Biography
Asja Drača Muntean is an art historian and cultural professional with more than two decades of experience in the public sector. Her research work encompasses art history, the culture of remembrance, museology, and Holocaust studies. Since 2022, she has served as the Executive Director and Curator at the “Staro Sajmište” Memorial Center.
Art as Resistance: The Testimony of Nada Novaković from the Zemun Transit Camp
Abstract: This paper analyzes the artistic testimony of Nada Novaković within the broader historical framework of the functioning of the Zemun Transit Camp (Anhaltelager Semlin), as the central camp in occupied Serbia during World War II.
After May 1942, on the grounds of today’s Old Fairground (Staro Sajmište) in Belgrade, a camp was organized under the administration of the German police, primarily intended for the internment of Serbian civilians, political prisoners, and members of insurgent movements to be sent for forced labor in the Reich. The camp was located in the pavilions of the former Belgrade Fair, which had previously been used for the Zemun Jewish Camp (Judenlager Semlin).
From the beginning of 1943, women, often with children, were also interned in the camp. Nada Novaković was brought to the camp as a female Partisan captured after the Battle of Sutjeska. Her visual testimonies record daily life within the camp. Hunger, disease, humiliating searches, threats with dogs, public executions, and continuous psychological torture represent an important context for understanding her art created under camp conditions and immediately after the war. Her visual works constitute a rare and significant corpus that reveals survival mechanisms, vulnerability, and mutual support within the camp community, particularly among women. This paper interprets her art as a form of resistance and a means of preserving personal and collective identity, emphasizing its value for the historiography of the Sajmište camp as well as for the culture of remembrance.
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