A Slip of Paper Worth a Life: Researching Roma Genocide in Serbia

Podcast host Lovro Kralj talks to Milovan Pisarri, who discovered the small document that is the centre piece of this episode. Milovan is a researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade, Serbia.

This paper slip contains a declaration, in Serbian, that a woman called Milica Glišić was removed from the “Gypsy list.” 

On the reverse of the slip, a four-word sentence in German accompanied by a date reads: “Aus dem Lager 12.II.1942 entlasse” (“Released from the camp on 12 February 1942”). It is signed by the camp commandant Andorfer, SS Untersturmführer.

Milica Glišić was a 25-year-old Romani woman with an eight-year-old son. Together with approximately 600 other Romani women and children, she had been interned in the Judenlager Sajmište in Belgrade in mid-December 1941. 

The small note saved Milica’s life.

The document is preserved in the Yugoslav archives alongside other similar records that enabled numerous Romani women and children to be released from the camp and to return to their homes, places that were looted and empty. The men had been killed a few months earlier by the Wehrmacht in mass executions.

Featured guests:

Milovan Pisarri is a researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade, Serbia. Podcast host is Lovro Kralj.

Milovan will tell the story of Milica Glišić and the piece of paper that saved her life. 

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