My Own Private Concentration Camp in Nis, Serbia

(Part One of a more detailed account of my time in Nis, Serbia.)

I've been to Auschwitz in Poland.

It hit me in the gut.  I felt sad at the mass atrocities that had happened.  I felt relieved that my great-grandparents from Poland had left in the 1890s so they had avoided the horrors of the war.  I felt angry and felt like punching some asshole tourist when I saw him filming and taking pictures of the interior of the prisons and cells in direct violations of the rules. I generally hate rules, but...don't you have any respect? Asshole.

I had many strong feelings.  But they were stronger at Crveni Krst Concentration Camp in Nis, Serbia.  

Why?  At Auschwitz I stood in a line for a ticket, followed a tour guide around in a line, watched other tour groups walking through various parts of the camp and finished the tour at a souvenir shop.  All the exhibits were clean and shiny and well-kept.  The whole thing felt like a creepy, well-maintained ride at The Walt Disneyland of Death.

Crveni Krst looks like it hasn't been touched since it closed in 1944.  The one employee simply collected the $1 entry fee, let me in and went back to sleep.  He offered no tour, no advice and no explanation.  Not a single other tourist came during the hour I spent there.  All the signs were in Serbian Cyrillic so I could only make vague assumptions of what happened.  I was alone with my own private concentration camp.

I did not feel a cold chill as I walked into the camp; rather I felt extremely hot, sweaty and uncomfortable.  My American brain has problems with metric conversions, but that scalding Serbian summer cemented in my mind what 40 Celsius feels like: really fucking hot (or 104 Fahrenheit.)  Any prisoner who had been there during the summer between 1941 and 1944 would be sweating bullets for more reasons than one.  Ironically, stepping inside the prison building was relieving. 

The lack of any English in the building confounded my attempts to learn the history.  I squinted at the exhibit signs and desperately hoped to understand them, but I did not magically gain the ability to read Cyrillic.  One wall had pictures of various prisoners, so I started counting them until I lost track.  Human skulls were in a display case and I could only assume they were from dead prisoners. The entire experience left me feeling more lost and alone, until finally I found a room full of artwork that put the camp in perspective.

Kids draw the damnest things

The artwork was graphic, disturbing and was clearly drawn by children.  In the United States these drawings would get a child sent to the school psychologist for counseling and a call to the parents.  Here they appeared to be a project approved by the school itself.  I was able to discern that there had been various acts of torture against Jews, Gypsies and Communist prisoners.  Several pictures depicted a large unarmed revolt.  Many prisoners were escaping over the walls, but many others were shot dead while tangled in the barbwire.


I wish more history was told this way.  If I could have read the adults' Cyrillic signs, I'm sure they would have tried to impress me with elaborate stories involving phrases like "astounding heroism," "incredible atrocities," and "never again in our lives."  These fancy words are always accompanied by various facts, figures, graphs and numbers.  Do we need numbers to prove that war is bad?  The childrens' drawings get to the point.  

                         Some people live.  

                                                    Some people die.

The first floor was a museum.  The second floor was just a large attic with prison cells; nothing more.  The cell doors were open, so I went inside one and sat down.  I didn't think.  I didn't want to think, because I would start coming up with all those florid, elaborate, "adult" phrases that I hate.  I stared at the door.  Then I stared at a wall.  Then I picked another wall and stared at it.  I stared at different walls until I found myself staring out the shutter window that was in the roof.

I started thinking.  What if I couldn't leave?

(Of course I'm an adult, so I had many thoughts, and later I fact-checked everything with my Serbian friends and the Internet.  But I'm not some douchebag who works for Lonely Planet, so I won't write it here.)

The Do Absolutely Nothing Tour of Nis, Serbia

There's actually plenty to do in Nis, but the best way to enjoy this slow southern Serbian town is by doing absolutely nothing.  Find an outdoor cafe, order a black, Turkish coffee and waste the afternoon away.  After you're done with that grab a cold Jelen beer, sit by the river and waste the night away.  You'll learn a lot...especially if you're with the right people.

This is how I spent my last trip to Nis in 2011 so there's not much to say.  For those ambitious tourists who like to plan ambitious scheduled itineraries (boring), I'll share my big accidental Nis trip from summer 2010.  As follows...

Downtown Nis. What's the antonym for 'bustling'?

Nis seems to specialize in morbid, depressing tourism.  Here's a list of the uplifting, happy locations you can visit when you aren't discussing the uplifting politics of Serbia over coffee:

1. Nazi Concentration Camp which was ironically a Red Cross building
2. Bubanj Memorial where many of the camp prisoners were executed
3. Nis Fortress where Turks and Serbs killed each other
4. Skull Tower which is composed of the skulls of Serbs who were killed by Turks

Sounds like a lot of fun, right?  I only visited the Concentration Camp, Bubanj Memorial and partied at the Fortress. Perhaps the most depressing item is that Nis Fortress has been left in neglect, thereby allowing local Mafia to build - you guessed it - a disco on the fortress.  Serbians accept this as Mafia doing what Mafia does, and in fact the 'historical' disco is a great place to go out in town.

I will describe the places I've visited in more detail in the next few blogs...when I get around to it. People in Nis are never in a hurry, so I will honor them by not hurrying this writing.  When I'm in Nis I simply go with the flow and do what the locals tell me.  They mainly tell me to slow down, relax and drink more.  I'm happy to say that I'm doing that as I write.

So before we take a tour of Nis, here's a big Jelen Pivo toast to all of my wild Serbs:

  "Ziveli!! Aj De Breee!"

Sweet Home Nis Serbia

I hitched a ride from the Serbian-Bulgarian border.  I planned to be in Nis, Serbia before the sunset, but it's already nightfall and I'm in a small town called Pirot, still 75 kilometers from Nis.

I'm dining on a traditional 'gurmanska pljeskavica' (Serbian cheeseburger) and a not-so-traditional Coca-Cola.  The old man who picked me up, Dusan, just paid for my meal with one of the fattest rolls of Serbian Dinars I have ever seen.  I estimate its worth at at least 100 American dollars.  He's waving the money around to let the world to know he has just paid for the Amerikan's dinner.  I remember I'm not in Latin America where such an act might get you robbed.

"Ciefing" in Mostar, Bosnia

Southern Serbia (and the Balkans in general) operates on a different wavelength from the rest of the world.  Only in Nis do I see people spend a 12 hour day drinking the same cup of coffee while talking about all the things they have to do, need to do, should do, could do...without ever actually doing them.  In neighboring Bosnia this has a name, 'cief,' which loosely translates as 'doing nothing and loving it.'  This sounds more like the laid-back 'mañana' attitude of Latin American countries such as my current home of Costa Rica.  However the Balkans has managed to create an equally laid-back, but more sophisticated culture, around something which is not supposed to relax you - a cup of coffee.

I blame the evil tourism industry.  Since I live in Costa Rica, I use it as the obvious example.  Costa Rica has marketed and sold the expression 'Pura Vida' as THE way of encompassing the people's friendly, relaxed attitude towards life.  This place is sold as a peaceful, military-free country with gorgeous beaches and perfect sunny weather where nothing goes wrong.  They don't mention the criminals who prey on tourists, the tourists who prey on prostitutes, the trash and piss-smells in the streets and the fact that it rains 11 months out of the year.  

While it is true that Costa Ricans are happy and friendly, that's only true if you talk about happy, touristy things.  If you take the conversation beyond the weather, they turn out to be as conservative, deeply religious and closed-minded as your average American Southern Baptist Republican.  Despite me tolerating criticism daily about 'gringos' and capitalist USA, if I criticize Costa Rica I'm usually told to, "go back to your own country if you don't like it. (see Youtube comments.) Sound familiar?  Yeehaw!

The Balkan countries of Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia, (and Kosovo depending on who you talk too) have stunning mountains and beaches, nice weather and friendly people who will often invite you into their homes like family.  Unfortunately tourists still see this region as a war-torn, poverty-stricken place full of violent, genocidal war criminals.   

Horrible, war-torn former Yugoslavia

When my nice Serbian friends travel through Europe, they hear supposedly intelligent people call them 'war-criminals' and 'racists' because of the actions of a few powerful people with evil ideas.  Oh well...such is history.  Germans still have to apologize when they get 'too patriotic' at international football games because some politically sensitive, whiny pricks start throwing out the word 'Nazi.'  I don't care.  I was cheering for Deutschland at the Eurocup 2012. 

But I digress...

I watched the elderly Dusan wandering around the gas station parking lot and wonder how he could be a war criminal.  He was beyond laid-back, and the fact that he couldn't speak English didn't stop him from sharing his whole life with me.  We had already stopped by his house to move furniture, finished a Serbian dinner on his tab and had coffee at a local cafe that was owned by his son who had lived in Chicago for some years.  His son was 'Americanized' and had explained to his father that although I appreciated the hospitality, it was 8 o'clock at night and I had somewhere else to go.  

Dusan was now soliciting rides for me from truck drivers in the gas station.  His son said I was in a hurry; but Dusan couldn't be hurried.  He strolled from truck to truck seemingly without purpose, and yet somehow managed to find a ride for me within 10 minutes.  He passed me his number and told me to call him when I arrived in Nis...and that I always had a home with his family if I was ever in Pirot.  The same crushing, sad feeling I had had with Maria in the Ukraine - knowing I would never see someone again - came over me.

An hour later I was at the riverside amphitheater in Nis, singing Gogol Bordello, drinking heavily and partying with my friends as if we had never missed the past year together.