World War and to point out how hard it was to raise our Smederevo from the ashes after it ended,” the Mayor of Smederevo, Jasmina Vojinović, said at the commemoration.
A programme to mark the 84th anniversary of the 5 June tragedy was performed by Smederevo grammar school students and pupils of the Music School “Kosta Manojlović”.
At noon today, the clergy of the Smederevo Church Municipality held a memorial service for the victims at the Old Cemetery, and wreaths were also laid at the memorial ossuary of those who died in the 5 June tragedy.
