The Three Fists, Bubanj Spomen-Park
Niš, Serbia
Designed by Ivan Sabolić, 1961
Niš is the third largest city in Serbia. When Garman forces took over Serbia in 1941, they established a concentration camp on the city's outskirts, where captured Serbs, Jews, and Romanis were held.
The camp was active until the liberation of Niš by Partisan forces in 1944. It is estimated that more than 35,000 inmates were held at the camp during the war, out of which 10,000 or more were killed.
The killing was carried out on a hill near the camp called ‘Bubanj’. The prisoners were forced to dig mass graves in which the bodies of the murdered Serbs and Jews were buried. To this day, the entire Bubanj hillside is scarred with tranches containing the remains of those killed in these brutal acts of execution.
When Niš was about to be liberated, efforts were made by Axis forces to conceal the mass murder acts; remains of buried bodies were dug out and burned, so it is hard to tell the exact number of people who were murdered on the Bubanj hill.
Today, Bubanj hill is a green pastoral park. The Spomenik, designed by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Sabolić in 1961, standing in the park's center, is the only clue to the horrors that took place here in the past. Although it suffers from graffiti and degradation, it is relatively well-kept. On the footsteps of the three fists, there is a large-scale wall with a relief describing the story of the mass executions carried out on the place and an amphitheater that has seen better days, where memorial ceremonies are taking place.
I reached Bubanj hill on a cold clear morning. People were strolling through the park, jogging with their dogs, or talking on their phones. I stood for a while at the memorial wall, trying to get a sense of the horrific events this place knew. Then I turned towards the gigantic concrete fists bursting from the ground. I thought about how symbolic it is that Sabolić chose to design these hands reaching out to the sky, not crying for help, but with tightened fists as a sign that the resistance continues despite all the killing. That led me all the way back to the Podgarić Spomenik we visited at the beginning of our tour…
What an inspiring way to close this visit to the remarkable monuments of former Yugoslavia.
More information about this Spomenik can be found here:
https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/nis